Woodriver bench chisels

Hi all,

long term member here but only recently active again rebuilding some parts from my hand tool coolection, i have recently been looking for a moderately priced set of timber handle bench chisels. Have been looking at something that's nice hardwood handles to hold and decent enough steel to keep an edge. doesn't have to be PMV-11 crazy $700 set from Veritas.

I recently picked up a few items from Timberbits marking gauge, saw etc and found the 6 set with bubinga handles here. WoodRiver 6 Pc Chisel Box Set

Thought it looked nice and compared to vintage sets discovered on ebay that will take significant effort to restore or quiet expensive brand new sets i thought this could be a good middle ground.

Placed the order overall to which just this morning found this - https://www.timbecon.com.au/bench-ca...YaAlXYEALw_wcB

Seems to be identical set of chisels to me nearly down to the words in description, steel and handle in use the same, I'm just not sure of why the significant price difference between the two.

So I've cancelled that portion of my order from Timberbits and am now looking a little deeper into options available, especially if they're knew and available in Aus and not severely overpriced ill be interested.

Does anyone own either of these brands Woodriver or Luban chisels specifically and have any thoughts on their quality etc? Are they worth even the $99 or $220 price tags?

Cheers,
Nathan

Speaking from hard and expensive experience I would advise against buying a set and instead buy selected sizes though the Luban set is not terribly expensive so maybe that advise does not apply. I have a set of their small butt chisels and have been happy with them. I am surprised that Timbecon is so much cheaper than McJings TTTT.

I bought a set of timber handled butt chisels from McJing’s, they are very good and feel great in the hand and hold an edge fairly well. Hard to beat for the price.

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Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I am surprised that Timbecon is so much cheaper than McJings TTTT.

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Me too, $99 compared to $125 is a big difference, it could just be due to a variation in the exchange when they completed their respective purchases. I have a set of the Luban chisels and am happy with them. If was going to spend more I'd probably look at some of the better Narex chisels.

The reason the Wood River and Luban chisels appear identical is because they both come out of the Cixi City Qiangsheng Tools factory. Is there any difference? or are you just paying extra for the Wood River branding? Wood River is a brand owned by Woodcraft USA who have the tools made by Qiangsheng so with any of the Wood River branded tools there's an extra party trying to get a bite out of the retail price.

Thanks for the information everyone. Useful to know and i did make an assumption they were coming out of the same factory just to different resellers.

Taking a look at some of the narex chisels, they do look nice. This set is out of stock, little more than my initial budget for new set of chisels but perhaps worth the save for when theyre back in https://www.timbecon.com.au/narex-se...abinet-chisels

Even the cheaper $200 set look fantastic. Thanks for the advice!

Yes, there's been some pretty favourable comment on the Narex cryogenic's. All the chisels in that boxed set are available individually at a $10.50 discount on the set price, you just don't get the box. :D Could be seen as an opportunity to buy the sizes you really need straight away? :wink:

You can do a lot with a chisel box.:D
Regards
John

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Originally Posted by orraloon

You can do a lot with a chisel box.:D
Regards
John

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John

Not exactly "Cold Chisel."

Regards
Paul

They might be the same, they might not be the same. CrV is a marketing designation, not an alloy specification... There are a million different flavors of CrV alloy steels available in China... For example, Woodcraft advertises their Asian socket chisels are 100CrV - which is a 1%C, low alloy steel which would be sort of equivalent to W1... Woodcraft has their green handle chisels made of 115CrV - which is a 1.15%C alloy steel, allegedly similar specification wise to the stuff Pfeil uses. You can feel the difference when you sharpen them. The socket chisels feel very "Dry" on the stones and sharpen quickly like older vintage chisels, where the green handle ones feel more "chewy" and are more difficult to sharpen.

But... Just because the steel falls into the same specification, that does not mean it's heat treated the same or that the incoming quality of the steel was the same... I don't think the actual heat treatment or steel quality of the green handle Woodcraft chisels is equivalent to Pfeil's Swiss steel...

That said, I would expect the Woodcraft chisels to be extra-expensive down under because they probably come from China via the United States, where Luban comes directly from China...

I'd pay more for Luban than Woodriver because I prefer the name :p

Lu Ban was a legendary master carpenter and Chinese patron God of engineers and builders, has a very nice style and sports a man bun

https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uplo..._21_luban1.jpg

Luban style woodworking has also become an internet sensation because of this granpa who makes awesome stuff in a village somewhere with about 1/10 of my tools and equipment and using trees as clamps

https://youtu.be/VK9oyvhRpA8

Whereas Woodriver is basically a random name vaguely relating to woodworking and selected predominantly to hide the tool's Asian manufacturing.

Gimme the man bun.

wood river doesn't even rise to manbun level. It is equivalent to someone wanting to joint the manbun and murse crowd, but opting for a clip on man bun.

As far as the price differences noted above, Woodcraft is a business with a bunch of layers in it, and they're generally the highest priced retailer on anything they carry. Woodcraft and Japan Woodworker are the only retailers I've ever seen replace suggested retail stickers with higher prices.

I'd have guessed the "luban" chisels to be a $20 set on alibaba, but they may be made to WCs spec and generally sold only by WC in the US (I've never seen quangsheng or other tools that are similar or the same to the WR branded stuff sold in the US, so QS tool must observe some territory deal as long as it's favorable to them). For comparison, the aldi chisels that paul sellers raves about are $1.60 a set freight included on alibaba, but you have to order several hundred to several thousand sets to get that price.

FWIW II, the woodcraft chisel set is $109 US dollars here in the states, and they constantly offer 10% off coupons and free shipping, so that's the bogey here.

The reason WC has such high prices is two-fold, I think (three if you count catalogs):
1) they have franchise stores, so those franchise stores need to pay for the franchise, the location and who knows what else and still need to be able to make a profit
2) 1 may be all of it, or they may also just enjoy selling stuff at high margin. The stores keep the website from doing much, anyway, as they had a machine they were closing out in the past and I asked them if they'd lower the price in return for the fact that there would be no product support and the documentation was already poor. They stated that they couldn't as there were still a lot in inventory in their various stores (suggesting there's an agreement with some significant teeth).

The biggest bummer here in the US is when woodcraft gets sole distribution of something - pfeil carving tools for example, because it becomes almost impossible to get them at a reasonable price then. At one point, a seller from canada authorized to sell there was shipping carving tools (considerable shipping from canada to here, even though it's close) to the US, paying ebay fees, and still beating WC's prices by 15-20%. That seller no longer sells to the US - I guess they got spanked.

if a carving project requires four or five new gouges and they're of any size, that's a serious difference in cash.

(I couldn't quickly find the bench chisels on alibaba. Ningbo Yontai tools offers the $70 "woodriver" butt chisel set without the badge for $14 a set including sea freight to US. 500 piece minimum order. Good luck selling that many, but that's typical....

....and quickly illustrates why most of the woodworking retailers carry anything made in the first world. Why bother when you can make the same nominal profit (or more) while tying up a tenth of the cash. Who cares if you go downmarket to customers, there's always new ones coming along who have no idea how this stuff works.