Well, I suppose that’s life!
After years of reading reverential articles about them, and (much) hesitation, I finally lashed out and bought this Norris A15 smoother, said to be in excellent ‘user’ condition. Apart from the millimetre or two of thick brown shellac jolloped over the woodwork, and some minor pitting of the sole and sides it is in pretty good nick. There is a (steel) screw driven up the base of the tote, but no discernible break or crack in it – doesn’t look original – is this someone’s idea of insurance, or did they come that way? The blade looks to be original, it certainly has ‘Norris’ stamped on the front, (and ‘Sorby’ on the back). Wear-marks from the cap-iron screw would indicate that something of the order of ½” of blade has been consumed over the tool’s life.
The shellac was a relatively recent addition, filling-in the name of a previous owner stamped on the front of the bun. It was really thick and ugly, so I carefully removed it with alcohol. You can see that someone had been at it a long time ago, doing a pretty heavy cleanup job, leaving a few paper scratch-marks in the hard-to-get-at spots. I would guess it was originally stained pretty heavily, since the bun and cheeks of the tote are Beech, while the tote itself is Mahogany. There is a lot of stain in the end-grain of the bun on the throat side. To minimise any accusations of ruining ‘genuine’ battle scars, I put on a seal coat of shellac followed by a good waxing.
Then the cutter assembly. Someone had ‘thoughtfully’ fiddled with the cap iron, and done a reasonably successful job of cleaning and aligning the business end, but it needed a bit more cleaning up and lapping to get a good tight closure. The blade needed considerably more work. The back was severely convex – the sort of shape I suspect a lot of folk are busy putting on their plane irons and chisels with this ‘scary sharp’ method so in vogue around the world – so it took a good many strokes on the diamond lap to get it properly flat. Then a light re-grind (getting the edge back square), and honing (test-shave a bit rough, but now I’m getting impatient, I want to try this thing!).
So I plonk a bit of (southern) silky-oak on the bench and take a few test-swipes – not too bad, but I find it hard to get the hang of the adjustments – you have to back off the lever-cap screw quite a bit to be able to move things freely. But after a few minutes, I did get a reasonably nice, fine shaving across most of the blade. Then I attacked a bit of Kwila that just happened to be sitting there. After two swipes, the cut got really rough.
I disassembled and found the entire edge of the blade was burred – like a well-burnished scraper!
OK, I know Kwila isn’t the gentlest thing on plane blades, but two swipes?! Even my ordinary old Stanley tool-steel blades can do a lot better than that.
I checked my sharpening angles (they are fine) and re-sharpened the thing, paying much more attention this time, when it became immediately apparent that this blade is soft – it’s very hard to put a really good edge on it. Trying it again on the S.O., it didn’t keep a sweet edge for more than a dozen strokes. For comparison, I touched up my newish Clifton (4) and my favourite old garden-variety #5 Stanley (Australian made, bought new in mid-60’s) and tried the same bits – both cut more sweetly, even after a half-dozen swipes on the Kwila. The #5 has a Stanley HSS cutter (Australian-made, no-frills version), while the Clifton has that thumping great chunk of metal it came with. Both hone easily to a shaving edge, and hold it well, though the old HSS blade outlasts everything else I have, including a couple of Hock blades.
So what do I do now – I’ve cast around for a new blade, and the only ones I can find (new) so far have a price tag that would make the well-heeled blanch. And do all the Norris smoothers have the same size/length of slot??
Derek! Somebody! Help! What do you advise???
Signed (sob),
‘Disappointed’ :confused: