Comparing Top Quality Chisels

welcome to the channel in this video we're going to be testing out and comparing three different chisels we have the lenos the veritos and I finally get to try out the blue spruce I know a lot of people asked me to compare the IBC or the Rob Cosman chisels I wasn't able to get my hands on one and I can't justify buying too many chisels for comparison videos just because I'm a small Channel okay give me a break all right let's dive in the first place we have to start is the handles and the comfort of these tools because if you follow my channel you know that I stress Comfort there is no reason to be uncomfortable in the shop if a tool is uncomfortable to use I'm likely to just not grab it and find a way around it and I don't want that to be the case especially when it comes to chisels and when it comes to saws to me and I would say to most people when you actually think about it the more comfortable a tool is the more accurate you're going to be with it because you can set it down pick it up and it just fits in your hand and you don't have to think about how is my hand position where am I at on that note if you watched my previous videos I did a video comparing the veritos to the RoR I ended up eliminating the rter and going with the veritos the RoR handle was just too big for me it was bigger than this handle and the Veritas already has pretty big handles after that I did a video comparing the veritos and the Leen neilen and and I ended up then eliminating the veritos because I liked the handle of the Lee neelen better because it was smaller and it fit into my hand better this part is kind of going to be subjective it's going to depend on how big your hand is to give you a reference the right across here the knuckles how you measure your hand basically is 3 and an eigh inches for me so my hands are are pretty small um so looking at the verit toss that takes up almost my whole hand and I feel like I have to stretch this finger to get it to the reference point holding it back here just it doesn't feel right it doesn't feel comfortable you're meant to hold it right there and it's just too big for my hand I will say on that note that for the veritos I picked their mortise chisels because I liked a big handle behind a mortise but for bench chisels I like the smaller handles I like when they get smaller like this now because I got a blue spruce and I got to try it out I have to say that this is the best I guess of Both Worlds um it's small it's comfortable it fits in my hand really well I like it better than the Lee neelen because it's simpler it's they didn't do as much to the handle like with this one it goes real fat up here it's got this bump it goes narrow here I mean they did a lot of fancy things and it's just it doesn't reference as well and I don't know how to explain it this references where it fits I mean you can see that rest there this rest here that rest there this is kind of it's above the line here it's above the line let me scoot it back well now I'm pretty far away so it's it's different and again I know it's weird but I'm a little OCD when it comes to this stuff I will also mention that I like that the blue spruce has this indent as a reference point that you're able to put your finger right here with the Lee Neilon you don't know where you are on the Chisel when you pick it up you can spin it around and there is nowhere to reference it um like I said the lead nailson are my chisel set so I have them not in all sizes but I have a decent set of them this is the same size as the Blue Spruce I believe it's the/ inch there's no reference point so if you set it down and pick it up you don't know where you are on the Chisel see what I mean veritos does have the reference point they have this right here and then they also put it on their handle so you can see a flat and a round right there so they have the reference in the handle they also have the reference on the Chisel I just find that that's a really big bonus when it comes to comfort of the handles one thing I will say too about the Le Neilon is that you can pop the handle off if you need to um if you want to turn different handles you can change them if you need to take the handle off to get in close you can do that as well I'm not sure if Lee neelon sells butt chisels or not but I can show you the Blue Spruce and the veritos because I'm going to be doing a separate video on butt chisels and talking about those ones veritos again has the reference point they have the FL and the round the handles are slightly smaller than their bench chisel sizes which I mean okay but when you look at the Blue Spruce they're the same so whether you're going from a bench chisel or a butt chisel you know that you're grabbing the same it it's the same way it's going to fit in your hand the exact same way it's going to have the reference point the exact same way so I feel like that's a big bonus to their chisels I will add on that for the Blu spru cuz I also have their quarter inch the smaller one does not have a reference point it does have this little indent right here that you can feel so if you put it in your hand then you might be able to feel that but it does not have a reference point like the bigger chisels do in my opinion it's still better than the lenal because it's square and the lenos is Round right here so you really can't reference anything this at least you can know are you on a flat side or not basically I forgot to add something about the Chisel handles so this one the veritos is made out of torrified maple I have heard of people busting the handle on this chisel um and then they either replace it themselves I don't I don't know if they're able to send it back and have them fix it or not but keep that in mind Lee neilen uses horn beam I have heard of people breaking these handles but the cool thing is is that you can just pop the handle out get a new handle and put it on there or turn your own or whatever with the blue spruce you don't have to worry about that because what they do with all of their handles is they resin Infuse them so they are stronger the other thing that does is it helps with weight so the balance of this I think I had mentioned that the balance of this one is awesome because it has a little bit more weight in the handle than these other two do like this one is a very light handle this one is a little bit heavier but this one right here because it's resin infused and it has just that little bit of extra weight it really makes it balanced in your hand even when it comes to the smaller one that resonant fuse just adds enough to make it balanced the next thing that I want to look at I've been fussing around with them and trying to show you in camera but it's it's pretty difficult um I want to show you guys the sides of the chisels and how much of a point they go to and how beveled they are and the reason that matters is because when you're cleaning dovetails this is going to get into the cold the shoulder um or if you're cleaning shoulders how clean is this point is it going to scrape all that kind of stuff with the ver toss they go exactly to a point they go so much so to a point can you hear this that they get sharp after you hone this and lap the back and then you go to cut you will cut yourself on the finger I've done it many times on both and ended up bleeding all over my work piece because what you have to do is sand the sides down because they get so sharp the lineal SS you don't have to worry about that because they would I say that these it has the biggest it goes to the biggest point I don't know how to word it and that's what I'm trying to show you guys in camera I don't know if you can see that dark line that's the point that it goes to now when I show you the blue spruce it's actually right in between the two which I like it's almost like they had it go exactly to a point and then ease the edges for you like you have to do yourself to the vers but when I show you in camera see that light strip right there it looks it looks like it has a big side to it but it doesn't it goes very nor narrow like I said it's basically like it goes to a point and they did the work for you of taking that edge off so then that way when you lap it you don't have to worry about this getting so sharp that it cuts you continuing on about the narrowness of the chisels I just want to point out that the veritos is the narrowest Chisel here and that can matter in certain applications like for example the dovetails the smaller it is the better it is to get into those little tiny Corners um they do make dedicated the Blue Spruce and the Leen Neil and both make dedicated dovetail I think they're called fishtail fishtail chisels I don't think the veritos does but with this being narrow you don't really need them to show you a comparison there it is next to the lenon here it is next to the Blue Spruce I know it's not really fair because this is the half inch but you can see bar TOS just slightly narrower I do have the blue spruce quarter inch and you can see there Veritas is still narrower than the blue spruce next thing we got to look at is sharpness right out of the box I have to take the Lee neelen out of this part of the video because when I bought these they were used so I can't speak to how this performed right out of the box you guys can let us know down below so just looking at these two chisels right away I have to say the blue spruce Takes the Cake when I took it out of the box was shaving hairs right away and then I mean look how cool that is there's the camera that's just awesome I know a lot of people chase a mirrored back they do it for you um the other thing is let me see if I can get some of my grease off of this because I've been using this and I've been testing it out and you can see the scrapes but it still has the mirror so I just think that that it's just cool to me that's a bonus but it did shave hairs right out of the box it handled engrained with no issues right out of the box the Veritas what they do is this has no mirror on it and they actually tell you not to flatten the backs of their chisels they say that this gray right here is a rust protectant but the guy that I borrowed this from has not used this chisel so it was new out of the box and you can see there were rust spots that I was scraping off so I'm not too sure about how that works I mean you can see right here that the gray is going away when I unbox it I scraped some off right there there's a little point of rust I don't know if you guys will be able to see it right there I'm going to interject here so with veritos having this on the back I feel that this has more resistance than the other chisels when it comes to how well it slides against the wood with these ones you might actually be able to see it right now putting the same amount of pressure you can see how it just slides this one too just slides but when it comes to the veritos it feels like it sticks it feels like it doesn't Glide as well so me personally if these were my users I would take this quote unquote rust preventative off of the back this chisel did cut out of the box it did not shave hairs right out of the box but it was able to cut it just didn't feel as smooth and in their instructions they tell you it needs final honing when you buy it um when I did the video comparing this chisel to the RoR this the veritos Chisel actually took major Edge damage damage it took a big chip out and the other thing that I'm hearing about these chisels is that you're actually supposed to grind this down a little bit to get to the stronger Metals so that way it doesn't chip out um so that's something to keep in mind with these ones is when you buy them you're supposed to take them I guess to the grinder right away and then hone them the blue spruce right out of the box you didn't need to do that you didn't need to worry about it at all you can buy it pop it out of the box and use it right away so yeah I was going to be done with this part of the video but I'm going to add on I don't understand why we're paying so much for chisels and they're not ready to go right out of the box um clearly it's possible so I I don't understand they're all right around the same price range so the lenos and I'm doing these ones I did the prices in half inch because that's what this one is so veritos half in is 9550 Lee neelen half inch is 95 and the blue spruce inch is 100 so they're all right around the same price let me add on for these two so Veritas does free shipping Blue Spruce the shipping to me was n bucks for I think the four piece set when I was looking Lee neelon their shipping can be like 15 bucks so you're you're at the same price you know what I mean so I just don't understand when they're right around the same price why can't we get tools that are ready to go out of the box why do we have to do final honing when we're paying a 100 bucks per chisel same thing with hand PL all right I'm done the last category is Edge retention which is kind of difficult um and it can get super duper Technical and I'm not going to get super duper technical about it um I really like that James Wright did because he did a video and I believe it was like looking at the edge retention and how many swipes and all of this kind of stuff um I don't have time for that so I'm not doing that I'm just going to go from what my experience was with using these um I've used these two for a long time this one is the newest one in my shop out of my experience with these I'll say that the Lee neelon had the least Edge retention and it was the most difficult to sharpen so this one's on the bottom of my list leaving these two I would say with Edge retention they're they're comparable um they're very very close to each other but when it comes to sharpening the blue spruce I can just grab strap and go back to work with the veritos the pmv11 I felt like I needed to hit it on the stone the stop and then go back to work um that's the best way that I'm going to explain it too so I guess for that category the blue spruce would win as well because you can just stop it go to work versus Stone stop go to work so to sum everything up I want to start with my opinion and show you guys who I thought was the winner so as you can see I am going to be selling the Le Neilon set to then buy the rest of the Blue Spruce chisels to complete the set I know that I had talked about how it can shave hairs right out of the box and how it has a nice mirror on the back I understand that that does not affect the longevity or I guess the lifetime of the tool but I think that that's a huge bonus to it that you don't have to buy it and sharpen it right away with the veritos you have to buy it grind it back and then sharpen it again Le neelon I can't speak to but to me that was a huge bonus thinking about the longevity of it it was the most comfortable to me it has that reference point the handle fits really well in my hand the veritos handle was too big but it did have a reference point the lenal and handle was just I guess overdesigned over shaped um all those curves and how it lumps out and you don't need all of that and it doesn't have a reference point so comparing them side by side the Blue Spruce and the Lee neelen Blue Spruce Takes the Cake for me the other bonus to it is it's resin infus so you don't have to worry about breaking the handle it makes it really well balanced in your hand I'm just I'm very impressed with that part of the Chisel which again to me is one of the most important parts then when you get to the edge retention side of it it held its Edge as long as the Veritas pmv 11 did but with the veritos for me I found that I needed to hit the stone hit the stop and then go back to work with the blue spru it was basically just hitting the shop and getting back to work I know eventually you're going to have to hit it on the stone but I didn't need to in all of my testing with it so I thought that that was another huge bonus to that chisel the only downside I would say to the Blue Spruce is that I wish they were narrower when I was looking at the quarter inch chisel and comparing it to the other 38 chisel it was just a little bit thicker and I wish it was a little bit narrower um but I don't know that that's going to bother me in the Woodwork that I do I think just seeing the Veritas and seeing how narrow it is I'm like well why can't the other one be narrow like but I don't know that that is going to make a difference to me um we'll find out when I do Dov tales and I'll update you guys but so hope you guys enjoyed this video if you have any questions any comments if you tried out these Brands and made a decision based off of your experience with them please let people know down below so they can see other opinions as well um hope you enjoyed did I say that already yep have a good day adios

Channel: Bat Cave Creations

Views: 4,794

Keywords: Woodworking, Handtools, hand tools, diy, hand planes, woodworking tools, wood projects, guide, how to, howto, how-to, tutorial, review, comparison, veritas, fyp, for you, for your page, fy, chisels, lie Nielsen, blue spruce, spruce, blue, btw, BSTW, LN, pmv11, bench chisel, bench, lie, Nielsen, resin infused, compare, vs

Id: CLB0bR_t_NU

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024