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newest plane iron metalurgy

2K views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  WillemJM 
#1 ·
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#2 ·
The steel does make a difference.

In a recent thread on another topic, someone mentioned that the steel for a certain establishment referred to as "HF" was as good as the high quality steels.

I purchased my first hand plane in the late 90's. It was a Record #5, before they were sold and shut down, sad to say.

I replaced the Record blade with a Ron Hock blade. Same plane, just the blade change. Big difference.

I have to say the steel can and does make a difference.

I have several Veritas planes, and I love them all. I feel the Ron Hock blade performs the best - as a blade.

Each plane is designed for certain tasks. I happen to like my Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane best for what it is designed to do - clean out dado's and tenon's. I would replace its blade if Ron Hock made a replacement.

If Lee Valley has a better steel, I will be taking a hard look. I love my planes, and if I can get better performance, this can be very worthwhile.
 
#3 ·
I had seen that on a forum of our Aussie brothers a few weeks back and I'm not quite sure what to think about it. It sounds to me as though it's compressed powders metals much like some used in the super-secret techy biz... I'm just not sure how I feel about that.

There are far better minds than mine working on it though so it will certainly be interesting to see none the less!
 
#8 ·
If they can keep the price down, that will work for them. The sharpest steel is pure iron, but it has no durability, so mostly Martensitic steel is used with dilution of carbon wich forms a matrix tougher and harder than pure iron. The finer and more evenly the matrix is distributed, the better the quality of the blade would be, so they should be successful.

Personaly, it takes me less that a couple of minutes to take out my iron, sharpen it and set-up. But for those wanting the best this will be attractive.
 
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