I demo'd a PM-V11 chisel. Based on that demo, I'd say they aren't worth it, but it's moot anyway because everybody has a different measure of 'worth' as my previous posts address. Perfectly fine chisel but nothing to arrange a girl jumping out of a cake over.
Anybody with the need to scratch an itch is usually going to scratch it. I'd rather buy a dozen golf balls that promise 15 more yards in distance through the bag. They never do, but the manufacturer contorts the statistics from some machine that tells you they will and still meet USGA criteria for distance in a 'legal' golf ball. It's a bunch of marketing hoo-hah of course, but people do fall for it. I actually don't any more but admit to having been intrigued a time or two in the past. Pretty cheap intrigue though -- you still need golf balls on a much more frequent basis than you ever would a plane iron, so you spend five more bucks than you otherwise would have just to see. If you have a slow swing speed a ball that spins a little less will go farther but you can't make them stop on the green. A lot of people don't care, they just want to be able to say they can hit a seven iron 170 yards, It's better to hit it 160, and high, rather than 170 comparatively low and screaming through the green. There is no real trade-off. Better players buy a ball that spins they way they want it to and has an overall trajectory that fits their eye. Raw distance is not a problem. Same with a woodworker -- an iron that goes a little farther is not a game changer, well not unless a couple of 90 second honings avoided during a work session is considered a game changer. Surely, this can't be the case can it? That's all we're talking about, a couple or three fewer honings during any given day. Five to seven lousy minutes. Big. Fat. Deal.
