Thread: Quality aftermarket replacement hand plane blades. Originals are too thin

Originally Posted by D.W.

it's too bad this kind of stuff is hard to coordinate.

...

but back to this situation - ASW was making M2 blades, but they're not hard to make. There just isn't much specialty market.

so, where is a white knight who will get opinions from knife melakers and perhaps have irons milled in M2 or CPM 4V, have 10 made, and then sell 9 for the cost of all 10. Everyone would win aside from inconvenience for the organizer.

M2 is an ingot steel, obviously, but not terribly coarse grained unless you get low cost chinese steel from an unknown supplier. T1 is also an interesting option, but probably not as safe. 4V is safe and probably better.

Potentially a white knight. I've done this sort of thing for the state before. $15k of specialty work.

I'm making a 20-24" norris style jointer and need a blade to fit. Current plan is 01, but I'm open to ideas.

Paul Williams' blades were excellent.

I live close to Bohler Uddeholm, have a commercial heat treater 4 blocks away and might be able to get something to a saw doctor for grinding the back flat.

It would be on a cost recovery basis, with 120٪ of estimated cost to me up front, and I'll refund surplus post despatch. Been bitten before with people pulling out at the last minute, and then piece rate increasing - eg: same cost to run a furnace for 50 or 80 items, but the cost per item increases and I had to wear the cost.

Will have to find a local machine shop (saw doctor even?) to mill the slots. Whilst I can do the machine work, I don't have the time to recommission a mill. Be a minor risk on the heat treatment, but these guys are good so minor. It'd have the hardness guaranteed, assume toughness OK.

Let me do some sums mid-Jan when all factories return to work..

Thoughts?

Originally Posted by eddie the eagle

Will have to find a local machine shop (saw doctor even?) to mill the slots. Whilst I can do the machine work, I don't have the time to recommission a mill. Be a minor risk on the heat treatment, but these guys are good so minor. It'd have the hardness guaranteed, assume toughness OK.


Thoughts?

I read the heat treat chart for M2 - it's something that a furnace would do on schedule almost without thought, and then it's a matter of quench preference, but it doesn't need a fast quench, so all methods should yield about the same result. Options are things like pressurized air (more atmospheres, more cooling ability), oil quench to black and then finish in still air.

Whatever the case, if you're starting with good stock and the furnaces is allowed to do its thing, and you choose a hardness target like ASW had, the blades will be indistinguishable. Toughness is only a problem with bad stock or errors.

I can't think of a much better steel than O1 around 62 hardness for an infill.

I think at the outset of something like this, a group buy is a no-go. If you get money ahead of time, you'll be badgered, and if you get money later, too many people will back out and "left over from a group buy" sounds like unwanted custom underwear.

the recipe for it, I believe, is fronting the money.

I recall seeing ASW blades for around $100. This is insanity, but it means that if you get good stock and chase the right spec, you won't have much trouble selling anything over a longer term, especially as word gets around.

but fast or high volume or group buy seems like a no.

Heat treat here has a batch cost and then a smaller variable cost. So if you do something like heat treat four irons, it costs a lot. If you heat treat 20, it costs less per iron. if you can do the milling and grinding on your own, that's obviously a lot better. I've never hired out work because there's never a batch of something to do it with and try as i have, I just can't find higher wear steels that are as practical for significant planing as the more plain alloys. However, there is obviously a strong market for specialty blades, or we wouldn't have V11 and 10V, and now in the US, Magnacut being offered at retail (basically CPM4V in characteristic, but extremely stainless). the idea of popping an iron in a guide and then putting off the time to the guide again and advertising the ability is a net that catches fish.

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet: Hocktools.com make thicker replacement blades. I use them in my Stanley planes.

Philly planes in UK make blades ; recommended by Jim Hendricks.

I don't know who jim hendricks is, but I only see tapered and snecked plane irons on philly planes.

Parallel irons ; uncut.
Snecked irons as an option.
No irons cut for Stanley types.

Revitalising this thread.

Can anyone recommend or discourage me from buying one of these replacement plane blades?
They're a replacement for Luban planes. I'm after some blades for a no.4 and a no.5 stanley.

Edit: that was stupid. They're for Luban planes. They won't fit stanley/records, will they? 3mm thick blades!

They’ll fit… I bought a 3mm thick HSS iron for a 3 years ago; it was a little hard to get the cap iron screw in but it did go in the end. You’ll need to back the frog off a fair bit too to clear the mouth. You should NOT need to open the mouth up… like I stupidly did I sold it a couple of years ago with both the thick HSS iron for smoothing and the original thin iron ground with a camber for using the plane as a scrub, you just had to swap out the iron to use it either way; no need to move the frog.

3mm is more than likely too thick and will need the plane mouth to be filed open. Even 0.100" blades will barely fit. In addition to that, if you want to use them with a closely set cap iron, the shavings will choke because the gap at the mouth is too narrow. They also will need the mouth to be filed to allow for the whole range of operation of the plane.

Originally Posted by johknee

Revitalising this thread.

Can anyone recommend or discourage me from buying one of these replacement plane blades?
They're a replacement for Luban planes. I'm after some blades for some a no.4 and a no.5 stanley.

Edit: that was stupid. They're for Luban planes. They won't fit stanley/records, will they? 3mm thick blades!

some they might, some they won't. With a 3mm blade, you'll add additional backlash to an adjuster.

In my experience, the older the plane is, the greater the chance that the mouth is smaller at a maximum. 3MM is about .118". some planes will start to get tight even at 0.1", but those have always been early planes for me.

Just as a matter of fit to how the plane is designed and dealing with the adjuster and things of the like, without really going way deep science project and tabbing the cap iron or something so that it has fingers coming down between the iron to catch the adjuster lower, i'd personally stick to 0.1" and below for a standard stanley plane.

As far as luban blades, do they state what the steel is? I saw references in the past to T10, which is almost the same in composition as W2 currently available in the US. It's a more plain steel than O1, would have slightly shorter edge life, but if it's got reasonable hardness, it could be pleasant. Production control and nailing 1% plain carbon steels is probably not great, though - it's not as easy as more highly alloyed steels unless the heat treat is done by hand.

the other reference that I saw as Mn65, which is just a 0.6-0.7% carbon plain steel with additional manganese. I would guess that the manganese is added to make it easier to harden. the amount of manganese is up into the O1 spec range - that addition in O1 has a lot to do with why it's used now and W series steels aren't - ability to quench slower means easier to deal with industrially. There is a trace of chromium in it, too, which also helps hardening and probably adds a little bit of toughness. Steels in that range seem to work better if they're a couple of points short of 1% steels (meaning if T10 would make a nice blade at 62, I doubt Mn65 would. it could be made to 62 hardness, but the edge would suffer for it in actual use - the better you compare it, the more it would be noticeable).

Bottom line with these, if you find them in something thinner, then the question is whether or not they're inexpensive - if they're in the $10-$20 price range US, that's where they should be.

Just my opinion here, I looked up T10 on alibaba. It can be bought in coil or sheets and the coils are about $550 a ton. that's mill run, so it's not like you can just punch a blade out with a punch press or laser cut it, heat it and make it cold and throw it in a plane, but I would be surprised if the actual cost to make these blades in china was more than about $2 or $3 each ($US).

I see bench plane blades in T10 listed at 40-60 AUD. Someone would have to convince me they took japanese-like care in selecting the cleanest of all stock and dealing with the stock through all phases of heat treatment and tempering to command that.

i see mn65 listed as the alloy only for some oddball planes. I looked up mn65 to see what it's used for - it's a spring steel. the carbon level being much lower than T10 is intentional - springs can't have anything that initiate cracks, so the steel is starved of carbon a little so that all of the carbon remains in the matrix and forms on carbides. We tend to like steel that has a little bit of carbide volume in the edge. If i squinted at the use of mn65 long enough, four or five people would do a drive by and mention they love the blades, I'm sure, and steels like 60crv (0.6% steel often used in $2 chisels) can make a workable tool, but it's missing something compared to a really good tool.

Hmmm, experiences seem to differ a bit here. I have used quite a few after-market blades in Stanleys & Records, and so far have not had a mouth problem (with planes, that is. ) The thickest after-market blade I've used was a full 1/8" (.125") thick and it certainly did cause trouble with the cap-iron screw being too short to get a decent grip, and also with the adjuster, which I solved by building up the tip of the cam a bit by brazing and filing it into shape (it was an old, well-worn yoke anyway). I don't recall having any mouth problems, but I'm fairly sure I was ok there & able to move the frog back far enough for a usable mouth. I don't think I have ever taken a file to the mouth of a Bailey plane except to smooth off the little nicks & spurs that some oldies acquire in their lives. But it wasn't an easy direct swap & most folks would not be equipped to deal with those problems so I expect you would want to avoid that situation.

I looked up the thickness of Luban blades for their Bailey style planes and they are 3.18mm (0.125") thick, so you may want to proceed with caution. As D.W. says, post WW2 Stanleys seem to have more generous mouths, though I have two type 11s (~1911-1919) both of which happily received new blades that were thicker than their originals. In this case they were Veritas PM-V11 blades which are a teeny bit thinner than the earlier A2 Veritas blades I have.

In my experience, the cap-iron screw and adjuster yoke are the main concerns, as D.W. has also mentioned. Typical after-market blades are generally .10" thick or a smidgin thinner. You will lose a half-turn of thread compared with an old, thin blade, but the cap-iron screw should still engage fully in the cap-iron. You may get a little more backlash due to the adjuster cam not engaging fully, which you may or may not notice (or may or may not be bothered by!). I'm speaking from the experience of 20 planes or so over the last 40 years, and it may be a bit dangerous to make generalisations from such a relatively small sample, but I'll stick my neck out & suggest that blades of 0.1" or thinner are unlikely to cause you any problems unless your plane is an outlier, and you may get away with a 3.2mm blade with no major problems with a bit of luck. But given normal wear & tear & manufacturing tolerances, it's pretty hard to predict how well a blade will fit 'til you actually try it in your plane.

As far as quality goes, I've used quite a few Luban block & shoulder plane blades for planes I've made and found them of very acceptable quality & good value for money. I read somewhere that they are either A2 or something equivalent, but can't remember where & can't vouch for the veracity of the claim, but they do sharpen similarly to A2 (i.e. it takes a bit more effort to get a good edge on them compared with O1), and have much the same wear characteristics. I don't think you'll have any complaints about their quality....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by johknee

Revitalising this thread.

Can anyone recommend or discourage me from buying one of these replacement plane blades?
They're a replacement for Luban planes. I'm after some blades for some a no.4 and a no.5 stanley.

Edit: that was stupid. They're for Luban planes. They won't fit stanley/records, will they? 3mm thick blades!

John, it is a gamble, and with long shot odds. It may or may not work. It is more likely it will not work for the reasons mentioned above.

I have a UK-made Stanley #3 with an older Clifton blade, which is 1/8” thick. This works perfectly. Great combination. But I have not had much success with other Stanleys over the years.



Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by IanW

As far as quality goes, I've used quite a few Luban block & shoulder plane blades for planes I've made and found them of very acceptable quality & good value for money. I read somewhere that they are either A2 or something equivalent, but can't remember where & can't vouch for the veracity of the claim, but they do sharpen similarly to A2 (i.e. it takes a bit more effort to get a good edge on them compared with O1), and have much the same wear characteristics. I don't think you'll have any complaints about their quality....

Cheers,

so far, I've seen listings with T10 and Mn65. I thought maybe woodriver here sold A2 also, but not sure - that could've just been WC and cosman's line of blades.

the write up for Mn (which now appears to be what's in wood river blades, and maybe that will replace T10 for luban, too) claims 60-64 hardness. The actual limited specs that I can find suggest the extra manganese adds a bit to hardness vs. 1060 or 5160, and that it's an inexpensive spring steel. Lots of inexpensive steels make great woodworking tools and even razors, though. Probably more importantly, the extra Mn reduces warping and shortens follow up work.

if it's a click harder and we expect that it maybe is more like 1075, then 400F temper would put it at 60 and it doesn't reach 64 until tempered at 200-250F. It's very uncommon to have good edge stability at that.

T10 had the same hardness range.

Mn65's industrial sheet suggested a sweet spot of 58, but those sweet spots are often several points short of where we'd find the steel better for woodworking.

I've had quite a bit of experience now hardening steels from 0.6% carbon to in plain steels, 1.25% carbon. Sometimes, you can get odd results out of the lower carbon steels if there is nothing to form carbides and the additive elements slow the transition needed, but I would imagine 64 hardness and good behavior for Mn65 is not in the cards. 60/61 may be.

Beyond that, once plain steels get close to 65 hardness, they suddenly will seem much harder to sharpen - even on aggressive stones and could be harder to sharpen than 60 hardness A2.

i've got but one vintage iron that tested 65 in my data set, but I've got one or two more like it. They are ultimately boogers to work with and need to be tempered back, or I need to have an actual reason to temper them back. They're icy on stones.