Interlineal Peruser

You're welcome Thomas. It looks like not too many posts find their way onto here. Another way of making a good cheap cold chisel is to grind the tip off of an el cheapo cold chisel and then weld a thin bead of Stellite on in its place and then grind it to a chisel point. Stellite is good for lathe cutting tools and keeps its edge even when very hot.

Hi Rob I remember my father [born 1920] trying to teach us as children about how to properly [and not properly]quench Double Griffin when used as a cold chisel. He'd heat up all of the DG chisel about 1 inch back from the cutting edge until it was all cherry red. He knew from practice exactly what colour it needed to be. He'd then quench it ever-so-briefly in oil to get the colours running towards the cutting edge, and they'd slowly 'run' just like the super-imposed time-line that you see during the finish of an Olympic swimming race. I always used to wonder where these colours came from but I now think it was perhaps in part from the oil acting somewhat like it does as a rainbow on water. I forget the sequence of colours as they 'ran' but I do remember the most crucial colour, which was 'a golden straw colour' [the pot[ential] of gold [cold?] at the end of the rainbow?], and just as this straw colour met the cutting edge was the time to quench the cold chisel out completely. He showed us how, if it was quenched too early, it'd be too brittle, and useless as a cold chisel, or too late, and it'd be too soft. Too prove all of this to us kids, as there's nothing better than the old adage of "seeing is believing", he'd place the cutting edge of the cold chisel on the top of some very old and well-used railway line and then lay into the chisel carving pieces out of the railway line. As you may know, railway line, having manganese in it, is designed to work-harden with the rolling stock's wheels giving it a good gradual pounding over the years and the day's heat. I have seen a few large shearing sheds having roof trusses made completely from old railway line and anyone with any sense should never dare to enter such places simply because old [used] railway line can snap like honeycomb at any moment, seemingly of its own accord, or just in a cold [chisel] snap. :^) If you wish to get hold of some good old Double Griffin I suggest you speak with some elderly railway fettlers who worked on the "permanent way". Some of their old chisels and tool steel may have, and just on the spur[line] of the mom_ent'erprising, decided to take an early retirement and accompanied their users home in their lunch boxes. As a kid I used to watch these fellows at work with their large 6-inch-wide Double Griffin cold chisels being held in tongs and then belted with big sledgehammers. They were forever having to take pieces out of the line as it stretched in the hot weather and use by traffic. They'd mark the rail all round as best they could before snapping it with a special bending tool if it hadn't already snapped by itself. Sometimes they'd even let you take home a short piece that you could carry to use an an anvil.