What brand of turning chisels ? Poll!!

What brand of woodworking chisels should I buy ?

options are :

Sorby, (Pommie)
P&N, (Australian Made)
Hamlet, (Pommie)
Toolex, (Made in Taiwan)
Carba-tech Generic (Made in China)

Zed,
I am not sure if my input would be a good indication as I am in the USA. I use sorby, crown , sears craftsman along with several that my partner and i have made out of old files.


River Rat

Zed,

I sent my advice to your first post and not the pol so please refer to that for my first reply.
Next, I have purchsed several brands of tools and here are my experiences:
First I bought a set from Carb-a-tech which wern't that bad except that although they don't keep their edge as well as other brands and made in China.
Next I bought the P&N gouge as mentioned in my other reply, it's a great tool except it wasn't the size that I expected.
Since then I have bought several Sorby (also great tools) and a Henry Taylor also good.

My advice is to buy the best that you can afford, but stay away from the asian tools because although they may be a good starting point and are supposed to be HSS, the quality of steel is no where as good as the P&N or the Shefield steel, & you will be forever sharpening them.

Hope this helps:)

Zed

given that you are in Sydney, you could also try Hycut tools, imported by the guy that sells the UniJig and supposedly the same quality steel as P&N etc, but a little bit cheaper - I have one of their bowl gouges which in my limited experience does the job quite well.

And just to confirm that there are exceptions to rules, I get better results from my 12mm cheapie skew than from the 20mm round-edged Henry Taylor. (I guess I have to concede that there is just the remotest possibility that my technique might be contributing a very small amount to this problem, rather than the tools.):)

Colin

P & N. Good steel, mid price range, AND AUSTRALIAN MADE!