I have a bit of a problem with buying and refurbishing more chisels than is probably reasonable. It started out with me trying to assemble a basic set of vintage chisels on the cheap, but then I just kept on going.
This one came in a pair I bought a couple weeks back. I really liked the handles and thought this one might be great for paring. I figured I could flip it over and grind the bevel on the other side since it didn't appear to be laminated. And for $15 to my door for the pair, I was willing to take a gamble on some neat-looking chisels.
But once it arrived, I saw that the work done to round the back was way more involved and done more precisely than I could tell from the photos. Someone spent a lot of time to shape the blade this way and based on how smooth and symmetrical the rounding of the back is, I'm sure they knew what they were doing.
So, it seemed like a shame to just regrind it into an ordinary chisel and undo all that work, at least until I was certain I didn't have a use for it as-is. I don't think it's for using with a lathe, since the bevel is around 22-23* so I don't think it would hold up to that. I grabbed a pine scrap and tried using it with a paring motion across the grain, and it leaves a scalloped surface kind of like a fore plane with a rounded iron. But that's all I can come up with.
Does anyone know what this might have been made to do?