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

Blade thickness doesn’t affect edge retention and thicker blades can affect the Bailey style adjuster. A very easy fix is to keep an eye out for a vintage Australian made Stanley or Titan HSS tipped blade that will simply drop in.

I know the Chief loves the old HSS blades, & so did I when I had a couple. They are/were excellent blades and are about the same thickness as originals, so you can be sure they'll fit old Stanleys & Records without problems. They are pretty easy to sharpen and hold an edge very well, so there's nothing not to like about them, except they're hard to come by now. They haven't been made for at least 35 years or more, but if you do stumble on a good one at a sensible price, grab it!

The majority of after-market blades are only a little bit thicker than the old Stanleys & Records (~0.10" [~2.5mm] vs ~0.08" of originals are typical figures given), but I've struck one brand (IBC) that was thicker than the rest, it was about 3.2mm, iirc.

Much has been written & said about possible problems with thicker blades. One is the cap-iron screw may not reach through the blade enough to get a good grip on the CI. In my experience, this is pretty rare & I have only struck it once or twice. In my case I had a few spares & soon found a screw that was long enough.

A second problem is the adjuster cam not engaging the cap-iron slot properly. This is highly variable, many will be quite ok, but occasionally, especially if the slot (&/or cam) is old & worn, you'll have trouble. The cam will only reach the edge of the slot & you'll find the thumb-wheel has to be spun a ridiculous amount to get the blade extended or retracted. This backlash (the number of "slack" turns between moving the blade one way or the other) may be excessive & annoy you. There are several possible solutions for a worn cam with excessive backlash. One is to simply ignore it, which is the 'solution' I favour. My nice old type 11 #4 has about 4 full turns of backlash due mostly to an over-large cam slot & it doesn't bother me in the slightest, but if you like to change the settings on your planes a lot you might be moved to addressing it - there was a recent thread on the topic.

Lastly, if the mouth is especially tight, you may not be able to move the frog back enough to allow a workable mouth gap. This one is pretty uncommon (at least in my experience), but reliable authority says it happens. Unless your plane is a rare & collectable example, I'd have no compunction about taking a file to the mouth & opening it a little if that were genuinely the case. Most old mouths are pretty beat-up & could do with a bit of tidying-up!

There may be some argument about this, but imo (all else being equal), the thicker after-market blades can improve the action of your typical old Bailey plane, the extra mass of the blade-assembly gives them a more solid "feel". How much difference it makes, I suspect depends on user perception & how good the plane's frog is (i.e., how flat it is in the couple of areas that really matter), so you may or may not notice much change, but I certainly remember noticing a big difference the first time I put a thicker blade in an old workhorse #5.

IMO, (and other mileages will vary! ), Hock blades are an excellent choice for your first foray into after-market blades. They are just pretty ordinary O1 steel, nothing flash, but tempered to a sweet spot that sharpens very easily and holds that edge very well. I've not (yet) had any problems fitting them to old Stanleys (my oldest being from the 1911-1918 era).

If you want extra tough, the (relatively) new PM-V11 blades from Veritas are slightly thinner than their A2 blades or Hock blades and should not be a problem to fit to any Bailey type plane. The trade-off is they are more expensive & harder to sharpen properly whatever Veritas claims, especially if you use oilstones - no problem if you use diamond plates and/or water stones. I have a couple and they are great, but I wouldn't fit them to all of my planes, I'm quite happy with the other less expensive blades when working with "sensible" woods that don't take the edge off your freshly-honed blade on the first swipe.

That's my take in a nutshell, but I suspect you'll get plenty of other opinions....

Cheers,

I agree with the Chief - the thickness of the blade has nothing to do with blade thickness - it is all about the hardness of the steel. It is a juggle between really hard steel that is very hard to sharpen and softer steels which sharpen easily but don't hold their edge for very long. I think a lot of us (including myself here) come up with our own ideas on how to improve things that have worked perfectly well for over 100 years. In my case, I found out that it was the user needed improving, not the tool.
Once I realised that you had to sharpen up (planes and chisels) a lot more than you think you do, and got myself a honing system that is quick and easy - it made a lot more sense. It also depends on the timber at hand. I have had some stuff that took the edge of my plane in 10 strokes. I now sharpen up several times a day if I am using the tools a lot.
As the Chief says, there is a lot more to modifying a plane to take a thick blade than it seems at first glance. If you are using standard Stanley or Record planes, you will probably find a thicker blade will raise the chip breaker to a height where the depth adjustor will not engage properly. Have a close look and you will see that the adjuster passes up through the slot in the blade and engages with the chip breaker, nit the blade itself.
One other thing worth checking - if you have old planes, check that the blade is not worn out. The whole iron is not hardened, just the first few cm. If it has been sharpened a lot (20 years of constant use), or subjected to over-zealous grinding, it can wear down into un-hardened steel. See this blog post ReHardening Your Plane Iron - Paul Sellers' Blog He is a bit long-winded at times, but talks a lot of common sense. He has a follow-up post about re-hardening the iron, but I think I would just get a new one.

I have a Clifton 2" blade, complete with their 2-piece cap iron and a custom made longer cap-iron screw, which is surplus to requirements if you're interested? This whole assembly drops straight into a Record #5 (and presumably some Stanleys too), and was a popular upgrade for the crappy Record blades. It's good steel, holds an edge well, and transformed my very first plane (modern Record, before I knew any better...) into a very good user.

Since gathering a collection of Veritas and LN planes the Record hasn't been used in years; I'm throwing the plane out in the latest shed cull, but the Clifton blade/cap iron assembly is worth keeping if someone wants it?

I can take pics if anyone is interested in buying this. In very good condition, and the blade is still pretty much full length.

What else are you "culling"?

I'll be listing some Veritas and LN planes that I don't use much in the Market Place next week . I only mentioned this Clifton blade here in case the OP might want it as an upgrade to a Record/Stanley plane.

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

... This whole assembly drops straight into a Record #5 (and presumably some Stanleys too)....

..And will fit most Bailey type #4s as well as both take a 2" blade....

Cheers,

PM sent re Clifton 2" blade assembly

Originally Posted by bruceward51

See this blog post ReHardening Your Plane Iron - Paul Sellers' Blog He is a bit long-winded at times, but talks a lot of common sense. He has a follow-up post about re-hardening the iron, but I think I would just get a new one.

Paul's instructions on hardening set you up for failure. ignore them. To do things properly wouldn't take any more effort, but he sets you up to make a warped, unevenly heated, underhard iron that won't be much good.

This is sort of paul's specialty - to pretend he's an authority on something he isn't and send people out thinking they're getting different results because they're not as good at it as he is.

Originally Posted by D.W.

Paul's instructions on hardening set you up for failure. ignore them.....

That's a bit harsh, perhaps, though I agree heating a wide blade in the open like that with a single torch is likely to be a bit hit & miss. It's hard to get the whole width evenly heated and keep it that way 'til you can quench it. And from my own experience with thin blades, there's certainly a high risk of warping if you don't dunk carefully in the quenching fluid.

However, it clearly worked for Mr. Sellars. I guess you could say it's a simple intro to heat-treating if you just want to see what happens when you get some tool steel red-hot & cool it quickly. If you use an old blade that is of little value to begin with you have nothing to lose, but if you want to get serious about heat-treating, some sort of small furnace sure makes a big difference (more even heating much more quickly) & is likely to give you much more consistent results....

Cheers,

Well said. No harm in dabbling with a scrap blade before investing in expensive equipment to do it properly.

Im sure we've all been watching "Forged In Fire" on TV recently, seeing even "expert" bladesmiths stuff things up in spectacular ways despite having access to all the required toys. My wife and I have got very good at commenting on their quenching based on colour (too hot, too cold) and predicting the outcome.

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

Well said. No harm in dabbling with a scrap blade before investing in expensive equipment to do it properly.

Im sure we've all been watching "Forged In Fire" on TV recently, seeing even "expert" bladesmiths stuff things up in spectacular ways despite having access to all the required toys. My wife and I have got very good at commenting on their quenching based on colour (too hot, too cold) and predicting the outcome.

Actually, if you watch the last or next to last episode of season one, Murray carter is on it with another truly talented smith, and they put on a clinic. the commentators at the table question a few of the things murray does, but they look ideal to me - the guys hosting just don't have the right kind of experience to judge what murray does, and have probably done most of their bladesmithing with a furnace.

there are technical things that just won't work out with what paul is showing, and I'd forgotten earlier, but someone sent me a blog post of this or something where paul insults the tool company tradesmen and talks about how the irons end up not done that well because of low pay or low resources. These were factory done blades sold to professional users. I've literally never seen a stanley blade that wasn't properly heat treated.

I didn't see FIF until showing someone chisels here and they mentioned it. it's clear that in later seasons, they intentionally went with less competent smiths because the clinic that murray put on is interesting only to people who know what they're looking at. Otherwise, it's boring, and the work is too high quality for someone to imagine they could do it.

As far as color temperature - it's very uncommon for someone to soak a knife on there at a temperature that isn't too high. Some of that could be lens related on TV, but the quality of the heat treating is so bad that I think that's what they want - something that you can differentiate.

Equipment-wise, there's little more that you need vs. what paul uses, but he doesn't have a clue why the way he's using it is so dumb, and I don't think he really cares - it's not his objective to provide good information, but rather to convince people that he is or that he's "demystifying" things and then curate the comments on his pages (or probably an hourly employee or two does that) to make sure nothing outs his gimmick. I've bought more expensive equipment, but I do a better job heat treating literally with two small torches of the TS berzomatic type. The bigger forges and then the furnaces are intended more for a dull soak, but trouble happens when that's not done accurately.

Specifically, I'll give you a couple of things that will go wrong with what paul does:
1) the iron is heated unevenly - it will probably warp (you should have an even color temperature tapering off only in length)
2) there isn't enough heat in a mapp torch to get an iron evenly heated end to end - there probably would be enough even with something like a used soup can to house the heat. It would've been easy to add that. that will lead to incomplete conversion and perhaps detrimental grain growth in overheated areas. The result will be underhardening (again, it will leave you short of just buying a low cost iron)
3) any old oil is OK for O1 steel or any types that need to transition slower. it won't be fast enough to finish the job (couple with the underheating) on something like a tungsten water-hardening steel from the early 1900s
4) the bevel is left on the iron. If the iron is fully heated properly, it will warp. the more plain the steel, the worse the warp. The result could be an iron that's not usable at all pretty easily
5) there's no shielding for the iron in the toaster oven. toaster ovens don't make a nice linear heat, they cycle on and off. Edges and bevels need to be shielded or they'll temper much higher than the rest of the tool

There's no chance of matching the quality of heat treat that was done at the factory. The materials needed to do the job are almost there. It could be explained in a way to do it properly and people would have success doing it (save water hardening steels encountered accidentally - they're going to be a little soft no matter what and the conversion will leave behind an unstable component that's not converted).

the guy bothers me because sometimes I think he wades in on stuff and toots his horn and bags some trade who did an excellent job - that he couldn't match...I think he does that on purpose. but there's some component of him that is not genuine no matter what. I don't believe that. In this case, he's pitching the something for nothing gimmick, claiming that the job was done well, and people who listen to him will get bad results and think it was them or perhaps run around saying "well, the quality of the iron was probably bad" (it wasn't).

Originally Posted by IanW

That's a bit harsh, perhaps, though I agree heating a wide blade in the open like that with a single torch is likely to be a bit hit & miss. It's hard to get the whole width evenly heated and keep it that way 'til you can quench it. And from my own experience with thin blades, there's certainly a high risk of warping if you don't dunk carefully in the quenching fluid.

However, it clearly worked for Mr. Sellars. I guess you could say it's a simple intro to heat-treating if you just want to see what happens when you get some tool steel red-hot & cool it quickly. If you use an old blade that is of little value to begin with you have nothing to lose, but if you want to get serious about heat-treating, some sort of small furnace sure makes a big difference (more even heating much more quickly) & is likely to give you much more consistent results....

Cheers,

I'm not sure that he'd get most of the iron hot enough and transitioned fast enough for warping to be a problem. but that will result in a failed iron that's relatively flat. According to him, it worked, I think if you got the iron in hand and used it, you'd find out that it didn't.

it's not difficult to do heat treating by eye and match book for a lot of steels. you only really need a furnace when you get into steels with vanadium or niobium in them, or when you're looking to temper in the 1000F plus range.

I think furnaces are actually more difficult to use. I know for sure I've matched or bettered book on a few steels (because I had them heat treated - it actually caused some controversy that i did because I did it with successive heats instead of a soak, and I'm pretty sure my grain is finer). A fine job could've been done with about the same equipment paul is using, but I don't think he knows enough to do it.

The first couple of things i heat treated, I got advice from Raney Nelson and watched a larry williams video. It was pretty much "do this with O1". larry overheats it a little bit but probably not long enough for it to be a problem. raney gave me a pretty narrow range to work in and then said "but you will never be able to make an iron that's an equal of a commercial iron" (that also turns out to be false). if I'd been given advice that failed, I don't know if I'd have stuck with it. Here's the important part - to do it properly (which isn't that difficult) makes the difference between something you'll use and something you'll put aside. there's already enough literature online telling people that they'll fail at it and it should just be hired out, or that they need to buy something expensive (only if you need to heat treat something feet long like a sword).

I'm assuming you mean an electric furnace when you mention furnace, vs. a forge.

Originally Posted by D.W.

....I'm assuming you mean an electric furnace when you mention furnace, vs. a forge.

No, I meant a simple "coffee can" furnace, or forge or whatever you like to call them:

5 working.jpg

As you say, it doesn't need much to contain the heat for small objects, but a bit of insulation boosts things considerably. For my first attempt I used straight wood ash, which I made into a mush & tamped around a bottle in the can. It was ok as a refractory material but started to flake a lot after a few uses, so I re-packed with ~50/50 ash & plaster of Paris, which has proven a lot more durable.

As with everything, there is "perfection" & there's "good enough for purpose". For an amateur mucking about with cheaper steels there's little to lose & much fun to be had - you should get a decent temper at least one time out of 3 if you use "easy" steels like O1 & the like. The good thing about heat-treating is you can always try again if you're not happy with the result. I've had great success with 1084 steel sold by a knife-making supplies place here in Oz. It was billed as the steel to try if you know nothing, & that described me very well so I went for it. So far, I've made quite a few small plane blades that have proven excellent in use - they are perhaps the easiest of all 'cos you only want the business end hardened. To save hard grinding, I've been applying about 1/2 the bevel while still soft - one blade warped a little, but I'm pretty sure it was due to a bad first plunge, most have remained as flat as they started.

I would never guarantee success every time, but both 1084 and O1 have given me good results, which is pretty satisfying for someone with as little experience as I have. I was dubious about how well such a "simple" steel would hold up in the fairly demanding role of being a plane blade, but they seem to be wearing just as well as some of my good commercial blades.

I will stress that I have only attempted smaller blades so far. I have a large O1 blade I cut out yonks ago that I have not attempted to treat. At 5mm thick & 65mm wide, it's far too large for my limited gear, & I suspect far more likely to warp or end up unevenly hardened even if I managed to get it hot enough, so I'm going to find someone who knows what they are doing to finish that one off ...

Cheers,