Mortiser chisels

Jeff Horton

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The Heart of Dixie
My old Wysong and Miles mortiser is coming soon. :headbang::headbang::headbang: It only has one chisel with it so I need to buy some.

Seems to be two options. Cheaper imports and higher priced models. Not much in the middle ground where I typically buy. From what I am reading there is isn't much difference in either of them either. One does about as good as the other. Anyone had any experience with brands they could pass along?
 
I bought mine from Wilke when I bought my mortiser. Boy, that was a lot of help wasn't it.

When I got mine I was talking to Gary, I believe it was, and he said that he used the lower cost ones in his own shop as he did not use them day in and day out like the commerical shops. The high dollar ones were for the commerical guys. So, I suppose that it just depends on how much you are going to use them and how often you want to sharpen them.

Needless to say, I bought the lower cost set. They work fine for my limited use so far. I did buy one expensive one to run a comparison test but never got around to it. That is something I need to do some day and then I would have a much better understanding of the quality difference between the two.

I thought that Wilke was out of business but I see that there web site is up and running and appears to be current with a limited supply. In fact they are showing bit and chisels and at least one set. I did not check prices.

http://www.wilkemachinery.com/defau...goryBanner=Drilling - Boring Accessories Home
 
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I bought JET chisels at Woodcraft, mostly because they had them in stock and I needed to replace a broken one immediately. After all, the other ones had worked just fine (right out of the box). At some point later, I tried a 'better' chisel... and found no practical difference. So when I got my new floor model Powermatic (that didn't come with chisels!!!), I just got the JET again.
 
I picked up a set of Shop Fox chisels when I got my mortiser (also a Shop Fox) and although they needed a bit of light touch-up to the edges, they've worked fine for my limited use. (I've done a couple projects that used a lot of mortises, but they were done with poplar and redwood, so it wasn't really pushing the chisels too hard.)

I also bought a single 5/8" (I believe) chisel from Grizzly, thinking it'd be comparable, but it was unusable out of the box. The chisel was OK but the drill bit was bent and it squealed like a pig when I attempted to run it. To their credit, they did cheerfully refund the purchase price (including shipping) and told me not to ship the bad bit back to them. I suspect they got a bad lot from overseas and I helped them find it.

I've not used any of the higher-dollar mortiser chisels, but since I'm not using them very often, the lower-end ones have worked just fine for me.
 
Thanks guys. I asked on another forum and got very similar answers. Seems unless you in production there is not a big difference. Couple of folks have had to sharpen them out of the box but no one has had one that didn't work just fine.

Jesse, your the first one that has mentioned getting a really bad one. But I will keep that in mind too!
 
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