A Winter Project
Excerpt from J. Buck Tool Catalogue 1912 (see below for details).
One of my winter projects is to clean up some old tools that were passed down to me. To remove the rust I soaked the blades in treacle and water (1:20 ratio) for a week and managed to clean them up fairly respectably using some iron wool and emery paper.
My favourite is the 1/4" Buck Cast Steel chisel. There were a lot of “Bucks” in the world of tool making and the closest I could find was a similar “J. Buck” chisel listing on Ebay, although without the decorative cast “eye” motifs. The J. Buck catalogue also features some similar chisels and matches the history of the second chisel. This chisel doesn’t have any maker’s mark but it does have the owner’s named stamped on the handle. According to our family tree Robert Young was born in 1860 in London and his profession is listed as “Organ Builder”. My family confirmed that they were likely his, meaning I’m looking at a couple of chisels that are c. 100 years old.
I added three coats of Tung oil to the handles and after a sharpen these were ready for use. I’ve already started using them and really appreciated the smaller size for working on finer pieces. I’m also working on restoring a number of hand planes that were passed onto me at the same time which I will document in a future post.
Images
J. Buck Tool Catalogue images are Creative Commons Licensed, sourced from archive.org
All other phhotographs copyright © Small Boat Works 2024.