Ron Harper wrote:
"Have quite a few very old Buck Bros and Chas Buck chisels. A hodge podge of
handles. Turning a uniform set of handles is on my to do list. I love curly
maple and have quite a bit of it. Anybody use it for chisels?  Comments?"

Hi, Ron, 


In general I prefer harlequin sets, different makers and different handles, but
I'm not rabid about it. I've been trying so assemble a set of Buck butt chisels
for four or five years now, so I've given some thought to the issues.

Are your blades uniform enough to constitute a set? Not just maker (by the way,
I too am happy with cast steel Buck Bros. and Charles Buck chisels in the same
set), but style (square edge vs. bevel edge and tang vs. socket), blade length
within reasonable limits, say plus or minus a quarter inch or else a regular
increase in length with increase in width or possibly vise versa)and age (all
noble cast steel period or all degraded modern blades that aren't cast steel).
Do you have all the sizes in a reasonable progression? (all by eights or all by
sixteenths or all by quarters, or a traditional set with smaller gaps in the
smaller widths and larger in the larger widths). Do you have them over a
reasonable range of widths? Are some of the hodge podge handles original Buck
handles, or are they all replacements? are some of them good, handsome working
handles taken by themselves? In short: when you have finished the effort of
making uniform handles, will you
 still have a hodge podge of Buck chisels?


I had/have four NOS Best London Octagonal boxwood chisel handles in a size
comfortable for my hand, and a few years ago I chanced into Buck square edged
tanged blades with about 4" of blade remaining, in 3/4", 7/8", and 1-1/4". They
go together very nicely, and I will have a very nice set someday, I hope. I will
have to decide on the wood to use for additional handles, and that preyed on my
mind for a bit. Only--- I've been looking for at least four years, for dogsmeat
chisels I can improve rather than good chisels that don't need work, and I
haven't yet filled in any of the missing sizes, not even the 5/8" or the 1". It
may be a while before I have to face the problem of what wood to use to fill out
a boxwood set.


Of course, it wouldn't be that hard to fill the set if I were willing to ride
roughshod and also to spend significant money. I used to work for a man who
decided that he wanted a set of good chisels, and settled on long Witherbys.
Bought individual chisels on eBay. When he had the commoner sizes filled in he
found he had to buy mixed batches to get the one Witherby he wanted in the
batch, and threw all the others into a "trash chisels" box. Bought a belt sander
to flatten the backs and sharpen, and learned to use it by practicing on the
"trash" chisels. Destroyed a lot in the process, and didn't care: they weren't
Witherbys. Bought a mini-lathe with a duplicating attachment so that he could
make uniform handles, though last I heard he hadn't made the handles yet. At one
point he gave me a box full of "trash" chisels that he didn't consider even good
enough to practice sharpening; God knows what he destroyed and threw out,
because the twenty or thirty
 good chisels in what he gave me (some were indeed genuine trash) included Buck
(that's where I got one of my potential set), W. Butcher, Pexto, Stiletto, old
Stanley, and I forget what-all. Bit by bit I turned most of them into good,
sometimes eccentric, tools: I made several with extra-short palm handles like
engraving tools, a pair of short 3/8" skews, a special chisel for opening out
tight wooden screws (that had a foot-long handle to brace in the hollow of the
shoulder), and a bunch of plain-Jane spares. Anyway, I want to fill in my set of
Bucks by bringing chisels back from the grave. Battered ones, corroded ones,
short ones. Cheap ones. Real bottom-feeder, me.


Back to the point: You might want to get your hodgepodge Bucks to a state of
uniform set in blades before you make decisions about uniform handles. Or maybe
not. I'm not saying good or bad about anything her, just pointing to different
options.

Tom Conroy
Berkeley