One of the videos...

Re: The youtuber

William Duffield

I think the review which gave the Narex Richter chisels high marks was by James Wright (wood by Wright YouTube channel). Coincidentally, I watched it last night, before reading this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYDLQ_gydhc

It's a bit of a shame that he spent so much effort on the testing and the spreadsheet summary, without having the Unicorn enlightenment. Another column of data contrasting pre- vs. post-buff would have been very useful, but i suspect it would not have helped the HF plastic handle objects enough to get them reclassified as chisels.

He did a good job

David Weaver

I watched the video again (or parts of it). He did a good job trying to categorize the chisels. I'd still pick the Iles chisels out of that group.

I've used a set of the old pfeil chisels (a friend has them when they were "best value" in an old FWW magazone). He didn't like the shape of them, but they sharpen very easily (blacken the stones quickly) and don't feel very alloyed compared to most others.

Guh....$90 for "matsumura" chisels that look like they're just squashed in a die (not forged by someone turning the chisel in a power hammer). I bought some of those early on and they were crumbly, but I've had crumbly chisels that have been impossibly hard that had a lot of professional use in japan and when I got them and tempered them to "absurdly hard but not crumbly", they became much better chisels.

I'd walk down the road to HF and get one of those blue handled chisels if they still had them. You can make even that type (usually) usable with the unicorn, but higher hardness with the unicorn still makes for a sweeter performing chisel given the same sharpening routine. When I did the article test, I could tell the sweetness on my japanese sample vs. the Mk2, and then a bigger gap yet between that one and the sorby (which held up "decent" after the buffer, but still had more cut resistance).

But, jeez -$90 for the matsumura is really offensive.

...he has the same thoughts as I do about the base narex chisels. They have a glass ceiling. The buffer saves them, but the process makes it so that the buffer is needed to save them.

I would've guessed 57/58

David Weaver

for sorby chisels. Actually, i had a chisel once that tested mid 50s and was unusable, so I'd have guessed 58. He's got test results that say 58.9, and the HF is almost 2 points below.

It'd be kind of difficult to make it stand up well in anything hard or stringy - the sorby is kind of at the edge of what can be made keen and decent for cutting joints without damage.

(I'm sure the HF chisels could be used, but the unicorn's horn would break a little).