So why did I buy these again?
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>I can never resist socket chisels at garage sales when they hit the 50-cent level. Somehow, this means that I've acquired lots of socket chisels without handles. Some of them were clearly struck with hammers. You can tell because the top of the socket is mushroomed, often enough to close the top of the socket or nearly so. The drawing below attempts to show the effect by a vertical section through the socket (no, it's NOT two palm trees shaking hands; that's supposed to be the wall of the socket and the mushroomed top)
We're getting ready for a garage sale ourselves (LOML, who in my opinion learns slowly on some topics, seems to have forgotten that our net hourly wage from the last two was about 10 cents an hour), and I'm thinking about getting rid of some of the excess, starting with these mushroomed chisels. I have MORE than enough chisels that don't need this repair, but just handles (another project for the round tuit list).
Before I offer them for sale, how easy would it be to restore the socket? Are we talking annealing, forging, and retempering, or are sockets usually tempered fairly soft and malleable?
I doubt that I'll be selling anything droolworthy, but any interested locals can e-mail me, and I'll try to remember to let you know about the date.