Tool Grips

For quite some time I have paid close attention to tool grips.

I have even made quite a few odd ones just to test ideas.

These taper the opposite way of a lot of handles. Not good for whacking, but for pushing, they are great.

For a large handle, this is my favorite design.

For small portable tools, these tapered and rounded square handles do pretty well.

The rough octagonal handle shown in the foreground of this picture is surprisingly comfortable and manageable.

In my playing around with handles, I have discovered that I am liking shorter handles, with at least one flat plane, more and more.

While the aesthetics, feel and grip of a simple egg are superb, without a flat, the tool tends to wander around the table top. This can destroy tips, edges, feet and legs. If you try to catch them, hands can be damaged.  This tool fits well to the palm of the hand and allows the force to distribute evenly.  As a result It can be used with great pressure and produces little fatigue while doing it.

Having a flat on a tool is usually better.  Having several flats is even better still. Too many and the tool will start to roll. Too few or too pronounced a flat, and the tool becomes polarized to a particular position in your hand. This may be idea, but if you use a lot of grips, it can be limiting.  Flats, as long as they are not too long, can give a tactile reference and allow you to feel when your grip is correct.

So for some  background on tool grips and with it lengths, there are some   great references at McClain’s Printmaking Supplies .

Some of their documents such as  this one,  advise users of their Japanese Tools to cut the handles length down.  Their advice is, if you hold your hand splayed open, the distance, between where the web on your thumb ends to the farthest point of your middle finger, is the handle length advised. For me that is right on 7″ so I have not cut down a lot of tool handles. In fact I find 7″ a bit long or alternately quite well long enough. 7″ is quite nice in fact for a tools entire length.

The question of the best handle shape is further complicated by the range of grips that one might desire.  Some conventional grip are quite instinctive, but there are a lot of grips that have been tested and used over time, that may preclude some tool shapes.

Wood-Block Printing, by F. Morley Fletcher shows several interesting grips,

as do two articles at McClains, The Traditional Way to Hold Japanese Tools and  The Traditional Way to Hold The Knife.

Some tools  have broader flairs at the back, to facilitate palm grips and mallet use.

Woodworking Tools 1600–1900 by Peter C. Welsh Has several plates from Moxton’s The Tools of the Joiner Woodworking Tools, one of these plates, shows what looks like a short octagonal or hexagonal grip flaring towards the back with a bit of a rounding or flair back at the end.

There they are, center left.  Same handle almost for gouge, mortise chisel, skew, fishtail and straight.

Plate 8 shows a hexagonal socket.

Plate 8 also shows what looks like a primitive butterfly yo-yo. 😉

I am really fond of hexagonal shapes, and generally prefer them to octagonal, but from my own playing around, octagonal is preferable on a handle to hexagonal.  Hexagonal forces the hand to hold the tool at particular angles.  If aligned right, this may be fine for a particular user, but a hexagon allows quite a bit more tweaking.   A faceted handle has many advantages apart from the safety and convenience of the tool staying put.  It also gives the hand some reference as to the angle it is being held at.  It makes it easier to repeat a how you hold it.

As far as hexagonal handles go, Frog,  has some nice handles for reasonable prices. I have not tried them, as the economic swings have not rewarded those who try to maintain quality public education, but I suspect they will do nicely.  The 81M6 to 81M10 are the ones I rather like.  While you are at Frog, look around, their range and prices are quite tempting.  Oh, but for flipping great wodgers of cash, I would be all over their catalog!

Over on Timber Frame Tools, is an excellent article on tool grip shapes, that points further to a few other superb articles on octagonal grips.  He should have also pointed to his own  article on making hexagonal cross sections, it is superb as well.   I like Don McConnell’s PDF on Octagonal Handles quite a bit.  They are good pounders and pushers, they are simple and elegant.
Stephen Shepherd’s Octagonal Handles are delightful.   Clean lines and simple in form.

Bibliophile, on The Literary Workshop Blog, shows in detail how to carve, an octagonal handle for a socket chisel. He uses a draw knife, rasp and spokeshave, and ends up making as even a hexagon as you could ask for.

The Schwarz even shows a preference for octagonal hammer grips, although from the picture the handle looks to be as hexagonal as it is octagonal.   I do not remember who was involved, but I do recall at one time reading a discussion where several experts on hand tools agreed that a slightly flattened octagonal grip was standard and preferred.

Stephen Shepherd relates that he has pretty much switched all of his tools over to tapered hexagonal grips.   That speaks fairly strongly for his preference as he has handled and used quite a few.   Thomas Martin, in his,  The Circle of the Mechanical Arts, London, 1813, shows a few handles that look pretty much just like what Stephen prefers.

My next experiment will be to try and make a few similar to this, a few like Don McConnell makes and a few that are a bit squatter, as the Moxton illustration shows, for resting in the palm.   When I say try, I mean it.  Getting a tapered hexagonal handle right, is a much better show of skill than it seems to be at first glance.   Trevor Walsh over on TWD Shop, shows a process for making a tapered octagonal handle, that looks like a winner,  I am going to have to give it a try.

Who knows, I may find one I like enough to try and produce a set.  Currently my tool set is more like a mixed range of China.  Then again, I am rather charmed by mixed sets of China.

Bob

This subject is explored even further here!