Help with restroring chisels

[Michael Pfau]

I bought an old set of chisels on Ebay. Dunlops made in Germany are most of them. I would like to clean them up, and turn new handles for them. My question is alot of them have no farrel. the wood is just run into the metal tapered hole. Can i use epoxy?.. when joining this? Any ideas would be great. Thanks.

[Pat Keefe]

Michael, what you have brought are called "socket" chisels. When you turn your handles, you have to turn a "male" socket to go into the "female". Generally they are friction fit. Epoxy just makes it more difficult to change the handle size/shape if you do not like it.

See Bob Smaslers thread here for tips on restoring old chisels

[Danny Thompson]

These sound similar to the modern Lie-Nielsen socket chisels. As Pat says, the friction fit is meant to be all you need, although some people glue them. Mine work well without glue. If a handle comes loose, a few taps with the heel of my hand and it snugs back up.

[jonathan snyder]

A friction fit is fine, but the first time I picked up a chisel by the handle and my freshly honed edge hit the floor, I broke out the epoxy! Just a dab as insurance. If you need to remove the handle, you can warm the socket with a lighter and the epoxy will release form the socket.

Jonathan

[Ray Sheley]

Jonathan,
I understand that folks up your way have a bit of snow at the moment. When does snow season normally end for you?

OH! For the on-topic part, so far I haven't epoxied any handles, but I have a couple with socket pockets that appear ro be hoplessly non-uniform and so far my skill level hasen't yet made a reliable enough fit to keep them together consitantly. But no epoxy.....yet.

[Stephen Shepherd]

Don't use epoxy because when the adhesive bond fails, and it will fail as you are constantly pounding on the thing. If you want to use a glue use hide glue, then when it becomes loose, just get it wet and put it back in.

You can also use rosin (the same stuff used to rosin the bow), rubbed in the socket and on the handle, grips well and is easy to renew.

The problem with epoxy is that it has to be completely cleaned off to reglue where as hide glue needs only a little moisture or more glue to reactivate.

Stephen

[jonathan snyder]

Ray, we got 20" on Saturday Just when I thought spring was here. Its been in the 40's the last two days so its melting fast. The geese are back and the tulips were up about 2", so even the critters got caught by surprise

Stephen, I haven't had any problems with the epoxy failing yet, but I have only used it on some of my paring chisels. I like your idea of hide using hide glue. I imagine that would also release with a bit of heat.

Jonathan

[Mike Brady]

Actually, I have had no problems with the socket chisels holding the handles. I just set the handle into the socket with some hard blows with a mallet. Here are a couple that I restored and turned handles for (Greenlee brand).

[Mike Henderson]

The only time I've had problems with getting a handle to stay in a socket was when I used a very hard wood as the handle, like cocobolo, bocote, or ebony. Normal woods, like oak, pecan, cherry, walnut, and even bloodwood, stay in the socket quite well with just a good rap from a mallet.

Nice handles, Mike B. Did you also polish the chisels - maybe with a deburring wheel?

Mike