IBC Replacement Blade (2") Review - Pics Heavy

[Tri Hoang]

Somehow the universe align and I ended up with a 2" IBC replacement blade for Lie Nielsen. I got this blade for another plane, not a Lie Nielsen, though.

It comes in a pretty fancy package - evidence of some marketing love. Here is how it comes off the package

[Tri Hoang]

The package claims that the blade has been lapped on a 1000x and 8000x and will pass the hair shaving test. Out of the box, this blade failed to shave any hair off my arm, though. The scratch patterns on both sides suggest somewhere between 220-800 grit lap. Here is how its back (face) and bevel look.

[Tri Hoang]

Compared to my Lie Nielsen A2 blade on the left that has been lapped on my Shapton Pro 12K the IBC blade looks pretty dull...The LN blade shows a nice reflection of the IBC blade on the right.

[Tri Hoang]

Compared to an out-of-box WoodRiver blade (#3, 1-3/4") the IBC blade show a coarser scratch pattern as well.

[Tri Hoang]

Where the rubber meets the road = heavy pushing. I put the IBC blade in my generic #5 smoother as-is without any sharpening and it is beyond dull. I managed a few shavings but it took a lot of effort. I'd have resharpened my own blades well before this point. This blade is no where near ready out of the box...worse than Veritas/Lie Nielsen and even WoodRiver blades out-of-box. I think this claim is pretty much bogus, at least with my blade.

[Tri Hoang]

I lapped the back of the IBC blade for about 9 minutes on my Shapton Pro 1500 before getting a consistent scratch pattern. During that time, I had to stop & flatten my stone once. As one could tell from the pic, the back of the blade has a high center and low sides.

The feedback on the Shapton is that of a firm, gritty, not too-muddy feel. I guess the blade hardness is comparable to average Hock/Lie Nielsen A2 but a little softer, just like the Veritas blades.

[Tri Hoang]

Another 4 minutes on my Shapton Pro 5K and Shapton Pro 12K and I've gotten a mirror polish on its back. So my overall time for lapping the back is about 13 minutes. I'd say that it's average compared to the Hock/Lie Nielsen A2 blades but way longer than most Vertias A2 blades. On most Veritas A2 blades that I've own, they took less than a minute on average to go through the 1500 stone.

[Tri Hoang]

So a few more minutes on the front bevel at 30* I've gotten a pretty sharp blade. I put it in a WoodRiver V3 #4 and it easily take full width/length shavings off a piece of Ash I have laying around. I don't think the digital caliper is very accurate but it's the only thing I have to give some measurement at this scale...Let's say it's between .5-1 thous. I have no idea how durable the edge on the IBC blade is until further testing.

[Asher Langton]

Thanks for the review and the pictures. I don't see why IBC puts a secondary bevel on the blade if it's not thoroughly honed. Seems like a waste of effort.

By the way, what do you think of the new WoodRiver planes? I help one briefly today at Woodcraft and it looked nice. Seemed well-made, with a thick, cleanly-ground iron, but I didn't have a reference surface to see how accurately it was machined.

[Shawn Stennett]

I bought the Rob Cosman version of the IBC blade and I had a much better results than you did. Mine would shave hair out of the package and was pretty flat and did not look as course on the back as yours. I am not very experienced with hand planes but was happy with my purchase for my number 5.

[Tri Hoang]

My initial thoughts on this 2" IBC blade:

- The blade is well-made. Sides are clean & polished. The back is reasonably flat. I have no scientific way of telling how hard/durable the blade is. My guess is based solely on the feedback received on my various stones. I think it's closer to RC 60...comparable to Veritas blades and a little softer than the LN/Hock A2 equivalent. Having replacement plane blades available at a local store for a large chunk of old/modern bench planes is a good selling point.

- Various IBC claims on their packaging are iffy at best such as:

* Lapping on 1000x & 8000x - not with the scratch patterns I've seen
* Out of box "shave hair" razor sharp - I tried really hard to the point of scrapping my skin but no hair fallen.

The rest of the claims such as double tempered, air harden, precision ground...are just marketing blobs.

I love using thick blades on old Stanleys so if I have a need and Woodcraft gives enough incentives at the same time, I may get another one.

I hope you find the review helpful & thanks for reading.

[Jim Koepke]

- Various IBC claims on their packaging are iffy at best such as:

* Lapping on 1000x & 8000x - not with the scratch patterns I've seen

Maybe the last 0s are just typos?

Thanks for the review I enjoy having the information.



jim

[Sam Takeuchi]

Interesting. So basically if you wanted a thick A2 blade, wouldn't it be better to go with Lie Nielsen A2 blade (not the vintage replacement kind) for $0.01 more and be content that it'd be manufactured to a high standard? I'd be happy with a new blade wrapped in old newspaper and plastic blade guard if it was made to a high standard. This fancy packaging and half hearted lapping job really doesn't speak for quality at all. Not a good first impression, at least for me.

[scott spencer]

Thanks for the enlightening insights. I've been curious about these blades since their launch....not a great first report for an expensive premium product! It'd be interesting to hear their defense.

[David Weaver]

That's odd. i got two of them from WC right when they were coming out, and they were lapped and polished on the back. Not flat to my stones, so I had a couple of minutes of work to get them flat to my stones (and that could be me, and not them, never will know), but they were polished.

Sharp enough to shave hair out of the box, but not quite the same type of sharp you get used to if you sharpen with a 1 micron stone or stop with good stropping technique.

There was no large secondary bevel like that that I can recall.

The issue I see with having them polished and with no microbevel is that while a beginner will be able to throw them right in a plane in that condition, if they're at 25 degrees (not sure what they are), the honed edge will take a hike quickly or chipout, as the virgin edge of A2 blades sometimes do. I'd rather have the microbevel if they're polished. If they're not, they almost have to tell you what angle the secondary bevel was done so you can throw a tertiary bevel on it with a polishing stone.

They are good irons, but all of the replacement A2 irons are good irons. I don't know how hard they are, either, didn't test one, but I suspect they aren't harder than LN blades, which doesn't really mean much, because LN blades are 62 hardness, and there isn't a lot in the world of A2 that's harder than that.

I once sent an iron back to LN because I *imagined* that it wasn't hard, i guess because the first thing I subjected it to was something punishing, and because it honed easily on the stones. They humored me and tested it and said 61.5. Talk about feeling like a dunce! I apologlized to them, and they said "well, it's one of the older ones, but we'd be glad to send you a new one along with it if you're not satisfied" (it had the old style finish on the steel, but was still A2). Talk about trying to make a customer feel good - prove there's nothing wrong with the iron, and offer to send another one anyway. I felt really guilty and doofy after that. I should've just appreciated that it yielded to the stones easily and was still hard - that's a sought after trait that you pay money for if you're buying japanese tools.

I did not generally say anything about the IBC irons when I got them other than to mention that they were good irons and another choice that's just fine to use, because I didn't pay anything for them, but I also didn't get paid to look at them. As close as all of the A2 irons are in performance, there's no reason to pick favorites unless you're just picking on price to your doorstep, which is what I do.

At any rate, something has changed in the process. Maybe they've gotten feedback from the people who had the polished irons that led them to feel like it wasn't worth the expense. Packaging should be changed if that's the case.

I took a new LN iron (i had one unused on hand) and a new IBC iron and put them through their paces on a stroke count test until they wouldn't cut - on hard maple. Both fresh out of the box and then once after grinding a sixteenth or so off of them. One of them lasted 800 strokes and the other 1050, I won't say which, because they could've easily flip flopped results on the next test. In testing those, and in testing some of the other A2 irons for curiosity, the only thing I can really conclude is that all of them last an incredibly long time if you get one that does not chip out. The iron that first develops small chips (leaving lines among a mirror shine) is going to be the first one that fails completely 500 or so strokes later, regardless of which is harder if they are not worlds apart in hardness.

A couple of other things I figured out doing that, because I never let an iron get as dull as they got before they stopped cutting:
1) a lot of times when you start to get tired and think the iron is dulling, paraffin on the bottom of the plane will do miles more good than running to sharpen the iron. Especially worthwhile if you're not doing final smoothing and you're sharpening more often than you need to. If you're doing final smoothing, then depending on what you like, it's maybe worth putting the iron on the stones often to make sure everything gets a nice finish with no lines.
2) In real life use, I usually touch up the iron when it's around the 200 or 300 stroke range and you can tell that it's starting to lose its ability to leave a nice finish. The irons will cut for a very very long time after that if you're not taking tissue shavings. I determined my irons were no longer fit to cut when they weren't able to take a .002" shaving. The iron that lasted to 1050 was leaving a very interesting finish on the wood at that point, but still cutting. The surface left behind almost felt fuzzy.

Goes back to what george wilson says - it's the quality of the steel in the iron (assuming he means compact grain size and uniformity or lack of very large carbides).

In my experience, all of them are different if they aren't the same age, even within the same brand. Some feel harder than others, some chip a little when they're new and need to work back, and a really great iron doesn't do that, but I haven't had a brand of iron yet where all of them don't chip before the first regrind or two.

Back to the iron, you can always contact WC customer service and ask them what happened and why the iron isn't ready to use out of the box. The reaction you'll get at different stores varies by who is behind the counter, but if you go to WC corporate, they are very concerned about customer service IME.