Best bang for the buck regarding chisels..

I found chinese chisels made from HSS to be of excellent quality: The can be sharpened to usual standard very easily and being very hard but not noticeably brittle hold the edge well, at very low cost also. Description:

Marples are a good middle-of-the-road brand. I have several that I use when I have to go on site.

In UK you can often find deals on their splitproof range - they do a set of

If you want to go upmarket, you might look at Two Cherries or Robert Sorby.

Cheers

Frank

While I find Home depot a pain in the but, they do carry all sizes of the Buck chisel, they are well built and fairly inexpensive and made in the USA I do believe. At the price it's well worth trying one to check the quality, I've had good luck with them.

Ed Angell

Two cherries make great carving tools, but in chisels, I like these, as well.

I've been slowly building my Sorby mortise chisel collection. Definately spendy, but worth it. Great chisel. My next endeavor is to start on the Sorby paring chisel collection. For the rough stuff, I have the Stanley arsenal. SH

I actually just received my new boxed set of 6 two cherries chisels. check them out at:

At 15% of $99.50 that's only $84.58 for a very good set of chisels, IMO. I had a $5 coupon, so with shipping it totaled to only $90 for me. Another option is the set of 7 Lee Valley bevel-edge chisels for $60+shipping (w/o a box). I think the two cherries is a better value, but the LV set does give you the 1.5" chisel, which is pretty useful. So, for only about 2x the price of a marples set, you can get a much better set of chisels.

Mike

Juergen Hannappel wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@lisa2.physik.uni-bonn.de:

Unless you live in China, or until the Chinese pay living wages and provide safe working places for their employees, and have stringently-enforced, strong environmental rules, please don't buy Chinese (or any other slave- wage country's) products if you can avoid it. The U.S. has lost at least three million manufacturing jobs since 1998, and a major portion have been lost to slave-wage countries. China's production costs are so cheap that even Mexico is losing jobs to them! A good way to stop the slide of wages and jobs in this country is to buy at home first.

Thanks.

Amen!

Not knowing better at the time, I bought a set of Marples blue handle chisels. They take a nice edge, but don't hold it worth a d**n. When the time comes I'll get some better ones.

I know how you feel. I have the Marples set myself hehe

Those would be slave wages in the U.S., but in China the wages are far above what the factory workers' neighbors are making. Cost of living in China has been discussed here. You might pay a bit of attention.

When it comes to environmental and safety rules, it's probably not a good idea to single out China: most of eastern Europe is in the same boat.

Charlie Self

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." Sir Winston Churchill

Do you actually use them?

I've found Buck Bros. stuff to be of such low quality that I'd not use the chisels to open paint cans.

What do I mean by low quality? They don't hold an edge. Maybe they'd be fine whacking out notches in 2x4's, but I've never had decent luck with them for woodworking.

Barry

OK Hitch, how about a list of Made in USA chisel manufactures.

Erik

Take a look at:

Good luck trying to change the world...Let me know how it works out for you. Money makes the world go round; always has, always will. The truth of the matter is we'll all be making the same wages in another 50-100 years. Of course that means the standard of living in the U.S. will be less, but there ain't no stoppin' it.

FWW did a chisel test & review in issue #139 (Dec'99). In it they ranked the mfgrs products for "toughness" ie the ability to hold an edge. They also gave a real world ratings to the rankings: 1-3 = excellent; 4-7 = Good; and 8+ = Average.

The best value for the money is something you have to research & decide for yourself.

Art

Rank Mfgr

FWW did a chisel test & review in issue #139 (Dec'99). In it they ranked the mfgrs products for "toughness" ie the ability to hold an edge. They also gave a real world ratings to the rankings: 1-3 = excellent; 4-7 = Good; and 8+ = Average.

The best value for the money is something you have to research & decide for yourself.

Art

Rank Mfgr

I believe that is precisely the point.

Buck was a good name in chisels once upon a time. Then the name was sold. At least two companies independently manufacure (different) products under the Buck name. The Buck Bros Turning chisels are good quality. I dunno anything else with that name that is.

But if you can find old Buck chisels at garage sales etc, they're good.