Premium chisels: 5/8" Ashley Iles Mk-II and 1/2" LN.
Cheap chisel: 1/2" Marples Blue Handle. I bought a set of 6 for less than a single LN cost.
* Fit/finish impeccable on both Premiums.
* AI and LN are well balanced
* The LN is noticeably thicker than the AI. (Some of that may be because it is 1/8" more narrow.) The lands are ground much steeper too.
*The back on the LN has been lapped. The AI still needs to be. (Will do it this weekend.)
* The AI and LN were sharp right out of the box. Both ground at a 30* bevel, but in use the AI "feels like" it's ground lower. I cannot figure out why. (I wonder if the AI is sharper. Dunno.)
* I touched up the cutting edge of both on my Shapton 6000. It seemed like the AI was sharper when cutting notebook paper. The AI is O1 vs A2 in the LN. Jury is still out until I do more work.
* The LN's socket handle looks very small. In reality, it's only 1" shorter than the AI. So far, both handles feel fine in-hand.
* The 5/8" AI is noticeably lighter weight than the 1/2" Marples. That's partly because the Marples has a long heavy handle.
I cut two pair of dovetails and chiselled out the waste.
* The only difference I noticed is that the AI doesnt seem to bruise the baseline as much as the LN or the Marples.
* Other than that, they all 3 worked equally well.
* I did not see any advantage to the thin edges on the LN or AI. Yet.
More this weekend.
Fred