High-Quality Wood Carving Tools Set of 7 Chisels and Gouges with Canvas Case, Razor Sharp CR-V 60 Steel Woodworking Tools, Perfect Wood Carving Chisel Set for Beginners and Professionals from Schaaf

The bottom line is that these are very good quality chisels for the price.I've prepared and used the 1" chisel on cherry and pine. No sweat. Then today I pared about 3 feet of 3/8" box joints in padouk. No sweat. The edge held up very well - one slight hone required after doing more than half of them.Out of the box:* The handles are not very aesthetically pleasing, but they are functional. I found them comfortable to work with. I don't like the hard finish - I much prefer an oiled finish. I might be tempted to slightly flatten one of them enough to eliminate rolling, but I'm always a little worried that changes like that will change the comfort.* The grind is pretty rough, and definitely needs to be prep'd before using. I expected that, so I'm not dining the chisels for that. The only chisels that I know of that can be used for woodworking out of the box are from Lee Valley, and cost 5-7 times what the Schaaf chisels cost at full price. Even those need final prepping to work optimally.* The angle on the 1" chisel was 27.5 degrees. That is about perfect for me, as I like a 30 degree angle, and a secondary bevel gets me just about there.* The roll is not the best designed roll that I've ever used, but it is OK. I wouldn't use it without the chisel guards.Prepping the 1" chisel:* The back was very slightly concave. The only chisels I've ever bought that were perfectly flat were from Lee Valley and were considerably more expensive. Given that, if you can't get perfectly flat out of the box, slightly concave is the next best thing.* The machining was pretty rough - rough enough that without prepping, the edge would quickly chip and degrade. I would not use these chisels without prepping them.* I flattened the back by working through the following grits - 220, 1000, 4000, 8000 (all Norton stones) and 15000 (Shapton). It took me about 35 minutes, which is good for me.* Next I put on a preliminary secondary bevel (4000 grit) to see what kind of edge I would get. The bevel was 27.5 degrees, so the secondary was close to 30. This minor honing still left the edge with some minor but noticeable nicks. At that point I reground the bevel a bit (less than a minute) at 1000 grit, and that eliminated the nicks. I then honed a secondary bevel to 15000 grit.* I was able to grind the bevel and hone the secondary bevel by hand, and still end up with a perfectly square edge (as far as I could tell).* Finally, I relieved the edges along the back to make the chisel more comfortable for paring.Update on Prepping:* Today I prepped the other three chisels. All of them were either flat of slightly concave out of the box, so good flatness.* For the first time I used a Work Sharp WS3000 with a coarse grit to flatten the backs. Excellent results in a minute or two per chisel, as opposed to the 10-20 minutes I'm used to with a 220 waterstone.* I then worked through the other grits as described above for the 1" chisel.* As an experiment, I used the WS3000 again, this time with the leather strop wheel, to see if I could get a good polish without rounding the back. Worked great! The backs were as close to dead flat as my eyes can see, and no noticeable rounding at the edge.Comparison - bear in mind that these are subjective comparisons, but I've used all of the chisels mentioned to build stuff.* In general, I ding the Schaaf set for providing just a limited set of 4 chisels. In particular, I'd like to see 1/8", 3/8", and 5/8" chisels. I'd also like to see skew chisels, but lacking that, you could always grind your own from 1/2" chisels if you could buy them individually.* Box store chisels - Craftsman, DeWalt, Buck Bros, etc. I will only use these chisels for rough carpentry where the plastic handles allow for heavy-duty pounding even when the edge gets dull.* At first use, Schaaf chisels seem to be on a par with the old Record blue handle chisels, which were very serviceable for most woodworking tasks. If anything, they were a tad flatter out of the box. The advantage of the Record chisels is that the plastic handles on mine have taken a lot of abuse over the years. As far as I know, you can't buy these new anymore.* Since I'm not a fan of the new generation of blue handle chisels since another company bought the Record brand, I'd rate Schaaf above them.* Woodcraft green handled chisels - I haven't used my set for anything but rough woodworking, but in general they seem similar to the current generation of blue handle chisels.* They seem to be on a par with the new Stanley Sweetheart chisels. I like the feel of the Schaaf handles better.* They hold an edge better that the old octagonal handled Robert Sorby chisels, although nothing feels as good in your hand as that octagonal handle.* Lie Nielsen - Way more expensive, but they are better chisels. I particularly like them for fine, detailed work. They also come in smaller sizes, which I find very handy on occasion.* Lee Valley PMV-11 - Way more expensive, but in my mind the best you can buy. However, you can buy two sets of Schaaf chisels for the price of one PMV-11 chisel. PMV-11 is worth it if you are chopping dovetails all day and need to minimize your sharpening, but if you are an occasional woodworker like me, and are willing to put the work into properly preparing your chisels and keeping them sharp, the Schaaf chisels will do what you need.Bear in mind that you are not buying fully sharpened chisels when you buy this set. You are buying quality steel that will hold up well to demanding woodworking tasks once you have flattened and polished the backs and honed the edge, and you are getting very good value for the price.

I've had a set of hardware store chisels for 30+ years that have served me well. I was fortunate enough to have friend who took the timber framing class up in the NE sharpen them for me for practice when I first got them. I've pretty much preserved his work but it's difficult because of their configuration. So, I wanted to finally get something more for woodworking rather than carpentry.After reading the reviews, I thought these were cheap enough I wasn't risking much if they weren't any better than my ACE chisels. Upon opening the box, they were in a very nice cloth wrap with robust edge guards. The handles are comfortable, the ferules are tight and unblemished and the chisels don't have egregious machine marks. I expect that 60-90 minutes on my water stones will give me a great set of chisels.UPDATE 3.28.24: I did get all 4 chisels ready for use as most YouTube gurus claim is necessary. But it took about 4 hours all in. As I said above, the machine marks were not too bad. But the backs of the chisels are slightly concave, better than convex. But even though I could have left a dimple in the center, I was determined to get the entire back flat. The steel is definitely hard, it took a good session on my Norton stones to get them sharp. I judge sharpness by the usual paper cutting but I also check how much effort it takes to shave across end grain on a piece of walnut or hickory.

Quality tools, well received.

I’m an home woodworker and I’ve always wanted to learn decorative and relief carving. I have a basic Pfiel 6 piece carving tools set given me years ago that I learned to sharpen properly and put to use. I needed more range for relief carving and decorative shapes. I did a lot of research via blogs, YouTube and forums and the Schaaf carving tools stood out in the budget category. The seven piece set covered some of the range I needed at a reasonable price.Nerdy and surely excessive detail below, but my headline summary is: good steel , decent hardness, expected rough finishing marks, but some gouges needed significant reshaping and finishing beyond mere (and expected) sharpening. These are potentially great budget tools… if you put in sweat equity to compensate for the budget price.None of the issues warranted returning tools or needing customer service from Schaaf. As others have said, that the customer fills the quality control role. I am now happy with their performance, but 3 of the 7 tools required notable work because of careless finishing at the factory. I’d like fellow purchasers to be realistic about what they are buying and what might be required to commission them for use beyond casual sharpening. If you are a newbie to sharpening and grinding I strongly recommend you buy directly from Schaaf and pay for their sharpening service.Obsessive details and pix below————————————-————————————-————————————-They came quickly from Amazon, well packaged in its own box in a nice canvas roll, each tool a plastic bag for each gouge. The handles are hardwood and decently finished except for one that has a divil and another that had a small chip I could re-glue. These issues don’t interfere with use but are annoying and unnecessary flaws. All the blades were square to the handles.I love the full size and substantial handles as I have big hands. If you have with smaller hands you might want to reshape them. The blades are weighty and feel robust enough to will withstand mallet work. All the gouge curvatures were symmetrically cast and ground, a crucial ingredient for function. I expected to see some grinding marks on the shafts— these don’t impact function just appearance and can eventually be polished out.But… I could also see significant rough grinding striations on the inner curves of 3 (out of the 7) of the gouges. These significant machine marks were on inside gouge curves and went all the way to the cutting tip. This is key because no matter how fine and polished you sharpen the outer working bevel, if the inner edge is grooved your cut will be serrated, not smooth! This is one reason why you flatten and polish the back of regular bench chisels so the bevel edge you sharpen is even and smooth across its width to a few microns. Take a look at the pix.So beyond normal sharpening new tools before use, I had to first smooth these machine marks for 3 tools. Fortunately these were on shallow curved gouges, #3’s and #5’s, so working the inside curve was easier. I shaped some dowels to match the inner curves as slipstones and glued on 400 grit wet-dry sandpaper. It took a fair bit of time to smooth these grinding marks to about 10-15mm from the edge.Fortunately the deeper gouges were all finished much better inside and out, few grind marks and ready for sharpening to my preferred edge geometry. Getting inside these more acute curves would have been unacceptably challenging and I would have contacted customer service and replacement. The good news: the steel itself seems quite hard and tough which, while more work to hand grind, bodes well for edge retention.Another issue: the V-chisel was symmetrically cast but asymmetrically ground and sharpened. I had to first flatten the tip on a grinder to make the wings even with each other, regrind the edge bevel and also grind the lever curve behind the V to a gentler curve so a steep chisel angle wasn’t required during use.Now to shaping the cutting angle and sharpening-All the gouges were ground to about 25 degrees. I like closer to 20 degrees and I expect to rework them myself. All fixed up they perform well and seem to hold an edge as well as my smaller Pfeils and are a pleasure to use. This set gives me the angles and depth for bigger carvings and faster wood removal. I really love using the broad #3 20mm for background removal and smoothing work and the fishtail gouges for contour shaping. By the way, one thing I’d suggest to Schaaf is have the tool number on the steel as it wears off the handles readily.From what I gather you might get a set that you can sharpen up and use right away, or you might get a set that is good but might have gouges you need to exchange— their customer service has a good reputation. Or, you might get what I had- no deal breakers but requiring work and prior knowledge to bring them into use. It was a mix of good materials and product concept on the one hand, and with poor manufacturing quality control with a few of the gouges in the pack. These are potentially great tools for a great price… if you are willing to put in sweat equity to compensate for the budget price. You will pay one way or the other. If you are not already knowledgeable about sharpening you might feel frustrated since sharp and properly ground tools are everything to carving happiness.I hope this is helpful to your making an informed purchase.