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Score!

Saturday we went to the first big country fair of the season, and one of our very favorites. This one features acres (literally. Probably) of dealers in old junk, prominently old tools.

This was my only buy of the day, but what a score! It was a grubby old canvas tool roll with some rusty bits I didn’t think much of. I picked it up with a pair of pliers I liked the look of, and he charged me a fiver for the lot.

Got it home to find thirteen really nice quality chisels. Rusty to be sure, but they’re cleaning up and sharpening just fine. I’m not the world’s greatest sharpener (and curved chisels aren’t the easiest thing in the world to sharpen), but I’m getting there.

The four little ones on the left are all done. You can see there’s some pitting, but a bit of inner bevel at the edge takes care of that for practical purposes. Yeah, I’ve been burning up the “reclaiming old chisels” YouTube search.

I was actually looking for chisels. I plan to try my hand at some linoleum/wood block printing again (I was a printmaking major in art school). That’s why I need the tiny ones but I’m not in a hurry to put the effort into the larger ones. Even my sharpening skills are adequate for linoleum!

In all the acres of tools, I only found one other man selling chisels. It was a set of six, I think. Good but nothing special, in okay condition with wooden handles. Dude wanted £120 for it. Funny how these places work.

So, you reckon these things originally fit into a wooden handle?

May 30, 2018 — 8:57 pm
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