Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
I picked up this 11” long Perfect Handle screwdriver for a $2 at a building reclaim place. It's would make a cool restoration project—the wooden for the handle is a wreck—and will come in handy considering all of my old hand planes require flathead screwdrivers.
It was easy enough to remove the pins that used to hold the wood handles in place. I didn't see a point in trying to salvage the wood. Moisture loss and wear over decades made them too small to fit. Instead, I decided to make new wood for the handles from some scraps of maple I had laying around.Fitting the new wood took some effort to fit into confined spaces. The wood had to be cut to length as well as either end of the blocks having 55 degree bevels before the wood can be glued in. (Removing the old handles also revealed the maker's mark, IAB Co, which is Irwin.)
Once fitted, the wood blocks were glued using epoxy. I'll mention here that the maple blocks I used for the handles each had two holes in them, so I made short dowels out of some scrap bubinga to plug the holes. I decided not to include new metal pins to hold the wood in place, figuring that the epoxy will do the job. The bubinga dowels are only there to plug up the holes and for aesthetics.
This next part of the project, i.e., shaping the handle was super fun. It basically amounted to the same process as roughing out and rounding the wood when woodcarving in the round.The first step was to trim excess wood on either side of the handle on the band saw.
Then I drew the handle shape I wanted.
There are many ways to shape the handle. My preference is to use rasps and files whenever possible. They allow me to remove material quickly while providing me with a lot of control of the tool. In this case, I used a Shinto rasp, which I LOVE using. I highly recommend having one in the shop. It made quick work of rounding out the handle.
Important note: I stopped using my rasps before the wood was flush with the metal of the handle to avoid gouging into the metal or ruining the rasps. I planned to shine up the metal by sanding it using my 1×30 belt sander. The wood would be sanded flush to the metal at that time. This was a bit tricky. The sander was perfect for cleaning up the metal and getting it to shine, but it was too aggressive for the wood, especially because I'd be sanding cross-grain. This led to a few burn marks in the wood, which were a pain to remove. (I had a few burn marks, usually close to where the wood and metal meet. I ended up sanding those marks out with sandpaper and small files. The belt sander was to aggressive and imprecise for spot sanding.)Once the shaping of the handle was done and hand sanded to 220 grit, I french polished the handle (using amber-tinted shellac) followed by applying paste wax with 0000 steel wool. This is my favorite finish and gives the tool a great feel in the hand.I'll mention here that the rest of the screwdriver was shined up using the 1×30 belt sander followed by using a fiber wheel, then buffing/polishing. My fiber wheels go on my 4-1/2” angle grinder, but you can also buy them for bench grinders/buffers. I'll note to be very careful when cleaning up the head of the screwdriver with power sanders and grinders. It's VERY easy to turn that flathead screwdriver into a chisel or to mess it up in some other way that makes the head useless as a screwdriver. (Ask me how I know.)Thanks for reading my post!