The Whole Garage Catalogue: A Ward Chisel

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A Ward Chisel

The Ward firm appears to have been a Sheffield tool maker -- it's no longer with us. Here's a close-up of the logo.

In between the 'W' and the 'P' is what appears to be an anvil, with perhaps two crossed tools above it.

It looks to be quite a fine chisel, though the blade end at one side curves in somewhat. It looks to me like a manufacturing defect, rather than something that was introduced by purposeful grinding. To correct that, I'd have to shorten the blade by almost an inch, and then grind a new cutting edge. That would give me a 1 7/32" wide chisel with proper, parallel side edges. Maybe I'll do that someday when I'm really desperate for something to do. In the meantime, this can join my other chisels in their drawer.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!