Has anyone been able to work extensively with the Narex’s Richter chisel? I’ve heard good things in a couple of places, but I’ve yet to find a major review thereof. What are your impressions (e.g. steel quality, durability, keenness of edge, general feel/ergonomics, etc.)? Would like to develop a greater consensus one way or the other before deciding to purchase.
Woodworking Pastor
NC
Replies
For reasons I won't drone on about, I recently exchanged many of my chisels of long use for Narex chisels. In truth it was partly to drum up some tool-buying cash by selling some rather expensive items (such as Blue Spruce) the cash from which bought about 10X Narex items compared to what the equivalent Sprucers would cost.
But all my Narex chisels are of the standard steel, main-range kind, not the Richters. I did look at Richters but came to the conclusion that, although they do have a better overall finish (polished handles, mainly) and a slightly different steel, they don't offer any meaningful advantage over Narex standard fare - which is already extremely good, especially for so little money.
Sometimes a manufacturer will make substantial functional improvements to something and sell it as a premium item. Sometimes the improvements are largely to the image rather than the substance of that sold. I'm not saying this is necessarily true of the Narex Richter range .... but it could be. :-)
The bottom line (ha ha) is that the standard Narex items work very well indeed; come near ready for work with only minimal fettling of the working end; and are inexpensive partly because they don't spend enormous efforts on the cosmetics rather than on the functional aspects.
Lataxe
I had the standard Narex chisels and kept them even after buying all seven of the newer Richter chisels. Both work well. I am as vulnerable to eye glitter as most people are and I do like the feel and look of the Richters better. The steel is better, but aside from Mr. Wright's excellent YouTube review, I don't do enough chiseling to notice a large difference.
I do not have experience with the Richter line, but I have a word about Narex fit & finish:
I now have my second set of Narex mortising chisels. They are my second set because I sent the first set back. The steel has been top flight. That set went back because of the handles. Narex makes round handles and sands light "flats" on opposite sides before a stain dip, leaving them with a nice grippy feel. The issue was that the flats were not indexed to the blades. With a shaped handle you expect to be able to swap tools and know where the edge is without looking. That first set was off by as much as 30 degrees.
I bought online and the retailer went to the trouble of digging through their stock on hand to assemble a matched set for me. W/O that effort I would not own them. Nice chisels in the end, especially for the price paid.
When I first saw that particular line, I laughed. The leather between the blade and handle is ludicrous. It was a later 20th century marketing gimmick, but leather does not belong in that spot at all.
Older chisel s had leather at the end of the handle, but the purpose there was to prevent splitting the handle end while pounding. But even then, they were leather washers, with a central core of wood to transfer the blow directly from the mallet to the steel.
Whenever I see some foolish addition to a basic tool, such as a laser on a handsaw, I roll my eyes and move on.
I have three Narex mortising chisels. Reading this thread I hurried off to the shed to make sure the handle flats and oval were properly aligned with the blades. Happily they're all perfectly aligned. This must be why I never noticed the handle orientation when chopping with them, eh. Perhaps MJ's moan about his prompted those Czechs to improve their production process? :-)
That leather ring on the Richters (and on no other Narex chisel) seems to be part of the pretty-look marketing. However, there is blurb that claims the steel is significantly better as well; and is comparable to Veritas PM-V11 for both resilience and ease of sharpening.
Here is a Blighty advert from one of the on-line purveyors, going on about this better steel. Of course, this is sales blurb so ......
https://www.workshopheaven.com/narex-richter-bevel-edge-chisel-1-8-3mm.html
Myself, I think their standard stuff is more than good enough. Perhaps the Richter steel is more performant. But do you need "more performant" than their less expensive chisels?
Lataxe
Lataxe, you're welcome! I "set them straight" about 2 1/2 years ago I think.
I agree with John, putting a shock absorber between the mallet and the work makes no sense at all. There is leather in my Stanley Everlasting set (#40s I think) but I'm pretty sure it is there as a filler from the wood of the handle to the butcap, which is a solid part of the core with steel from butt to edge.
I'm not sure what others are saying about the leather in the handles, I just got a set for the Richters, and there's no leather. They look and feel great, but I haven't had the time to use them yet.
Thanks all. To follow up here: I’m curious about this particular chisel because I’m looking for a middle point between cost and steel quality. I have an eclectic collection of bench chisels, both old and new, superb and disappointing. Part of the interest in steel quality is also related to sharpening, (need a better lapping plate, finishing stone (8000+), and strop). It would be great to find an affordable chisel that held an edge, required little lapping to achieve flatness, and whose side bevels were small enough to clean up dovetails.
I learned about the Richter from James Wright’s thoroughgoing testing/review of a host of chisels (https://youtu.be/hYDLQ_gydhc), but I wanted to check out other impressions from the online woodworking community. Strangely, there seems to be little out there on this particular chisel given Wright’s high praise.
–Woodworking Pastor
Wow, that guy really went down the rabbit hole. Thanks for the link, I guess I needed a nap!
I read a story in a Pop Wood e-post where the author was paring 1 mm slices off a piece of 1/4 x 3/4 white oak comparing an old Stanley to a new Richter he had just bought. Every so many slices of oak he would try to slice a sheet of paper. After 200 slices of oak the Stanley had developed a burr and would not cut the paper. At about 280 the Richter was still going strong and he was getting tired of the test so he quit.
I bought a set of the oval handel (beech I think) Narex after I read a review hear but was not impressed. The back of one of the wide chisels was so out of flat on the end I thought about sending it back or cutting the last 1/2" off. The steel seemed very hard and took a lot of work to flatten them but they don't seem to hold an edge as long as my old chisels. I guess you can't always go by the review.
I recently purchased a set of Narex Richters for my son and I must say I am impressed, they compare very favorably with my Veritas vm-11s at a fraction of the cost. If I had to do it over again I would be hard pressed to spend the additional money on the vm-11s.
My own Narex chisel collection is slowly growing as whenever I want an additional kind of chisel to those I already have, standard Narex has become the first choice. They are inexpensive - less than Crown, Sorby, Henry Taylor and others of that price point - yet much better made in terms of the much smaller amount of fettling required and the ability to take and hold an edge. Iles is their only competitor at lower price points.
Some don't like the fatter-handled version of Narex chisels but they do have other configurations of many bench chisels, with slimmer and more traditionally-shaped handles. Myself, I like the fatter handles because they fill my chiselling grip.
I have three of their dovetail chisels, three mortise chisels and two bench chisels. All are well made and perform very well indeed, with their standard steel of 59 Rockwell Hardness.
One or two posters in this thread say they've had Narex chisels that have needed too much fettling - flattening of the back or re-configuration of the handles. I now have 8 of their chisels and have had nothing but very well-made items - certainly in a much better condition that newly-bought Marples, Crown and Henry Taylor chisels I've acquired in the past. Narex standard chisels are less cosmetically pretty than Blue Spruce, Lie-Nielsen or Veritas, though.
Chisel prettiness is not too high on my list of required chisel attributes, mind. :-)
One day I might sell my old Blue-handled Marples, although they've served me well for 25 years and still do. I'll use whatever I get to try a similar set of 4 Narex Richter as all reviews I've read extoll their virtues. They aren't expensive either - about 1/3rd the price of Veritas PM-V11 and half or less the price of Lie-Nielsen equivalents. They're even cosmetically pretty, according to reviewers.
Meanwhile I have a 1" cranked Narex chisel and two 1/4" skew-bladed paring chisels on the way. I expect them to be as good as the other 8 Narex I have now.
Lataxe
PS Their screwdrivers are very good too.
I don't have much to add other than another thumbs up for the Richters. I needed a 1.5" bench chisel and picked up a Richter from Highland. It holds an edge and sharpens well. It does feel a little bulky, but that's probably more about the mass of a 1.5" size.
I haven't used the chisels, but I have forged chisels from water hardening files and made a lot of tools. I've also had some of the narex chisels in the past (the basic line).
The process used to make the original narex chisels is different from typical, and they have a hardness ceiling and are usable chisels but are mediocre.
The hardness spec provided with the richters is what I'd refer to as medium-hard temper. It's specified as chrome vanadium steel (there are tons of specs for chrome vanadium steel, at least as wide as 0.5% carbon to 1.5% carbon, so that doesn't tell us that much other than that it's probably fairly plain steel, which is good for chisels).
There's an idealized test where these came out on top, but the test provides a bias for a chisel in the medium hard temper range, so it's not a surprise to see they'd come out on top.
I can only say this much as a maker of tools (not for sale, an amateur maker) - you can fairly easily make tools and see all of these differences in play as a spec. 62/63 hardness is barely sharpenable on oilstones, but still sharpenable, and on plainer steel, the wire edge falls off more easily. 59 hardness in the more mediocre line will lead to a more persistent wire edge.
Pretty much anything on 60-63 hardness would cause indifference from most experienced woodworkers who use a lot of hand tools, and the feel of the chisel and other aspects would be more important than anything else. If you work with a set of chisels long enough, you should be able to learn to accommodate them so that they don't take damage while you're working. The issue with mediocre chisels is that sometimes the accommodation makes a chisel undesirable to use.
Don't get swept into believing there's anything more in the Richter chisels than relatively common steel and a slightly harder temper than some of the other chisels.
I own four of the Narex Richter (1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2) and I have found the steel comparable to the Ashley Iles chisels. The lands are consistently barely present and I have zero complaints with the longevity and quality.
Sure there may be aspects that are unnecessary, but that doesn’t effect the utility and at the price, why not? The fit and finish is better than my Ashley Iles chisels as well IMO.
I have a set on th e way. My current chisel arsenal is a set of super cheap chisels that need frequent sharpening. They are beveled chisels and got good marks on Amazon, but they are pretty cheap. I have amassed a pretty nice tool shop and wanted upgraded chisels. I don’t want to spend the money for Lie Nielsen or LV chisels if I can get something comparable for half the cost. The difference maker was Wood byWright’s comprehensive review and the review previously mentioned in Popular woodworking. There he slices the white oak until he runs out of White Oak at 280. I’m pretty sure it was Stanley 750’s he was comparing to the Narex. The Stanley’s failed to cut paper after 200. Ultimately at less than 40 a chisel, I don’t see how it could be a bad deal. You could pay far more for much less.
Paul Sellers on his free Common Woodworking site (just need to register though free), has a list of inexpensive chisels he recommends. I'd check there to see if he talks about these chisels.
Paul Sellers has been on my favourites list for a good while now .... although I have to say his stuff is not really a favourite, more of an interesting perspective. Frankly, I find much of his stuff far too hard&fast for my taste. He's very dismissive of so much merely because he doesn't have it or do it himself.
There's something of "The Paul Sellers Show!" about his output - celebrity building rather than pure woodworking.
Not to say that his websites don't contain anything of value - they have a lot of interesting and sometimes informative stuff. But you have to be very careful to winnow out the many prejudicial anti this & thats from the straightforward information. It's often the case with those old WW curmudgeons who become set in their ways.
Here are a couple of quotes from a very recent Sellers blog that seem to illuminate the general issue:
"THE FUTURE OF APPRENTICING
By Paul Sellers - 2 October 2020
"I can’t recommend a catalog anymore, and nor do I recommend a magazine either. I can’t. I make a point not to copy anyone anywhere and when you write and ask me whether I watch this or that youtuber, blogger or vlogger I should tell you this and then ask you not to ask me: If I have watched 30 minutes of woodworking guru output since YT came into being 15 years ago I would likely be exaggerating 10 times".
That's arrogant, solipsistic and something of a jarring cognitive dissonance, given that he portrays himself as a "woodworking guru" outputting his stuff largely via Youtube and other on-line channels, a lot of it paid-for "lessons" for which the free stuff appears to be the PR. And the "I make a point not to copy anyone anywhere" is such obvious nonsense. Did he make up all of woodworking by himself, then, like an Ayn Rand "hero" with a motor?
So, without dismissing his findings or opinions about chisels out of hand, I wouldn't assume that what he says is particularly objective or reliable. It might be but it might not and how would we know?
*******
Personally I find FWW still the benchmark for detailed, meaningful and usually well-supported WW information. It does have a touch of the PR-advert blurbs here and there but generally this can be easily spotted and winnowed from the extensive good crop of high quality guidance and advice.
The older content from Pop Woodworking also seems to have plenty of explanation and justification for what they say and recommend.
Another good source of WW info about tools are the few unaffiliated and non-commercial posters on the subject. David Weaver and Derek Cohen are examples I would trust, for example, even if I don't always agree with this or that they might argue for or against. At least you get those arguments for or against rather than a, "My 50 years of WW experience means I am infallible".
Lataxe
I agree about PS, there are a couple of others too.
The dismissive tone is unbelievable, especially from someone who touts how good those Alde chisels are or if you don't sharpen the same way and so on.
Richter chisels are their high end offering. They offer high quality at a reasonable price and the steel (the most important part) is great.
No chisel is perfect out of the box, if it is, you paid someone else to tune it up for you as part of the price.
I recently bought a set of Narex RICHTER chisels. I was impressed with the fit and finish. The backs were very flat and they sharpened easily. A foil like burr was produced while sharpen which usually causes suspicion about the quality of the steel. The burr did polish away and left a very sharp edge. Today I used them to chop dovetails in katalox. Katalox cuts more like stone than wood! Chips were flying across the shop. I've had chisel edges fracture while chopping katalox and expected it to happen to the Richters. NO FRACTURED EDGES! I think these chisels are an excellent value!
I have a set on the way. When polishing the backs, where did you start in terms of grit - either waterstone, paper, or other. The images I have seen showed very little grinding marks if any - how did they appear to you?
They were flat when I got them. I just polished the edge with 4000,8000,16000.
I just purchased a set of 7 Narex Richters. Decided to sharpen the 1 1/2 inch first. I was a little disappointed that the back needed so much work. It took about 40 minutes to get it flat (using diamond stones 220-8000). The bevel also had a hollow that was 1/8 inch long starting at the side of the chisel. This was another 35 minutes or so to work it out. Here's the good part. This chisel is wicked sharp. Shaves the hair on my arms with ease...cut through end grain pine like butter leaving a finished surface on the wood. I cannot comment on how durable the edge will be, but from what others have said, it should hold up well. I am hoping the other chisels in the set have flatter backs. Lastly, they look and feel Great!
I have continued to sharpen my set of 7 Narex Richters. The 1 inch, 3/4 inch, and 1/2 inch were all concave along the length of the backs. Took about 15 to 20 minutes on each of the chisels to get them flat. Even with all the unexpected flattening required...I still like them...they take a nice edge...feel nicely balanced....and look great. Now to see how well they hold an edge.
I bought a set of 8 of the fat handled Narex chisels 3 years ago, to add a layer of better chisels above my 4 Marples and (very) old Craftsmans with the yellow plastic handles. I recently picked up a Narex and a Japanese mortiser.
The Narexes were flat on the backs out of the box and required only polishing. I use these mostly for dovetails, and relegate the rougher work to the older chisels; the old Craftsmans get the scraping and really rough stuff.
I have been very pleased with the Narex quality and durability. I do spend a lot of time sharpening before a project, like a half day going through all the chisels and plane irons. In my opinion, that's the most important issue of all.
Narex Richtor chisels were a bargain when they first came out. Now, the price level has escalated considerably.
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