Chisel Handle with Leather Washers - Tutorial 3

The last chisel handle type is one with the leather washers on the striking end. Galoots seem to like this one.

Please note that I only make the claim that this is the way I do it. There are undoubtedly a dozen other ways to do this, and I will no doubt be told about every one of them. :>)

To begin with you need some hard and thick leather. I am using some very old shoe sole material about 1/8”thick. You can tell it is old by the price tag showing the price at 15 cents a pair…

Using a pair of dividers I scribe the washers a little bigger than what they will finish at, and I scribe both the inside and outside diameters. This makes it easier to locate the hole punch which cuts the holes.

I use a pair of sheet metal shears to cut the outside diameters. If I had a hole punch big enough I would use that. You can cut them with anything you have available. The actual shape of the leather washers is not critical at this point. They just need to be big enough. You need enough leather washers to make a stack about 1/2” thick.

I found that my 1/2” hole punch actually makes a hole that measures .525” when I check it with a micrometer. So I make the spigot that the leather washers will go onto that size. This needs to be a nice tight fit.

I leave the tenon for the washers about an inch longer than required. There are 2 reasons for this. The first is that I will want to put the tenon in a drill chuck when I finish turning the handle, as will be seen in a later picture. The second is that I need some extra wood for the socket to slip over when I clamp the glued leather in place. This keeps the leather compressed nicely.

When the leather washers fit correctly, they need to be glued in place. I found that a 1/2” drive socket works well against the leather.

I put the handle back in the lathe and clean up the glued up leather and the spigot.

Now I turn the handle around and put the excess spigot into a drill chuck so I can turn it.

Now I can turn everything down to its finished size. Now is when all the finish sanding and cutting of the grooves takes place.

Here is the finished handle after buffing using Tripoli compound on the same buffing wheel that polished the copper ferrule. The wood is a piece of straight grained hickory that came from an old shovel handle.

This is the finished leather end.

I hope you have enjoyed this journey through the making of my handles. If I have forgotten anything, please notify me.

Tutorial 1

Tutorial 2

Tutorial 3