There’s an urge to describe everything about the test here before discussing results, but I think I’ll leave that to the end. Before getting into the details, one thing was pretty clear from the 6 chisels I tested. All of them could be set up to take no damage without trouble, even though at a specific setup, some perform better than others. The gap between the worst and the best does not remotely approach having to deal with a chisel that’s soft and rolls. None of these really do.
That also means coming up with a realistic way to show failure rather than a “bess” tester and some arbitrary nonsense, I had to set the chisels up so they’d fail a little, and ignore setting them up so they wouldn’t. The whole unicorn thing covered addressing edge failure, but also did include that it doesn’t have to be a buffer doing it. You can, if you choose, just continue to increase bevel angle a degree at a time and on any good chisel, the difference between the best and worst of good chisels will probably be a degree or two.
So, I attempted to do something else here because the damage created by the test is relatively universal at the edges, but it’s also almost impossible to get a “here’s a typical picture, here’s the worst and here’s the best part of the edge”. I could do that, but it’s really subjective. So, instead, I attempted to take video of the edges being scrolled, and doing that is…really difficult. The chisels aren’t dead parallel to the microscope lens, and I have to move the chisels laterally but the platform on my scope doesn’t really allow for setting a chisel entirely on the platform – the end has to sit on something off of the scopes platform, and that gives us a combination of some things. Those include the edge going out of focus as the chisel is scrolled due to changing distance from the lens. The edge wanders sometimes away from the center of the lens – so while we’re scrolling along the length, it’s attempting to move laterally off of the screen, and the scope’s software is attempting to auto correct light – which works like shit. This scope is ideal for taking static pictures, but the videos will be really difficult to watch. So, the results don’t suffer the same ills as taking pictures and cutting test wires or whatever, and getting a bunch of data that may not be worthwhile, but observing the scrolling and having the software for the scope make judgements is challenging.
Before describing the details of the tests and the chisels in greater levels, I think one blog post with the videos will be fine. They’re all malleted in the same wood with the same mallet at the same striking force, and sharpened the same way. No chisel has its original edge. I’ve nicked the chisels that aren’t mine – think BB sized nicks, not sand, and then ground the bevels back and re-established an edge so that we are not dealing with an overheated edge from factory grinding that throws off the test. It’s my opinion that if you have to grind off more than a tenth or eighth of an inch of a chisel to get to good steel, the chisel probably shouldn’t have been sold.
There are six chisels:
1. The zen wu “chinese white steel” chisel, lighter colored handle here, more or less a copy of the Veritas chisel design in a file steel at 63.5 hardness by my tester:
2. The Narex Richter. In this case, 63.5/64 hardness.
3. The Amazon Chinese 100cr-V chisel. Not an amazon product. Struck hardness of 63 to 64 on different parts, handles not original in this picture. Tested chisel is second from left.
4. A later Ward cabinetmaker’s chisel. Struck hardness of 61.5 – some length of this chisel’s edge on one corner is not as hard, presumably an artifact of the grinder overheating the chisel.
5. My own 52100 chisel, 64.5 hardness.
6. Thin 26c3 Chisel, one out of the group on the front page of this site, though this and others have been ground a little thinner since that picture. 65 hardness.
While I think you will have a near impossible time viewing these in general, a few comments are in order: First, the screen in the video is about 0.019″ tall. Damage that resulted in nicer use generally correlates with less deflection. Nothing survived without significant damage, and the details in a separate post with comments about each chisel and then more description of the method will illuminate why. I hoped for more separation between the various chisels, but finding the point on purpose where one or two of the chisels hold up and the others fail is just making fake news, so to speak. If it happens unintentionally over an array of conditions, it’s good data. But if nothing really stands out here, that’s better data for you.
I didn’t pick garbage chisels – these are all pretty good. At the aggressive setup of the edge, the Narex fared the worst but did OK in a later comparison to the 52100 chisel with a more robust edge. The 26c3 chisel fared the best, but it is thin and somewhat sprung and it’s pretty hard to hit as swiftly because the handle is smaller and less flat on the end. It’s probably ever so slightly technically more capable than others here, but not in a meaningful way. We are comparing for the most part, chisels that are 63-65 hardness, and nothing on the warm butter end of the hardness spectrum. In my opinion, the Narex both nicking the edge out to get a picture of the grain and in use shows some issues of hard tempering and minor grain enlargement. This is a surprise, but aside from using these chisels for mortising and prying – something none of them are really made for, the hard tempered nature is solved by not much edge accommodation.
Lastly, I tested the Chinese chisel -the amazon obtained cheap set – on a whim at the end – days later. The first test, I ended up setting the edge up a little to well and the chisel didn’t show any damage before I did the test video shown here. I just forgot when setting it up and gave it too much buffer angle. If anything, the second iteration was a bit cautious on the buffer, and the results are worse than they would be if I’d have been able to sharpen it with all of the others but the Richter. the Richter also was an afterthought, but it arrived if I recall, the day after the first test and while the damage was catastrophic, it was set up like the others. I then ran a separate test later with the 52100 chisel because it’s one thing to say it performed worse than the others with the initial setup by a pretty wide margin, but another to exclude information that it didn’t take much to set it up so that it held up fine. If you’re pretty conservative with edges, I think most of the time, you’d like the chisel and certainly I’d prefer it over the V11 chisel I tested in the unicorn test article on wood central.
Of course, I hoped my own chisels would be a measure above purchased stuff, but that’s not really realistic, and even getting a mortise chisel made by Kiyotada relatively late when his quality had really gotten dialed in, you will find that the difference between such a chisel and just a really good one found used on buyee is not that much in the steel. It’s the little things that make you prefer it – you’ll still have to sharpen it, and if you’re aggressive, it will still fail at the edge.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
Testing, posted my comment twice and it didn’t show up…
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not sure why – I don’t see any pending comments. Just this one.
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Seems it is working now…here is my original comment
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I guess the issue is the tester has to provide accurate information to start with, but then it has to be paired with other data to mean anything. the other data negates the value of the tester’s data because it just provides the outcome that the tester would be implying. There’s some parallel to the catra tester for wear, but at least you can find that the catra tester will give you a potential point that’s meaningful. That machine is also obviously many many times more expensive.
the issue with a wire or string cutting tester is that you’d have to take 20 or more readings on an edge that has any damage. It may be OK for a fresh edge, but then it doesn’t tell you how the fresh edge holds up. What you really want to know is a combination of the results from the chisel and the amount of effort and variability involved. I think it’s easier to judge much of that subjectively for an experienced user or an actual test of use for someone like you or me. You can develop a regular strike with a mallet that’s probably got a couple of percent of error if the test results are supposed to provide some level of effort or efficiency.
I think the whole string tester idea is better if you know what angle you have to use and that’s fixed and you’re just trying to get initial sharpness, but you can also do the hanging hair test to really dial that in if you want to find upper and sometimes impractical areas of sharpness.
Short story long, I think it’s easier just to test a chisel and record the effort and damage, but that someone who is doing a lot of work with chisels is going to find at least as good of an answer using whatever makes the work easiest when sharpening is part of the workflow.
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Thank you for your details reply, David!
I got the idea once I am really started to be serious about sharping and by the time, it seems to be a brilliant idea(can’t say not affected by someone from the internet); spend least amount of money and have some results.
Once started, it is not as easy as it seems. It is much harder to get right, too many confounding factors. For example, a slight change of the edge profile(bevel angle, squareness of the edge, etc) will probably render previous tests void; I didn’t know if it was the method or myself is the problem by then…
Anyway, thank you for clearing it up! And a microscope is a far easier way to check the edge, but just can not be quantified easily. I remember vaguely someone did an edge testing by counting the pixels produced by the damage to the edge, but that again involves how the image is taken, etc…I might revisit this in the future, it may not be the best method to test different chisels, but it is probably a good way to compare sharpening methods.
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So, knowing the scale here, you can use a ruler and in some cases pause and get a good estimate of the damage depth.
For this to be really complete, it’d need ot have half a dozen different applications and then something like a per degree test with the edge set progressively one degree higher and higher until two successive tests at a degree showed no damage. then you could see the amount of angle needed for each chisel to meet that test. And the interval would be annoying to newbies to find out that one superb chisel stops taking damage at 31 and a mediocre one at 33. it’s sort of like explaining to someone that 3 points of hardness make a huge difference, but it does depend on where those three points are.
A combination of effort malleting by strike count could also explain things like favorable outcomes. For example, the 26c3 edge looks far better here than anything else, but because of the design of the chisel, it would take me 8/9 strikes to get the same distance through the wood as the 52100 chisel or the zenwoo in 6/7. it doesn’t sound like much, but you can tell the difference in use. the handle of the 26c3 chisel is slight and rounded and the test kind of pointed out to me using it next to others, I want those handle ends to be flatter than the profile I have. I already knew just from some use with prior seaton style chisels that it’s hard to hit them as hard – they feel different and they spring a little.
Lastly, there are things to look for here – the depth of the damage but also what it is. The foils remaining usually means extra effort. They will come off at some point in most chisels, but it’s better to just not have them as far as effort goes. Just looking at the videos even for me lets me know that I really can’t discern too much other than that I could use any of the chisels shown and other factors are 10 times more important than which one. which also isn’t that popular if you’re giving test results.
Test results with measures like we’re talking about, I think, are more often used to direct people toward purchase tokens and sometimes individual affiliate agreements that are more lucrative than just general amazon reference revenue.
that nothing is completely defective here is good information. that all of the damage is generally as deep or deeper than a sharpening cycle would be if I had a microscope and was just coming up with a good setup and really wanted to see what’s going on – would tell me to protect the edge more in this case. the scope isn’t really needed, but it is helpful to see and understand things, especially if you are heat treating tools and really want to see everything you can to tell if you’re getting better at it.
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