cleaning up an old chisel

[siguy]

took a little trip down to the junk shop today,

and came home with $2 worth of steel,

a nice little mortising chisel that is pretty badly gummed up,

i started by sanding with some 150 grit paper to take off all the rust then i started trying to sand the pitting out of the back, but it was pretty deep, so i took it to the belt sander with an 80 grit belt followed by flat sanding on some 150 grit and then 400 grit paper,

then i rough ground the edge (straightened, squared, raised a burr along the whole edge) with a few passes on a coarse stone on my bench grinder,

then i cleaned up and flattened the bevel on some 150 and then 400 grit paper for a slightly convex bevel. followed with green rouge for the final polish and stropping. its sharp

with that done, i moved onto the handle. i grabbed a likely piece of scrap poplar from my box of wood,

 

[siguy]

pulled out the trusty stockman and started whittling to fit in the socket,

kept whittling until i had a good fit in the socket, cut to length,

kept whittling until i had a good shape. held the handle and gave the butt of it a few good hits with the hammer to pull the chisel up onto the handle tightly,

just to test it out, i made some nice shavings off a piece of poplar. not really designed to be a cutting chisel (built for chopping out mortise joints), but it worked well,

gave it a generous coat of good old fashioned linseed oil,

interestingly enough, the name and logo are rather alike the modern Buck knives...i think i'll see if i can dig up some history about it tomorrow...

hope you enjoyed!

 

[antonio_luiz]

Looks like you had fun with this labour of love. The part that people forget when refurbising chisel and plane blades is that the back of the blade has to be 100% dead flat. I've even found that many new blades (and I'm talking reputable name brands here) aren't flat and need work to get right

 

[Bill DeShivs]

Great job.
Now wash your hands and put some pants on!
:^)

 

[StretchNM]

Buck Brothers have been around awhile, making chisels and carving tools. Garrett Wade used to like to sell them, I think. Maybe Lee Valley still does.

Pretty smooth. Excellent workmanship. Though I'd lap the back up through the grits like Antonio was saying. I like to get mine to a true mirror finish. You probably knew all that already, though, I'm thinking.

Hey. How come Bill didn;t say anything about WD40? ((( )))

 

[fujita yuji]

This is amazing.
Thanks for sharing.

Also I want to thank you for your advice on chisel sharpening.

 

[sawyersam]

It's great to resurrect an old forlorn tool. I've done it many times and the satisfaction is better than buying something new.

 

[bobofish]

Buck Bros. are pretty decent chisels these days, they sell them for example at Home Depot. They have US made lines and China lines. I have a few of the US made ones, and they are quite decent, and for the price I've been very pleased.

Here's a little article about their history, looks like they've been around a long time:
http://www.craftsmanstudio.com/html_p/BuckBrosChisels.htm
and a little more:
http://www.geocities.com/sawnutz/buck/index.htm