What Is The Best Chisel

hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to the shop today we are doing the chisel test from the cheapest of the cheap to the most expensive of the most expensive what do we find between chisels which ones are actually worth the money and which ones well aren't let's dive in and take a look now first off I have to warn you this video is going to be a long one because we are looking through a lot of data we will be going into detail and the spreadsheet and all the information on that so to help you out I have list of all of the time stamps and different things we'll be talking about different sections down below in the description so you can jump ahead so if you're the type of person who likes to flip to the back of the book and read the last page of the murder mystery there's a time stamp for that down below also I have an entire video dedicated to how this test was performed and the procedures that I went through to get these numbers so if you want to see that video linked down below I'll be going into far more detail if I were to put that into here it ended up being around an hour long video so we'll keep it separate and then also speaking of links I have links to all of these chisels down below so if you want to see the ones that I'm testing and where they came from go to that down there now there is no sponsor on this all of these are either my own chisels that I purchased with my money or they have been loaned to me by a friend or a fan of the channel so there is no company that has given anything towards this this is all well provided by you the viewer also all of the testing supplies and tools for this are things that I bought for myself so this is completely unbiased and objective data and for those who follow affiliate links no there isn't like this one chisel that I'll be getting the affiliate links for so you should go buy that one no I actually almost all of these have affiliate links down below so it doesn't matter which one you buy if you use the link you'll be helping out the channel so thank you for that so I really have no incentive to talk about one chisel or for another and for a long time I have been using the Aldi chisel and so I wanted to make sure that wasn't a bias in here and actually to the point I've decided to purchase a different chisel due to this testing so I'll be talking about that later now the other thing I need to point out is the difference between objective data and subjective data objective data is the numbers I hit it six times and it produced this result and that what I really want to get into here I've seen a lot of other chisel tests out there but they're like boom it really felt good like this and it went through and I think it deflected about this far but the numbers are really vague and the items you get out of it are very subjective I want this test to be very objective so that it's nothing that I'm putting into it it is all it took 15 strikes from this apparatus and in the end the sharpness number was this so we're able to go through this and eliminate as much of the subjective information as possible so that we're left with just the object of data of this chisel is a number seven and this chisel is a number six and we can actually go through and see which chisel is better than others but in the end it really comes down to personal preference because one of the most important things for me is the handle field the handle is really crunky and I don't like it as a handle is really nice and I like it and and that's that's not something I can put objective dead-on so in the sheet down below I have it split up into a section of objective data and a section of subjective data and that way you can actually go through the numbers and you can choose for yourself well I really think that hardness is very important to me and the handle feel is really not i'll have data in there so you can put in your own numbers and compare which chisel is best for you not just which chisel does the test to say is the absolute best and that's one of the things i really want to focus on with this test i want to have clear data so that you can go to it because you might say that this is important and this is important this is important and these other options really aren't important and for me it might be the exact opposite so you can put different weights to which options you like into there and see which chisel comes out best for you so after all of that let's actually go over to the computer and take a look at all of the actual data and see what the number does it say let's dive in so welcome to my office I'm actually going to take you over here and show you this spreadsheet and all of the information so for the next while we're going to be looking at the actual data and all of the information that came out from this so let's actually dive into this data because I know this really got scary for a lot of people and I'm gonna try and make this as simple as possible but mostly in here I want to actually go through this and explain how all this dad's in here so that you can actually go into this sheet and I'll leave a link to it down below and you can pull out the data you want so you can cross-reference between this and that and throw up these and I'm sure a lot of people out there are gonna blunt to have a lot of other ways of working through this so here are the raw numbers that you can have all the fun you want with now this section here in red these are my these are my subjective guidance and you may want to go go through here and change some of the numbers for yourself like right now here I have wait down at the bottom how important are each of these aspects number one price for me that's not terribly important because I buy it once but I'm gonna be holding it in my hand every day I'm gonna be sharpening it every day it's gonna be getting dull every day I want these other things that I'm gonna be using for years and years and years to be very important the price is important up front but when I first got into woodworking price was very important so I'm a wanted to bump that up to something like eight and then you can see all of these numbers over here with the price just changed for me the feel of the chisel is incredibly important so for me that's a nine number - the durability of the edge how important is that that is a nine to me the keenness how sharp can I possibly get it that's not that important sharpen ability how fast it does its sharpen that's somewhat important but not as much as others hardness I really could care less about because the the hardness isn't what matters it's how it actually performs and so you can change around the weight on these and you can get different numbers over here so if you're just concerned about the usability of it and you're not really caring about price then just look here with just the chisel but with the price line over here this will actually take price into the consideration of how important is that to you we'll come back to these numbers a little bit beret now I want to move over here to the main section of the datasheet number one we have links to all of the chisels where they can be purchased so if you want to see the exact what I'm talking about you can go over here look at it with a few things over here the the file a 20-year old one it's the same length as the brand-new one also the Stanley everlasting chisel I have a link to the hand tool finder where you can find some of the old one so some of these antique chisels you got to go antique shopping for them I have the price listed rounded roughly as prices do change over time and so that's what's in here some of these with the notification tag I don't mean that you have to buy them in a set you can't buy into whistles then all through here in the middle this is actually data about the chisel is it a tang is a socket what's its total length where's the balance point on the chisel the height of the side wall in other words the side of it if you're trying to get into the corner of a dovetail some people like it with almost none at all which you can come down here to the Pharisees pmv 11 or the new file they have basically no side wall at all the Ashley Isles had a little bit less than one millimeter but I'm assuming that's just because it's been used over time and that side wall has worn away a little bit next we have the measurements of exactly how wide the chisel I got was those may vary as you know production runs change but I got the numbers as close as I could with the ones that I was actually measuring and then the total weight and grams so let's scroll on a little farther here and let's look at these starting sharpness now I kept track of all the numbers of how sharp I could possibly get it right off of the tools and what or was that and so these gives you the minimum sharpness so the the absolute sharpest I could possibly get and the maximum sharpest you know what was the what was the dullest it came off of the tools at and then it gave an average and so this is basically how keen of an edge I could possibly get it to next we can come over here and look at hardness now this isn't you know checking with one of those file sets this is actually having it done at a lab now I have to throw a slight caveat into the numbers in that because the chisels had some rounded edges and things like that the numbers might be off a decimal point one way or the other but these hardness numbers are really really close also some of these had some outliers where they tested a spot and it came back with some number that was wildly outside of the other numbers that they were getting and so there are outlier numbers that were in here for a few of them particularly in the blue steel because it is a you know they'd say blue made hand forged steel so you're going to be getting a bunch of different numbers out of the ones they got were pretty close but some of the outliers were a little bit off one way or the other for most of the homogenous ones the numbers were pretty darn close they also tested the back of the chisels so not just the flat side but also the back to know is the the same steel all the way through and so most of these the numbers came out pretty close from the front to the back of the chisel the only difference being the blue steel because it is a hand forged steel so there's an incredibly hard steel on the on the cutting edge and then the back of the chisel is a softer steel so you see the steel difference coming down to 18 and 43 with the HRC type testing so that can make it much easier to sharpen because you have that softer steel that wears through very easily but you still have to sharpen the harder steel right on the tip next we can come over here to the sharpen ability so this is basically how much steel can be removed with taking it over the sharpening plate a certain amount of times and so I went through my tests on this and I tested the sharpness before the testing and then after the testing what this told me is that if it took off a lot of material it would get very dull so the greater the difference between the two the easier it is to sharpen if it gets dull very easily that means that it is a very easy chisel to sharpen the plate can take off a lot of material very quickly if the numbers are very close together that means that it is hard to sharpen it doesn't take off as much material so I did three tests on them before and after sharpness and then we have the difference over here what is the difference between them so a lower number on this means it's harder to sharpen a higher number means it's easier to sharpen and these numbers actually correspond it pretty closely to the hardness testing I was kind of surprised that these really came out one after the other so a harder steel generally means it's going to be harder to sharpen there are a few caveats to that with the narrow ax Richter the PMV 11 and there were a couple others that didn't quite fit the scheme as well now let's actually get into the meat of this where most of the detailed information is so number one we have the average durability here and this is the average of all the charts are beginning in two a little bit you can kind of take this number with a grain of salt but it is rather important in other words the higher the number on this the more the steel deformed as it was being test either it chipped or it rolled or it wasn't as keen or sharp as it should be the smaller is a number here means that it actually held up really well it lasted longer than others so a low number here means that it is a good chisel a high number here means that it is a cheap chisel Harbor Freight plastic handle chisels hint hint don't buy them so here we can get into all the tests and each one of these are broken down into what is the wood what is the angle it was sharpened to so this is the first one the Douglas Douglas fir at 20 degrees test a test B test C average of each of all the tests difference is the difference between the before and after how sharp was it before the test how sharp was it after the test again a higher number means that it's not a good chisel a lower number means that it is a good chisel it lasted longer in that particular one it was very interesting to see how these came out so we have in each of the angles so Douglas fir and 20 degrees 25 degrees and 30 degrees then hickory in 20 25 and 30 and then lignum vert I in 20 25 and 30 and so this is all of the raw data in here some of these you'll actually come across here and it says in a and that's because I could pound on that all day long and I still could not get through it the edge deform to the point where it just I might as well be pounding on it with a screwdriver so in a means I'm yeah I probably got up around 15 20 strikes and it's still not going and I'm not gonna test it any longer so if basically it took longer than it did but I still tested the edge afterwards and basically anything over two thousand means that it's it's a worthless it isn't going to work another thing I was surprised in this these strokes the amount of times that had to take the impact to cut through kind of closely paralleled with how sharp it was before and how sharp it was after but those numbers change it's like in this one it was twelve for this 11 and then nine so sometimes it was quicker sometimes it's easier but the difference between before and after sharpness was pretty even so we can see the averages over here of how many strokes did it take to get through the wood and the average of the before and after so let's actually break some of this information down and show you some of the graphs to make this a little bit simpler so back here at the beginning I have these graphs down below that we can scroll down and come into it and each one of these breaks it down into the types of wood or the degree that it was sharpened at so up here we have Douglas fir at 20 25 and 30 so you can see here at 20 degrees a lot of these were deforming even though really good chisels they were deforming far more 25 20 degrees than 25 degrees and then 30 degrees was really good most of them held up rather well at 30 degrees basically as long as you're not doing fine and grain paring sharpen up at 30 degrees it's it's a much better edge than 25 or 20 now if you're gonna be doing in grain paring you might want to do a 20 degree but I'll leave that up to you so here you can actually go through and compare them between Douglas fir hickory and lignin Bataille and see all the numbers and like the this all DS plastic one all three of them it doesn't matter what you sharpen today that was just gonna do for money no matter what but some of these did surprisingly well then Eric's Richter this old file I was really surprised with it it held up really really well but you can see a lot of the good name once the Lee Nielson the blue steel the P&V eleven the new file the Ashley Isles they all held up pretty darn well I have to say I was I was really impressed with the old Aldi you really can't find them anymore but I was fairly happy with them next we can come down to these below and these actually look at the angles so we're actually going to look at all of the angles in the particular wood so the blue is the Douglas fir red is Hickory yellow is Ling over Thai and you can see how some of these is the the yellows just most of them did not like Linga more time but some of them actually did relatively well you can see the narrow X Richter the file the old one the Lee Nielsen blue steel PMV 11 the ash the Isles the the new file they're all holding up really well and particularly when you come over here to the 30 degree you can see you know a 30 degree edge still holds up relatively well in comparison as long as it isn't this Harbor Freight plastic chisel because even to the thirty edge it's it wasn't getting through that so basically this is a lot of data here and I wanted to just basically do a data dump here I'm gonna take you back over to the bench and talk through these and actually talk about what I learned and some of the things I want to test in the future but I want you to dive into this I those links to the sheet down below you can create your own off of it and do some cross references you can see because every chisel out there's different every person likes different things so what in this data do you like what don't you like what are things that you like to see in it so that was a lot of data and information and I want to actually go into some of the things that I have learned from this so number one it was actually very surprising to me that there was a big difference between low-quality chisels and decent quality chisels and then on up to the high quality chisels that was I really expected there to be less variant between them because in actual use and feel there isn't that much difference but in the wearability and the actual testability of it there is actually a pretty decent difference between my original hypothesis was that there wouldn't be much difference between the Aldi chisel the nice narak sand as the blue steel chisel I kind of felt that you know once you get to a certain point steel of steel but I was wrong some of the standout surprises to me were number one the Aldi chisel the I really liked how that worked out it it was surprisingly good unfortunately they're almost impossible to find down because Aldi's hasn't sold them in almost two years I was actually surprised just how bad the Harbor Freight plastic chisel was I thought it would stand up a little bit better than that but it's just in the end it it was a little better than a screwdriver in some places also when it came to the old pile and the new one I was very surprised in the differences in quality and there's only 20 years in between these but the the chisel style and the the shaping of it and apparently the steel are drastically different between the two I was blown away by how well this old one worked out and it kind of made me wonder you know was there is there a problem with the testing on it or was it just you know a really good steel it just happened to come out of one good series I don't know that's one of those interesting things that I would love to dive into it more if there was a way to do it but it was very interesting to actually test the difference between an old version and a new version speaking of outliers now if I really had my druthers in the way I would do it I would buy 30 of every chisel from different runs and different locations in different places so that we could have a variant of how how effective are they in manufacturing these over the years and that would probably be fairly telling and I'm sure it would actually even out the numbers a little bit more but since I don't have the thousands and thousands of dollars to do that and the time yeah maybe we'll do that sometime in the future to give you guys a little idea of how long it takes to test every one of these chisels took me between six and eight hours to do a full run of testing on it all told I have about a hundred and sixty hours into the testing of this chisel test so it was a decent amount of work and if I were to increase that to get it to ten or twenty the number goes up really fast the next surprise for me is number one there wasn't a huge correlation between hardness and durability there was a correlation between hardness and sharpen ability with a few odd caveats that the P&V eleven sharpened a little bit faster compared to its hardness than other ones but in most cases there wasn't a huge correlation between hardness and actual function of the chisel also to keep in mind the blue steel chisel is actually a laminated chisel so there is a harder chunk of steel here on the base and a softer steel here you can sit in the hardness test where they tested the top and found out it was like an 18 and the base was well over 60 I think it was like 63 firmer clay and so in this case I was only testing the very tip for the sharpen ability so this one is incredibly hard to sharpen just that tip but using the whole bevel it will probably end up being far easier because you'll be sharpening a lot of these softer steel in there as well I would also like to go back and test some of the antique chisels that have you know passed in the years it was nice to throw in the old Stanley everlasting chisel to see how that compared to some of the modern ones but again that would be very difficult because especially in the older times it was there was far more variability in the quality of steel so who knows what those numbers would come out like so let's get down to the conclusions number one I was really happy with the all these chisel it wasn't the greatest chisel but for the money it was a pretty decent one and I was I was kind of happy with how that came out unfortunately they're almost impossible to find now I was not as happy with the basic narak shit'll yes it's better than the cheap ones and yes it's price kind of puts it in that range but it wasn't that great when you start looking at some of the higher-end you have a pile chisel you have the Ashley aisles you have the P&V eleven you have the blue steel you have Lee Nielsen all of these chisels performed relatively similar even though the price range went from a hundred dollars to thirty or forty dollars they were all fairly similarly in the same class and it kind of gets to a point where there really isn't much difference as long as you're still using similar steels I was incredibly surprised with how the old pile actually worked out apparently this one was really good who knows it's an older one so what has happened over the years to it but if I have to pick the one best chisel overall for me that's the narak stricter yeah the the cryo steel on this really held up and it was surprising that it stood out as far as it did from the this chisel held up really well it had decent sharpen ability it had all the classes on the handle is one of my favorites and some of the details on it it's it's a nice thing to hold I didn't give it a tin because it didn't have an octagonal handle for me a great chisel has an octagonal handle but it really stood out well and being less than half the price of some of these really high-end chisels it well outperformed them so in Best Overall chisel I have to give it to the near X Richter this really did outperform the rest number two I want to go into best price now that really kind of depends on how much do you weight the price if you're talking about the best price overall then the Aldi tizzle but you're not gonna be able to find it very often even though they are you know less than two dollars a piece next I might have to throw in the Ashlee Isles chisel for about 30 bucks a chisel it really holds up well and is right up there with the premium chisels so I have to give this one a good kudos on that but for just a few dollars more you can bump up to the narak trichter which was the overall best so in this case I can't have to say for price to quality the near x Richter is right up there with it so it kind of depends you know can you spend thirty five dollars a chisel in which case in my book that's the one to get and so that's where I really would do say if you go on to the spreadsheet that's linked down below you can enter your weight into each of those you know how much do you like the handle how much do you like the durability how much do you like the sharpen ability which is our most important to you put the different weights in there and you can see which one is most important to you so for me the data was very convincing it was enough that I went out and got a set of narak Richter's these really did surprise me both and their numbers the feel their function I think I'm actually gonna come in and octagonal eyes to handle a little bit just a little bit up here just give me a better feel I think that would make it about perfect I'm in love with these just the shape the feel the the stainless steel collar the leather bumper on here they did a bang-up job and honestly I you can't beat him for the price so that's what I went and bought from the data and just as a side note when I went out and got mine I talked to the distributor for the in Eric's Richter's and he said there's going to be a very limited supply on them for a while so if you want these you better act pretty quickly they will be coming out eventually but but due to the processes it takes these a lot longer to make so it is a brand new thing on the market and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do in the future so you'll be seeing me using these in the shop a little bit more again I have links to all of these down below so I go ahead and take a look at that and look through the spreadsheet I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys do I can you go through and do some comparisons and contrasts and what things pop out of that data to you that is different from others also I'd love to see your interpretation of the data which ones actually come out on top to you is there something that is more important to you than others let me know that in the comments down below I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who allowed me to borrow chisels and do the bang-up on them and the the teardown that's required to actually do this testing thank you for that if you'd like to see other tests like this in the future let me know I do also have a glue test where I went into great detail looking at a bunch of different glues and comparison and contrast on those again I want to say a huge thank you to the patrons on patreon without you this would not be possible the hundreds of dollars I've spent on the testing equipment and buying a couple chisels for this that really means a lot and thank you for that everyone scrolling over here on the side is what makes this channel possible so say thank you to them so say thank you to them and if you'd like to find out more about that there's links to patreon and becoming a member down below so I think that will not do it for DES and until next time have a wonderful day I think with all of these chisels you could now say I have a very chiseled physique

Channel: Wood By Wright ASMR

Views: 150,505

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Chisel test, what is the best chisel, chisel woodworking, what is the best chisel brand, best chisel, Aldi, Craftsman, Narex, Stanley Sweetheart, Stanley Everlasting, Robert Sorby, Narex Richter, two cherries, Lie-Nielsen, Blue Steel, Veritas PMV11, IRWIN Marples, Ashley Iles, Pfeil, chisel, bench chisel, woodworking chisel, wood chisel, chisel sharpening

Id: hYDLQ_gydhc

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020