Thread: Wood by Wright chisel testing

I recently rehabilitated a Titan Socket Firmer ( I cannot work out is it is a Heavy or Light variety) and only sharpened @ 30° to 1200# Diamond stone and the stropped, as it's designed for chopping as is my standard for mortice/firmer chisels. My paring & bench chisels are 20° and 8K/green rouge to shaving sharp.
Titan Socket Firmer 02.jpg Titan Socket Firmer 01.jpg

V11 is a bit of an odd choice for chisels - I think LV's O1 chisels would perform equally well at 61/62, and the hardness that the V11 chisel came in at is pushing the limit for the alloy - a point softer and it may have done better (and a point softer, O1 should do well if the heat treatment is good.

A plain chrome vanadium rod like is probably used to make the richter chisels results in a finer grain than V11 can achieve at a lower cost, and with the same hardness potential. The same is true of the older pfeil chisels - they are a relatively plain steel and the name "chrome vanadium" can be misleading as when both are in tools only in small amounts, they are not free roaming as carbides (rather, they make hardening and keeping grain size small eaiser and not until greater amounts are added do they start creating large roaming carbides like you'll find in A2, D2, V11, etc).

The Iles result is a little odd, but maybe the chisel wasn't that great.

The 59 hardness chisels that really shine in the durability test are a little odd, too, but the test is a nice effort (I get the sense that most of these things are done on youtube to set up a list of link through revenue and that irks me, but that's the way youtube is now).

Good fine steel that can attain high hardness and then tempered back as little as needed to stop chipping and things will be about as good as they can be. Slight undertempering makes a brittle edge, and overtempering makes one that folds (in most cases, a chisel that claims 61 and comes in at 58.5 is going to result in a chisel that's not very good).

separately, I tested tools in hard maple last year or the year before. If you're looking to completely stop chipping doing things like dovetails, a very good chisel nearly ceases at 32 degrees and a somewhat less good chisel ceases around 34.

Nothing I have holds up at 30, and extensive damage is guaranteed in everything at 25, but the bevel angle is shallower, so a chisel will feel like it's cutting better with damage when it's at a low angle vs. high.

Cutting is two parts (when malleting). Severing and wedging, with some overlap. Low angle, less wedging, less edge damage, better severing. But doing an A/B test side by side, you can feel a pretty stark difference in a chisel that needs 34 vs. one that needs 32 - somewhere above 32, wood starts to break from wedging and fly off instead of coming off in a neat leaf.

If you like using a chisel at 30 and don't mind little bits of damage at the outset, the same chisel may work well for a while after the initial edge gives up (what's left behind is a little more blunt, but not as fragile as the initial apex).

I asked him to do this test with unicorn bevels too but he doesnt seem interested in reading about what that even is. Sharpening is a funny thing... there are so many different techniques and people seem to be set in how they do things once they have their system.

Correct me if Im wrong here, but this test is good to see how the steels compare to each other but using traditional straight bevels is like doing research on efficiency of carburetors when the world has moved onto fuel injection... it seems like its all a bit meaningless and outdated. Eg durability and sharpenability doesnt apply with the unicorn bevel...

He seems like a nice guy, but these guys don't operate their channels out of curiosity - notice all of the links to retailers, and a huge number of those links have tokens to send revenue back to James - the tests always occur as a means to generate revenue, and then we try to get what we can out of them in spite of that (like the hardness data, etc). I can make a chisel that holds up better than any that he tested, but it would be pointless as it's out of a steel that nobody is going to use (a water hardening steel that warps and takes skill to get right beyond following a HT furnace temperature program).

These guys on youtube are sort of an alternate reality - the channels exist to get revenue but the presentations don't seem to register as that to most - the glowing comment sections are filled with "we're friends" kind of atmosphere, but the relationship is one way.

I like the guy, but he's got a channel to figure out ad and link revenue on (he's the only guy I will still watch who has link through - i've set YT to filter out the stumpy nubs and Jonathan katz moses folks of the world). I'm no great maker, but most of these guys are a less good maker than me - they're not really the folks we should be listening to.

Any review that comes up with a "buy this" instead of "understand this" is not doing anyone any favors.

I see that he likes some chisels by someone named "timmons" or Kimmons or something, and they're around $150 each for A2 chisels (I never heard of them before he mentioned them). No offense to whoever is making them, but there's nothing really there - they won't match an old ward or I. sorby chisel and at the price, you can afford to sort through some older english chisels (maybe four or six times over). And they don't even have a bolster, so they're not really a complete chisel - just neatly ground flat stock. I would be willing to bet that I could make a set of 5 chisels by eye with 26c3 and the worst of the 5 would have a large performance margin over anything made of A2 (shorter versions of these https://i.imgur.com/RWdN6ri.jpg )- I just don't have the heart to actually make them and charge people figures like $150 per chisel - and these parers are definitely far harder to make due than any of the chisels shown in the test (the material cost for them is about $125 and that's what I charged the guy who asked if I could make him parers).

I also cannot make any honest statement that chisels need to be as good or that anyone will even gain anything. The unicorn is far more powerful than differences in chisels for actually doing things, and applying brain power to making something well regardless of tools is a step beyond that yet.

Hi David

I recognise, but don't begrudge, youtuber's with a revenue interest in their publications. However nothing stops us assessing the information on its merits in a clear-eyed fashion. I think James does a good job of making clear which parts of the ratings are subjective and encouraging critical assessment.

What I think he could have improved upon is explaining the benefits of a high-quality chisel separate to edge quality and retention. Specifically, if I take a Veritas chisel out of the box, I can credibly expect the back to be perfect, the sides to be perfectly parallel and tapered for getting into dovetail recesses. The handles are also top-drawer for regularly available (I prefer elongated handles but there you go). If I take a big box store chisel home I would expect at least an hour and perhaps $10-$20 worth of consumables (I use wet&dry paper on a granite plate to flatten the back rather than use my diamond plates excessively, particularly because this allows you to bear down hard without concern). The handle will also be unpleasant and need replacing to be a regular pleasing user.

Also, some problems such as out-of-parallel sides or uneven grinds can be difficult to diagnose and difficult to fix. I discovered this yesterday when I made a jig to grind a taper on the sides of an old 1/2" chisel for dovetailing and found it creating uneven tapers on each side. After puzzling and testing for a good half hour I worked out the sides were just uneven and this was making the tapers uneven.

If you place value on your time, then $20 for a cheap chisel plus at least an hour's fairly skilled work and (modest) consumables and $100 for something perfect out of the box and with a much nicer handle... well it starts narrowing. If you want to add tapered bevels on the side you're probably going to need some precise equipment to make a jig and a reasonable belt sander.

On youtubers...

I think the proof of the pudding is in the tasting in terms of Youtubers. With Paul Sellers and Rob Cosman, both are obviously heavy advertisers. However both also demonstrate that they actually do go about building high-quality furniture and other items. I find Rob Cosman's commercials particularly grating - I mean I watched his recent new method of dovetailing by establish kerfs to cut pins, setting the kerf perfectly in place by using a wheel gauge set to the width of the saw's set to offset the tails. This relies on having a saw and kerfing knife of precisely the same dimensions.

To use this method as shown you need:

1/ One of Cosman's dovetail saws (~$300 AUD)
2/ A Cosman kerfing knife ($93 AUD)
3/ A premium wheel gauge you may not have if you're starting out.

What particularly grated me is the video involved him holding up and showing off what "one of his students" had achieved on their first attempt. Out of how many students? What is an example of a typical, as opposed to unusually good, result? How much assistance was given - surely the students didn't just watch a video and go at it on their own (the way you would if you just bought the stuff offline and had a go in your garage)? What a student will do with a teacher watching over them and catching errors is very different to what you might achieve on your own.

This said, I still watch Cosman's videos because... he actually builds and shows proper furniture builds of quality, shows useful techniques (his drawer videos were particularly useful to me), and there is enough quality content in his videos if you ignore the product placement.

Sellers is polarising (I am generally a fan). I think what is often unmentioned is that much of the success and quality of his videos is the video production. The camera placement, zoom and audio on his modern videos is always immaculate and make them very comfortable to watch and see what he is talking about. Another thing I think he sort of skimps on is the milling. He often makes a point about how important perfectly square and precise stock is. He has one old video going through squaring a board by hand, but in all modern videos it is all just done. He has explained a few times that he does spend time usually once each week very precisely machining his stock for the upcoming week, but that is skipped in most videos.

But back on the chisels - I have actually been "unicorning" a bit more and think I am finally sold on unicorning most of my chisels. It was driven by needing a 1/2" chisel for dovetailing with slightly angled lands. What it particularly lets you do is restore an old chisel with a bit of confidence that it will actually perform, so you're not wasting your time by fixing up.

In Australia there is something of a good second-hand market on FB at the moment for job lots of old chisels of with softer steels which are perfect for "unicorning" (EA Berg, Peugot Bros, Titan, old Stanleys). It must be estate sales and a particular generation dying off and their kids emptying their sheds. I have stockpiled a drawer full of beaten up chisels that I have paid no more than $2-$5 each for (usually in lots). What I am tying to do at the moment is just restore them as I go according to the needs of a project. When I have paid $5 for a chisel, I don't mind grinding off a half inch from the blade to get past some bad pitting (for example), or just binning one that is too far gone (eg a huge belly on wide chisel).

Part of the reason for this is just major supply issues. For the 1/2" chisel I was tempted to just drive to Carbatec and pick up a PMV-11 chisel to continue rounding off my set but supply issues mean there is just no stock. It was literally impossible in a capital city to buy a quality 1/2" chisel and the best source was my garage and a buffing wheel

Chris

we're in a little different place on chisels as I find great joy in making tools, which has made adjusting them really easy. I have a stanley 750-ish chisel that I rehardened that would stun a V11 chisel at this point (stanley left them a bit softer by choice - it's fairly easy to find which tools are good stock and just not finished vs. which aren't).

But it's also safe to say that I have great proficiency in setting up and "finishing" tools that weren't finished due to making and not due to something that's done perfectly on the first try. I bought a V11 chisel to do my unicorn article and developed a pretty solid distaste for it as it was cleanly made, but it ended right around there. The Iles chisel performed as well, ground twice as fast, and honed faster (and ground a lot cooler). Or rather, the iles chisel was a little better - it was easier to eliminate damage with it. The V11 damage was relatively meaningless, but it was measurable that it was greater.

A run of the mill japanese chisel (I got a set of i think 12 with boxwood handles used of buyee - similar to buying used tools on ebay in the US for about $300) bettered both pretty easily. I thought I'd keep the V11 chisel for a while just to have it around to compare things, but it is a case to me of having everything that people like Chris Schwarz would advocate, and everything that someone in 1850 would've had distaste for using chisels day to day was in it at the same time (instead of having fine lands, they come to a point and then the corners are weak - I think this type of zero land is easier for someone to make in modern tools as you just grind them to width and sharp crisp edges. The tools with fat lands that are really cheap are ground usually by an automated machine (people have long since forgotten why someone would like nice lands on a tool).

I guess after having used a few hundred chisels, I just wonder why someone can't make one like older English chisels for experienced users, but the answer is two parts:
1) no modern manufacturer can tolerate the warpage and discretionary work that happens with plain steels (Except japanese makers, who laminate - but that dictates no really thin chisels, especially not longer and thin).
2) the market isn't for a long chisel that someone will come to like as they move along, it's for short chisels or fat heavy chisels because it gives the impression that a chisel is strong

It'd be a little more interesting if a western maker used something like M2 and drove it to high hardness - M2 doesn't require special processes to not have large grain, and when HT with cryo, it gets really hard and can easily reside at 65-ish hardness without becoming chippy. To make a chisel like that out of M2 wouldn't yield anything special that someone else couldn't just copy, though.

At any rate, it's not all that important - I think people should like what they like, and if they love V11 chisels or Rob Cosman, it doesn't matter what I think. I do think that Rob and Paul Sellers are about the same, just one has more ambition than the other (thus the drive to sell tools, too) and apparently a whole lot of kids to be the provider for (at one point, I voiced some displeasure for cosman's dovetail saw when it first came out because he was selling a $300 version and a $700 version in a finger joint box that didn't seem much different) and one of the marking knife makers in the US (there's another beginner's trap - learning to harden and temper on something little like a marking knife is a missed opportunity) told me "you shall not ever say anything negative about Rob C. - he has 10 kids to take care of". I don't know if that's true, but it's not like I took the commandment about honest opinions (thou shalt give positively biased comments about all in the woodworking community) as applying to me, either.

That can all sound a bit harsh, but once you get the basics down, most of the internet woodworking community (and all of the gurus pretty much) is a dead end. What's needed for all of us is a sense of design given to us (or the ability to find good design if we can't do it ourselves, to "borrow" aspects from) and then finding something that we really want to make well. We can all want to woodwork, that's fine. We'll start to make nice things when it's making the nice things (and learning about their nuances) really sinks into us. Most of the hobby world furniture, most made by gurus is plain, etc, for fear of more natural elements or desire to be able to teach very specific methods instead of something more broad and useful. That's too bad.

I think both cosman and sellers have a trail of people treading water behind them, but that's good for both of them.

Hi David

Thanks for your interesting thoughts.

I think we are different places in particular because you don't frankly talk about handles enough as well

You are definitely right about long, narrow chisels just not being perceived as useful because it's only experience actually doing things that makes it click. When I started I was getting in 3/4" and 1" chisels. Then when I started dovetailing and actually using chisels for any length of time I started realising that it's the 3/16" and 1/4" inch which are the workhorses in a lot of work. I helped clean out a garage for an elder relative lately, sorting out everything into a "keep or rubbish" pile with a friend of a family member. They came across a bucket of old chisels and grabbed all the narrower chisels (EA Bergs and Stanley 750s) and said to me, "We should just chuck these out - all toy chisels." Where does one start (I've given up talking to this guy and just grabbed them all for me).

I do see a sharp distinction between Sellers and Cosman though. Sellers - almost to a fault on occasion - denigrates modern tool trends and seems fixated on the philosophy that there were older generations of craftsmen who made a market for, and maintained beautifully, quality tools that they maintained and it was all lost when the new generation (and "throwaway culture") came in, fed by manufacturers trying to make a buck by cutting corners. Sellers - as far as I can tell - seems to only sell his videos (ie his instruction) and goes out of his way to avoid product placement. He also doesn't do any of the, "If you like this project, consider subscribing to my online course." It seems different to me, rather than just different extents.

The reason I am dubious about the philosophy of the current generation having developed throwaway culture is that I am sure there was a substantial quantity of high-end craftsmen makers who bought and maintained their tools at a high level evocative of traits of pride in one's work, industriousness and care. But one only needs to rummage through a few estate hauls to see that equally so in the previous generation many also butchered and mistreated tools. How many times in an estate sale do you see a flattened and well set-up chisel needing minimal work versus:

1. Handles almost apart or at least ends badly mushroomed into fuzz from pounding with metal hammers.
2. Handles covered in paint splotches and crud.
3. Bevels skewed and steepened to something like 45', and it seeming like they eventually just gave up on them.
4. Back bevels on chisels - explicable only by someone doing rough carpentry and just getting to sharp and giving up on chopping to a line.

You only need to watch some tradies work or watch a building site to realise it's human nature when people are at work to just be getting things done. I am very skeptical of the notion that mediocrity with tools only kicked off from the 80s onwards, or can be blamed on manufacturers only...

I agree with this to some extent. The ease of sharpening still seems relevant if you "unicorn" because refreshing the bevel is always necessary.

(a) Just out of interest in the sense of curiosity and for thinking about when reading manufacturer claims and analyses from other sources. Not everyone's unicorning. I haven't yet on some chisels as I am still comparing experience.

(b) Situations where unicorning may be difficult if possible at all (eg plane irons where you're nervous about clearance angle for bevel down, or heavily cambered irons). (Yeah I know these are more about abrasion/wear damage but one is going to hit knots and gnarly woods from time to time and occasionally end-grain paring eg on a shooting board.)

(c) When thinking about dealing with sharpening situations where you can't unicorn because you just can't or it's impractical (eg hand router plane blades, nickers, moulding plane blades etc). I know these are more about paring and you don't really have options in most of these cases, but it still is information that, to the extent accurate and applicable, informs your knowledge.

Originally Posted by qwertyu

I asked him to do this test with unicorn bevels too but he doesnt seem interested in reading about what that even is. Sharpening is a funny thing... there are so many different techniques and people seem to be set in how they do things once they have their system.

Correct me if Im wrong here, but this test is good to see how the steels compare to each other but using traditional straight bevels is like doing research on efficiency of carburetors when the world has moved onto fuel injection... it seems like its all a bit meaningless and outdated. Eg durability and sharpenability doesnt apply with the unicorn bevel...

Originally Posted by Cgcc

Hi David

Thanks for your interesting thoughts.

I think we are different places in particular because you don't frankly talk about handles enough as well

You are definitely right about long, narrow chisels just not being perceived as useful because it's only experience actually doing things that makes it click. When I started I was getting in 3/4" and 1" chisels. Then when I started dovetailing and actually using chisels for any length of time I started realising that it's the 3/16" and 1/4" inch which are the workhorses in a lot of work. I helped clean out a garage for an elder relative lately, sorting out everything into a "keep or rubbish" pile with a friend of a family member. They came across a bucket of old chisels and grabbed all the narrower chisels (EA Bergs and Stanley 750s) and said to me, "We should just chuck these out - all toy chisels." Where does one start (I've given up talking to this guy and just grabbed them all for me).

I do see a sharp distinction between Sellers and Cosman though. Sellers - almost to a fault on occasion - denigrates modern tool trends and seems fixated on the philosophy that there were older generations of craftsmen who made a market for, and maintained beautifully, quality tools that they maintained and it was all lost when the new generation (and "throwaway culture") came in, fed by manufacturers trying to make a buck by cutting corners. Sellers - as far as I can tell - seems to only sell his videos (ie his instruction) and goes out of his way to avoid product placement. He also doesn't do any of the, "If you like this project, consider subscribing to my online course." It seems different to me, rather than just different extents.

The reason I am dubious about the philosophy of the current generation having developed throwaway culture is that I am sure there was a substantial quantity of high-end craftsmen makers who bought and maintained their tools at a high level evocative of traits of pride in one's work, industriousness and care. But one only needs to rummage through a few estate hauls to see that equally so in the previous generation many also butchered and mistreated tools. How many times in an estate sale do you see a flattened and well set-up chisel needing minimal work versus:

1. Handles almost apart or at least ends badly mushroomed into fuzz from pounding with metal hammers.
2. Handles covered in paint splotches and crud.
3. Bevels skewed and steepened to something like 45', and it seeming like they eventually just gave up on them.
4. Back bevels on chisels - explicable only by someone doing rough carpentry and just getting to sharp and giving up on chopping to a line.

You only need to watch some tradies work or watch a building site to realise it's human nature when people are at work to just be getting things done. I am very skeptical of the notion that mediocrity with tools only kicked off from the 80s onwards, or can be blamed on manufacturers only...

There was no real drive for antiques in the US (other than cowboy culture in the 1950s and 1960s), so things started to get cheaper as soon as industrialization. But that also initially made for a greater supply of hand tools (much of stanley's expanded catalog occurred after industrialization).

By 1900, backsaws here were on the downturn, by 1935 carpenter saws were already cheaper and then off the cliff with the circular saw, and by WWII, the era of high quality metal planes was over. Chisels made after 1900 are iffy here and after about 1940 or so are no good. 1960 or so for sheffield.

So, it wasn't just the 1970s or early 1980s or whatever that killed tools, it was the elimination of their use over time long before.

The trades here don't use much for hand tools and haven't for a long time, other than chisels to fit door stuff if they're forced to use them. Cabinetmakers and clock makers other than maybe a few very very fine makers generally used shapers, sanding and pin routers.

But getting to my point with both of these guys - rob sells tools apparently (this isn't fact, just what I recall) because he realized when he was traveling to teach classes, he could add selling tools to both make money and to put them in the hands of his captive audience. Paul has probably been primarily an instructor to beginners and maybe intermediate workers since...1984? And worked in a museum before then, but not something like a master at Colonial Williamsburg would be (and even then, the maker has to be a master in something fine to be a fine worker - so Roy U. was a master housewright, but is just OK with neat work - if you ask the fine workers at CW, they wouldn't include him in the groups of truly fine makers that are there - Peter Ross (blacksmith), two of the gunsmiths, the Headley's (cabinet work) and George Wilson (instruments and then tools). Not to mention the book binders and silversmiths, etc.

So, we're in a small set of alternate reality with either Paul or Rob, they are making simple things with no history of having made a living as a fine maker (And both have a weird design eye to say the least).

I think the counter to Rob is Paul, who uses his tool point of view as a way to keep money in the pockets of his students (so they spend it with him), and the romantic line about a craft economy is naive. He wouldn't have students in a craft economy - there was no real hobbyist anything because in a craft economy, there's no disposable income for 99% of the population (or more), and no real time for craft. Rob has the "you have to have *good tools*" narrative to butter up people to buy tools and Paul uses the something-for-nothing gimmick. I guess he doesn't have on location classes any longer, but I think that's because it's more profitable not to, and easier, and maybe he'll retire.

both of the guys are good at their businesses. As soon as you know something you want to make well, though, I think you can leave them behind and go to broader sources of information. That's just my opinion. I thought all of those guys (cosman early, charlesworth, etc, were interesting but there is a seed partially of entertainment and potential that doesn't match getting lit to make something well enough that you're willing to do it until you can).

in the DVD era, a friend and I did pass around various DVDs (this was pre-Paul) and I saw a few from cosman - including one on fitting drawers. That was the last one of those for me - it detailed a slow tedious process that nobody would do, and that isn't needed for accurate work (but I guess it can be repeated step by step by someone who wants a method rather than understanding results).

Originally Posted by Cgcc

You only need to watch ... people at work just getting things done. I am very skeptical of the notion that mediocrity with tools only kicked off from the 80s onwards, or can be blamed on manufacturers only...

Quote of the day! (I edited it a bit.. It's not just tradesmen...). Yes, one only need look at buckets of antique socket chisels which were mushroomed under the hammer... If you sharpen them, you won't need to hit them so hard...

Anyhoo... I plowed Wood by Wright's data. I'm a nerd that way, and just like Rob Streeper's testing in our own handmade chisels forum here, the #1 factor that swamps all the others is edge angle.

Gaming results would be incredibly easy with small changes in edge angle if you were trying to sell stuff. For example, put a little asterisk in the small print like the Woodworking Mags do, and run the low alloy chisels at 25 degrees but the A2 and PMV at 35, and the fancy alloy chisels will beat the pants off of conventional alloys. They'll test out with 10:1 or 20:1 edge life over the others.

but...

Now go back to Wright's test. If you ONLY looked at 30 degree edge holding, the Aldi chisel, Harbor Freight wood handle, and Buck Bro's all outperformed PMV-11 and LN's A2. Why? Those boutique chisels looks like they needs a bit more edge angle to really stabilize (probably still chipping out at 30) where the cheapies hit their sweet spot.

Just my opinion, but I think that test does two things:
1) it provides a bunch of data
2) it makes for some conclusions that don't match what I see at the bench

The real purpose of that "test" is just to get revenue links for people to buy. It's not definitive, and there's really no way to get a definitive test (which you would have to get in a cabinet shop where there were people working all day, and time how much time they spent sharpening and get their subjective opinions)

If a chisel isn't chipping a little bit, it's not hard enough (by that, I mean you should find the sweet spot for the edge by coming back from where it chips until it's got enough support not to). Any edge that rolls and doesn't let go will be trouble (you can wear yourself out using it, but it'll take more effort to get it through the wood).

I thought 52100 would be the answer for chisels due to the ability to basically duplicate O1 and cast steel but do it with more toughness, but the toughness became a problem.

I guess it irks me a little bit that everything on YT now is nothing but reference tokens to harvest money off of viewers. Why does it matter? It means that almost everything you get is going to be directed toward that. I don't think WbW needed to recommend any japanese chisels, but he's got mediocre versions in his test solely because they can create a revenue token from amazon for him.

I guess that's the dream these days - get viewership in hopes of using them later.

For an experienced user, the longest edge-holding chisels I've found are picked out of japanese chisels. An inexperienced user can probably find their failure a little too easily, though - very high edge strength, but little space between yield strength and ultimate strength.

One thing you can do with any chisel though is get a piece of wood and take standardized strikes (mark it off in 16th of an inch segments, etc) and use the chisels in a rotation and count the number of strikes to work through a given volume. You find out pretty quickly that better hardness and some chipping at low angles will lead to far fewer strikes.