Why, oh why, oh why !!!!!

[swb58]

Rant mode on . . . . . . . .

Why do some eBay sellers 'sharpen' chisels, for Pete's sake why can't they sell them as is.

Found two examples tonight, one was by by a maker that I look out for but it had met with a grindstone and the half the edge was well blued.

Then there's this one, I'll say no more :evil: (item 141281125741)

Obviously not a reader of this forum and with as much brain as that found in a small stone.

 

[GLFaria]

Or it is made of flintstone, in which case it could be a stone age implement (really looks like)... And do those people actually manage to sell anything? (eeer... I hope you didn't buy that one)

 

[AndyT]

To be fair, the rest of the tools in that lot have not been touched by the seller, so it's more likely that the last owner had a go at that gouge. In-cannel gouges aren't the easiest tools to sharpen - that one looks like it was done with an angle grinder.

My similar pet peeve is the sellers who think any bit of brass, such as the stem tips and depth stop on a plough plane, need polishing up with brasso.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Think positively - You've a chance to resusitate a sadly mauled tool. It's like rescuing an abused puppy or kitten, and nursing it back to health and confidence - a positive contribution to the good in the world. (It's also easier than nursing puppies or kittens - you don't need to shovel tins of food into tools, or 'clear up' after them!)

Maybe we should start the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Tools. We could appoint inspectors to go around arresting tool abusers, and punish them by confining them in Jacob's basement with no hope of release until they'd repaired the bevels on the chisels they'd abused with only a scooped-out oilstone. That'd learn 'em!

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Slightly less frivolously, the easiest way I've found to regrind in-cannel gouges is to dress the periphery of a standard grinding wheel to a radius slightly less than that of the gouge. I used my little 4" hand-crank for this, with a spare wheel fitted, but it's not too hard to do on a bench grinder - just rather dusty! This means you can grind to a fairly straight edge without too much difficulty - trying to use wheels of much smaller radius than the gouge is difficult, because you end up nibbling lots of humps and bumps in the edge which are tricky to dress out.