Brian's thread on choice of chisels just set me thinking. I'd always thought it was just that I was using cheap chisels, but it starts to look like even good quality chisels sail pretty close to the wind so far as edge damage is concerned when working hardwoods. My white steels don't much like paring plywood for example. Which while it's known to be hard on edges you would imagine might not be that bad.
Guess I'm wondering if there's perhaps not more of us than realise it cooking the edge a little when sharpening, and consequently working almost all of the time with a less than optimum steel condition?
The reason for this suggestion is that when push comes to shove the action (both sharpening and cutting) really only happens at the last thou or two of the edge. It's got to be very hard for heat to conduct itself away from an edge that fine, and equally be very easy to in just this very localised strip get up to decent temperatures without causing noticeable bluing etc.
Many of us use e.g. our finger, or water boiling off to detect heat. Which by definition requires heating quite a large area, and implies that the actual edge may be getting a lot hotter. Even taking a lot of care like I did - on a Work Sharp running at 500rpm, and cooling in water after a few seconds of grinding - and not grinding right to the edge.
There's also the possibility that even if the heat treatment of steel was spot on that factory grinding (presumably liquid cooled?) might have messed it up a bit.
Wonder has anybody ever done the metallurgical analysis to determine what actually is going on, and determined just what is permissible and what is not? I'm not all that comfortable with most dry bevel grinding options for example - but maybe I'm being over cautious...
ian