pedder":13g0tgh7 said:
I don't get this. On the same forum people moan about the end of the old sheffield tools and hype to buy cheap asian made chisels. To make a chisel for 2 GBP or less, you can't obey the european standard in working men or enviroment protecting. So someone anywhere in the world is risking his health and the health of his children just we can get some cheap chisels. Not one set 3 or 4 or 5. So we spent the same money as we would have if we bought one sheffield made set. Just for the little feeling to have made a bargain. Most of us (me too) have not not enouh thins and tools but too much.
Sorry for my little morning rant. :lol:
Cheers
Pedder
Hi Pedder,
This issue has been discussed at some length on other threads but as you raise it I would like to say, yes we all, or nearly all, would like to have clifton planes, ashley ilses chisels and even perhaps some of your fantastic saws, unfortunate;y many of us cannot afford this. What is more it is almost impossible in this modern age of globalisation to avoid buying products from the far east (where I assume these chisels are made). The computer I am writing on, the equipment in my kitchen, my daughters toys, the list is endless. To avoid far eastern goods is only possible for the very wealthy obsessive who has not only the money but the time to know the true provenance of everything they buy. As a working class self employed single parent I do not have the money or the time for this.
Okay, back to the lidl chisels, I have some and they really are not bad, for the money they are excellent. They compare well to my narex chisels although the finish is not quite as good. I have one ashley Iles gouge that I bought new and it is a different league of tool, although I'm not convinced the steel is that much better.
The really remarkable thing about the lidl/Aldi chisels is that they are better than some of the modern stanley, marples etc. These chisels are, as far as I know made in the far east and then branded with a name from the industrial past of Sheffield and sold to us at more than 5 times the price of the Lidl/Aldi chisels. There is no reason to think that they are environmentally better or that the workers get paid better to make these rebadged "english" chisels than the Lidl/Aldi offerings.
One last thing, even if I could afford a full set of Ashley Iles chisels (they're made in England but not Sheffield, in fact are any chisels still made there? Sorby perhaps I don't know) I would not want to use them for some of the functions at work. Today, yeah Saturday, I was dismantling the internal fit out in a narrow boat, I needed a couple of chisels (one big, one small) that I was not too afraid to chip as I struck a screw and that I would hit with a lump hammer if needed, sometimes I even scrape paint and rust from steel boats with a chisel (wide chisel is the best scrapper I know of). I do not open paint tins with them, that's what screwdrivers are for. However I still want these chisels to take a good edge but don't want to be afraid of taking them to the grinder and seeing money turned into sparks. The Lidl chisels are ideal for these jobs and can take a good enough edge to use at the bench, for £6.99 for 4.
The other option is buy second hand chisels. All my saws and planes are second hand (apart from a QS block plane,Chinese), made in the great industrial past of the North of England, when the workers were exploited like the modern day Chinese workers and the environmental costs were huge, my Dad is from Sheffield and talks of how they were constantly black from head to foot from coal dust. The tools however were cheap from carboots and ebay and with a little bit of time and work perform well, however I have had poor results however with vintage chisels as they nearly always have bellied backs, probably from curved stones. The Lidl chisels I have bought took 30/to one minute seconds on a fine diamond stone to get the cutting edge polished on the back (or should I say face). Some, indeed most of the vintage chisels have been impossible to flatten and the only way to remove the wire edge is to lift the chisel slightly. Some years ago I spent hours and hours trying to remove the convexity from vintage chisels and concluded it was not worth the effort, especially as they regularly go on eBay for considerably more than Lidl chisels and often more than Narex.
Sorry for my little evening rant
Paddy