This weekend I revived my father’s cold chisel. Not a spectacular device, but amazingly useful.

A cold chisel is traditionally used by blacksmiths to cut into cold steel – mainly for cutting thick steel sheet.
(A “hot chisel” is used to cut iron and steel while still in the forge or soon after)

My father had used this for various projects over the years – he probably bought it some time in the 50’s or 60’s – and I recently came into possession of it. Banged up well and truly – mushroomed on the top, and dented at the cutting tip.

I used an angle grinder to remove the mushroomed top, and the bench grinder to shape the hardened tip.

Blue “hammered finish” paint was the best finish for this project as it hides the dents and scratches really well, as well as being a very traditional finish for tools like this.

This weekend, I gave new life to an old soldering iron.

It belonged to my grandfather, then to my father – I remember him firing up the kerosene blowtorch when I was a kid.

It’s a remarkably simple tool. Basically a lump of copper on an iron stick with a wooden handle so you don’t burn your fingers.

I was surprised how difficult it was to file the copper. The steel shaft could have been made shinier, but at some point I realised it would look better with a few little dings and pitting, than trying to make it look new.

I was originally going to finish the handle with polyurethane or epoxy. Nope, I thought that beeswax was a better finish for the vintage.

Now I’m on the lookout for an old blowtorch like this !

My tenon saw started to leave dirty marks on timber.

Time to clean things up.

It still cuts just fine, so the teeth don’t need sharpening.
All I did was remove the rust and sand it a bit.
But now it’s not an eyesore, and I can cut cleanly with confidence again.

I guess technically this is a Veneer Saw, since it has the extra teeth on the top leading edge (so you can start a cut in the middle of the sheet).
But I’ve always called it my tenon saw.

These old pliers have been favourites for decades, but time has added rust, and nothing quite lines up any more.

I tackle the surface finishes, grind the jaws and bring these delightful little pliers back to life.

I decided to leave them with a sparkling metal finish rather than repaint the handles.

This week, I restored a set of vintage vernier calipers, made in Spain around 50 years ago.

These ones read metric and inches, and can measure outer and inner sizes as well as depth.

I’ve had these for decades, and they accumulated a lot of rust and gunk.

The movement had become stiff and uneven.

So I cleaned them, derusted them, filed and polished them back to new condition.

This week, I restored some very old woodworking clamps that belonged to my grandfather.

They were rusty and beat up.

So I cleaned, straightened, derusted, painted, and polished them.