Garrett Wade Chisels

[Richard Gillespie]

Update on previous thread:

Garrett Wade contacted me after the previous posting and offered a set of chisels for my use to test their new line. They said that they had been shipped to them with the wrong color scheme. This is their new line with steel all the way through the handles.

I sharpened the set using the scary sharp method, taking about 5 hours to complete. Thought that the backs flattened rather quickly. They took a good edge.

IMHO the ones I was given are way too soft for use in hardwoods and maybe even softwoods. I used the 3/8" one to work on some 22 year old spruce and was surprised at how quickly it dulled. Today I tested the other 5 in red oak. Each one dulled after 5 -8 impacts at 90 degrees and cross grain. My tests are not done in a scientific manor though.

I have reported this back to Garrett Wade.

[Sandy Stanford]

Update on previous thread:

Garrett Wade contacted me after the previous posting and offered a set of chisels for my use to test their new line. They said that they had been shipped to them with the wrong color scheme. This is their new line with steel all the way through the handles.

I sharpened the set using the scary sharp method, taking about 5 hours to complete. Thought that the backs flattened rather quickly. They took a good edge.

IMHO the ones I was given are way too soft for use in hardwoods and maybe even softwoods. I used the 3/8" one to work on some 22 year old spruce and was surprised at how quickly it dulled. Today I tested the other 5 in red oak. Each one dulled after 5 -8 impacts at 90 degrees and cross grain. My tests are not done in a scientific manor though.

I have reported this back to Garrett Wade.

Five hours? Using Scary Sharp? Good God, they must have been in horrendous condition from the manufacturer.

[James Taglienti]

what's a scientific manor- is that like a laboratory?

[Nick Laeder]

Sounds like a cool opportunity to try out their new line. Not so sure posting negative feedback in a public forum is a cool way to repay that opportunity.

Remind me not to send you anything of mine to test out.

[Richard Gillespie]

Sounds like a cool opportunity to try out their new line. Not so sure posting negative feedback in a public forum is a cool way to repay that opportunity.

Remind me not to send you anything of mine to test out.

It was their suggestion that I state what I found. They didn't say if I was unhappy to keep quiet.

[Ben St. John]

what's a scientific manor- is that like a laboratory?

:D I don't normally like smilies or internet acronymese, bit this made me LMFAO

[David Weaver]

Update on previous thread:

Garrett Wade contacted me after the previous posting and offered a set of chisels for my use to test their new line. They said that they had been shipped to them with the wrong color scheme. This is their new line with steel all the way through the handles.

I sharpened the set using the scary sharp method, taking about 5 hours to complete. Thought that the backs flattened rather quickly. They took a good edge.

IMHO the ones I was given are way too soft for use in hardwoods and maybe even softwoods. I used the 3/8" one to work on some 22 year old spruce and was surprised at how quickly it dulled. Today I tested the other 5 in red oak. Each one dulled after 5 -8 impacts at 90 degrees and cross grain. My tests are not done in a scientific manor though.

I have reported this back to Garrett Wade.

What is the final bevel angle on the chisel? Red and white oak are hard on chisels for their hardness, especially pounding directly into side grain - they can make chisels that would otherwise do fine in soft woods and medium hardwoods look pretty bad.

My suggestion, for completeness, is to use a jig and set at least one of the chisels steeper in angle 5 degrees at a time until you find a point that it doesn't fail. That's suggestion #1.

Suggestion # 2 would be to hone of a measurable amount off of another chisel and see if your experience is similar. It's likely - not certain, but likely - that the chisels would perform a lot better after 1/16th is off the end of them. This isn't exclusive to cheap chisels, either.

Most cheap chisels seem to be in the high 50s hardness (once you get to the good metal), which is at least as hard as almost all vintage chisels, and harder than some. They have to be exceptionally poor quality - exceptionally poor - to be as bad as your experience, ultimately. I have (charles, you want to get in on this, because I know you love it) probably 10 sets of chisels. Maybe more. I use three of them with any regularity, and 2/3rds of the rest (specialty chisels) when the needs arise. In those 10 are a set of chisels from HF that look like cheap hirsch knock offs for $9 for 6 of them. Aside from having horrible balance and thin steel, they hold an edge fine. I give them to the wife when she asks for a chisel, but I ground one off and honed it just to see what it was like. Surprisingly good. The worst chisel I ever had was an old witherby that was after they changed to some sort of alloy steel. It tested at 52 hardness while at the same time an iyoroi mortise chisel tested at 62 in the same tester - it (the witherby) was the worst that I've seen. It held an edge OK at 35 degrees, but who wants to use a long paring chisel at that? I gave it away. Someone actually gave it back to me, dissatisfied with it for free, so I gave it away again. At least it had a pretty EI rosewood handle (charles, that one was for you, too).

Presumably the 5 hours had something to do with using sandpaper (and not coarse sandpaper) and deep tooling marks?

I think some tinkering needed yet to find out the whole story. If the whole story really is that bad, charles once told me he'd cut me any joint if I gave him the chisel. If I'd have had four of those alloy steel witherbies, I'd have sent him the chisels and had him make me a box for the wiener shaped hammer todd hughes gave me. You could have him make you a box maybe for a whole set - might be a good trade.

If you really need a set of chinese chisels that works reasonably well, and money is tight, send me a PM. I have a set of chinese chisels (not the HFs, better than that) that I know work fine, and I know they're not worth the money for me to try to sell in an earnest way. I would sell them to you for $1 (There's a reason for the $1, and it has to do with my laziness).

[glenn bradley]

what's a scientific manor- is that like a laboratory?

Some reviews use a jig to hold the chisel and drop a specified amount of weight from a specific height a certain number of times to drive the chisel into different woods. Granted there are still many variables but some of the products dulled just as quick as suggested. It was interesting (as it is in any such tests) how well some of the cheaper tools did and how poorly some of the expensive ones did as well :confused:.

[David Weaver]

What was also goofy in that test was how barr chisels fared, even though someone who was involved with them had glowing comments about barrs and their edge holding ability.

Not a fan of the fact that they decided to make the angle for all steeper so that LN chisels would be used at their recommended bevel angle. They should've all been tested at 25 degrees, and a side comment about the LN holding up much better at 30 could've been made if they fared poorly.

1/8" should've been wet ground or belt sanded on a coarse belt off of each of those chisels before they did the comparison.

[Kent A Bathurst]

what's a scientific manor- is that like a laboratory?

It's a house where physicists live, but that's not important now.

And don't call me Shirley.:D

[Richard Gillespie]

Spelling isn't my forte' so it took a while for me to realize I should have used manner instead of manor, sorry about that. Spell check doesn't catch miss use errors.

[David Weaver]

There was a girl with the last name Use in my school growing up, too, and I couldn't catch her, even though I would've liked to.

:D

[Kent A Bathurst]

There was a girl with the last name Use in my school growing up, too, and I couldn't catch her, even though I would've liked to.

:D

At the local reformatory school for girls, the homecoming queen is crowned Miss Demeanor.

[Frank Drew]

Sounds like a cool opportunity to try out their new line. Not so sure posting negative feedback in a public forum is a cool way to repay that opportunity.

Remind me not to send you anything of mine to test out.

Just don't send him poor tools if you want a positive review; and what was he supposed to "repay"... the "cool opportunity" to use some mediocre tools? :confused:

As far as I can tell, Richard was doing them the favor, not the other way around.

[Richard Gillespie]

There was a girl with the last name Use in my school growing up, too, and I couldn't catch her, even though I would've liked to.

:D

Begs the question, was there also a young man in the class by the name of Bator?

[Mark Maleski]

Update on previous thread:

I'm not following - got a link?


This is their new line with steel all the way through the handles.

I like GW quite a bit. Their catalogs are beautiful and I've happily made many a purchase from them. But their add copy on these chisels seems silly to me, as it includes the sentence: "This [the shank going through the handle] also makes the chisel a bit "handle-heavy" and gives it a wonderful special balance." How in the world is a "handle-heavy" balance a good thing? Richard, what was your impression of the balance?

[David Weaver]

I'm not following - got a link?



I like GW quite a bit. Their catalogs are beautiful and I've happily made many a purchase from them. But their add copy on these chisels seems silly to me, as it includes the sentence: "This [the shank going through the handle] also makes the chisel a bit "handle-heavy" and gives it a wonderful special balance." How in the world is a "handle-heavy" balance a good thing? Richard, what was your impression of the balance?

Guess if you like to hold the handle and pound away - for those of us into timber framing :confused: Which is....wait, where are the timber framing fanatics on here?:eek:

[Richard Gillespie]

I'm not following - got a link?


Previous Thread (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=141428)



I like GW quite a bit. Their catalogs are beautiful and I've happily made many a purchase from them. But their add copy on these chisels seems silly to me, as it includes the sentence: "This [the shank going through the handle] also makes the chisel a bit "handle-heavy" and gives it a wonderful special balance." How in the world is a "handle-heavy" balance a good thing? Richard, what was your impression of the balance?

In the smaller width chisels, being handle heavy was noticeable. I didn't find it objectionable however. I over all liked the steel shaft going through the handle. The power of the hammer strike was directly delivered to the cutting edge.

I never got to using the chisels in parring. That may have been a different story with it being handle heavy.

[Jack Camillo]

I still can't get over five hours to sharpen the chisels. They'd have to pay me on top of giving me the great honor of evaluating them.

[Petra Pope]

I’m the technician at Garrett Wade who asked Mr. Gillespie to take a look at our new chisels, and I can confirm what he’s posted about our exchange – he was asked for his honest assessment and he was not discouraged from posting. To have done so would have not seemed fair to either Rick or the open forum spirit of SMC that Garrett Wade supports and respects.
This discussion is an update on a previous SMC thread in which I had invited people to contact us directly at tech@garrettwade.com Rick was the only one who did, and he asked one question - “How well do they hold an edge?” At that point, we had received mostly positive feedback from contractors and other customers who wanted a chisel that could withstand abuse, but we had not yet heard from someone like Rick, a woodworker planning to cut dovetails in black walnut and needing a chisel with a good, hard edge. I felt Rick would be a fair judge (he was) and would test the chisels’ limits (he did). He was indeed doing us a favor, and we are grateful for his efforts. Though disappointed in what he had to say, we consider his report a great benefit to the quality control of this product. These chisels were not meant to perform as Rick has described. We will investigate why they have and go about fixing the problem. When we do, I’d like to be able to post an update here on SMC. I may even ask Rick to take another look.
Petra