Making a Flexcut Palm Chisel/Gouge Handle

I made a new palm chisel handle from a Purple Heart drawer pull and I wanted to share.

Flexcut makes some affordable sets of gouges and chisels for Woodcarvers. It's in essence they are 'Travel Kits' The best street price is about $75 for the 10 blade, 1 handle kit and the 16 blade 2 handle and nice detail knife sells for around $150 (street price)

If you were to buy the handled gouges They would run about $15 each in sets of 4 and the basic set of 9 would run $115, More than $20 each.

My goal was to make functional handles, that were still interchangeable for the blades.

Any wood dowel 1" wide and at least 1 1/2" long would work. I used a purpleheart drawer pull about 1.25 wide and 1.5" long.

1x1x4" block of wood, for jig

3/8ths in dowel to fill hole, if not making permanent.

Drill

3/8th inch drill bit

Chisel 1/4" or less

Small/tiny file or chisel 1-2mm

Wood glue (or epoxy if you would like to make permanent.)

Pull saw

Bench vise or clamp (to hold jig)

First step was to remove the hanger bolt from the knob, it's just a wood thread, and comes out pretty easy if you can grip the threads. A piece of plastic tubing or leather will protect the threads if you'd like to be able to reuse the hanger bolts.

I actually hand held these and drilled them out. A bench vise a some thing to keep it from being damaged would be nice.

Purpleheart is a very dense wood and I had a dull bit, but I took my time and it followed the path of the former wood screw nicely. The base of the chisel/gouges is about 1" long and slightly wider than the 3/8th inch bit/hole.

Now it's time to dry fit the chisel/gouge.

You will find that the chisel is just wider than the hole. It is perhaps 10mm, I used a 1.5mm chisel to widen the hole, but a needle file would work as well. You want to maintain a tight fit.

If you would like to make the blades permanent you could use epoxy now. That was not my goal.

I used a 1x1x4" piece of basswood and drilled a hole then carefully cut down the middle of it, then carefully cut down the middle with a pull saw.

If you look closely you can see it took 2 tries...lol It was nice to have the hole go through the block of wood. It made pushing the dowel back out from the other side easier.

I cut a piece of dowel about 1.25" long and placed in the jig. I then placed the jig in a vise, but you could use a clamp. I wasn't very successful trying to cut it without a vise.

Now I dry fit the pieces of dowel and the blade. I sanded the dowel down to a pretty tight fit, the dowel and the purpleheart are hardwoods, and I wanted to ensure that the fit wouldn't loosen over time.

Now I glued in the pieces of dowel. I used a minimal amount of glue, I guess I might have added some oil on the blade base, but it came out just fine.

You'll notice I shaped the top of the dowel a bit, I suspect I'll skip this in the future. I may stain this one.

So I'm happy with the functionality of the finished product. Just 25 more to make...lol.

The picture shows Flexcut's small handle palm tool and a small Ramelson chisel.

The other photo is from the dry fit, when I was checking to see that other chisels would also work.

I also have some similar Cocobolo and Palm wood drawer pulls I hope to use for specific tools. It's not always easy to grab the right tools. I think I'll use the Palmwood for fine chisels and gouges as it isn't a very hard wood.

Alternatively you could chisel out blocks of wood from one side until the blade fit tightly and disappear into the wood, then glue a block of wood to the other side and carve or shape on a drum/sander.

I'll also likely make a couple long handle versions, similar to Flexcut's 'power handle' for times when extra power is needed, like for spoon gouges.