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:
Below, the tools after the rescue operation:
1 comment:
Lovely work!
Post a Comment