Hi Gang,
A week or so back I posted a question on another forum regarding some scrap steel I had come across at work and was planning to use as scraper stock. During the discussion it was suggested to me that I should use a harder burnisher, one that is also polished.
At this point enter Harry. A fellow woodworker who happened to have some hardened piston rods laying about. He kindly offered them to me because he didn't have the time to make burnishers out of them. I accepted his generous offer and promised to save one of them for him.
Several days ago these hardened steel piston rods arrived in the mail and I decided that I would make new handles for them right away. I needed a break from my ongoing projects. So I selected some Ash and Walnut from the scrap bin. I used 1/2" copper pipe for the ferrules. I was surprised how quickly the process went. I managed to rough the blanks, drill the holes, mount the ferrules and turn all the handles all in about 1 1/2 hours. That includes giving them several coats of BLO allowing them to dry.
I the chucked the steel rods into my lathe and sanded them all the way up to 2000 grit. You could see your reflection in them once I was done. After that I glued them into the handles and buffed the completed burnishers using a Beall Buffing System.
Like I said, one of these is going back to Harry, and I'm keeping one. The other two will be sent to two other deserving (fledgling) Woodworkers.
Thanks for viewing.