Pocket Chisel
By Dan Kitchen
A chisel is a useful hand tool or bench tool, but you don’t want to carry it around in your pocket. You risk cutting your pocket and yourself, unless you can keep track of the plastic caps that sometimes come with them. FastCap has come up with a solution in their new Pocket Chisel.
At first glance, the Pocket Chisel looks like it should be hanging out with the butterfly knives and switchblade combs at the swap meet, and it does function like a butterfly. The grooved nylon handles encase the chisel blade, protecting it and your pockets. The handles lock in the open position, and FastCap claims you can hammer away on the split handle like you would a normal chisel.
The unique handles are color coded to the four different sizes — so you know which chisel you’re pulling out of your pocket without having to open it up. You can get the Pocket Chisel from FastCap and their distributors in 1/4″, 1/2″, 3/4″, and 1″ sizes, for $20 apiece.
Pocket Chisel [FastCap]
April 25th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
While this is all kinds of cool for making a tool you wouldn’t carry around with you something you now can, I don’t think these will be much use to anyone except craftsmen who do much of their work with a chisel, and would like the ability to whip one out anytime and work anywhere. I’d like to see some kind of hybrid cold chisel/wood chisel in this kind of getup, though. THAT would be useful. A folding pry bar, too.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Wouldn’t the bigger problem being figuring out how to carry the hammer in your pocket as well? Perhaps I’m inexperience, but I don’t recall chisels generally being tools that are used by themselves.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Not to a wiseacre, but sharp chisels can and are used by themselves in many applications.
April 26th, 2008 at 6:06 am
I wonder how many hammer strikes this could take before breaking.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:35 am
This hand-held hammer would be the perfect companion!
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00979533000P
April 26th, 2008 at 11:08 am
as Hank Says - not to be a wiseacre - but if one of my master carpenters was seen to be using a hammer (rather than a mallet) to drive a wood chisel I’d re-assign him to a different job. The same goes for using a claw hammer to drive a cold chisel.
April 26th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
fred, how can you say that? I see the guys on American Chopper use claw hammers on chisels and punches all the time. If they do it, it must be ok!
Now where’s that sarcasm icon?
April 27th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
these are really good as scrapers guys, use them on windows or anything really, keep it sharp and it wont dig in to the surface of whatever you are scraping on
April 28th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Dudes, sometimes carrying the sharp bit is enough:
hammers are just modernized rocks.
For going into the bush, pitching shelter, doing a bit of creative work, knowing the land, sometimes less is more.
Ever heard of whittling?
That’s minimal, too..