Stanley No. 4 with PM-V11 Experience

[Patrick Chase]

I'll chime in. Hopefully, bring some peace to things.

You're delusional if you actually believe that. Or was that just puffery designed to get people to read your post? :-)

However, I LOVE good white steel and other simple high carbon. After Stan Covington sent me some chisels, I got hooked on the edge quality and longevity that good, superbly heat treated white steel can offer. I find that those chisels get sharper, faster, and last a significant amount of time on pretty much anything that I do on solid wood--however, I will never use it on plywood or carbon fiber.

Please tell me you're not using *any* woodworking chisel (even Aldi etc) on carbon fiber? That stuff is brutally abrasive.

[Stewie Simpson]

Matt; a lot of the better vintage steels need to be sourced from the U.K. (imo)

I have no experience working with Japanese steels.

Stewie;

[ken hatch]

Thats interesting, just to appease my curiosity I would like to see these tests done with an ideal honing method for each steel. An 8k water stone is not ideal for high carbon steels which should be honed with either very fine Arks or Jnats or similar natural stones.

The best edge I get with A2 is likely done with a 13k sigma. It's fine to do that it just becomes annoying to retain all of these various methods for each steel. Eventually I'll phase out A2 from my shop.

Really I use for 2 tools, the LN 7 jointer and the LN 4 plane.....so if anyone has an o1 blade and wants to upgrade give me a holler. I've yet to find a consensus on another blade that works in the LN planes....Ken may have arrived at one but I was unsure if it worked out completely.

Brian,

Veritas Stanley replacement iron (O-1 or PM) and Hock O-1 will work in LN planes with a light grinding of the cap iron adjustment opening. Ron Hock posted about that mod on his web site a couple of weeks ago. I wish he had done it earlier, it would have saved me a lot of butt scratching and trouble working through a fix to LN planes. I still do not understand LN discontinuing O-1 irons.

Because I use natural stones for honing, for reasons of "feel" and edge quality, there is no A-2 iron in my shop.

As an aside, without the 'fix" all my LN planes except one would be gathering dust.

ken

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks Ken! I ordered one so I can finally stop my whining on this issue.

[Stewie Simpson]

I agree with Ken; I don't fully understand LNs logic in offering A2 only.

Stewie;

[george wilson]

A bit about VINTAGE English steels: I just spent $200.00 on a mint condition vintage English knife of GOOD brand. The blade is still as bright as the day it was made. Nice stag handles. When I try to get a razor sharp edge on it,little bits crumble from the edge.

England used to get their best iron from Sweden. It came in 4 grades of "hoop iron",that were priced by the ton. Swedish iron was smelted with charcoal,not COAL. They had plenty of trees. They also had better ore. English made steel always had problems because they used coal. They did not understand chemistry at the time. Sulfur got into their iron and caused problems that the Swedish iron didn't have. The English didn't know why this was at the time. It made their steel what blacksmiths called "Hot short". Cracked and split easily when very hot.




I think this is what is wrong with this knife,very disappointing. I will not buy another, tempting looking as they are. No way of telling if English or Swedish steel was used. I love the severity and all business appearance of old English and German knives. Your good old English plane irons MIGHT have been made from Swedish steel. I think the vintage English irons I used and liked may have had Swedish iron in them,too.