Narex Mortise chisels

[Jerome Hanby]

I'm not a Neanderthal by any stretch of the imagination, but I just used 1/4" Narex Mortise chisel from LV for the first and wow, it's a life saver. I haven't even got it spiffed up yet, just out of the box (or brown cardboard envelope). Built a drawer with box joint joinery and had underestimated how long the drawer bottom slot should be on the front and back and didn't notice until I had three sides glued and was fitting the bottom. Not sure if that slot is technically a mortise, but that 1/4" chisel fixed my problem in nothing flat!

[george wilson]

I'll have to look them up. I didn't know Narex offered mortise chisels. I am not usually a furniture maker,though somehow I have made several simple pieces of furniture for the house. I usually mortise by slotting with the milling machine,and squaring up the corners with a chisel. At work we had an old but working Yates American floor model mortiser with a PEDAL. I don't like these lever jobs. My shoulders aren't in good shape to pull at them.

[Matt Radtke]

I picked up the 1/2 from Lee-Valley, and the 1/8th because it still had Fancy-New-Whizzy pricing at the time. I love 'em. If I didn't have the crazy ambition (and a lot of the material) to make my own between the two sizes, I'd buy the whole set.

[Peter Scoma]

Definitely a great deal save for the handles (IMO at least).

PJS

[Graham Hughes (CA)]

The Narexes are not pigstickers, but they are surprisingly good, especially so for the price LV was offering them at. I bought too many, really, when LV had them on sale and tried them out, and as with everything Narex I've tried I was quite surprised by how good they were.

[Jerome Hanby]

The ones from LV are actual imperial sizes not close metric equivalents. I kind of agree about the handles. They feel fine, but are a bit homely. And the set from LV gives me a new project (like I need another one) I get to build a box to match the one in which my Narex bench chisels (which are metric) live. I think Rob Lee posted on SMC that the premium Narex bench chisels they would be selling soon would also be imperial... Not positive what makes them premium, but...

[John Coloccia]

The Narexes are not pigstickers, but they are surprisingly good, especially so for the price LV was offering them at. I bought too many, really, when LV had them on sale and tried them out, and as with everything Narex I've tried I was quite surprised by how good they were.

The handles don't look like classic pig sticker handles, but I believe they have the most important characteristic commonly found on pig stickers - tapered sides (slightly smaller at the top so they don't get stuck). I'm not sure I have that right about the Narex, though. Maybe someone can clarify.

[Matt Radtke]

The handles don't look like classic pig sticker handles, but I believe they have the most important characteristic commonly found on pig stickers - tapered sides (slightly smaller at the top so they don't get stuck). I'm not sure I have that right about the Narex, though. Maybe someone can clarify.

You are correct. The blades have a nice, trapezoid taper. And yes, the handles are kind of 'meh.' Certainly good enough to get the job done though.

[Chen-Tin Tsai]

Would it be possible to cut the handles off and replace them? I seem to recall Derek Cohen doing a tutorial on replacing a pig sticker handle, and it seems that the Narex are of the tanged design, similar to the old pig stickers.

[Graham Hughes (CA)]

Yeah, sure. The problem with that is that a traditional English pigsticker has a really really big bolster, a huge tang and is thicker (although not necessarily a lot thicker). The Narex bolster is small by comparison, so you'll be forced into having a ferrule, and it can't provide the same support to the body of the chisel, so you need a ring on the end to prevent yourself from destroying it too easily. At this point you're basically making handles like the Hirsch ones, albeit with better designed steel. And because they're not as thick as a pigsticker I'm afraid of using it as a crude lever for fear of snapping it.

Basically it's a different chisel form and isn't very comparable to the pigstickers; appreciate it for what it is, and know that it mortises well, but is different. In particular this design seems not to have the same handle issues the pigstickers seem to—rarely have I seen a pigsticker handle all in one piece, and I've broken two of my own (with wooden mallets! grain runout happens to the best of us). I can't tell if this is a design flaw or if this is because big brutes making thousands of mortises preferred to use other types of chisel, but it's pretty consistent across my experience.

[Pam Niedermayer]

...In particular this design seems not to have the same handle issues the pigstickers seem to—rarely have I seen a pigsticker handle all in one piece, and I've broken two of my own (with wooden mallets! grain runout happens to the best of us). I can't tell if this is a design flaw or if this is because big brutes making thousands of mortises preferred to use other types of chisel, but it's pretty consistent across my experience.

I guess I have to disagree on this in that none of the ones I've seen have broken handles. Certainly the 8 or so I've bought are 100% intact. Granted, the only ones I even consider buying have boxwood handles, to the point that I've begun to think they all have boxwood handles.

Pam