Thread: Handplanes - woodies - DIY - any reason why not?

For the cast planes, I think it's just the accuracy of the machining. I don't think it's the type of cast in one plane vs. another. Cast iron, that is.

For bronze, the effect is increased further because the bronze is sticky (like brass or mild steel would be) compared to cast iron, and it's also very well machined.

When I did this test i'm talking about, I just planed a four foot edge over and over. I could tell a significant difference if I didn't wax every 20 strokes, or 80 feet. I use paraffin, which turned out to work well because the plane got warm while I was using the test. Only slightly so, but enough to make the paraffin application easy. Since I was testing longevity, I wanted to use as stable of a plane as I could and use all of the irons in the same plane - that turned out to be a bronze lie nielsen 4.

I planed beech, which is middle of the road.

I haven't got a solution for you with gidgee and some of the acacias. The worst offenders here for sticky are some of the softer pines and cedars - they can really grip the bottom of a plane. Planing several tens of thousands of feet over and over and over gave me a chance to notice some differences in things that I wouldn't otherwise note, and the waxing was just one of them (there's actually a significant difference in the cutting resistance of different steels, one that you can feel when you start planing a single thing a single way over and over. CPM M4 has an incredible amount of planing resistance - enough to make your wrist a little sore. A2 has less than O1, and V11 (which I tested - which is really mostly chromium and not vanadium) was very slick and easier through the wood. CPM V3 also had quite a bit of reistance, to the point that I redid one of the tests during the process (after the first test) as I was sure that some irons were sharpened better than others.

The effect remained in terms of relative resistance throughout the test (and all sharpening was done with diamonds to avoid any chance that something in a steel would resist a more typical sharpening stone abrasive - notably the vanadium particles).

Another good way to test this is to take an unwaxed premium plane and plane endgrain in a wide board in a vise. Note the difference in resistance for a premium plane vs. a stanley, and then plane the end grain with a wooden plane (if possible). It's incredible.

I have made a bunch of infills - they're all mild steel soles except one is O1. They all have a lot of friction (much more than a cast iron plane of the same weight - maybe similar to the LN bronze planes), and reward frequent wax use. I'm convinced that some folks get far into hand planing, start to get tired, and lean on a plane that's not waxed enough and think the plane is dull before it actually is.

On sole friction, has anyone tried using UHMWPE?

I worked with some Gidgee to make a box once. I was astounded as to how hard, and smooth, it was when I was finished.

Maybe a replaceable sole with one of these?

DW,
late to the party but wondered how you rationalised the variation of cutting resistance with different steels, equally sharpened with appropriately waxed bottoms?
Micro-chipping?

Originally Posted by Stocker

DW,
late to the party but wondered how you rationalised the variation of cutting resistance with different steels, equally sharpened with appropriately waxed bottoms?
Micro-chipping?

I set the final bevel pretty secure at 35 degrees and checked all of the final edges under a metallurgical scope before starting each test, and found no issue with chipping with any of the irons in clean beech (i did get all of the irons to fail in maple, not intentionally, but due to a mineral deposit - several times in different boards - that almost certainly included silica).

One of the other interested parties in the test (bill tindall) who is more interested in the whys (I just want to know the whats and the whys only when needed) got a hold of a metallurgist and the difference in resistance are generally due to two things (the first one I'm supposing, the second one is from the metallurgist):
* first, I used the cap iron, so the shaving was pressed back into the wood and thus rubbed the back of the iron more than it would've without a cap iron used. I think this gave me more of a chance to feel the difference between the various steels
* the metallurgist told us that the properties of a metal and wear, etc, (and presumably friction) are dependent both on the type of carbide and the size. We were primarily interested in hearing why a bunch of small chromium carbides would perform as well as vanadium in wood, and his answer (the full one that I no longer remember) was that hardness of the material rubbing against the metal would lead a metallurgist to specify a given type or size of carbide

The chromium carbides are just slicker. Now, what I learned that I didn't learn from the metallurgist, but from reading, is that chromium (which at this point seems to be an ideal woodworker's carbide if dispatched properly) will migrate into clumps more or less between 800 and 1400F. This is problematic because a lot of people like to let metal rest around that temperature or remain around there for a while.

I found the base metal that we believe PM V11 is specified to (Carpenter CTS XHP) and found the hardening schedule. It's tolerant of shade tree hardening as long as you can get above 1850F or so - I've actually found it better behaved for a home hardener than O1. The key with it seems to be getting it to temperature quickly and then freezing it in place. Any that I've allowed at high temp longer to try to get a little bit more heat before quench has been a dud. Heat it quick to very bright orange or dull yellow and it's indistinguishable from V11.

So, I think that's the issue here - the small chromium carbides make for a slicker surface. I was surprised as I expected to carbon steel irons to cut with the most ease. Anything with lots of vanadium in it seemed to have more cut resistance, but important to note here, that all of the irons wore uniformly with my sharpening regimen , and I expected the higher alloy irons to experience microchipping, but no irons did.

Quality of the surface was part of my test, thus the checking of the edge before starting. I can't hold lines in the work against an iron if they're left there because of my incomplete sharpening.

I did find that the simpler the steel, the more it seemed to self heal around small defects by wearing uniformly, which translates to carbon steel being a little bit more tolerant of less than perfect sharpening. Small defects will just wear off of the edge, and you may get a better surface a couple of hundred feet into planing than at first.

I've made a bunch of irons out of XHP - the slickness is there with all of them. Someone in the US sent me a small single iron wooden plane to reharden the iron for them, and as far as I can tell, the iron is a dud, so I made them an iron out of XHP also, and even in a simple little single iron wooden plane, it seems to be slicker through the cut.

Carpenter CTS XHP is terribly interesting (PM-V11).

Knife makers, a group I follow closely and talk to actively (but don't *actually* do !!!) go to some agonising, and at times deeply esoteric, lengths in the pursuit of blade sharpness, workability and finish.

A google for this metal reveals long and detailed discussions on their properties by people best described as "zealots"

e.g. Carpenter CTS-XHP Knife Steel Composition Analysis Graph, Equivalents And Overview Version 4.36

But, WP,
do you think that wood workers are devoid of "enthusiasts'; zealots and even some 'tragics'? DW and his group took time, no little expense and significant material to try to get to the bottom of these questions. Many have chiselled and others have sawn seeking truth, science and the carpentary way.
All hail the woodworkers and their happy pursuit into 2020.

The point you make is an important one - i did the testing for nothing in return. I borrowed irons from some other folks at their own dime (it wasn't practical for me to try to get a CPM V3 and CPM M4 iron made when a fellow named phil smith here had done so already and really gone through the wringer making sure they got quality heat treatment done - they used paul bos). Phil did give me a fabulous extra piece of milled cast iron to sharpen on and never asked for it returned, which I thought was nice, but I'm not promoting anything of his - it became an exchange because he appreciated seeing the testing results.

What ultimately did occur is that I spent about $450 on XHP stock to make irons for myself. I've been able to gift a few to other people and learn to cut irons from it (it can work harden, and no normal person will ever get it annealed again. LV warns that you should not treat it like HSS, which is true, but it has an interesting characteristic that it will retain its initial hardness (probably 62) at 400 degrees, and if you manage to ham hand it somehow on a grinder and heat it to blue, it does lose some hardness....but only a couple of points (it's still usable - translate that for a shade tree maker like me, it means that if you overheat it, you'll have few practical options to actually anneal it again).

I also did a lot of hours of planing, taking pictures, and need to get off of my fat and get the information together before I forget it.

I'm generally skeptical as I've always favored O1 and water hardening steels - they take a fine edge that seems to heal itself of smaller defects and keep good quality through its wear cycle, but XHP proved me wrong (I don't think LV is getting it from carpenter, but I don't know that - I didn't talk to them and don't expect them to confirm that it's actually XHP spec. the reason I suspect they're not, though, is that carpenter doesn't do a great job of keeping XHP avaialble all the time, and as a user, I can get it pre-ground in 6x36 sheets for $330 shipped to me (a princely sum) and 0.093" and that's it.

At any rate, I'm getting off track. M4 sharpens well, but it grinds slowly and has a huge amount of cut resistance. CPM V3 is slow grinding, but also very slow honing and it can really hold a wire edge. XHP is slick through the cut, giving the sensory illusion that it's even sharper than it is, it leaves a brighter surface than carbon steel (a huge surprise)...and it's far brighter on wood, not just a little bit. It's where O1 is in sharpness at double the feet the whole time, and it's tolerant of honing on natural stones and exhibits the same initial behavior that carbon steel does - if you don't do a perfect job sharpening and have a tiny defect, it will wear itself out and wear to a uniform bright surface. I can get a brighter surface off of XHP and a washita (i won't go into it, but it will be sharper off of a washita than carbon steel mostly because it's abrading more slowly, and thus finely on a stone like that) than I can with carbon steel and any abrasive, and the brightness lasts a long time.

V3 will eventually test your patience with stones and faffing with getting a very tough little wire edge off all the time. On XHP, the wire edge is slightly stronger than carbon steel, but it also generally comes off on its own. Seemingly, to me, everything else that can be used on planes has some kind of compromise. Elmax and other trade names are like XHP with more alloying, but for whatever reason, their behavior in knife edges is less consistent. Steels like S30V and other metals made for dies where the carbides are large and vanadium don't actually slice as long as XHP (presumably in metal to metal use, they would excel - but we don't do that).

It's really kind of a special little case where the only untoward behavior is that it grinds half as fast as carbon steel and it doesn't give the characteristic spark. But as mentioned above, the penalty for a little extra heat really isn't much. It's special in my mind because it will grind that slowly, which is where it gets its wear resistance, but then behave very well on the honing stones.

And it can be heated in a coffee can forge to bright orange or dark yellow, quenched in oil very quickly and you will get a quality almost identical to that of LV's commercially made stuff (to me, that's nice, because I can make an iron that's much better looking to me aesthetically, and I'll always make my tools over buying them, even when it doesn't make money sense like - and in this case, it makes no money sense).

So through all of this, I expect to find something like S30V where technically there's edge holding capability there, but the edge gives up defects right away and the promise is never achieved, but instead, I prove all of my assumptions wrong and end up experimenting to see if irons can be made easily with the base steel, and now all of my stanley-type planes are using it. Since I can get it only in one thickness, and carpenter won't return any correspondence from me of any type, I have it only in stanley plane irons.

Is it really ground breaking? Not really. If you have other irons that you really like, you'd sharpen just a little less, or a little easier - depending on what type you have. But it is a rare bird to me, one that busts all of my pre-conceived notions as a contrarian and I'm on board with it at the end of the experimentation instead. Judging by all of the wear vs. honing vs. toughness visual profiles of the other steels, I don't expect that there's anything else that will better it for a reasonable sharpening knife steel or a good cutting plane blade steel.

I haven't used it in chisels, and can make no comment there. I have a lot of vintage, self made and japanese chisels (mostly bought for a fraction on japanese auctions) and the vintage well finished japanese chisels would be really hard to better (not like I can find XHP stock, anyway - and it fared only slightly better than carbon steel in end grain planing in a stanley, which is a little more brutal, so I suspect that as derek found, japanese chisels will continue to be king for a while).