HOWARD IZENSON
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2025
Nice balanced tool, comfortable grip. High end tool. Wish it had handle with furled head for mallet use. It is sharp with flat back, ready to use out of box. Cuts nicely.
Don S.
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2022
The NarexRichter cryo chisel is good enough to be compared to the LieNielsen line. NR chisel is thinner, but you would only notice that if you were banging out a mortise with a dull edge. The handle and socket are comfortable but are a different shape than LieNielsen, so just depends on your hand. My hands are average, i have a slight preference for the shorter LN handle with the thicker blade, feels more stable to me. But this NR is a very close second. NR steel is quite hard, I had to sharpen through the grits a lot longer than usual. I did notice that while doing the secondary bevel there was a slight curl on the back side, noticeably more than the LN A2 steel. The chisel came polished with a fair primary bevel. The back needed a little flattening, a challenge with such hard steel. I have used this NR chisel for a few weeks for light work and do not have to continually strop the edge like my old IrwinMarples. So it holds an edge very well, similar to the LN. Overall, not quite as good as LieNielsen, but pretty close. At half the price !Update after several months ..... the NR chisels hold their edge for a long time, even after chopping out a mortise. Edge is easily refreshed by a strop with honing compound, a 30 second operation. I do not use a micro bevel but have not had to re-establish the primary bevel yet. I use Shapton glass/ceramic stones and they work great with these Narex chisels. These NR chisels compare very favorably with LieNielsen.
Hauptmann
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2022
Proven by research done by Wood by Wright. Search for "Wood by Wright How 2 - 42 Chisel Test"
Customer
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2022
Very good
Davin Schultz
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2021
These are beautiful chisels with high quality fit and finish. I haven’t used it lot but so far it performs very well. For the price they are a great value.Would recommend.
Customer
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2021
Dope chisel for not much money. Not much honing before I was shaving with it.
R. Lee
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2021
Take this for what its worth. I like these chisels and I would buy them again, but they are not flat nor square. I am not sure if the quality control has slipped a little, but i have already investing a decent amount of time lapping the backs and squaring the primary bevel.In terms of design, they work very nicely for me. I find the balance to be ok and am able to get into the corners of my dovetails well. They sharpen fairly easily for cryo, in my experience. I have a number of cryo gouges and they are usually a bit more difficult to sharpen, which leaves me a little suspect, but time will tell.For the money, they still seem like a great bargain, but expect to do the usual tune-up before use.
Michael Jamison
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2021
I have been slowly buying one at a time as needed. Incredibly sharp. Have been holding an edge well.I did the ususal flattening and my own finish sharpening. But great out of the box as well.Nice polishing and solid construction.
That guy
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2020
Having come from some very cheap chisels, these hold an edge a lot better and make cleaner cuts. I still use the cheap ones to clear out the bulk of the waste, then switch to these for the precision work.