Reply To: Grebstk chisels…

Well, I bought a set of 4. I’m not unhappy about it. They were $18.

I bought them to replace a few carpentry style hardware store chisels (ace branded I think) with big chunky plastic handles.

The Grebstk’s blades are about 50% longer, which is one of the problems I had with the others. The Grebstk’s wood handles are a lot thinner and lighter than the very chunky plastic/rubber handles on the others I like the shape and balance a lot more. I’ve chopped 8 mortises in 1 3/4 cherry with a plastic faced hammer and the handsurvived with only some bruising. The profile of the blades is about the same as the Ace, the sides of the chisel which are perpendicular to the back are quite thick before the bevel starts, basically the same as the ace, etc chisels that’s the one problem I had with the ace that was not improved (I believe the ‘aldi’ chisels have a more refined bevel). This sometimes makes it tough to get into acute corners, like on a dovetail. I will eventually probably buy at least one more finely beveled chisel. They are metric, as I expected.

As far as I can tell the physical properties of the steel are similar. I get them to the same sharpness, they seem to last about the same time, they take about the same effort to sharpen, the steel seems vaguely similar to the blade on my vintage stanley plane and to the ace chisels. I was able to flatten the back enough after not a huge effort (they are all hollow, but getting the first 1/4″ flat was not a giant amount of work). They sharpened up fine. Initially the smaller ones were not ground very square, but not so far out that it was a ton of work to correct. They were ground at about 27 degrees. They came sorta-sharp. Not nearly as sharp as I soon had them but it would have been possible to do rough work.