Side by Side Comparison of: Shinwa vs X-Acto

My order arrived a day early. The packaging was very good and the actual box and tools is attractive and well done. Each tool fits into a molded compartment and the steel is covered by a pliable clear plastic cap. Upon testing each tool they are well polished and extremely sharp. The price was good and I may purchase another set.

I love the power grip tools, this is my 3rd set. I carve very hard wood. And they work great

Not the highest quality, but very nice tools for the price, perfect for luthierie which is why I bought them.

I finished my first linocut with these and they are fantastic. Sharp, sturdy and great to handle. There are a good variety of tool sizes and shapes in this set. I did buy another set of tool for micro cuts to give me more variety, but these are a true favorite. I am going to Japan next year and hopefully hit a few wood tool shops. These are good quality for the price.

great knives very sharp and easy to hold and use

these feel overall better than ramelson sets. better leverage handle than the palm style handles. better quality overall and better sharpness straight out of the box. not to mention these are cheaper.

Basic Knife Set review: Great set. Each of the three knife sizes has come in handy on a small project where I'm cutting pleather. Blades are strong but be careful when using the sharp-point blades; I broke the tip of the smallest pointed blade by putting too much pressure on it. The zippered case is such a bonus.

This set has most of the common blades with a magnetic holder for each blade type and a booklet describing their uses. Although the set duplicates the smaller handles I previously owned, it provided the large heavy duty handle I didn't at a great sale price. I commend the case as well because, while a bit bulky, it provides clearly designated spaces for each blade and handle.

I do a bunch of projects at home that involve fixing all sorts of things from accidentally broken toys, to furniture, etc. For almost every project I need to cut off old adhesive, or cut off broken pieces etc. I have been using a box cutter which works great, but there are a number of times I need a different angle on the blade, or something with a bit more finesse. I picked this up, and so far it has been great. I like the multiple handles as the red one allows me to really get a nice solid grip on it, but the thin metal ones are great for delicate and precise work. All the blades have been really sharp, and the diversity has been fantastic to use.Definitely a good purchase.

I originally purchased the Elmers X-Acto Zippered Storage kit for work while preparing for a museum exhibit. The kit has been so popular that I added a keyring loop to the zipper pull and hung it at the entrance to my workshop in the museum. We access it regularly for different projects. The different blades have already come in handy.I liked it so much I purchased this one for myself. I did the same thing and hung it in an active workspace for easy access. When we are done, we just hang the kit back up and it is ready for the next use!

I ordered this set because I'm a leather-worker and wanted to get an Xacto knife set to be able to have options when cutting my leather. This nice Xacto kit came exactly as pictured. Absolutely no disappointments at all here! I especially can appreciate that this kit comes in a really nice looking wooden box. They also include several replacement and different blades for any type of project!Do yourself a favor and get yourself this kit. Especially if you're in to crafting that requires the use of Xacto knives. You won't be disappointed!I've cut at least 50-60 pieces of 3 oz to 5 oz veg-tanned leather, and have yet to need to replace a blade. Though I have already purchased replacement blades for when that day comes. I favor the number 11 blade, which I believe is the "original".Anyhow, this kit is great, came very nicely packed and quickly. Great buying experience!

Great Cutting Scraping Set...I repair cracked tablets and phones and this is perfect for scraping the glass off and cutting double sided tape.It's just perfect for me. Very well made....

If you are looking for a good inexpensive set of tools for printmaking, these are great. Well rounded hands. Easily controllable. Have not found a down side. Love that they come in a case

Good quality

good quality

These are super sharp and well put together. I'm not sure how long they are supposed to stay sharp. Found little divots in the blade not sure if it was my fault or not. I'm new at this so it could've been my hacking away.

These are my first carving tools so I don't have anything to compare them to, but they seem to work great. They are well made and I consider them a good deal for the price I paid. For someone who is just getting into printmaking, they are ideal.

Several very useful tools in this set! Good edges on most. Used a couple on basswood and found them to work well. Great for the money!

Basic Knife Set, compression case. Nice kit once you get it open. Very difficult, blister pack. You will need a utility knife to open. Blades are held in place by magnets - may come loose if dropped. Several blades were loose when mine arrived.

Great kit. The blades work well and the assortment is useful.I do wish the blades had covers. Or at least, that there were three covers that collated with the three handles, for when the knife is out of the case but not actively in use. There is an accident waiting to happen.

Good product in a nice pine box. All the blades are razor sharp and useful for many applications. I use my kit for my 3D prints to add some finishing touches. There was a little hiccup with mine however, the magnetic strip that holds all the extra blades kept falling out of the box when I opened it. It was due to the double sided adhesive tape not being able to support the weight of the magnetic strip. I applied a bit of superglue to the strip and it stuck fine afterwards. I urge you to be careful when opening this box because in my case I almost cut myself when flipping the box open and having those razor sharp knives falling onto my hands. But you should be careful in general when handling these. Overall a great product for any hobbyist crafter, I fully recommend it.

Though I didn't change blades yet (actually I couldn't figure how to).. But the one's placed by default work wonder and are quite versatile.. I humbly consider myself a self-made creative and artistic person ;-).. I was making this beautiful lovely hand crafted birthday card for my honey... It was beyond my expectation.. I used the wooden base instead of the conventional polymer base people use ( I chose not to spend more). It cut very delicate designs intricately. Only if there was an informative instruction page as to how to change blades... Sometimes applying more pressure bends the delicate tip but that was probably because I was using the wrong blade. Grip is too good. I was lured by wooden boxes but this box is great too. Very light weight, safe and handy. My honey loved the card. Thank you guys. I owe it to you.

After many hours of searching for my original X-acto set purchased about 40 years ago, I finally concluded I'd lost it during a move. I looked for a replacement in several different hardware and craft stores, but was unable to find the X-acto brand and settled for another "craft knife" which simply did not hold up. It finally occurred to me to check Amazon, and I am happy to say that my new set is of the excellent quality I expected from the X-acto brand, including the wooden storage box. The only thing which has changed is that the moulded compartments for the tools is no longer rigid plastic, but a flimsy, lightweight substitute which I expect to deteriorate with age. For that reason alone, I cannot give this set a full five stars.

Great kit. I've been using my old X-ACTO blades for years, but needed a case. For the price of a good case, I got this kit with extra blades and two extra handles. It's not the most sturdy case, but it does the job well and keeps my blades organized. I would recommend.

They work, but definitely can't get a good rhythm going. Good blades ain't cheap, but it's a good starting set for widdle carving

Good quality tools with a well-thought-out sharpening system. The handles are a bit small for my large hands but they take and hold an edge well. Nice storage box.

These tools are extremely nice upon arrival. They are so sharp they can easily handle any task and the grip is awesome and the blades are covered with rubber coating so that you can protect sharp blade from accidental damage.I used these tools to carve my "chaos eater" sword replica and it was a 1.13 m length pine wood sword with some awesome engravings but some chisels broke of tiny tips of their sharp bevel and when such thing happens you can no longer comfortably peel of the wood chips as before. Rounded bevels became dull the first, maybe because I used them a lot. Then i switched to straight ones and finalized the carving and if the blades remained as sharp as they were before I would give it a 5 star without second thoughts.So if you buy these chisels do make sure that you have some proper sharpening equipment and honing material, because I tried to sharpen them at 400 grid wet stone and although i reached some level of sharpness they were not as sharp as initially. I guess I must try sharpening stones which have 4000 and 8000 grid and diamond stones are the best what I've heard so far.Anyway, if you can handle sharpening, these babies are quite cool. And also I included a photo of the sword that I've carved with these tools.

They were okay .. good for small projects but chipped quickly.. I would say good for small detail projects

Not happy with it, lose sharp after 10 minutes of use.

Angle of the cutting bevel seems to 'steep'. But I have not used much yet.

Box came as shown, blades are nice and sharp. There is a thin magnetic strip to hold all the blades which has an adhesive on the back side, the strip would not stay adhered to the plastic backing, so I removed the plastic and stuck it directly to the wood. No more blades falling out as it's opened.

The knives are nice and Sharpe and come with a pleasing variety. Hopefully they last me a while. The wooden container is sturdy, but the latch doesn't match up at all. The knives are held in a thin plastic bed that don't quite stay put inside the box. The middle knife is almost to big for the container and is only held in because the knife is stabbing through the plastic holder. To replace back into the container, you have to restab into the plastic. Remember there are no protective coverings delivered with this product.Overall, I am pleased with the product.

I wanted a set of xacto knifes and this fit the bill. The knifes are exactly what I was looking for. The box does suck though. More specifically the cheap plastic holder inside the box. It is very flimsy, falls out easily, often comes out with the knifes. I ended up making my own holder from extra foam. Not the best but 500x improvement over what it came with.

Xacto really needs to examine this product and their heads. I have had to tape the plastic insert that holds all the extra blades into the box since at first it simply fell out dropping blades everywhere. Fun, right? When I taped it in I also put a rubber band around it thinking it might help the blades stay in the plastic mold since they do not fit in there snugly however this really doesn't help a whole lot as you can see in the picture they tend to simply fall all over the place. I love the handles and blades but the box is absolute garbage. You might as well put everything that comes in this kit in a plastic bag and shake it around. That is pretty much what you'll find once you unpack this little ditty.Epic fail on keeping extremely sharp blades from being strewn about very close to your fingers when opening and closing this thing.The only reason this gets any stars at all is because of the handles and blades alone.Don't say I didn't warn you!

The actual blades and holding tools are very useful and seem pretty well built. The twist-locks don't seem to hold the blades as securely as one would hope for such sharp blades - the red-handled tool is especially bad about this.The storage box is pretty nicely built but the blade holders and tool holders are just flimsy plastic which does not seem to want to stay in the storage box. This is particularly worrying since one of the blade holders happens to hold a dozen blade tips and likes to fall out of the top of the box.Additionally, the magnetic strip on the blade holding plastic is very poorly attached to the plastic.With these two flaws together, you end up opening up the box and having either the blade holder and blades fall out on you, or the magnetic strip with all of its blades fall out on you, and I'm honestly not sure which is more terrifying given how well these blades can cut.

As the title says: The knifes are what you'd want. Sharp, decently sturdy. Good variety of them. They seem like they'll do whatever job you expect of them. However, the box, while very nice looking isn't very good at keeping them in. If I close it the "correct" way (handles on the bottom of the box) when I open the box back up (after no jostling, mind you, just sitting on the desk) the plastic that holds the replacement knifes will be face down on top of the handles. Upon picking it back up to put in place, I will discover further, that the little magnetic strip taped in to hold the replacement blades will have also fallen out, letting the little blade scatter all over the inside of the box. From that point, I get to carefully re-stick the magnetic strip in place, and then place each little blade in it's own little spot. This isn't as fun as I make it sound. So I just close the box with the replacement blades on the bottom. When I open it now, I only have to put the plastic holding the handles back into its spot, but the handles stay in the plastic holders.

Nice shape, and holds well in the hand. The metal is too brittle to hold up to hardwood. Right away the chisels chipped when using them on cherry. I will only be able to use these for softwood. Pretty disappointing, but as always, you get what you pay for.

Unfortunately, I have found that these aren't made from the best steel.

One of the tools was loose at the handle. The other tools were fine and very sharp. I would have given it a 4 or 5 if not for the broken one.

While these carving tools came sharp in the package, I quickly discovered the metal to be too soft. After one night of use, the edges were beginning to chip. Sharpening didn't take long but the edges deteriorated just as fast. The handles are nice and comfortable but unfortunately that doesn't make up for the low quality steel. I did not once use a mallet. I only used the force of my own hands. These would be excellent with some better quality steel. If you plan on using these once and never again I would recommend. If you plan on repeated use, look elsewhere.

They were sharp but one had a wavy edge and does not cut to well

I sent mine back, they are very poor quality. WOuld only recomend if you want to carve balsa or soft woods. Even pine would be too hard. Cheap metal quality.

Crappily built. The blades are held to the lid by magnetic strips that hardly stayed attached.

Not as good as Xacto use to be when I was a kid. Have bought generic knife sets.

New purchase and the blade holder falls out if the case every time I open it. I've been thinking of how to glue gun it in permanently but I'm sure the thin flimsy plastic would just disentegrate. The knife handles stay in place but pulling them out requires pulling the other flimsy plastic shell out. Searching for a replacement case already.

SO not worth the money. Came DIRTY and SCRATCHED UP. Visibly old and used. The box has a large, deep scratch on its lid.

This set is not for carving basswood or other similar woods. The blades are OK but the gouges and v-grooves leave a lot to be desired. The first v-groove I tried to use on basswood bent in half. I think this set would likely be OK for balsa wood or Styrofoam. If you are a wood carver, buy Flexcut or other quality specialized wood carving tools. You could buy one good carving knife for the price of this kit and be ahead of the game. I'm going to be trying some paper cutting projects in the near future that I think I'll be able to use the blades for so the set won't be a complete waste of my money.

Other than the handles, this is a pretty low quality product. For this price, just buy the individual packs of Xacto knives and save yourself the money. The wooden box is poorly assembled, the hinges and lock are not square and the black inserts which hold the knives and handles are made of the thinnest cheapest plastic. The plastic is so bad, in fact, that the shrink wrap used to seal the items into the black inserts cracked and warped both the top and bottom pieces. Now neither will stay secure in the box, the top piece just falls out when I open the box and the whole bottom lifts out when I try to pull a knife up.Would not recommend this kit. Just buy the individual knives/handles.

Tool tips chipped and because extremely dull after one useWould not rec.

Came extremely sharp. Too sharp? They dulled after a couple minutes of use on soft wood

After a few minutes of using one of the knives a huge piece broke off.

I bought this set in Nov. 2016, but didn't start using them until today, Jan. 27. Within less than a couple of minutes, the first two sweeps I used broke right where the blade enters the handle. I was using them to clean up the curves in a 1/16" deep area I had routed for a small box hinge with rounded ends. I was using them with just normal hand pressure to slice a sliver of wood up to a marked line, not pounding on them with a mallet or using them to gouge out a 1/2" chunk of wood.I knew going in that these were not going to be the quality of a Flexcut set, but I certainly didn't expect them to break the first time I tried to use them. Each one broke in nearly a perfectly straight line across the blade. The end of the broken blades looks like pot metal, not how steel usually looks when it's broken. I'll be tossing these in the trash and ordering a high quality set after I post this review.

Not high Carbon steel. Will not hold an edge very long. Definitely not appropriate for carving hard woods. Ok for bass wood carving, that's all.

I found them to be of poor quality. I usually don't write reviews, but this purchased prompted these words.

The handle fell off the black holder before I ever used the tool.Although the case is wooden the holders inside are flimsy.

I recieved a cheap Chinese knockoff in a plastic box on a bubble card. Stay away if you want Xacto knives. Same thing is $6.24 at Walmart.

It came dull in the package I expected to be able to use it

The regular Xacto handles and blades are fine but the wood cutting tools are poorly made and not worthy of purchase and this set was sent backfor a refund.

The blades themselves are fine but the box is pretty terrible. The black plastic inserts are not securely affixed and despite lots of attempts to wedge them into place, the flimsy plastic keeps falling out over and over again. There's a magnetic insert in the plastic part that's supposed to keep the blades in but that falls out too. So the blades always kind of end up loose and tumbling out...? I'd be very embarrassed to give it as a gift.

Very disappointed with this purchase, what i've received was a different set than the picture showed and it was rusted.It's going back.