Old chisels with plastic handles are cheap and available, so it is no problem to
find and restore them into useful and good looking tools.
The first thing to do is to boil them in water. The heat will loosen the handles
from the shank and they will come off easily. Wear gloves and use a pair of
pliers to handle the hot handles and the blades.

Now you can remove the rust and get ready to make some handles.
I like to use brass tubing flare nuts for ferrules because I can adjust the size
of the ferrule to match the bolster on the chisel.

You can see in the next picture how the size can be varied to fit.

Here is another picture showing how I converted ugly plastic handled chisels
into nice looking chisels with wood handles.

Now you try it!
James D. Thompson
The Old Millrat in Riverside, CA
May, 2011
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