Estate Sale Finds - Part 2

This is the second post about some tools I found at a couple of estate sales back in August.  Last week I wrote about the boring tools: brace, bits and an auger bit extension.  This post is about the three chisels in the lot.

The tools I got at two estate sales

Of the three chisels in the picture, the two smaller ones were made by Swedish maker E. A. Berg, the "Eskilstuna" brand.  Both are about 7/8" across the edge.  Remarkably, they were found at two different estate sales (and on the same day)!  You'd think I'd find them together!  These made me think of a guy in my tool collectors club, Jeppe Eskilsson, who died unexpectedly during the pandemic.  He was an avid collector of, and had tons of knowledge about, Swedish tools.  I enjoyed talking to him and wish I had spent more time with him.

I made a handle for the handle-less Berg chisel, just a simple shape.  But as I was rehabbing that chisel, I found that the blade had a serious crack in it.

E. A. Berg 7/8" chisel

The logo

The crack from the flat face ...

... and shown on the beveled side

Handled and sharpened

Due to the crack, I'll never use this chisel with a hammer or mallet, but it sharpened up nicely and can pare like nobody's business.

Paring end grain with the freshly sharpened Berg chisel

The second Berg chisel is a much heavier duty square-sided "firmer" chisel.  It has the same logo as the bevel-edged Berg chisel.  It's got a steel ring at the back end and this chisel has been bashed by hammers many, many times in its life.

E. A. Berg 7/8" firmer chisel

Unfortunately heavy pitting on the flat side

A stout steel ring at the back end

Got a nice mirror finish after flattening and sharpening

I had to spend a lot of time flattening this one to get down past the pitting.  It also required that I remove about 1/8" from the length to get past some unevenness and deeper pitting.  And because the chisel was fairly thick, it took quite a while on the hand crank grinder to create a new bevel.

This flat at this tip shows how much I had to grind back from the edge

The third chisel is a 2" bevel edged chisel with the mark "YALE" on it.  I tried to research this, but got conflicting results.  I found on eBay a chisel box labelled "C. I. Yale Mfg. Co., successors to G. I. Mix & Co., Yalesville, Conn, USA".  But I dead ended there.  There is also the Yale Lock Company, who've been around for many decades.  The logo on the chisel does not appear to be the same as logos used by the Yale Lock Mfg. Co., which later became the Yale and Towne Mfg. Co. that apparently made (and still makes) fork lifts.  But these Yale companies were founded by Linus Yale, so not the same as that C. I. Yale Mfg. Co.  Someone suggested that a known manufacturer could have made chisels for Yale Lock and stamped Yale's name and logo on it.  I'm guessing that's the case.

Anyway, this chisel had quite a side-to-side belly on it's flat side and it took a LOT of time and effort to flatten it.  But eventually it got there and sharpened up nicely.  Its handle had been broken off and apparently someone kept using the chisel with the tip of the handle still in the socket.  The broken handle had been hammered into the socket so much that not only was it very tough to remove, but also the rim of the socket was seriously deformed.  I filed the rim reasonably smooth and made a new handle for it.

The logo

As found: tip of handle hopelessly bashed into the socket

Drilled a hole and put in a screw to try to pull out the handle's tip (to no avail)

I had to drill out the handle's remains and followed up with a metal pick to pry loose some debris.  Filling the socket with water for several hours helped loosen the fibers and eventually I got it cleaned out.  But look at the rim of the socket!

Totally deformed from years of pounding from a metal hammer

And here it is after filing the rim

I made a new handle with the "London Pattern" from some scrap wood.  Fitting the tapered tip into the chisel's socket was fit/pare/fit/pare/fit/pare and repeat. because the interior of the socket was anything but a regular cone shape.  I marked the inside of the socket with sharpie to gauge progress and eventually got a good tight fit.

Turning an octagonal blank to the London pattern on the bungee lathe

Fit the end into the socket to find where it rubs more and file/rasp those marks away

This is the very tip of the chisel handle: it shows how out-of-round the hole was

The finished handle before the shellac finish, shown here next to a 1 1/2" chisel

Handle with shellac, then wax; edge sharpened

These chisels cleaned up nicely.  Aside from the bevel-edged Berg chisel with the big crack in it, they will be nice users.  But even that one should be useful for lighter paring work.  I shudder to think what might have become of these had I not seen them in a cabinet at those sales.  Probably the scrap heap, and that would have been a shame!