Chisel Purchase

[Alan Turner]

As many of you may recall from prior posts, my strong preference is for old rather than new handtools. Well, I need to outfit a second shop, and so decided to be a bit lazy and see if I could get away with it, so I went to the place we can't mention here, and bought a set of NOS Bahco chisels. They are tang chisels, wood handles, 10.5" long, bevel edged, metric sized. What I could call bevel edge bench chisels. I paid about $58, including shipping. I note that at the current time the price is up a bit.
Well, they arrived, and this morning, I spent 2 hours lapping and honing them. There were not in bad shape, so it works out to 20 min. each, which is much faster for me than older tools. Just cut a mortise in hard maple, 1/2:", and the edge help up well, with no rolling. Seems to be pretty good steel.

I thought I would pass this buy info along for those in the market for an inexpensive chisel set. No affiliation, etc. Pix is from the bay.

One reason that I made this decision is that I have a full set of butt Bahco's, from the early 80's, and they are of excellent steel.

[Herb Blair]

Alan,
Congrats on the chisels. Sometimes we here on the forum poo-poo lesser known brands out of hand without knowing if they are anygood or not. I have several different brands of chisels in my shop. Some old (Stanley, Whiterby, Swan and Buck), and some new (Lee Valley, Buck, and Marples). I use them all, and find that for my use, once sharpened and honed, they all perform about the same. I guess we would all love to have a set of the LN's, but at $50 apiece, I'll not be getting them anytime soon. I guess I'm not as critical as some.

[Derek Cohen]

Alan

Of course you know that Bahco are the decendents of Berg chisels? With genes such as these, they have to be good!

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Alan Turner]

Derek,
I did not know that; thx. I do recall that my older Bahco's have a fish emblem on them, as I recall. Bahco bought out Sandvik several years ago, and one of my new chisels has the name Sandvik on it.
Alan