Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Addressing wood chisel abuse!

Below, two examples I came across recently.  First, a lovely Swedish Esteel socket chisel, with the socket deformed after some moron used it without a handle, obviously hitting the socket with a steel hammer rather than with a wooden mallet.  I'm planning to carefully heat the end of the socket with the oxy-acetylene torch, and reform it by hammering the mushroomed portion on a tapered drift.  Frequent quenching of the blade will be necessary to ensure I don't draw the temper.  Then I'll reshape the bevel and sharpen it on a whetstone.  Then I'll see if I have a suitable vintage handle to fit the socket.


Second, a British-made Footprint socket chisel.  The picture doesn't do justice to the damaged cutting edge.  I assume a previous owner drove it into nails or screws, and/or used it to pry lids off of paint cans.  The rust pustules were also bad.  Also, anyone who lets paint get on a good tool shouldn't be permitted to own them.  Anyway, I've re-ground and sharpened the edge, cleaned the paint off of the handle, and removed most of the rust (unfortunately, also most of the etched Footprint name). 


I keep cheap junk chisels around for jobs that risk the tool.  High quality tools like these should be treated with more respect.

Below, the tools after the rescue operation: