This Laminated Birch Crochet Hook from WeCrochet is one of the best wooden crochet hooks I have ever tried!  See how it compares to other popular brands, and what I think of the hook shape, quality, and price.

The Best Kind of Wooden Crochet Hooks

If you’ve ever watched any of my knitting needle videos, you know how much I LOVE laminated birch knitting needles.  So I was super excited to try out a laminated birch crochet hook for the first time!

The Radiant Crochet Hook is made by WeCrochet, the sister company to KnitPicks.  (KnitPicks makes my favorite birch knitting needles, which I use almost exclusively.)

I got the Size G / 4.0 mm hook, and tested it on a few swatches with different crochet stitches.  Here’s what I thought:

Laminated Birch

Okay, so I’ve already mentioned that I love laminated birch.  The beautifully colored layers in the wood and the warm, smooth feel are wonderful.   But the main reason I love it so much is because of the amount of surface friction.

Many wooden hooks are a bit more grippy than I like.  Even though most wooden hooks are pretty smooth, they don’t let the stitches glide quickly enough for me.  I like to crochet kinda fast, and if the hook has too much surface friction, it slows me down.

On the other hand, if the surface is super slick, the stitches can fall off the hook a bit easier.

Laminated birch, in my opinion, has the perfect amount of surface friction.  It’s slick enough to allow the stitches to glide quickly, without being so slick that the stitches fall off on their own.  The speed of this hook is just perfect for my taste.

The Hook Shape

The Radiant hooks are inline hooks, which means the hook part is notched out of the rod to make the hook instead of being tapered.  For comparison, a Boye hook is tapered, whereas a Susan Bates hook is inline.

I don’t normally use inline hooks like Susan Bates, because they tend to have the thumb rest closer to the hook tip.  This is great for people who hold the hook like a pencil.  However, I hold my hook with the knife-grip, and I prefer the thumb rest to be farther away from the tip of the hook.

On this hook, the thumb rest is a flat section of the handle, which is a nice distance from the tip.

But what I love most about this hook tip is that it is shaped differently from any other inline hook I have tried.  The notch in the hook tip is much deeper than I have seen on most other hooks.  I feel like this deeper notch grabs the yarn better.  The flat area just below the hook tip is smoothed out at the edges, with nice, rounded corners.

The very tip of the hook is rounded, and goes into the stitches easily.  But best of all, the front edge of the hook tip seems to be flush with the shaft of the hook.  That hook edge does not stick out past the shaft, so it does not snag or catch on the yarn as you pull the hook back out of a stitch.  Even the edge of the hook is smoothed out, so it is not a sharp enough corner to snag your stitches.

The Handle

The handle of the Radiant crochet hook is nice and smooth, and feels good in the hand.  It does not have a size marking etched onto it, but you can use a hook sizer to determine what size it is.  You just insert the hook into the different holes in the sizer to see what size hook you have.

While the handle of this hook feels nice, there is one thing I would love to see changed about it: the thickness.  If you are used to regular aluminum hooks with thin handles, this may not be a problem for you.

However, I do a lot of crocheting for my blog, and a hook with a thin handle makes my hands get tired more quickly.  When the hand is closed so much (even if you’re holding the hook gently), it puts more strain on the hand as you make those small motions.

This is why I usually use a hook with a very thick handle, about 3/4 inch in diameter.  A thick, ergonomic handle does not require the hand to close as much to grasp it, so is easier on the hand.

If this hook just had a much thicker handle, it would be absolutely perfect for me!

The Price

These hooks are very reasonably priced, at $5.49 to $8.99 USD each, depending on the size.  They are available individually or as a set from Crochet.com.  Sometimes, they put these hooks on sale, so you can get them at a discounted price.  Compared to other brands of wooden crochet hooks, they are a good value for the price.

My Thoughts on the Radiant Crochet Hook

Overall, I think this is a wonderful crochet hook.  The hook shape is ideal, and the surface friction of the laminated birch gives just the right amount of speed.  Honestly, if this hook just had a super-thick handle, it would be better than a wooden Furls Streamline.

So, would I buy this hook again?  Yes… if the handle was more ergonomic.  I would buy a whole set, and I probably wouldn’t buy any other kind of crochet hooks anymore!  If you don’t mind a thinner handle, I would highly recommend this hook!

Have you tried the WeCrochet hooks yet?  What did you think?

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