These photos are from commentariat(tm) member ‘dangerousbeans’.

Perhaps you will recall the tale of the wandering bar of suminigashi that was somewhere in the postal service [stderr], fate unknown due to coronavirus-caused air service interruptions. It re-surfaced a few weeks ago when I got an email “it’s here!” Nothing from the US Postal service, though suddenly the package showed “delivered” – it’s a success, and I’ll take it however it happens.

dangerousbeans completed mounting the bar in a chisel for wood-lathing and I can see why she’s chuffed about how it looks. That baby’s going to chew some wood!

I’m impressed at the narrowness of the handle and the ferrule – that’s a hard target to fit a 3/8″ steel bar into. Good job!

The ferrule of a lathe chisel is a very important part of its structural strength. It serves to distribute impact and also acts as a backstop in case the front of the handle starts to come apart. Lovely!

I am actually not very good at identifying wood, but that looks like cross-grain oak. I love the old-school look of his handle, which is such a different interpretation of chisel handle from my own.

Thanks for sharing! I love it when a collaboration works out.

One of the reasons I am not very good at wood identification is because most of the woods I see are exotic versions of exotic woods, or exotic versions of normal woods. Sure, I can identify a plain piece of white maple, but that’s easy. Identifying a piece of spalted burl is a different matter: is it boxwood or mesquite? Um. It looks like a fractal, is all I can say. Burls of some woods bear no resemblance to the normal grain – i.e.: walnut burl. I remember a piece of lignum vitae burl I saw once, now that was something (it was destined to be turned into pegs for a musical instrument). And the bog oak I’ve worked with – some of it you’d be hard-pressed to identify as oak. Or, I would. The best part is that I really don’t have to care; I can tell if a piece of wood is solid enough by its weight and the sound it makes when the tablesaw blade hits it. If the tablesaw starts to smoke, it’s hard enough.