Under its first use, Mr. Murphy attached a few corollaries to the above theory.  First, our previous slitting chisels had all been narrowest at the cutting edge, tapering gently broader toward the handle (Fig.1), but the tail kicking chisel was broadest at the cutting edge, tapering toward the handle.  The effect of this change in geometry was that as the chisel was driven in, a characteristic upward curvature of the hammer stock had dovetail locked the chisel into place.  There's no particular problem driving the chisel in but of the hour and a half it took us to punch one eye, an hour and twenty five minutes was spent trying to get the #$%&*§!!! chisel out.  That wasn't all.  The diminutive dimensions of the chisel, while ideal not only for hammer work but also for treadle hammer work, acted like a wet, if not fully cooked, noodle under a 16lb sledge.  This was in turn responsible for two phenomena:  1. The lions share of the hammer blow went to flexing the cool portion of the chisel rather than cutting the stock, and 2. the hot portion of the tool (and take my word for it, when you can't get the chisel out of the stock it gets HOT!) had to be straightened regularly.  Mr. Murphy's final little aggravating detail was that since we couldn't quench the chisel, we had to twiddle our thumbs on those few occasions when we did get the chisel back out of the work, until it had air cooled enough to continue.  Net result--the low tech blunted leaf spring was lots, lots, faster and less aggravating.  Back to the drawing board...

            After due contemplation it seemed to me that the heft and rigidity of the leaf spring tool, not to mention its quenchability and non-stick profile, were pretty darn suitable for an eye punching chisel.  In fact, it seemed at lower temperatures the rigidity of the H11 was not well suited to use as the shank of a sledge driven tool, for while its red-hardness cannot be disputed, it was never intended for the stresses at the tempera­tures to which it was being subjected.  It seemed obvious that what was needed was to apply a water quenchable H series steel to the edge of the leaf spring tool.  Simple, right?  Well... maybe not.  Tungsten and cobalt rule out gas welding entirely, and stick welding is iffy (That's as sophisticated as my welding equipment gets.).  Besides this, most of the very hot work steels are not intended for water quenching, and I wasn't even sure what a layer of low red-hard electrode filler between the hot work steel and leaf spring would end up doing at an orange heat under the hammer.  I assumed the result would be to deposit the H series edge in the hole, rendering further punching  efforts challenging, at best.  I cogitated...