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Yeah... Don't let Bill give you the impression that the guy behind the counter was just jumping up and trying to give his stuff away by lowering the price. No. That would be a mistake. This guy, Taggart, he has this thing that he does where he hangs around and sifts through the stuff. He sifts through it, and he pick, pick, picks it. One, two, "Uh, do I really want that one? ...No." Then he puts it back and shifts his weight to the other foot and starts pick, pick, picking through the bin again. The poor guy was watching him for ten minutes before he had to come over and start slashing his prices just to get Bill to stop pick, pick, picking at his stuff. It was a glorious thing to behold. Not at all like the guy that Slav was talking about. Bill never made an offer. He just stared down the guy's stuff, and made polite, sometimes even interesting, conversation. Anyway, we took our chisels back to Bill's shop and he did all the skilled labor. It was a great lesson in turning a $3 chisel into a $20 chisel. My photos don't do it justice. Thanks, Bill. Oh, yeah. I did get to smack that slacker handle (after Bill's makeover at the lathe, and a spa treatment of BLO, turpentine, and one other ingredient I can't recall now... shellac? varnish?) with a big mallet. Woo hoo! It's a beauty now. But the thing that killed me, and that is my real gloat, is that I got a great big, beautiful, only-superficially-rusty leg vise -- FREE! Check it out!
How did I get it? My friend Bill, who loves rust, had two, and wouldn't take my money, because he is a kickass galoot who had already fixed his other one up very pretty -- apparently he pounds on it all the time. This one was languishing in the corner, and all I had to do was promise to clean it up and use it -- RIGHT... big sacrifice! I have to promise to spend a few hours getting dirty and smelly in the garage instead of pushing reams of paper across my desk? SUCKER! I was going to do that anyway! Whew! What a blast. I'm going to remember that trip for a long time. Oh... yeah. Gary asked about the top chisel. Gary... I took some closer photos. They are big files so that you can see the details. There are no markings that I can discern. The dimensions are 5/32" blade (cut) width; 10 1/16" chisel length, including socket; 4 3/32" handle length; overall, 14 5/32". The handle is a replacement, I think, since it seems that the socket has been ground some (probably from having mushroomed a bit). I like the heck out of it. I am going to go cut something with it, but I need to figure out how to sharpen it. It doesn't have a hollow ground edge, in fact, the edge is formed at the intersection of the flat bottom and the curved convex face of the chisel. I don't have any others like it, but I'll bet there is a bunch of information in the archives about the proper way to do it. Anyway, I think that this is one of those "pig sticker" mortising chisels that Bugbear is always recommending. I hope so. Anyway, enjoy the pics.
Thanks again, Bill. You are truly galootinous. Michael Winget-Hernandez
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