Need Advise,Spucing up Stanley 60 Handles

[Stew Denton]

Hi All,

Moses's post on his Stanley 60 chisels made me finally post on rehabbing that I am doing, and need some advise on.

A while back I bought some old Stanley 60 chisels, and have been working at cleaning up, polishing, flattening the backs, and sharpening them. I am early in the process, and have quite a ways to go on them. The blades look pretty good after I get through with them, not new, but pretty good.

I had originally thought I would not mess with the handles, and some of them look a we bit ratty, but the handles weren't the important part to me, and I was focused on the business ends.

However, I got to looking at them, and thought that the blades looked pretty nice, so got to thinking it might be nice to clean up and polish the handles so the entire chisel would look better.

I found that working on them with cleaning powder gets rid of some of the ground in dirt and grime, but wondered about buffing them up. I know that buffing compound of some type, and a buffing wheel, can help, but don't know what kind of buffing compound to use, or if there is a better approach. I have plenty of buffing wheels and the standard pack of 4 types of buffing compound, which I have had for years.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Ops, make the "sprucing" in the title line.

Thanks and regards,

Stew

[Joe Bailey]

Auto stores have many products designed to restore modern headlight lenses to like new condition -- these are mildly abrasive cremes which remove the dull, foggy look from the lens.
In severe cases, sanding with wet sandpaper (grits from 1500-3000) is indicated prior to using the product.

Test somewhere inconspicuous to check for compatibiltiy with your particular plastic

[Tom M King]

Golf club ferrules are polished with a linen belt on a 1x42" belt sander. You don't have to hit them long at all. It would probably work for those handles too. The manual way to do it is with old t-shirt material saturated in acetone, and a quick buffing like polishing a shoe. You don't stay on them long with either method, or it will change the shape too much.

http://www.golfworks.com/product.asp?pn=PFTB&green=1EB5DD9E-2B1B-57D0-00C0-FAC7D9779BA2&utm_source=MyBuys&utm_medium=RSP&utm_campaign=WebRecUS

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Toothpaste. We use it to clean dive masks. If that doesn't work, use a soft rubbing compound. McGuire ' sells some stuff called "liquid ebony" that is very fine.