Thread: fitting handle to slick?

Don't heat the chisel - unless you are bleeding to death & trying to cauterise the wound, or it has been so mistreated that it needs to be re-hardened because it is as soft as cheese.

It used to be a fairly common practice to heat a chisel tang to red heat & then 'burn in' the tang to a handle with a hole in the middle - of course it used to be pretty common for the handle to fall off after a year or so too.

Most socketed chisels have a solid tapered socket, so when you have removed the old handle, dead bugs etc. & cleaned the socket right out, measure it up - big diameter, length of hole etc. - make your handle taper a good 1/4" (6mm) or so short & a smidge over sized then give it a good whacking with the blade against a bit of scrap timber. That should compress the handle timber a bit & it should never come out of its own accord. If the tapered section is too long, it will bottom out in the socket before it is good & tight, so you will need to trim a bit more off - of course if it won't come back out then it is probably juuuust about right anyway If the socket has a split down one side then you are laughing - the spring in the socket will hold the handle in place so long as the handle is shorter & a bit thicker than the socket.

thanks a bundle, i'd better get cleaning and turning then, that sounds easy enough.