Customer Reviews

Xacto X5224 Standard Woodcarving Set

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I bought this same set at a local crafts store. I had purchased a beginner's book Easy Woodcarving: Simple Techniques for Carving & Painting Wood on wood carving wherein the author stated to buy the highest quality tools you can afford. When I saw this at the store, I noticed that it had blades, gouges and chisels all in one decent-looking box. When I got home and tested them out on a block of basswood, I quickly found the author's advice coming back to haunt me!

The set only has one handle, so you need to constantly switch the blades. That handle is too small for my medium-sized male hands. The base of each blade is supposed to be flat so as too fit into the tightening mechanism of the handle. Unfortunately the bases on some of the gouges were misshapen and would not fit into the handle at all! Some of the gouges were also fairly flimsy, and bent quite a bit even with shallow cuts into the fairly soft wood. The included saw blade appears to be fairly useless.

I should say, in fairness, I'm a total novice to woodcarving. It's possible that I'm completely misusing these tools, though I sincerely doubt it. Personally, I'm going to return this set to the store tomorrow and order a set of carving tools that are of higher quality, where the blades do NOT detach from the handle, etc.

I guess you really do get what you pay for!

I just got this set today, and as I gently tested out the various pieces, the tang of the 3/8 U-shaped gouge broke inside the handle. Also, the whittling blade moves a little despite having the handle fully tightened.