Hi all been doing furniture making for a couple years now and every once in a while I’ll stumble onto a tool manufacturer outside of the normal LN veritas. For instance I was was looking up PEC tools and auto correct put in peck and it is actually another tool company that makes quality tools. So question is if you all no any quality hand Tool makers that are outside the norm?
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There are dozens of brands and makers out there focusing on hand tools. The easiest thing to do would be to purchase one issue of Mortise and Tenon magazine. After FWW it is my favorite magazine. The back pages have all of the sponsors listed there and it is the easiest way to get a comprehensive list of who makes what. Possible their website lists the sponsors. Just want to add that you don’t need these fancy tools to do premium work. The vintage tools really do work just as well. By all means get what you like and I buy a mixture of vintage and premium. Sometimes I buy premium just to support a maker.
There are some excellent small tool makers. There are some that are truly awful. Just terrible. Many of those are owned/started by bigger companies such as Woodcraft. They have terrible track records.
Research the heck out of an unknown brand before you spend any hard-earned money.
There are some outstanding companies out there, especially planemakers. Check out HNT Gordon (Australia, but with at least one US retailer), Bridge City Toolworks, MS Bickford, Caleb James. For measuring tools, check out Starrett and Woodpeckers. Barr tools makes some excellent chisels. I could keep going. There are lots of smaller makers that have really high quality tools.
Thank you this was very helpful.
Can't really help as there's little I can think of new that makes more sense for a serious user vs. understanding what was good in the past and finding it. For example, a lufkin measuring tool doesn't get any respect now. A combination Lufkin square made in Michigan with a hardened head is better than anything PEC makes that I'm aware of and typically about $50 on ebay. The nuance? If you accidentally get an old square with an unhardened head, it'll probably be junk. If you spend the $50 for the right thing, probably every part of it will be better - the rule is harder than the mid grade stuff, the head will last longer even if it's got use than anything unhardened, probably by 10 times, and so on.
We're on the hand tools side here. I think Woodpeckers makes hand tools for power tool users. Starrett makes nice stuff, but a hardened head full combination square set is now $380 and you'd kind of feel it has to be kept in perfect shape.
I started with the expensive stuff 15+ years ago and bought a lot of it - planes, chisels, etc...all boutique stuff, and have very little of it. In longer work intervals, a lot of the new stuff is really easy to set but still not preferable due to little things like excess weight and so on.
+1 for david
I have a Lufkin new old stock 12” ruler I got off of Jim Bode’s tool site. I love it and it is my daily user. What I really like is that on one side it has 1/8th inch increments and on the other it is 1/16th inch. Perfect for a woodworker needs.
For what it is worth, specifically about PEC, 10 years ago when I started woodworking, FWW came out with an issue that had recommendations for combination squares and double squares. PEC was rated "best value" and I purchased a PEC 12 inch combo square and 4 inch double square. Less than 8 years later both were trash- neither holding a setting.
I paid much more money and bought Starrett. Lesson learned.
see my comment about lufkin above. I was venting that I had a PEC tool that was new and it wasn't very accurate new. The CW toolmaker was on the forum I was on and turned me on to lufkins - they have to say "hardened" on the head, and the rule should have fine graduations or it's not matched properly - but if those things are true, I've gotten a gaggle of them and every one of them is dead on to a huge starrett reference square I found for a song.
I mention lufkin just because without the sheik name that mitutoyo or starret has, you can sometimes find a combination square for as little as $20 with rule. I hardness tested one of the lufkin rules - 53. Incredibly durable compared to half hard steel that's in a lot of mid grade stuff. The heads and rules don't develop wear burrs and really just adjust nice.
At the price, rather than having one, I have five or so and they're all over the shop so I don't have to walk over all of my junk piles to find one.
Accidentally got two that are unhardened along the way (lufkins) and neither is square - the hardened head and higher level rule combination is critical. they're the equal of an older starrett head and rule that I have.
Narex.
Re: Narex, I started with their bench chisels - they are a ok starter set. A little over a year ago got a set of the Richter chisels and have found them to live up to their hype. Any recommendations on particular tools they make? I saw they are now making dowel plates but haven’t seen any reviews and have also wondered if their files/rasps and screwdrivers are good quality.
Narex make good but perhaps basic tools. For we amateurs that don't use a tool for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week they're better than just adequate. I haven't tried their Richter stuff, basically because I find their "ordinary" tools very serviceable for all the jobs I use them for.
I use their standard bench chisels, dovetail chisels (with the hollow backs), mortise chisels and screwdrivers (the wooden-handled variety). I find the steel parts well-made if not perfect out of the box (a la Veritas) and their ergonomics suit my hands (but ergonomics can be an individual matter). Only a little bit of fettling is needed to get them perfected.
Narex do seem to pay attention to the design details. For example, the screwdrivers have non-round handle shapes for a better grip, a hex-shaped blade-to-handle part for exerting more torque with a wrench and blades treated with some sort of grippy black coating to help prevent cam-out. The flat-blade variety also come in seven different thickness/width sizes to fit any slotted screw I've ever used. A set gives a decent saving over buying individually and they all get used over time if you use a lot of slotted screws, such as brass screws, as part of the design of a piece.
I have around 20 Narex hand tools. The only "bad" one was a small drawknife that snapped on the handle bend from blade to grip. I presume that the bending process had made the metal there brittle as I wasn't applying the drawknife in any peculiar or over forceful way.
I haven't used any but one 6mm diameter round rasp of theirs, as when I bought rasps they didn't seem to offer any hand-stitched rasps with random tooth placement. Their less expensive rasps are all machine-made so unlikely to give a finer finish - but that might have changed since I went rasp hunting some four or five years ago.
Veritas is selling a supposedly superior steel compared to the A2 steel Lie-Nielsen and the like are touting: PM-V11
They’re cheaper and their chisel blades are tapered which throws off sharpening angles. Must be cheaper for a reason.
I don't think the Veritas PM--11V are cheaper than LN or Hock. In fact, you generally pay a premium for this option. I regularly use all three and think they're all great. The PM-V11 may be the best of these. They're a little more effort to sharpen, but hold an edge for a really long time, and they're not brittle. Whether they're tapered or not should not matter, the angle is registered off the back of the blade and should remain the same whether the blades are tapered or not.
Ditto with TboneTim, I have the cryogenically treated Narex chisels, and they are superb. Comfortable, excellent steel, they're great. They're the only Narex products I have, so I can't vouch for the other tools they make, but i suspect they are good and probably a great value.
The PM-V11 are indeed more expensive, but worth the small premium. I have no problem sharpening the chisels and plane blades in my Lie Nielsen guide.
It’s not much of a difference. When I heard about the new steel I compared it with brands I’m familiar with. Woodpeckers uses laminated steel in their description. IBC uses A2 steel. These are the only brands I checked because they are well known in my mind. A gross generalization for sure.
$86-108 Veritas
$95-125 Lie-Nielsen
The range are the sizes. I know Veritas can’t be only company to use this steel.
I think the PM-V11 is patented by Veritas. I don't think anyone else can use it. I haven't seen it anywhere.
But A2 or O1 are great steels. The heat treating and lapping are the biggest differences.
Two different people XRFed it to find it to be Carpenter CTS-XHP. You'll have trouble finding XHP on the open market because it didn't find enough favor to keep it widely available.
Several years ago, someone said they could XRF the steel and find out what it was and LV requested that just because you could do that legally "please don't because of all of our efforts". Which is fine. It's not legitimately what happens anywhere else - if you make a knife, the public expects it to be XRFed to both find out what it is and then confirm that it's what a manufacturer claims - or both.
If it was a patented steel, they wouldn't need to ask someone not to XRF it. Carpenter XHP apparently went off patent about the same time LV picked it up. I've made knives and plane irons from CTS-XHP, it's indistinguishable from V11.
Why am I pointing this out? if it is just using an alloy that was already available, it's worth a squint to hear people talking about a proprietary alloy that was developed. LV didn't do that and can't afford to do something like that - developing a novel alloy that will actually be good and then moving it from development to production for something that can be done in a way that's feasible when the expertise isn't in house...probably 7 figures in cost.
Picking an alloy and then buying a melt of it when it's not retailed is probably what's going on. You or I can't afford having a melt made for us and then rolled out. LV probably can.
if you find CTS-XHP stock retailed somewhere - it's probably from an older melt, and you'll find the cost to be high enough to make it not worth your while to set out on making your own knock off line. it's expensive. .1" x 6x36" cost me about $311. It makes a decent knife, but it's not as stainless as many might want, and it also breaks by bending pretty easily. I think those two things are what caused it to leave the market so that it would seem "exclusive".
(at least two different people, maybe more. It costs about $40 to have a sample XRFed to get all of the component alloying other than carbon. if you have an alloy and you change carbon, you have a huge problem - carbon can be assumed, and adjusting carbon only to try to create something proprietary would probably result in a bad outcome if you could get someone to make a melt of it in the first place.
Presuming LV picked XHP after doing evaluation, it would've been better for them to just say they did and boast about it, because it's expensive. if that's really the case, letting people run around claiming they invented something is in poor taste. it's misleading).
I heard about the V11 from McLaughlin who stated it was his new favorite line of chisels after being given a set from LV. Who knows if they paid him to say that but he hasn’t dropped them yet. They are still in his tool cabinet :-)
apparently, I can't respond to the reply below. I tested four chisels in an identical test a few years ago. V11 was one, brand new. I figured it would come close to the japanese chisel that I had (just a middle of the road chisel that I got in a set of 12 from japan for about $275 used - I got them because of their shape - later tested them with a hardness tester - they're 63 hardness).
At any rate, the other two chisels were iles mk2 and a sorby chisel. Sorby has gone over the edge- their chisels are kind of just hardware store like harbor freight-like steel but nicer looking.
of the rest, the V11 wasn't able to do as well as the iles chisel and was not close to the japanese chisel. Of course you can use them to do work, but what the value proposition is, I don't know. they nick more easily than vintage chisels or Iles MK2 that I had on hand, and they sharpen and grind half as fast as the iles. People kind of believe what they feel they should believe. LV says that the chisels sharpen faster than A2 - they don't. they wear on stones about half as fast as O1. A2 does, I don't know what, but it's faster than half as fast grinding and honing. I found that honing and someone else (kees heiden) put a machine together that would run steel over an abrasive and measure the amount removed- he also found that at similar hardness, V11 took twice as long to abrade as O1.
LV has done really well with the steel. But even better getting people to believe they have a house alloy nobody can use (lottery odds that's true), and that it can sharpen really quickly in line with O1 or similar.
As far as steel stuff goes, the woodworking market is pretty easy to fool as long as you make something that can be used at all.
Derek Cohen did a great review of 4 chisel types and steels, in tough Australian hardwood. The chisels were Veritas PM-V11, vintage Stanley #750 O1, Koyamaichi white steel, and Blue Spruce A2.
The PM-V11 were very close to the expensive Japanese chisels, and far superior to the vintage Stanley and the Blue Spruce.
https://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/FourChiselSteelsCompared.html
Believe what you want, but there are many other reviews of the PM-V11, and my own experiences agree. It's a superior steel, and well-made tools ready to go without fettling.
Derek's test of use isn't much of a test compared to mine, and the chisels compared at the lower end are generally not on par with good bench chisels. It's possible that there's some variance in V11 tools based on heat treatment and tempering, but the steel is a known quantity and its forte is wear resistance as much as you can practically get that out of chromium carbide. It's not designed for impact, and it looks OK in some tests due to its ability to get reasonable hardness and be compared to chisels that lack hardness (like a stanley 750 - i harness tested mine and they land at 60. Witherby and swan are the same - they are not a match even for something like an iles chisel.) The iles chisel that I had beat the V11 chisel easily at less than half the price at the time, ground and sharpened in half the time and came with side lands, so the corners wouldn't leave quite so easily as they will when there are no side lands.
Of course you can do work with V11 chisels. It just doesn't make sense to use them if you have other better options. Older English chisels are better yet quite often than the Iles, especially in proportions, but the type of steel is more suited for chisels than O1. O1 is a through hardening die steel.
The woodworking community makes a pretty easy target because most users will spend effort on getting something they like to work and rely on other people to do analysis for them. If you have something workable at all, you can really find yourself as healthy of a dose of confirmation bias as you want.
Read around a little on other forums and you'll find more hit or miss commentary about V11, especially as far as chisels and shooting plane irons go. I am waiting for someone to send me a V11 skew shooting plane iron in the mail because the person cannot get the edge to hold up even after having the first iron replaced. I'll make them a better iron for a shooting plane but one that will fit their LV plane. I've seen more of this kind of stuff and am far deeper in it (with observation, not just thinking) than you realize.
This has wandered pretty far from the OP's question. Perhaps it would be useful to start a new thread for the metallurgy discussion.
Excellent point
Better yet, have Shop Talk Live give us a discussion on their thoughts of the various steels. No doubt this has been done before.
That'd be an interesting discussion, but it's likely to not be very accurate. In order to get accurate talk about steel that's in woodworking tools, you'd need to find a toolmaker who does more than use something by suggestion and then send it out to heat treat.
You'd almost need to have a combination custom knife and toolmaker, and anything publication sponsored is going to want to center around what you can buy. For example, the move toward A2 steel has a lot to do with inability to heat treat or find heat treatment contracting. A2 is super easy to heat treat, and with a liquid nitrogen tail end when cooling it, you can erase a lot of things done poorly during the process. LN could not manage to get carbon steel irons to stay flat and didn't harden half of the iron length or so to the slot. As hock lost his heat treater, even O1 - which is easy to heat treat in relative terms - is getting harder to have heat treated at high hardness.
Larrin Thomas would make for an interesting presenter, but he does focus on knives, and the priority for knife steels is different than it is for woodworking. Good tools for woodworking don't lack toughness (don't chip easily) but when they fail, they have to fail by chip rather than rolling. In knives, preventing breakage is king, and steels that tend to roll rather than chip make for a better wide-use knife steel.
The woodworking world is a little strange. People want to talk about the aspects of steel in tools because it's sort of part of the gamut of things you can talk about and repeat things you've heard. It's far different if you make things and heat treat and you kind of wonder why people want to talk about it so much when they want to know so little, for example - constantly referring to things that signify edge strength (how long before the steel moves from its initial point), but using the word toughness (how much force it takes to break something, usually laterally applied). Or compare something like LV's O1 to Hock, and make comments about attribution related to what's actually the chosen hardness. If LV hardened O1 to 62, their chisels would probably be better than the V11 chisels in use - actually, with near certainty. There is more movement from O1 in heat treatment, though, and they would probably prefer using CTS-XHP / V11 just because it doesn't move much - it costs more, but probably in line with their markup. Essentially taking the place of A2.