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Bought my first set of carving chisels at woodwards in van bc 1972, they are the swiss carving tools the quality is excellent , and they make great paring /carving chisels which are used at 15 deg for softwoods and 17-20 for hardwood they are 46 yrs old , I don/t like the octagonal handles so made new ones.

Our very own Trevor Gore posted about his success re-hardening his own Marples that were mushy soft... Apparently, some got normalized but never hardened.... Once you reharden them and then temper back at 350 or 400F - they become quite a nice, useful chisel....

I would pass on the Aldi chisels...

Here's a link to that thread.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

My experience now after re-hardening more than a few chisels and then using commercial chisels....

Buy some "Good" chisels and get them setup properly, sharpened, and use them on projects before you go chasing down the rabbit hole of re-hardening and tempering chisels. Go buy a Two Cherries, a Marples, a Stanley, an Ashley Iles, a Pfeil, perhaps a WoodCraft Socket chisel, and maybe splurge for a Lie Nielsen or Veritas.. And maybe even a Japanese chisel or two.. Try them out and get an idea for what you like and what cooperates with your sharpening.....

You learn a lot after prepping, sharpening, and using many different chisels... This way - you kinda get an idea of what you like and don't like... And you can evaluate whether or not your project has any chance of meeting this criteria or not.... And then how much extra work will you have to do to kake yourself happy... That and you nominally get better at chisel prep to deal with warped chisels - because every single one you re-harden will warp to some degree...

So like for example - do you also want to or have any way to make your own handles - because in the process of hardening and tempering these - you will likely wreck a handle or make a plastic handle all loose and wobbly.... Or if you really really love the New advanced alloy Powdered Metal, HSS, A2 and such alloy steels - fooling with a moderately low alloy HCS like O1 may not float your boat... Or maybe you just can't really get excited over the blade grinds and blade profiles you end up with this way (aka rehardening a butt chisel with fairly fat side bevels....)....

Haha! I did end up returning them, they gave me a little grief about it since I had sharpened them but they ended up giving me my money back. I

I ended up just altogether quitting having a "set" of chisels for each individual job. I just use my furniture chisels for my luthiery work and that turned out to be the best decision. Far fewer problems and the carryover is the same for everything.

Instead of just buying a set of chisels I just purchase one that's the size I need when I need it. Keeps the ones I don't use from gathering dust since I end up having exactly what I need. Plus I tend to buy better chisels when I'm just buying one at a time since I can budget easier that way.