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

Originally Posted by D.W.

.......I can't make the case that it's going to be economically gainful for the average person to make their own irons until they start making tools where non-standard irons (or in quantity) are really difficult to get.

Amen to that. While you can do it without a huge initial outlay, I'd say the more basic your setup, the more hit & miss the product is likely to be, & the steeper the learning curve. If you get lost in the rabbit warren of tool-making, making your own blades is likely to come up at some stage, but unless & until that happens, it will be far more economical & far more reliable to go with commercial blades.

To sum up & address the OP, my impression is that there is a wide choice of replacement blades from various sources. While some blades may be "better" than others (and how much "better" matters depends heavily on what woods you typically work with & how often you use hand planes), I have not come across any of the known brands that I'd consider inferior or unusable.

If your plane is a stock-standard Bailey type, you have a 95% chance any of the replacement blades you can buy here will drop straight in your plane or at most, require minor adjustment of the frog position providing you use the existing cap-iron. If you want to use one of the replacement cap-irons, you may strike trouble, but again, there is a fair chance it will fit & function as it should. And imo, unless your existing cap-iron is damaged beyond redemption, or some previous owner has substituted with a CI that doesn't match your plane, there is little or no point in replacing it. If the current cap-iron fits well, it can function as well as any of the after-market cap-irons whatever manufacturers claim & in some cases better because it was made to match your plane's adjuster...

Cheers,

I think my process mentioned above, even if it just ends with a single heat dipping in oil and no fridge or anything and a kitchen oven will result in very consistent blades. but it relies on being able to overshoot heat, not on stretching to get it.

if I total up a paint can and some kind of wool, cooking oil in another can, and a TS4k torch - not absolutely vital that it's one of the bernzomatic torches, just that some larger torches or other similar types discharge as much or more gas, but not at quite as high of a temperature.

At any rate, it will be difficult to not make a blade as good as you can buy with the above, but it requires getting known O1 steel and being kind of brand loyal once you find something that's good.

Very different than reheating old irons, which is also not hard, but there's no guarantee that the old irons won't be a tungsten water heating type of steel, or something more similar to drill rod that comes up short in cooking oil.

I think the real dynamic is - "do I want to learn the skill, even if just at this basic level". If yes, then it's worth it to pick this up. the cost of the materials is about $80 if you line a can with kawool, then plus O1.

the setup that I use to match or better book on several steels is two torches (though I have a two burner stainless "real forge" that I don't use), and I've added a two-stainless-exhaust forge to go with the paint can type. the two stainless exhaust type is only needed for long items like kitchen knives or long paring chisels. All it is is one wide piece of exhaust pipe, a layer kawool, and a narrower inner pipe for more concentrated heat - especially necessary for stainless.

Back to the dynamic - if it's "i don't really care about this hardening and stuff, I just want blades" just buy the blades.

***TLDR - contact details for Paul Williams/Academy Saw Works?

Hi all,

Read through the thread in its entirety. Had this typed up yesterday, but then the laptop battery died.

From mine, the slightly thicker blades offer greatly reduced chatter resistance/increased stiffness at the cutting edge. edit - you may need to back the frog off a bit to get the mouth opening right, but the curve of the grind doesn't interfere with the blade/frog/base geometry.

Paul Williams (Academy Saw works) used to make Stanley blades in M2 that I swear by. Just went looking for his contact details to buy a couple, but can't find them. They were/are bulletproof and went at least half an hour's hard work on old growth hardwoods before needing to be sharpened.

Does he still make them?

Otherwise, is there a HSS blade available still as a direct swap for a stanley blade. Setting up at work to touch up jarrah and recycled hardwoods for kids. Last thing you need mid-class is to break for resharpening.

(Yes, I could make one as a metallurgist, but if they're already available... ...)

Back to the pre-Xmas house cleaning mayhem.

Regards,

Originally Posted by bruceward51

The thickness of the blade will not have any influence over its sharpness and how long it holds its edge. That is down to the steel in the blade. Thicker irons are usually used to reduce chatter, although I think that problem is also mainly a problem of technique.

In my experience - thicker blade / less chatter meant more stability at the edge/less vibration/ bending and a slightly prolonged edge, but it's academic. Chatter is also cap iron tension, lever cap force, flatness of the frog and flatness of the blade and technique (angle of attack of the plane to the timber.) Once again, academic. If all flat and firm, minimal chatter, but you can't stop flutter at the cutting tip in a thinner blade.

Mainly I use thicker 2.5mm M2 blades for better surface finish and longer time between sharpenings. A well set up plane helps. I flatten the frog surface also in setup.

Don't forget you've got 5-10 seconds post quench to flatten the blade if you want, DW, when you drop below the nose of the TTT curve and wait for martensite to form.

If you have a flat steel heatsink, you could cool it on that if you're quick enough and have something to apply pressure with quickly.

edit: I just place O1 vertically in agitated oil - temper in a kitchen stove 150°C x 2 hours or whatever it is according to the Bohler-uddeholm (my supplier) instructions when my wife's out for a few hours - and pay a saw works to flatten the blade. 20 bucks well spent.

(Either that, or look how they keep razor blades flat in heat treating as another option - that's a 2 hour rabbit hole to disappear down.)



(back to my question - does Paul WIlliams, Academy Saw Works, still make replacement HSS blades?)

Originally Posted by eddie the eagle

Don't forget you've got 5-10 seconds post quench to flatten the blade if you want, DW, when you drop below the nose of the TTT curve and wait for martensite to form.

If you have a flat steel heatsink, you could cool it on that if you're quick enough and have something to apply pressure with quickly.

(Either that, or look how they keep razor blades flat in heat treating as another option - that's a 2 hour rabbit hole to disappear down.)

I quench the top part of the quench in fast oil (even with O1) below black heat - this is not something I would suggest a beginner do - it's not necessary on O1 which doesn't need to transition as fast. Anyway, I have two pairs of aluminum quench plates and after getting the top end of the quench done as fast as possible in the first two or three seconds, I transfer the iron or knife, whatever it may be, to the quench plates and - no kidding - stand on them. and finish the tail in water and transfer to freezer.

there is a very short period of time, as you say, where major warp could be addressed, but it's uncommon for me to have much warp to deal with on plane irons, and usually on knives, it's in the handle where I've not heated past an inch or two in the tang, and that can be hammered flat later since no material will be removed.

At any rate, it's definitely the case that with good O1 heated evenly, the top end of the quench doesn't need to be done at 1095 or razor steel speed, so there shouldn't be much warp. and you're right, there is a fraction that you have in time where if you aren't pushing to hit the tail of the quench as cold as possible, you can adjust straightness. I'm usually chasing "poor man's cold" at the tail of the quench to maximize hardness, though.

the lower the tail, the more time you have to get to it - potentially hours if using liquid nitrogen, but the freezer is the best I have here, so it needs to get water cold and then into the freezer with no spare time.


......


but that's all things you kind of experiment and work on - keeping things flat in process, and shouldn't distract from my mention earlier that O1 can be done much more simply with something that won't cause divorce as the quench oil and cooling to oil and then still air before tempering is fine.

chasing cold at the tail vs. ambient temps gets about 1 point of hardness extra on 26c3 (not sure about O1, but I don't use O1 that much at this point), and potentially two vs. the strategy of terminating the quench a little early and allowing finish in still air. With really poor hardenability, it may not finish the job in the critical 2 minute or so period to reach the tail.

I chase these things (fast quench, 26c3 for chisels instead of O1, etc) out of being competitive, though. I think most people aren't going to get so wrapped up in it. I want to be able to take a chisel that I make and have a lot of headroom for tempering and then have it hold up better in use than anything that can be purchased, and at least as well as anything I can find historically.

Originally Posted by D.W.

comments above aren't a shot at tools for working wood for not chasing the tail end of the quench - I think they are making some things like spoon bits and such and it's one thing to deal with a little warp in a plane iron or chisel. It'd be another thing entirely to deal with it in drill bits that we'd probably prefer be a little easier to hone, anyway.


Long drawn out explanation above - it's a statement of what is about clifton, the why, not "they did a bad job". the latter is subjective.


what shouldn't be lost in this is how easy it is to do good O1 steel in the garage:
1) buy good bar stock
2) create some kind of heat housing structure (even if the first tries are an uninsulated can
3) uniformly heat what will be treated - uniform from the start, not create a hot spot and then try to make the hot spot bigger
4) get what's going to be quenched to nonmagnetic then as quickly as possible for the next step (test with a cheap pick up magnet that won't be hurt in the heat, but don't leave the magnet in the heat, of course - just use it to check magnetism quickly)
5) as soon as the steel is nonmagnetic, heat it another half or full color shade as quickly as possible (this should not be more than about 15 or 20 seconds)
6) quench straight into oil. If it's cold and the oil is thick, preheat the oil a little bit so it flows well
7) if you want to get good hardness, have a jar of cold water, and as soon as the oil has drawn as much heat out of the tool as it can, put the business end of the tool in the water for about ten seconds and then the entire tool (an iron in this case)
8) you can throw the iron in the freezer then if you want for half an hour before tempering

Temper twice for an hour between 375F and 425f, depending on your tastes. A toaster oven is fine , and probably better than a kitchen item. if you see the bevel of a tool or edges tempering a different or darker color than the

375 should result in 62/63 temper, and 425 60/61 hardness. You will be able to tell the difference between the two pretty easily

if you buy O1 stock or anything simple and this doesn't work, it could be because the steel is factory made coarse spheroidized (large grains with large carbides to be easy to machine). it's probably better to just avoid that when you're a beginner. Bohler and Starrett aren't delivered like that, but Buderus often is.

There's sort of an OWT that all steel should be quenched as soon as it's nonmagnetic. it's true that complete lack of magnetism shows a phase change and steel is hardenable. There aren't many steels where the best temp for quenching is right at nonmagnetic, though. O1 is better when it's a little higher. Quenching immediately is a way to avoid growing grain, but what I showed above won't grow grain and it avoids "people being human furnaces" trying to eyeball a soak temperature - that's impractical.

Concur absolutely.

Comments below may give some food for thought.

• The double temper/freeze is to remove retained austenite, which then turns into brittle martensite when you apply energy during use of the blade. Leading to brittle blades only at the tip. Highly recommended double quench/temper. -60°C is easy to attain with dry ice if you need at a reasonable cost (or free if you know someone that has frozen meals delivered.)
• The magnetism change doesn't actually show a phase change. It's the curie temperature of iron which is at 770°C. This is close to the ideal soak temperature of a 1080 steel or most high carbon tool steels.
• Larry Williams uses a better indication of phase change. When the steel transforms from it's low temperature form (ferrite) to its high temperature form (austenite), it shrinks by 0.15/7.85 ~ 2% in volume. This means that the brittle oxide on the surface flakes/bubbles off all of a sudden as the steel it was bonded to shrinks suddenly. At this point, you can safely say it's fully austenitic, but either this or magnetism is good enough for backyard heat treating.
• As I said on point 7, you've got a few seconds to get the part flat after quenching, as martensite takes time to form post-quench. It's not immediate unless you get to room temp. Can slightly straighten parts if needed, but nothing drastic. Give it a go on a knife you don't care about if you want. Use a bit of railroad track as a flattening source/heatsink. Put a second bit of track on top.
  edit: Saw your reply above as I typed mine.

(but back to my original question - does anyone know if Paul WIlliams' Stanley replacement blades are still available?)

Thanks in advance.

believe it or not, the first bevel edge chisels I made, I cut the bevels first, they went banana and I would hammer them flat as quickly as I could. I still have some of them -they still have burnish marks from the hammer.

Push it though time-wise and one chisel becomes two. I really liked hand filing the bevels, but it's not to be. I heat treat the chisel flat now and grind the bevels later, it's not too bad.

Larry's video is the first thing I saw. There's a problem with seeking flux bubbles for phase change, though - some irons and some steels will experience pretty radical grain growth if you chase temp that high. 1084 and 1095 will both do it, unless you get 1095 with enough additive elements to prevent it. 1084 that I've been able to find has pretty much nothing in it other than manganese. 80crv2 is a little harder to get to top hardness, but it can get to about the same post temper points and won't grow grain. the two O1s that I've used much of, or three, I guess - add precision marshall, they are all pretty tolerant of a fast temperature overshot.

which is what I like to shoot for. get to nonmagnetic and then chase a temperature overshot depending on what the steel will tolerate.

26c3 isn't super tolerant, but compared to 1084, it's pretty forgiving in terms of grain growth.

yes on the tempering - I didn't go into it around the discussion of O1 because there wouldn't be much RA compared to other things like AEB-L where the RA will actually lead low temperature tempers to increase hardness after quench. I'm guessing the cryo between tempers is claimed to do all kinds of things, but it probably maximizes the change to martensite in a muted version of what it does after quench.

I have pretty good luck with AEB-L out of the forge, and XHP (V11) does OK, too - both with a lower temperature pre-quench (which is still high for stainless) and then just pushing fast for a high heat. the knife expert here in the states who is actually local to me hates this, but it works well. I got banned from the knife forum here for pressing the issue and wanting to talk about this method and show actual test data. They think that even if I'm able to produce samples (some are better than book - like 26c3 - book hardness, 30% better toughness at same hardness vs book). When I refused to go along with the "ultimately everyone gets a furnace so that they can make knives out of maxamet", it didn't go over that well. Nothing wrong with a furnace, but you can't thermal cycle 26c3 three times and quench it all in a total of 5 minutes, and the results would probably be worse than I get.

This will sound like foreign talk to a bunch of folks here - I'm no metallurgist, but I went bonkers snapping samples and manipulating grain size - I thought I really had something that amateurs might like, but you can't get past the front door if there is someone moderating who sells knives. They believe discussing this stuff is irresponsible because someone will think you can do it and sell knives professionally.

it's a little humorous here that I could've dialed down the dork meter and written something very clear and useful that paul could've referred to, but he's such an egotistical that there's no way he'd ever do something like that. And personally, I wouldn't really want to do something gainful for him - I don't think he has honest enough intentions.

Also, I'm aware of some of the high carbide volume steels that have a triple temper schedule. some of the furnace schedules for the steels based on their data sheet look like they could last a 24 hour day.

and, I couldn't get anyone on the knife boards to sort of follow that what makes a good chisel (26c3 is dandy) and what makes a good knife (52100 if in carbon steels) isn't necessarily the same. there's just nothing gained increasing carbide volume in bench chisels - (look away derek!)- V11 chisels are not remotely close to my chisels in a same task test and take twice as long to sharpen because their carbide volume reduces edge stability (want that in chisels) and adds to abrasion resistance significant (harder to sharpen, and no use for the abrasion resistance in chisels).

did I say already? I learned ultimately that the chisels need to be made like straight sided firmers, I'll chase hardness with a very fast upper part of the quench and then chasing a cold tail, and then grind the bevels onto the chisels after they're hardened and tempered - with a steel that doesn't have a lot of abrasion resistance, they can be ground cool without issue.

https://i.imgur.com/g4t36uU.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/rPmneB7.jpg

If you look closely at the second picture, you can see the lands that I ground freehand on a contact wheel. I've got one more trio of pictures for you since you may be the only person who will appreciate them.

By some luck, I actually have some grain pictures from 1084 - because I sent samples to be tested without snapping them just using the same overshot as 26c3 - they (1084) came in harder than expected and undertough.

so, I figured I'd heat several slivers at various overshots past nonmagnetic. that's where I learned that relatively minor overheating can cause a lot of problems. so, the trick is thermal cycling to shrink grain as much as possible and then only a very small overshot.

This is the control sample - heated to non-magnetic and snapped (good quality annealed stock):
https://i.imgur.com/SaYUxnq.jpg

this is 1084, same stuff, same session - held 15 seconds over temp. 15 seconds!!
https://i.imgur.com/ZBoW8ya.jpg

that's unbelievable grain growth for that short of a period of time. this next skill isn't necessary for this topic, but this is for your benefit and not for someone starting out (who should follow good O1 stock, quick temp overshot to ensure conversion and then reasonable quench). I have learned to cycle thermally very quickly in the forge and tighten the visual grain viewed under a small scope. so this picture is the same sample that had grown above after I think four thermal cycles - they are subcritical, but I think they're not truly subcritical - I undershoot nonmagnetic just barely and probably some phase change occurs, but I then quench to black and repeat. very quick.

https://i.imgur.com/U4UmJxN.jpg

if your thermal cycle brings grain back, you know you can always correct something that warps by annealing and starting over and there will be no real consequence.

This discussion is for relatively simple steels, of course. Once you get into coarse chromium carbides and especially vanadium, niobium,etc, the stuff all has to be put back into solution, which isn't something someone like me with a forge is going to do.

I can refine the voestalpine annealed grain in 26c3 a pretty visually significant amount, and the result of doing that is a chisel that behaves like very good japanese white 1 chisels.

(except the paring chisels that I made can be like japanese chisels with better toughness than white 1, resulting in a solid steel parer that can be malleted as hard as you want and spring a whole lot in paring use without any threat of breaking).

Originally Posted by eddie the eagle

........ (back to my question - does Paul WIlliams, Academy Saw Works, still make replacement HSS blades?)...

Nope Eddie, he announced he was retiring about a dozen years ago and has disappeared entirely from the scene.......

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Nope Eddie, he announced he was retiring about a dozen years ago and has disappeared entirely from the scene.......

Cheers,

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

I just read a day or two ago that peters now uses cryo for everything, and not saying this cynically, I think they probably found that it's harder on complex steels with a high soak temperature to do without it and not have unhappy customers.

so, something like M2 or 4V could be ordered at spec and done pretty safely. It's the water and oil hardening steels that are suddenly becoming risky (as I've done a lot of water hardening steels, I've kind of puzzled about how someone doing hundreds of things a day could stay focused - always to be assured that "oh, they do them perfectly and they offer straightening", finding out later on the knife boards that there's a lot of cracked stuff, missed targets and warped ...

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 makers 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 than m2, but not cheap.