Japanese Puzzle Box - #4 Adding a Handle to the Small Chisel

The smallest chisel I used to clean out the recess started life as a metal working chisel.  I originally made it to clean up the bottom of grooves for ¼” thick maple plywood door panels.   That’s because a ¼” piece of plywood is not a quarter inch thick, it’s a tad less.  That meant I could not use my usual Japanese laminated ¼” wood chisel.  I did have a two ¼” metal working chisels so decided to take one and modify it to meet my needs.  I ground the width down to 3/16” wide, reground the cutting angle then sharpened it to a razor edge and it worked great.  Almost great that is.  Without any type of handle after using it for a while the small butt end left my palm sore and bruised.

Using it on this project was the last straw.  It’s time to make a handle for this tool.  I had some 2” thick cherry scrap left over so cut this blank out and marked the center on each end for mounting in the lathe.  You can see the chisel setting next to it.

 

Next is to punch the marked centers on each end and mount it in the lathe.

A couple of minutes of turning and I had the piece nearly round.  Here is one of the original flat faces not quite gone showing I need to take a little more off.

A little more work and I had the piece round and the beginning of the handle’s taper.

As I was turning I noted that the heel end (left side) of the handle was wobbling a little bit.  That told me that it was not quite completely square with the axis of the piece.  The cure is to:

1. Remove the blank from the lathe.
2. Take out the drive spur.
3. Install a 4 jaw chuck.
4. Reverse the blank.
5. Clamp it in place using the 4 jaw chuck and the tailstock live center to register the heel end so the blank is centered.
6. Pull the tailstock back away from the blank to give working room
7. Turn the heel face square with the center axis.

Here you can see I left a little nub on the squared heel so I could use the existing center dimple for axis alignment if I needed it later.

I will be mounting the blank using a screw later so I need to drill a pilot hole on axis.  I used the drill press for this.  Here is the setup, the hole in the MDF is for the nubbin on the heel to set down into.  I can now use the rim of my newly squared heel as my reference surface.  It’s then a simple matter of setting the blank in place and drilling the hole.

With the mounting hole drilled I put the blank back on the lathe and turned the nose end down to its rough shape and close to final end diameter.  The tail stock helps hold the piece centered on its axis.

In order to turn nose to final diameter I needed to pull the tailstock away.  Here I am with just the softening radius left to do at the end of the nose.

Once the nose end is nearly finished I could get ready to turn the heel end.  To do that I use a shop made adapter.  It is a 7/8” diameter by 1½” long piece of oak that has a centered pilot hole counter sunk for a screw that will run into the nose.  The adapter gets clamped in the 4-jaw chuck and the heel is aligned using the tail stock.

I can now turn the handle to its final dimensions except for a little nub on the heel end. 

 

Using a thin parting tool the nub is parted off, the tail stock pulled out of the way and final sanding done.  The handle is now just about ready for finishing.

The last tooling operation is to cut a couple of small grooves in the handle then with the lathe running use a piece of wire held in the groove friction burn it.  An application of Danish Oil Finish brings me to this point.

I did not take a photo of the adapter earlier on when I was mounting it to the handle blank, so here is what it looks like as I unscrew it from the finished handle.

My next step is to enlarge the pilot hole to snugly fit the chisel then epoxy it in place.  Before I drill the hole, I need to check to see how much clearance I need between the nose of the handle and cutting edge of the chisel so it will still fit in my sharpening jig.

Now that I have the hole depth I can set up the drill press to drill the handle.  The piece of tape on the drill is my handy-dandy depth gauge and the piece of MDF is the same one I used earlier.  It is set up centered on the drill bit then clamped in place to stay put.  This is to assure that when I drill the hole it will be on axis, square and not misaligned.

Last is to mix up some epoxy and glue the chisel in its new home.  All done it’s a lot easier on the palm of my hand to use than just the steel chisel.

Next Up – Dovetail, Slot, Slider & Recess for Lock Mechanism