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Hey guys,
I have been testing a bunch of chisels and wanted to share a bit of where I ended up.... Feel free to chime in with your opinions..

These are all NEW current production - not vintage...

I am only commenting on stuff I have used...

If you are new to this and need to run out and buy a chisel or 2 at the hardware store to get rolling:
Stanley Fat Max made in Sheffield England. The steel is good stuff and holds up quite nicely in actual work. The steel shank and heavy plastic handle makes them a bit unbalanced and bulky - but you can do a lot of good work with these...

Next up in my book is Stanley Bailey (made in England) and Marples blue handle (made in china, non-steel cap). These are both good "standard length" chisels and you could use them a long time. The Stanley slightly edges the Marples for mallet duty where the Marples is a bit easier to sharpen and slightly edges the Stanley for non-mallet duty... These are solid performers at a very good price. This is where I would start people off knowing what I know now....

Next up - Ashley Iles and Two Cherries. The steel is a bit better. Much better balance and their blade profiles are better than the ones before. Handles on AI are slightly better. Two cherries can take a lot of prep work and the handles may not be as comfortable.

Next up - Pfeil carpenter's chisels and Woodcraft Wood River Socket chisels.
Pfeil gets here because the balance, handle feel, and blade grind are great. These don't require hardly any prep out of the package. The steel is pretty good stuff too - though it doesn't really seem exceptional... These chisels feel good in hand.

Woodcraft Socket Chisels were a total surprise to me and I really like them. Easy to sharpen. Hold an edge well. Blades are ground exceptionally well and prep is extremely fast. They are well balanced. The handles are really comfortable to me as well. Of everything here - these are my favorites.

Last - the ones I don't recommend... Aldi, Harbor Freight, current Buck Bro's, Ace hardware store "Premium" chisels (china made), and Woodcraft green handle chisels. None of these held up well in my testing.

Nice write up John.

I used to be a fan of the whole "buy a set and be done" mentality that you get with alot of those brands. Not knocking your research John, I have found close to the same experience as what you wrote.

I make furniture along with the luthiery business, I also dabble in timber framing. So my user chisels are pretty varied, these days I'm exclusively a student/user of Japanese chisels for cabinet and luthiery work.

For most of what you'd "need" in guitar making (and that varies alot) I've also had huge success restoring older chisels from the brands Underhill, Pexto, LI White, Geo Parr, and too many other makers to list. The steel on these old chisels is exceptional, and with a little work you can really make them yours and make them special. So if you want a paring chisel, grind the bevel down on an old one and you'll still have a huge amount of steel left for the future. Some of these chisels don't need much work at all and just need to be cleaned. Bonus points if you have a lathe but you can make perfectly servicable and usable handles just with a few whittling tools. Plus having a tool that you've put some effort into seems to make a "connection" with you. Once you really learn how it cuts, sharpens and feels. I've found you end up getting really good with that tool.

However some of these need a TON of work so if you don't want to put in the elbow grease then you should skip these. Sometimes they just need the rust wire-wheeled off and sharpened.

I agree with what you said about Pfeil and Woodcraft. The woodcraft chisels are made with an extremely soft steel so they would be excellent for the beginners. Pfeil stuff can be a bit tougher since they seem to use a slightly harder steel.

The Two Cherries do take some prep work to get ready. However I really dislike the finish they apply to them, a quick wipe with some acetone can quickly get rid of this. Two Cherries steel is great though once you get a good edge.

I always wonder about pics of luthiers shops where you can see behind them 40 chisels and 15 planes or something like that. I've had the same 4 or 5 chisels for 25 years now, and two planes. My chisels are Marples blue but I believe they were made in England, and a Blue Spruce. I guess I can see having other ones as sometimes when you start to work and realize your chisel is dull you can just reach up and get another one and sharpen it later. On that note I recently read about hte Stanley Sweetheart line and they seem to get stellar reviews especially at that price. I've never purchased the top dollar chisels before but it seems to me that they all need a good tuning up when brand new.

Dan,
Surprisingly, the other way around.

I found these new Wood River socket chisels to be a touch harder than the Pfeil.. And the edges held up better on wood... I was completely surprised.

I actually had to return the 1st Pfeil I tried as it was very soft and wouldn't hold an edge... It's replacement was better... But the Wood River chisels still slightly edge it out in my hands... Completely unexpected - as I was expecting the Pfeil to be markedly superior to the WoodRiver chisel - and it was not...

That's not to say the Pfeil is "bad" - it is a good chisel... I was just expecting it to be better... I have to say I do like the blade grind, balance, and handle... I believe it is worth the price.

What was it you were wondering about, Mr. McKenna?

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Really? that's nuts, the wood river ones I had were insanely soft. Maybe we bought different chisels?

Pfeil is not bad at all. I have several of their gouges/carving tools for doing fills and small push cuts. One downside is that with the handles I've seen them split on occasion, from abuse mostly.

It's the 7 mallets - one for each string and another, just in case a metal guy stops by the shop - that let you know this is a serious luthier's workbench

"The steel is pretty good stuff too - though it doesn't really seem exceptional... These chisels feel good in hand. "

If the chisel has decent steel and feels good in the hand it will be reached for more than one with exceptional steel but poor balance.
My favorite chisels are flea market finds but I have some two cherries firmers and an older set of Marples blue chips. Recently I picked up 3 well used Japanese chisels for $7 apiece. They seem to have pretty good steel and the handles are more comfortable in use than I thought they would be.
I have more chisels than I will ever wear out, but I still buy them when I find a nice one cheap.

Were yours the new Socket chisels? These just came out in like November or so... I will admit that with mine - a night in the deep freezer improved them and made them more consistent... Weird I know, but I have replicated this for several different chisels now... It doesn't always do anything (apparently it depends on the alloy and how it was originally hardened) - but when it does you can tell....

I know that WoodCraft has gone through quite a few different rounds of chisels and some were pretty aweful... For example - there were some "crank neck" chisels with interchangable heads that had the blades hardened down in the low 50's.. It's almost like they got normalized but not heat treated... Then there are the green handle budget woodcraft chisels that list 115CrV3 steel - these seem quite hard but the edges don't seem to hold up as well as you would expect based on the specs for the steel..

Sidelong glances at other guy's tools. Mallet envy...never a pretty thing to see.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

I have had good success with the newer Stanley Sweetheart socket chisels. The handles are odd and too short, so I had to turn new handles. They sharpen well and keep the edge fairly well. I have a 30+ year old set of the blue-handled Marples. They would sharpen nicely but just wouldn’t keep the edge.

Try and get old Vintage Stanley Everlast chisels they hold an edge for like an eternity. the newer chisels have terrible steel. its too soft and just doesn't hold an edge unless you get nice Japanese chisels.

You only need a few sizes 1/8, 1/4,3/8, 1/2, 3/4 pick your favorites and buy three.

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We were fitting bloodwood bindings on a student tenor a few weeks ago, and the edges on the vintage Stanley, Marples, Sorby, and Witherby chisels racked with the boss's personal stuff were about as durable as the edges on the modern Sorby, Ulmia (1970's), Henry Taylor, and Iles blades (shown in the shot above on the general use/student use tool boards)...which is to say not very. The Lie-Nielsen A2 and the Veritas PM-V11 bench chisels (one of the students has a few of these) held up somewhat better, but after a few end-grain paring cuts were dulling to an unacceptable degree (although not folding as both vintage and modern edges were doing). We steepened the honed bevel angle to 35 degrees, and all of the chisels - vintage and modern - did fairly well, and the A2 and PM blades were actually durable at that angle.

The teaching points - in addition to the usefulness of having more than three chisels in the shop - are that:

- Edge geometry matters in challenging jobs like end-grain paring on abrasive or very tough materials (maybe more than blade alloy and treating), and

- For the vast majority of jobs in the shop, even the Aldis that we stock up on as holiday giveaways to new students get the job done...but at the cost of more frequent honing and perhaps some edge geometry manipulation.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

i have an addiction to Japanese chisels. i don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing, but i have very few western woodworking tools. clearly i am a snob

That's a good point Woody,

I have run into the same thing with bevel angle... I was sharpening everything at 25 degrees and couldn't get edges to hold up on anything except for the most delicate work... Eventually added a 30 degree micro-bevel and magically - many chisels work quite well.. Ironically - some time after, I found an old cabinetmaker's book from the late 1800's and it talked briefly about sharpening.. 30 degrees was the recommended "standard" where the typical 25 degrees was deemed too fragile for real life cabinet use.. And a 35 degree microbevel was recommended for mortising and hard, abrasive woods.. So go figure...

If I am doing mallet work - I find a fairly low primary bevel + a convex microbevel at > 30 degrees does quite well..

My recommendations sort of take this for granted.... For example - Aldi chisels are ok and you certainly can do good work with them - but going from Aldi to current blue handle Marples or UK made Stanley is like using a different tool... The edges hold up worlds better in my hands...

Which ones do you like best?

I have a set of Marples with boxwood handles that are at least 20 years old. The are my go to set. Much better feel than the blue handle.

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That's the approach I see here...grind at 25 and hone at 30 for general use, but both fine paring and heavy mallet use such as mortising usually ends up seeing either more or less honed bevel angle. The end-grain paring on the bloodwood certainly needed a higher angle...that stuff is awfully hard once it's been bent!

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Like Arie, I have a Japanese chisel, but I ONLY use it for mitered purfling and bindings, with a 25 bevel.

Marples has been my go to, but that's changing to a.newer Stanley.

Just in is a set of Narex. Yup, super cheap. . . Can't tell how the edge will hold, but it does sharpen well.

Best part about all my chisels? Just got the right tools to sharpen them.properly.

These were the socket chisels but I had bought them over a year ago. They were stupid soft, a few passes on a 5k stone would give a decent edge, they sharpened up very fast but would blunt after a few good strikes from a mallet. Might've been a set of transitional ones?

Matsuuda and Nomi Oire

Dan - regarding soft Wood River chisels.. Weird... I hope you returned/exchanged them... I wouldn't keep soft mush chisels... Especially at the prices those things run..... If you still own them - pitch the blades in the deep freezer over night and then let them thaw back out and see if they don't harden up a bit... This actually works for Wood River socket chisels... Lather, rinse, repeat.. Or you can send them to me for proper disposal. .

I will note this about chisels... Every manufacturer seems to have occasional "Duds".. Either too hard or too soft from any large number of reasons... When you get these - take them back and exchange them... The sellers know this is "a thing" with chisels...

The most recent one I exchanged was a brand new Pfeil bench chisel back in February... It was mush. It's replacement was great.. The store manager said 3 had come back within that month for too soft...

I have bought way too many Buck Bro's chisels in the last year for various projects.. I have run into some that were too soft and some were really really hard... But the most common brand I heard about this was Sheffield made Marples....

I have a set of the blue handled Marples. The blades say Sheffield on them. They are terrible. I can put a good edge on them and start carving bracing, after one or two braces I might as well be using a flathead screwdriver.

I hadn’t considered that they might just suck. I thought it was something about the way I sharpen them. I have a set of Japanese chisels too, but the wider one is 30 degree and I have found I like 20 or 25 for carving braces.

Maybe I’ll get some Aldi’s.


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Went with a set of Narex paring chisels and for the money I couldn't be happier. Although I did cut myself with the 1/4' one last night pretty good after a slip. Yikes!

I'll quite happily give you some...

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.