Some of my close woodworking friends take great pride in the handles they make for their tools. I admire that and sometimes I have to make a fancy handle to keep up with the “handle gurus” to keep the comments in check.
Last weekend, I was watching a guy(farrier) fit a shoe for my friends horse. Every file in his box had a nice handle: a corn cob.
I couldn’t help but notice the coarseness of them and so I asked about them. Casually he handed a couple to me and said “if you’re gonna just stand there and look at them like the rest of these people you’ll never know how good they feel”
They felt good. He takes the dried cobs and drills a small hole for the tang then he heats them a bit and “burns them in” to the cob. They were locked on pretty tight as far as I could tell.
I came home ready to make a few. Sorry- no corn around today said my wife. I will report back with my test.
I will probably make a few soon. After seeing the price of handles and the cost of shipping– I’m sure I will.
Replies
dan,
My Dad put cob handles on some of his files. He had several of the old iron-headed, copper pointed soldering irons, the kind you heat up in a fire. They all had corncob handles. Guess they are pretty good insulators, too. Not much for pretty, tho.
For a down and dirty handle for a small file, like a sawfile, a cork from a wine bottle works pretty good.
Be grateful your eye was caught by the files and not the shoes. You ever hear Minnie Pearl tell about the ol' boy came into the blackmith shop to loaf and watch the smith work? He'd just finished a horseshoe, and laid it aside, and it was still pretty hot. The idler saw it lying on the ground, picked it up to critique the workmanship, and of course, dropped it right away. The smith was watching him out of the corner of his eye, and said, "Hah! Burnt ya, did it?" "Naw," came the reply, "It jes' don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."
Ray
I like that Ray.
I put a couple of photos of the box we talked about in another section. Can't remember but you'll recognize them when you see it.
Dan
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