Highly esteemed galoots,

After taking the Grandstaffian diatribe about making your own tools to
heart, I finally got up the gumption to create a mirror image to the
skew chisel I made a couple of weeks ago. I had a Marples blue chip
3/8" chisel that the tip got broken off 2 years ago that was just
laying around waiting to be reground into something, and so yesterday I
got out the old hand crank grinder and started in. The chisel had sides
were not fully beveled by any means so that was taken care of first.
Then the skew was ground at 25 degrees and scary sharpened to an inch
of its life.

You can see the results here -

http://galootcentral.com/index.php?option=com_copperminevis&Itemid=2&pl-
ace=displayimage&album=lastupby&cat=0&pos=1&uidhttp://galootcentral.com-
/index.php?option=com_copperminevis&Itemid=2&place=displayimage&album=l-
astupby&cat=0&pos=0&uid The Marples is several inches shorter then the
Enderes, but since these will be used to clean dovetails, the lengths
really don't matter as much.

It was a very fun endeavor and quite a learning experience to keep the
pointy end of the skew from bluing, even with using a white wheel at
very slow RPMs and dipping it in water quite frequently. At one point I
had to stop after every five revolutions of the crank handle and cool
it. I lost several fractions of an inch of the chisel while moving up
that learning curve. The sides were much easier to grind back, although
not being able to see the actual grind made using a slow wheel a huge
advantage.

Making your own tools from another almost worthless tool is a great
feeling. Now I see why Scott so heartily endorsed doing stuff like this.

Gary Maze

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