Axminster starter chisel set

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"What chisels to get" is a perennial question and the usual answer is to avoid sets because they're a bad choice. Here's a set that's a good selection, good quality, and a decent price (for the UK) - £62.

3/4" Roughing gouge 3/8" Bowl gouge 3/8" Spindle gouge 1" Oval skew Diamond parter 3/4" Round nose scraper

Handles are nicely shaped ash and the tools are a good length. Gouge grinds are less than perfect (competent, but simple) and you'll probably benefit from re-shaping the wings to personal taste.

The "bowl" gouge is a particularly nice hefty tool, some inches longer than the spindle gouge. Axminster also sell these as separate chisels and IMHO it's worth buying a second one of them. Sharpen one as a bowl gouge, the other as a finger-ground spindle gouge and you have an excellent large spindle for turning chairlegs and similar sized pieces.

The downside of some cheap sets is too many useless scrapers. This one just gives you the one, that's OK for bowl work. For box hollowing though you might find a square-ended scraper useful too.

The skew is something of a compromise. It's a fine tool, but a 1" oval isn't the most commonly useful size. Perhaps this would be better as a

3/4" ? The oval shaping is nicely done and makes it much more flexible for rolling large beads - however 1" is big and there just aren't that many things you really need it for. For big cylinders a flat 1" skew is a bit more stable to use. For most beads a 3/4" or 1/2" is easier to handle.
Reply to
Andy Dingley
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> > "What chisels to get" is a perennial question and the usual answer is > to > avoid sets because they're a bad choice. Here's a set that's a good > selection, good quality, and a decent price (for the UK) - £62. > > 3/4" Roughing gouge > 3/8" Bowl gouge

There may be some small differences, but this set looks remarkably like an unbranded set I bought on eBay for about £20 when I first started turning a couple of years ago. They may have been cheap and cheerful but they served me well as a starter set. Why pay more until you know whether turning is for you?

Reply to
Geoff Beale

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> > "What chisels to get" is a perennial question and the usual answer is to > avoid sets because they're a bad choice. Here's a set that's a good > selection, good quality, and a decent price (for the UK) - £62. > This looks remarkably like a set I bought some years ago at my local Canadian Tire, on special for C$99, as a starter set. I've augmented them since, but still use the bowl gouge and scraper frequently, and just these 2 were worth the price of the set. The only questionable one was the spindle gouge which has a wide, very shallow flute, and this an awkward profile in use...

/M

Reply to
Moro Grubb of Little Delving

"Moro Grubb of Little Delving" wrote in message news:W_7zf.254090$2k.140984@pd7tw1no...

The only questionable one was the spindle

Not at all. Absolutely useful if you become familiar with it. It will peel effortlessly and with great safety on spindles and bowls. My favorite "finisher" gouge. Closest you can get to an inside skew.

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In use for interrupted edges.
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The surface it leaves. Doesn't even pull spalted edges much.

Reply to
George

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