Drastic measures...

Having spent much time pondering over the merits of various dovetail chisels, I finally opted for the Umeki-Nomi's from Axminster. These are decent Japanese chisels, hardened to around RC66 (so pretty hard) with a nice White Oak handle and finely ground down the long sides, but...

...the hoops make them almost useless for hand work (at least for me) The reason is twofold, firsly when used in the horizontal mode for any length, I'm left with a nasty red weal in the centre of my palm. Secondly, if used verticaly, the sharp edge of the hoop gets trapped on the inner part of my thumb near the crease and is generally intensely uncomfortable.

So I decided to do something about it...I cut the hoop off!

This seems a bit drastic but it's not really as I dowled on a length of 30mm English Walnut. A little shaping with the LN Block (and it's new o1 Quangsheng blade, of which more later) and sandpaper has now provided me with a slightly overlong handle (which ought to give a little more control) and a rather natty two tone handle.

The blade has been honed to a single bevel of 25deg so there's no way it's ever going to be tapped with a maul or even a Japanese hammer.

So... not too shabby, n'est pas?