Handles for some new tools

[Joe Fisher]

A friend of mine is buying his wife a Rikon Mini for her 40th birthday. She turned on my Jet a while ago and was immediately hooked.

I bought her a starter set of P&N gouges and turned handles from locust (Honey? Moraine?). The wood is gorgeous, and some of them have chatoyance and some curl. The ferrules are 3/4" copper couplers cut in half.

The one on the far right was the prototype; I put my own P&N gouge in there. I thought the design was a little clunky and too big for her hands, so I made the rest slimmer and a little more flowing.



I learned that even starting with a 1/8" pilot hole and moving up in 1/16" increments, your holes can still end up off center. Next time I will drill the holes first, and use them to center. That's the way I was originally going to go, but I read someone else's procedure for making handles and they didn't do that.

-Joe

[Bernie Weishapl]

Joe those a some sweet looking handles. You did a nice job on them.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Nice handles Joe! Your friend will appreciate them, I'm sure!

[Myrel Willeford]

Very nice wish I had a set that nice to start with. Want to be my friend too.

[Raymond Overman]

Those are sharp Joe, and I do mean the handles. They really put my home grown handles for my P&Ns to shame. Nice job. I'm sure she'll enjoy them.

[Lars Thomas]

That's one of my favorite projects. Looking great. Lars

[Corey Hallagan]

Great looking handles and nice tools all around. Very kind of you!

Corey

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

VERY nice, I'm sure they will be a big hit!

Cheers!

[Andy Hoyt]

Excellent work, Joe. What impresses me the most is that they are near perfect copies of one another. Something I've tried again and again to achieve and have failed dismally each time. Thanks!

[Henry C. Gernhardt, III]

Lovely work on those handles, Joe. I'm sure your friend's wife is going to appreciate the tools greatly!

[Jim Becker]

Yea, they really are wonderful handles. 'Look comfortable to hold, too.

[Joe Fisher]

Very nice wish I had a set that nice to start with. Want to be my friend too.

Sure I'll turn you some tool handles if you make me a sword.



She and her husband are blacksmiths, and they made me this sword for my wedding gift. I can't seem to find a picture of it outside the scabbard at the moment I made the scabbard and suspension and forged the belt buckle.

So making some tool handles is the least I could do for her

-Joe

[Joe Fisher]

Excellent work, Joe. What impresses me the most is that they are near perfect copies of one another. Something I've tried again and again to achieve and have failed dismally each time. Thanks!

Thanks very much! I was very proud of that, myself. What I did was keep the first one by the lathe and kept holding it up to the one I was working on so I always had a gauge to go by.

The nice thing about this design is it's very forgiving on small discrepancies in size - there isn't much to draw the eye to differences. The flowing shape really disguises it. I eyeballed everything, including the burned lines.

-Joe

[Glenn Hodges]

These handles make these tools want to be handled.....

[john blanchard]

Nice handles, I made one out of ash to replace a small handle on a spindle gouge. A question on the P&N tools if its ok, you refer to them as a starter set, I`m thinking of ordering some from Lee Valley, are they a lower quality tool, where do they stand compared to Henry Taylor or crown tools?

thanks