New chisel handles and a big whiney whiney whiney

[Pekka Huhta]

Oh boy.

I made a lathe. To turn me chisel handles. I had half a forest of "visakoivu", curly birch, masur birch, gnarly birch, whatever you call it. Curly, nice wood which is regarded over here in Finland as the best possible stock for any chisel handles, as it just can't split.

Makes you think it should make nice chisel handles.



They were.

A good 2" framing chisel for my timber work. I was proud as (***) for that one. The hitting ring by the way is a half of a 3/4" water pipe connector. It seemed to me as a nice touch, probably it is.

But the bench set. Bummer. Did not get thrugh on my quality control.



Although "visakoivu" is so resistent of splitting that I have old chisel handles which have been hammered to stumps without splitting, it just won't translate to socket chisels. They just don't take the bend on the socket.

At least the last set got right, at least this far. Set of small butts with Eskilstuna steel on the other end.



Well now, I shouldn't be depressed on this one. Still, I am :roll:

Not a bad one. But still it took me weeks to get the time to turn them all with that pretty but flimsy lathe. Not to speak about building the darn lathe.

The last touch for the day was that I got the last chisel blank flying to my forehead from the lathe. A helluva bruise it gave me. And as I got the blank finished it broke off on the first good try.

Whiney whiney whiney.

I guess we all have these moments from time to time, but this just got me a bit too bad and I thought to share a few bad moments instead of the endless successes we always see on the forum

Pekka

P.S: Could someone just put me out of my misery with a good set of just regular, old, carbon steel bevel edge chisels with proper boxwood handles. Really. A PM will do

 

[PowerTool]

The last touch for the day was that I got the last chisel blank flying to my forehead from the lathe. A helluva bruise it gave me. And as I got the blank finished it broke off on the first good try.

Whiney whiney whiney.

I guess we all have these moments from time to time, but this just got me a bit too bad and I thought to share a few bad moments instead of the endless successes we always see on the forum

Pekka

Ouch :shock: - hope the bruising soon wears off.
Thanks for sharing;always enjoy seeing other peoples work,as there is often something to be learned from it.(In this case,try to remember the full face visor when woodturning )

Lovely looking handles,though.

Andrew

 

[Paul Kierstead]

Very ambitious!! Bravo on the try, and they are very beautiful and worth the time spent.

The only way not to fail is to not to try. Have another try, the results look very much worth it, and the skills are more then worth it, IMO.

 

[Frank D.]

Wow,
I'm very impressed by that little lathe!
Those handles sure did look nice...oh well, as you say these things happen, althoughthey never seem to happen to me (on days I don't walk iinto the shop, that is)

The last touch for the day was that I got the last chisel blank flying to my forehead from the lathe. A helluva bruise it gave me. And as I got the blank finished it broke off on the first good try.

Now that's funny! :lol: Like the time i was putting the final screw into a jewelry box...the last screw of the last hinge...the screwdriver was a huge electric drill...I broke the screw, gashed my thumb, then took a big chunk out of the box. :lol:

 

[Paul Chapman]

That lathe & those chisel handles look lovely 8) 8)

I hope your forehead is better soon :wink:

Cheers

Paul

 

[Alf]

Oooo, purty. What a bummer about the busted ones though I tend to have a failure rate of about 1 in 5 for one reason or another and that's with much more friendly wood. But hey, when it works it's all worth while - or so I tell myself. :roll:

Cheers, Alf

 

[NickWelford]

That masur birch is lovely stuff, but costs a fortune here - I have a small piece I picked up at some show or other, 'twas about £12 if I remember - enough for a goblet is all.

 

[Anonymous]

Just have another go, we all have bad hair days :wink: :lol:

I've done socketed handle's and I had my share of failures like yours at first. I think 2 things were to blame.

1/ I wasnt getting good contact with the whole of the inside of the socket. this put too much strain on a smaller are of the tapered tennon. The wood handle has to fit as exactly as possible with no void's. How did you fit them up? Did you do the mark and file, mark and file, mark and file method? It cant be rushed unfortunately. Norse woodsmith has a good section on this. Chisel sockets are seldom tapered unifomly inside and you have to account for that when fitting up.
2/ Also I tried using ash wood that wasnt as good as it could have been, it was slightly spalted and sappy. I fitted it up (in a hurry :roll: ) and I had them snap immaediately. When I used good clean stock it worked fine.

Just 2 encourage you it can work out heres some that were all OK

That 1 inch socket is a beauty in fact one of my favourite chisels. When I bought it from Tony Murland its "handle" was a crude bit of filed up dowel :roll:

Cheers and good luck with your next ones Jonathan

 

[bugbear]

Oh boy.

I made a lathe.

Well, ****, boy! (American deep south accent)

You can't just leave it there!

Details and photos on that CUTE little lathe, please!

BugBear

 

[woodbloke]

Handles and lathe look really good, keep at it. We all have days when stuff doesn't go right. When that happens to me, its time to tidy the 'shop put the gear away and go and have a brew. Next time it usually goes OK......do like that curly birch tho :wink: - Rob

 

[Alf]

Details and photos on that CUTE little lathe, please!

ici.

Cheers, Alf

 

[bugbear]

Details and photos on that CUTE little lathe, please!

ici.

Cheers, Alf

Ah. Colour me hand-tool centric

BugBear

 

[Pekka Huhta]

Yet another try. This time the handles got done nicely. I really shoud get some room to the workshop to fit my moaning chair in

These really weren't the first ones, but the first ones I tried with the masur birch. It may be expensive, but then again I got my trunks practically for free.

Only problem was that they really were trunks. This is the smallest one, practically just a branch. I took some pictures earlier when doing the first ones.

I don't have a bandsaw. Actually the handiest way to saw that for blanks is a bow saw with cross-cut teeth. Actually it ain't much slower than a cheap bandsaw and saws much more accurately.

The extra on tha blank can be sawed of with one of the japanese saws, although they are too slow for sawing the whole trunk.

I started with 8-siding all the blanks. With a proper lathe it isn't so vital, but the bump I got on my forehead was just because I did not 8-side the last blanks.

Losing a blank or two is darn frustrating, as it takes a good while to start all over again.



I forgot to post this one to the lathe thread: This is the bit that we discussed about, a ground-up drill. It looks a bit difficult to chop that pattern to the end of the blank, but it takes about twenty seconds after a while of practising.

The drill bit is just the ther half of one of these pairs:

Don't know the names for those for sure.


Well, the handles got done. Could've been easier

Pekka

P.S, I was serious about the good bevel edge set with boxwood handles. If anyone has some just laying around under the heap of Norris planes and allthesuch, just give me a yell :wink:

 

[bugbear]

The extra on tha blank can be sawed of with one of the japanese saws, although they are too slow for sawing the whole trunk.

I started with 8-siding all the blanks. With a proper lathe it isn't so vital, but the bump I got on my forehead was just because I did not 8-side the last blanks.

Hmm. saws and planes? Don't strike me as the best tools for the job; I'd have used a drawknife, but I thought the Finnish way might involve axes?

BugBear

 

[NickWelford]

Hmm. saws and planes? Don't strike me as the best tools for the job; I'd have used a drawknife, but I thought the Finnish way might involve axes?

BugBear

Whilst looking at the pictures, I too thought that a shavehorse and drawknife would be the best option, failing a bandsaw. Very satisfying also.

 

[Pekka Huhta]

Masur birch is really difficult to chop or cut. You guessed it right, the local way over here would involve an axe, but the grain direction is so curvy that it's really difficult to chop bits (or even chips) out of it. Or if you do, they'll be chunks then.

What comes to cross-grain masur birch is... I guess the result would be the same if a birdseye maple went out for a few drinks ending up having some fun with a dish of sphagetti

I'm not that bad with an axe, but at least for me the wood was impossible to cut with an axe. I've been toying with the idea of getting myself a drawknife, but as they don't belong to the local 'tool dialect' it's pretty difficult to get one here. I know, eBay is out there, but I'm a bit lazy.

The closest we get to a drawknife over here is the bark iron or barking knife (picture from DICK Fine Tools catalog)

I have two of those, but I'm using them just for de-barking wood after felling. Problem with those is that they are generally made from relatively soft steel. They don't convert too easily to a carpenters drawknife.

Maybe I should try, perhaps a long slicing cut with a drawknife would do wonders where an axe just won't bite.

Thanks for the idea,

Pekka

 

[bugbear]

What comes to cross-grain masur birch is... I guess the result would be the same if a birdseye maple went out for a few drinks ending up having some fun with a dish of sphagetti .

Wow! That would be a fine turn of phrase for a native English speaker, and I'm guessing that english isn't your first language.

Wondrous.

BugBear (and point taken on the grain)