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I keep seeing recommendations for Narex, but the two Narex chisels i got were absolute junk. Every time I used either of them, the edge chipped. I kept regrinding them at higher angles to try to get them to work, but without success. Not just a tip problem either since I have ground at least 1/2" off them. Finally I ground the tip at 85 degrees and use them as scraping tools, which solved the chipping problem.

My favorites are old greenlee on Stanley 750s for general use, Sorby patternmakers chisel for bevel down paring and Tsunesaburu paring chisel for bevel up paring.

Windsurfer . I was referrring to the cryo richter chisels by Narex. IMHO they are excellent. The only other plain narex chisels I have are the mortise chisels, they are good. Can you return the narex chisels ??

The perfect chisel is like the perfect spouse - what you fall in love with someone else will hate.

Another happy Narex user here. If I had unlimited cash, I'd probably upgrade to something else, but the price they are hard to beat. I agree that you need to take some time to flatten the backs and to soften the edges of the blade (the edges are darn sharp out of the box and they will cut your hands). But I've been using them for 7+ years and they've served me well.

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

I think perhaps Narex has quality control issues. The first one I bought quite a few years ago was fine. Not great but perfectly usable. Another bought more recently is poor. Steel is too soft.

That could explain people's different experiences.

Cheers Dave

If I bought a chisel that I thought the steel was too soft, I'd just re-harden it. Probably just the first inch. It would take years to get back to the soft metal and then just harden it again. Now, if you're looking for that supreme hardening that only gypsies and dwarfs can do than, this probably won't work for you. We're only cutting wood.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

This is interesting. When I first received the Narex chisels I have, I tried sharpening them and couldn't get a good edge so I pronounced them junk and put them out in the rough shop. A year or so later I decided to give them another try but first I ground the back absolutely flat and polished it and the bevel edges to a high gloss. When I sharpened and stropped them they took an excellent edge and hold it rather well. I later bought the more expensive models with the round handle and couldn't tell much difference. I like them better than either the old Stanleys or the Two Cherries I have.

Chisels are graded on:

1) Ergonomics
2) Edge Retention
3) Ease of Sharpening

What makes a premium Japanese chisel so good is that they are easy to sharpen and they hold a really good edge. The blue steel tends to be tougher and the white steel tends to be a bit sharper. I have a set of Tasai bench chisels (one of the current best chisel makers) and he works in blue steel. These don't do so well in super hardwoods with a shallow bevel angle (25 degrees or less). However, dial them back to 28 or 30 degrees and they are simply amazing in terms of edge retention. I have another set of Japanese chisels from Yamahiro (white steel) and these do really well with hardwoods at a 25 degree angle or steeper. I like using the Yamahiro chisels for binding and purfling work.

I've also got a number of other chisels from high-end brands (Blue Spruce, Lie Nelsen, Veritas). By far and away the best chisels I've used aside from an exceptional Japanese maker is the PMV-11 chisels. Absolutely incredible edge retention and ease of sharpening at any angle.

One of the challenges with chisels and lutherie is that we often want a very sharp chisel for extremely hard woods. Most folks don't work with the kind of woods we do and it helps to have a quality chisel that's up to the task.


In short, I highly recommend the PMV-11 chisels. Very affordable considering the quality.

While I don't have any of the new Veritas PM chisels, I have tried a lot of others out, and have formed some opinions.

I'll start off with this: What we use chisels for in guitars is VERY different from what "Real Woodworkers" do. We almost never mallet chisels (say like mortising table legs or dovetailing drawers), and they almost never use them for carving spruce or rosewood. If you prep the edge for good paring performance in spruce or cedar, that edge will fail massively if you chop hard wood. If you prep it for heavy chopping, it will crush and mush spruce instead of cutting it clean. You gotta pick your poison. That's where it can be handy to have some set up with a low angle and fine edge for spruce/cedar and others set up with a more durable edge for hard stuff.

I noticed that with vintage western chisels, in general, paring chisels tend to be softer than chopping chisels. This seems consistent across many brands, so I have to assume it was intentional. My own work seems to indicate they were basically right. Many good chisels get way too chippy when set up for paring. Inching bevel angles up simply makes them push cut worse. A slightly softer chisel seems to push cut a lot longer than a harder one, but then at some point softer, the edges want to fold instead of cutting.

First off, to our OP, Stanley/Dewalt Made in England chisels actually have good steel. The steel is on par with current production Two Cherries and many other makers. The balance and steel shanked handle detracts somewhat from the comfort, and I'm not a fan of butt chisel length. If you want full length Stanleys, you can get them via Amazon UK, although mid-length units seem to be available via the Dewalt brand in the US. I mention this as you may be disappointed when "way better" chisels don't actually perform much better.

So much of chisel performance depends on sharpening, that it's very difficult to separate the effects of the steel from the edge angle and so forth. I've been through a million iterations and finally settled on using a worksharp to grind edges to P400, then I buff with yellow Kocour Auto buffing compound. That compound is a fairly dry, and very aggressive. For me, it's fast and produces a sharp, durable chisel edge. YMMV.

Chisel wise, if you just want to "Buy success" - Narex Richter or Woodcraft socket chisels are my favorites that you can just order online. Both of these have fairly narrow side bevels, which isn't always that useful for guitar stuff, but it's great when you need to sneak into a corner.. These are very good for chopping hard woods, but tend towards chippy when paring.

For paring duty - the Buck Bro's "Comfort Grip" has ended up being one of the best chisels I own. Yes, the Chinese things sold at BORG. Yes, they run towards the soft end compared to a lot of others. I sharpen these at 20-25 degrees, then power buff the bevel, then very very lightly buff the bevel at the back. The surprise is that mine went about 3x longer than anything else I own in paring without edge damage. That includes antique Wards, Sorbys, and Marples... They don't run as long as the vintage chisels, Narex Richter or Woodcraft Socket chisels when prepped for chopping, though.

I have a collection of various wood chisels I bought in the '70s and '80 at garage sales which are all pretty good. Also, I have a set of the LMI chisels, which I think are very nice, but nothing like Blue Spruce or those types of tools. However, my best chisel is the one I made while with studying with Richard Schneider. LMI carries something close, called the glue clearing chisel, at $74.00 and change; these are similar but seem longer and more curved. The blade is made out of O1 tool steel bar stock, which was bent on a form we made. We rounded the top edges, ground the bevel close to what we wanted, and sent them to a local forge. Also, one of my straight edges, about 40" long, is simply an out-of-the-box O1 tool steel bar - they are (or were) ground pretty accurately. When they chisels came back, we fashioned a handle with a ferrel from brass tubing. You can do the hardening yourself, but it might be easier to find a welding shop, or better yet a forge to do the hardening. If this is something you might be interested in, I can give more details.

Hi Thomas,
I would be interested in learning more about the process.

Home made chisels are certainly worth a shot as a science experiment. I went down that rabbit hole, as well as trying to gain better performance by re-hardening cheap chisels.

The thing is - if the edges on Dewalt made in England chisels aren't holding up at all, it's a sharpening problem, not a steel problem. Sure, a Narex Richter or Japanese chisel may hold up a bit longer, but it's not going to be worlds longer unless you're starting bottom of the barrel with mush that rolls as soon as it looks at wood.

I couldn't get anything useful out of Aldi or Harbor Freight chisels, no matter what I did. Those were a lost cause. You may not like the handles as much, or the short length, but current production Sheffield Stanley holds up as well as current production Two Cherries.

If you can go with old chisels. The metal is far superior. I use Stanley Everlast chisels. Available one bay. These hold an edge for ever. You just can't go wrong.

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Agreed, both in general and in particular. The Everlasts are great chisels, and you don’t have to baby them.

The steel on old chisels can be great, it can be adequate, or not so decent. There's huge brand to brand variability as well as era to era within the same brand. I've got some old chisels that are as good as the best you can buy today, but I've got a whole lot more that aren't.

Old rust is a hobby of it's own. Given current high prices and lack of availability of quality vintage chisels, I don't recommend starting there. It's not particularly surprising, after shipping costs, to pay over $50/each on quality vintage bevel edge chisels. At those prices, Narex Richter and Woodcraft socket chisels are competitively priced.

I agree that when buying chisels from the online auction sites you can over spend for old steel, but if you are not too anxious to acquire the first ones you bid on, and have a good eye for evaluating what is on offer, you can pick up some good chisels reasonably cheap.
I have had better luck haunting the fleas and yard sales and picking up some of the better brands for a couple of dollars. Often when you find them without handles they are priced at 1 or 2 bucks. You do have to invest a little time in knocking off the rust and sharpening, and you do need to know when they are too far gone to be brought back to life, but you can eventually put together an unmatched set of orphans for about the new retail price of one good chisel.
For guitar work many of us could get by with one good 1/2 inch wide chisel, but where is the fun in that?

This is the chisel I made at Richard's shop in 1983. As stated above, it is made of a 0-1 tool steel bar, which can be bought at metal supply places. The blade is 6.25" long. The handle could be a 1" dowel, with a ledge filed on the tool end for the ferrule. The ferrule is brass tubing.



The narrowing of the blade was done on a grinder and belt sander, as were the top edges. The bevel was roughed-out before hardening. The chisel goes into the handle about 2", and is held-in with black epoxy. All the smoothing of the metal was done on a belt sander, then something like emery cloth. Post-hardening, we used wet sand paper and buffed the chisel.



This picture and the next show the curving of the blade. In spite of the name, I use this chisel for everything, except, oddly, for cleaning glue. It works great for carving braces. In fact, this thread has gotten me thinking about making a few more of different widths - this one is a bit narrower than one-half inch. There are articles on the internet about how to harden the steel and quench it. It seems, but I have no first-hand knowledge, that this can be done with a propane torch. Richard sent the pieces out to a forge, so I did not personally see that part of it. But I know that this chisel is a good as any of my other chisels in terms of taking and holding a very fine edge. The name "glue-cleaning" chisel belies the quality and usefulness of the chisel. The blade on Richard's brace shaving plane was made from a leaf spring, which were on literally every car in those days. Apparently, the steel is quite good.

The bending of the blade is done with a bar, twice as long as the blade, which here would be about 17". So you get two with each try. Make a frame that is longer than the double-length blade, and fairly deep, maybe of oak, with holes for a clamp. Similar to how thick wood laminations are done. It might be helpful to try to pre-bend it. A press might be the easiest, putting the blade on two blocks and hitting it with the press, and then moving it bit, and walking it along, not unlike bending a side. I do not recall using any heat at Richard's shop.



Here, I tried to get a better view of the bend, by clamping the chisel to a piece of wood. The space between the tip of the chisel and the top of the wood directly under the tip is about 5/16". It was always a bit hard to get the underside flat. One day I ground it flat, and now it sharpens quite easily. The flat is about an inch long. I hope someone is encouraged to make their own.

I agree with Clay. If you can hold off and bid reasonably, buying old chisels on eBay can be affordable, and for me it's just good fun. I just hold back from being emotionally connected to the tool and sometimes I get good things really cheap. The duds I get I just resell. If you bought them, someone else will too! I stick with old American and European socket chisels.-Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso