# laminated irons (again)



## nabs (2 Oct 2017)

A while ago I started to investigate the economics of laminating (aka steeling) plane irons in the 19th C - I know, I live on the edge (both literally and figuratively!).

This of course turned out to be something of a fool's errand given all the factors involved, but I am persisting anyhow. 


I have managed to track down contemporary material and wage cost estimates for 1850s and the potential material savings from making a relatively large item like a thick laminated plane blade from a cast steel bit and a wrought iron backing - compared to a solid steel item - are surprisingly large. If my sums are right it is certainly enough to fund signifcant extra effort in the lamination process, given the comparitavely low cost of labour.

However, one of the many things I know nothing about is the difference in the actual manufacturing process of a solid steel edge tool vs laminated. I have got a vague understanding of the extra steps from this Peter Ross video:
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365386383

.. but I am left with millions of other questions. Do any of you have any experience/insight/opinions on the below?

how many plane irons could a forger be expected to do in a 10 hour day? What kind of reduction in productivity would happen if they were laminating ?

Are there any compensating savings for lamination? for instance, one thing I read is that the effort of creating the initial basic shape of the tool from a bar of wrought iron might be much less than using solid steel (does the steel require more heats, is it harder to shape?)

what about impact on grinding?

what about rejects - is one approach more error prone than the other?

etc!


----------



## Cheshirechappie (2 Oct 2017)

Not sure I can give full, definitive answers - but one or two points, anyway.

Yes, high carbon steel is harder to forge than wrought iron. Indeed, straight high carbon steel is quite difficult to forge, for two reasons. First, because it needs more urge from the hammer, and second because it's quite temperature sensitive. It doesn't like being overheated, and it's liable to crack if worked at too low a temperature ('hot short' in the jargon), so the range of heats between which it can be worked is much tighter than wrought iron (or later on, mild steel). That means more skill on the smith's part.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that when laminating, the blanks were roughed out, then the forge weld made, then the laminated piece finish forged to shape. I do know that most of the grinding was done BEFORE hardening and tempering - it's much easier to grind unhardened steel! Any grinding after hardening was just to clean off scale, and apply the primary bevel.

Don't really know whether that helps much, but I offer it for what it's worth, anyway!


----------



## D_W (2 Oct 2017)

i have no insight, but the following considerations come to mind:

* the steel is water hardening steel (in the old ones - not sure how easy it would be to laminate any modern steels to wrought). It's very difficult to harden without serious warpage by itself. I'm guessing that laminating it to something makes its behavior in the quench a lot better

* the users who were using planes in a shop with no powered grinder would much appreciate the thinness of the lamination vs. the thickness of an all steel iron. Later all-steel irons are thinner, even though it would cost little to make them the same thickness as the 3/16" business-end laminated irons that were relatively common. There is a loss with the loss of thickness, and that is in the amount of taper. The more taper, the better the double iron stays seated on a certain part of the iron (the modern steel irons - not modern now, but like the stamped irons that are all steel from sheffield but with some taper - they have some trouble keeping the cap iron affixed to the same spot when adjusting the iron. On a try plane, this is important. (edit: I think I probably didn't make the point well here. In order to compensate for the lack of lamination, later irons are thinner. Thicker would be really hard to grind, but in losing the thickness, you lose some of the functionality of the iron. Something a professional would've noticed. I'm not even a professional, and between my two planes - one I didn't make as nicely early on had a very nice NOS butcher double iron set. The later one is greaves or something of the sort, but very thin and the taper isn't as good and the hollow isn't there on the back. It's perfectly functional, but not as good to use. The lack of ability of the cap iron to stay set well without fiddling (scuffing the bottom of the screw, waxing the top of the cap iron and the back of the wedge) makes the plane less nice to use when you're dimensioning lumber and just want to keep moving). 

* the lack of steel above the cutting bit means that you get to slot wrought iron instead of steel - I think that's probably a tooling gain, especially pre high speed steel.

I haven't looked that closely at all of my irons, but the later cheaper all steel irons have often lost the hollow that is cut into the back of the iron itself. That is a nuance that makes an iron bed well even if the bed of a plane has a little bit of high centering from wear. 

Savings-wise, I think there is a modern issue here, and that is that relatively unskilled labor can take bar stock and run a machine to cut it into irons. To make a proper vintage laminated iron and cap iron, unskilled labor wouldn't do. Manufacturing 175 years ago would've been filled with skilled laborers, but pretty much everything done between then and now has been done to lower the skill level of the labor so that the costs can be driven down (furniture, tools, etc).

edit: after comment from above - to keep making laminated irons is probably not a big deal. You have the process, equipment and information (knowledge) in place. Starting it from scratch would be another thing entirely. It would take someone who wanted to do it and then the reality is there's probably no market for laminated irons because ...well, who is going to pay extra?

A functional compromise might be something like getting japanese rikizai (prelaminated material, which is also expensive - but it's used in a lot of japanese irons that are just cut) in white steel #2, and making an iron from that. George Wilson told me that the blacksmiths had a lot of trouble forge welding higher carbon steel to wrought, so they settled on going back to 1070, which makes for an iron that's not durable (this is at williamsburg, and involves Peter who you showed). Maybe some of that has to do with the quality of the wrought - could've been recycled architectural stuff with a lot of silica in it, but I don't know. I pushed George to give me an answer - he has a lot of respect for Peter's skills - one of the few people George refers to as a "master" of his craft, and said "if they can't laminate 1095 there, why can some of the japanese smiths laminate 1.35% carbon steel at low temperature?". He laughed and said "maybe they're not as good as the japanese smiths" 

There's no discontinuity in the japanese lineage, though - so they're not left figuring out how to do things like the guys at williamsburg are. Point being, if Peter Ross has trouble forge welding high carbon steel to wrought, you might have trouble, too (or whoever you hire). The quality of the forge weld needs to be pretty much perfect - if there are voids (which are common), then the iron is to be junked or sold as a second.


----------



## nabs (2 Oct 2017)

thanks both - I found two more videos that shed a little more light on the difficulties with welding cast steel you outlined. 

Almost in passing the blacksmiths mention three different potential problems:
1. the metal can split when worked too cold (mentioned specifically in relation to wrought iron, where the grain like structure creates weak points)
2. where the metal 'burns' (oxidizes) because it is too hot 
3. where the metal crumbles because it is too hot (it is 'hot short')

on further digging I found out the 3rd issue is a result of impurities (e.g sulphur) forming compounds that melt at a lower temperature than the rest of the steel and in doing so cause the grain structure to fail.

2 or 3 are apparently challenging when doing the weld as the temperature needed before the two metal will fuse is close to the point where cast steel can overheat.

The video also mentions Cheshire's point that cast steel needs more effort to hammer into shapes than wrought iron, and also that (despite this) it is more work overall to create a laminated tool than a solid steel one .

Peter Ross says in the same video that the cost savings from the reduced need for steel justified the extra work in the 18th century (admittedly he is talking about axes, rather than plane irons), and I am pretty sure this was also true in the 19th (and per DW it is a happy coincidence that this made sharpening easier for the thick irons typically used in wooden bench planes at that time).

I would still love to learn more about the process though!
[youtube]TRnAzsyPZ8s[/youtube]
[youtube]1SLGJT6nE_w[/youtube]


----------



## D_W (2 Oct 2017)

#2 in your list is why the japanese old-school blacksmiths who worked at night were so fanatical about temperature control (it's much easier to judge the temperature of the metal at night). They are pushing the limits of trying to laminate something really difficult to laminate, but do it at the lowest possible temperature at the same time to preserve absolute edge taking and holding. And, I'm sure they are doing it with power hammers, which peter probably didn't have the luxury of doing. Certainly the English manufacturers would've used power hammers - even if they were the type with a metal bit strapped to a long beam, and driven by water power. 

Anyway, I've used a couple of irons from those traditional japanese smiths, but sold them (mosaku was one that I had two irons from). They are fantastically hard, but I think it's sort of a display of capability that isn't practical to use. The irons are nicer when they're a click or two off of that level in hardness, and old japanese texts talk about putting something in the sun (presumably on a black object) to alleviate some of that. Also, the irons that are actually hardened by judgement by traditional smiths will vary a little bit. Sometimes some of them are almost untempered, and they fracture if sharpened with harsh abrasives, but can't be cut by anything natural that isn't extremely friable - that's slow going, and the balance of sharpening for wear never comes out in favor of that. If you get one that's a bit soft, then you have a hand-done iron that's in the same class as something made cheaply by Iyoroi, so what's the point? Mine have been overhard if anything (including one of my chisels made by an old school maker - it needs to be tempered, but I'm not sure if it's something that should be done because the maker's popularity stems from hardness and the maker is from tokyo and dead 15 years now). 

That said, I think the technical difficulty in doing this well is harder than we'd know. If Peter and the smiths at CW struggled to do it, perhaps it can be done with higher heat but at the cost of burning the steel bit and then there's really no advantage - you just end up with a less durable laminated iron. The high quality bitted irons, even from England (talking about the old ones, not the ones made in the last 125 years) can be quite hard. I'm sure that was on purpose - and it takes doing the process right. 

One other advantage to bitted irons for the hand sharpener (and it's an artifact now that we have strong cutting synthetic abrasives), the wrought iron in a bitted chisel or plane iron will literally pull particles from most stones - especially slates, but even washitas. I can sharpen a japanese chisel on a washita indefinitely even though the hardened edge would grade the washita and cause it to stop cutting. The wrought keeps it fresh, and will even wake up one that you've intentionally allowed to become dead. 

At any rate, to make something that's very good, and not just another record iron (record irons are fine, and it's nice that they're laminated, but they're no better and maybe not quite as good as stanley's non-laminated sweetheart and prior irons - definitely not as good as stanley's old V logo laminated irons)....well, to make something really good, I think that's probably going to be hard.

It also would deserve someone who understands what shape the iron should be, size and proportion, or it will be a piece of art that doesn't function as well as an iron that I can order directly from the UK out of old stock for $35.

What are your thoughts in general - irons for wooden planes, or irons for stanley/record/lie nielsen planes? If it's the latter, tsunesaburo has a decent rikizai product in blue steel that's not too expensive. It's actually much better than decent, I guess - it's blue steel rikizai and it's sort of like a super vintage iron, but you have to have something that can sharpen 65 hardness steel. If you do, it may be the best smoothing iron that you can buy now.


----------



## nabs (2 Oct 2017)

given my hamfisted woodworking skills I am more than satisfied with whatever irons came with my planes  - I am just curious about the historical side of things. I did not know that wrought iron helps to keep natural stones fresh - another interesting feature!

I am sure you are right about power hammers, particularly by the 1850s (which is the period I am looking at) which would have mitigated any potential delays forging a solid steel tool - this is one of the reasons that I am pretty confident the reason for laminating the tools was just that it was cheaper overall to minimize the use of cast steel, despite any extra work needed (and therefore we can conclude the blacksmiths were skilled enough to minimize the number of rejects for it still to make economic sense).

I also remember reading somewhere that the ability to weld cast-steel to wrought iron was not perfected until the end of the 18th century (can't remember where I saw this though!) - I wonder if it had something to do with new techniques in making cast steel that reduced the number of impurities, thus reducing the #3 issues?

out of interest, why is it important to the Japanese that the bits welded on are very hard (or at least harder than was needed in the West)?


----------



## MusicMan (2 Oct 2017)

There is an important advantage to laminated steel that has not yet been mentioned, that is in controlling the overall properties of the blade. You need a hard steel to take and keep a sharp edge. But these are brittle, hard to shape overall and prone to cracking, either from mechanical damage or from quenching stresses. Wrought iron (largely pure iron plus slag inclusions) is ductile but does not take an edge. Many items have been made, by Japanese smiths and others, that are designed to combine these properties, by having a hard edge and a ductile backing.

This has been done in many ways. I had the pleasure as a young metallurgy student of working with Cyril Smith, the Manhattan Project metallurgist and by that time a great guru, on a samurai sword, in which we examined cross sections in a metallurgical microscope. It turned out that for the final heat treatment the bulk of the sword was encased in clay, leaving the edge bare. Heating to red heat and then quenching gave an extremely hard edge but left a strong but ductile backing and interior. Thus the sword would fulfil its function of slicing an enemy or a slave from shoulder to waist without breaking. (I am told, but cannot verify this, that there was a verb in Japanese that meant "to test one's sword out on a passer by"). Case hardening is another example, where carbon is diffused in to the outside of a wrought iron (or low carbon steel) object to provide a pardonable skin after heating and quenching. Induction hardening works in a similar way. In this case the whole steel is hardenable, but only the surface is heated by induction, to be quenched and hardened. And solid-state weld lamination as described above is the obvious method when one only needs on edge of the blade to be hard, as in a plane. 

I thus very much doubt that laminated steels were introduced for purely economic reasons; they may have been economical but they were also the best material for the task.


----------



## D_W (2 Oct 2017)

We can have the hardness in japanese irons, etc, though, in relatively simple steels. They would be brittle, but it probably wouldn't be a deal stopper in planes with a cap iron (or even without). What would be, though, is that 65 hardness would not work with any natural stones (my japanese chisels claim 64, but they are probably closer to 61), not even japanese natural stones. 

This kind of hardness was available 150 years ago, too, with file steel. 

I'd guess (I'd love to see someone with a versitron test this theory) that most of the laminated stuff that's on the hard side is probably 60 or a click higher. Anything above that is defective. The first good unused ward iron that I bought was probably 65 hardness. I quickly figured out why it was unused - nobody could flatten it or hone it, and it and the plane it was in got set aside. I've had similar experience with "deluxe" irons offered in american planes in the late 1800s. They weren't common, but once in a while, you'd find a plane with a 1/4" thick iron (at the business end) and they are usually little used - even when laminated, they're a pain. 

At any rate, I think there's a lot of documentation about cost being the early driver. There are cases where laminated isn't better (mortise chisels, timberframing chisels, etc) and where differential hardening of solid steel yields a better tool. Delamination of chisels is common right at the line where the bit is welded to the rest of the chisel (unfortunately, I managed to do the same thing to an old framing chisel, and George Wilson, the toolmaker at CW mentioned that it occurred there). Good cast steel in the late 1800s (was it even cast steel at that point? I'm not much of an historian) was expensive enough to make it worth the trouble to laminate all by itself, and not all laminated irons take advantage of the dampening of the cast. 

in reality, many of the vintage japanese irons aren't really that hard, and when they are, they often show up (I can get them cheaply on japanese proxy auctions) little used because traditional sharpening would've been entirely by hand. The irons around 61 (japanese) don't last quite as long in use, but they're many times easier to sharpen and preferable for anything aside from the absurd japanese tradition of zero sharpening on the jobsite. 

All that said, there's a photographic negative of the opinion on here on some other forums, that modern steel is far superior to vintage steel. I will get some vintage steel under the microscope (I've got stuff back to the early 1800s). It'll be interesting to see if the voids that show up on my AI chisels (made of modern O1) show up on vintage steel. I'm going to guess that they don't, because a tradesman would've snapped steel and examined the structure to grade steel for sale. I'll bet they would've seen the small voids and rejected it - something that's not being done with modern process.


----------



## D_W (2 Oct 2017)

nabs":2stonfrr said:


> out of interest, why is it important to the Japanese that the bits welded on are very hard (or at least harder than was needed in the West)?



Apparently, they have a tradition of not sharpening on the job site. They also have a fascination with planed wood for interior architectural work and want a polish off the plane (the harder a steel is, the finer the edge it will take off of natural stones until it gets to the point that it's so hard that natural stones will only burnish it) because interior work is often left unfinished. 

So, it doesn't really translate to usefulness in the context of western woodworking. 

They also limit the clearance in their plane to chase a low effective planing angle, and lower clearance means more sensitivity to wear rate. Hardness breeds wear resistance (when the alloy is held constant) as long as there's enough toughness.


----------



## nabs (3 Oct 2017)

thanks both - it is interesting to know that one of the properties of the laminated iron is that you can make the steel harder than otherwise. But given DWs point about the difficulties sharpening even thin bits of very hard steel it makes me wonder if that was really a motivation (well at least in edge tools - not sure about swords!). 

Also, a metallurgical question for Musicman: is it a general truth about metal that as it gets harder it also gets more brittle and prone to chipping/breaking, or can this be avoided by manufacturing techniques? The reason I ask is that if brittleness was an unavoidable consequence of hardness, then this would be another important factor for the 19th C makers to consider, since chisels/plane blades will get whacked into hard knots etc now and then, and it is a pain having to grind out a chip (much more of a pain than touching up a worn edge!).


----------



## custard (3 Oct 2017)

D_W":15gqg808 said:


> most of the laminated stuff that's on the hard side is probably 60 or a click higher. Anything above that is defective. The first good unused ward iron that I bought was probably 65 hardness. I quickly figured out why it was unused - nobody could flatten it or hone it, and it and the plane it was in got set aside.



About ten or fifteen years ago Karl Holtey offered the option of a super hard steel for his plane irons (I can't recall the steel's name but I think it might have been called S53?). I've got a couple, including one he made for regular 2 3/8" Stanley or Record bodies. They're just too hard to be practical, I can only sharpen them with diamond stones, diamond paste, and far too much hard work. Karl dropped them after a few years so I guess I wasn't the only one that concluded you can have too much of a good thing!

It's similar with other woodworking tools, there are some super hard card scrapers currently on the market. With a carbide burnisher they can be made to work, but it's an impractical amount of work to polish and flatten them off and I can only get them to deliver a very aggressive hook; fine for stripping off varnish, but a non starter for flushing down inlay work. 

It's part of a bigger theme I see played out regularly in woodworking and wood finishing. It should be a harmonious system where every tool, ingredient, and technique are mutually compatible; but when one element of that system starts to step outside the boundaries then the whole thing falls over. A traditional apprenticeship and formal training might be too prescriptive for modern tastes, but at least they deliver a complete solution that's proven to work. The internet age seems to promote the kind of cherry picking that results in dysfunctional combinations and a culture of over hyped "ultimate" solutions. 

Just my 2p's worth!


----------



## MusicMan (3 Oct 2017)

nabs":1b4uin34 said:


> Also, a metallurgical question for Musicman: is it a general truth about metal that as it gets harder it also gets more brittle and prone to chipping/breaking, or can this be avoided by manufacturing techniques? The reason I ask is that if brittleness was an unavoidable consequence of hardness, then this would be another important factor for the 19th C makers to consider, since chisels/plane blades will get whacked into hard knots etc now and then, and it is a pain having to grind out a chip (much more of a pain than touching up a worn edge!).



Yes, in general it is, since brittleness is avoided by allowing some plasticity (ductility), which blunts the cracks and stops them spreading catastrophically in fracture. Alloy development is used to increase the hardness at which this happens, and manufacturing process, mainly heat treatment, is used to elect the blend of hardness and ductility (toughness) for a particular application. And as Custard says, the ability to sharpen is crucial for woodworkers. It isn't crucial for metal processing hence the use of tungsten carbide tools, which can remove massive amounts of metal in one cut. A pure carbide chisel would be essentially unsharpenable in the wood shop; and even when new would not be quite as sharp as steel because of its grain size.

I still think that laminated steel (thin hard on top of thick ductile) is the perfect structure for most wood tools, and I'd be very surprised if the historical makers did not know that. I've studied historical metallurgy a bit, and one thing i learned is never to underestimate the skills of historical craftsmen and the practical knowledge that is built up by tradition.

Keith


----------



## nabs (3 Oct 2017)

thanks, that is a good explanation. since the benefits for the manufacturer (costs; more latitude on hardening) coincide with benefits to the end user (good balance of edge retention vs ease of sharpening; price) there probably is no single answer to the question 'why were tools laminated' (or rather the answer is 'all of the above'!)

re the last point, I realized there was a huge amount of practical experience with steel tool making in places like Sheffield by the 1850s, but having looked at some of the contemporary literature I was surprised to find out how much discussion there was on chemistry and metallurgy too - will post some links later!


----------



## D_W (3 Oct 2017)

MusicMan":3vwncmou said:


> I still think that laminated steel (thin hard on top of thick ductile) is the perfect structure for most wood tools, and I'd be very surprised if the historical makers did not know that. I've studied historical metallurgy a bit, and one thing i learned is never to underestimate the skills of historical craftsmen and the practical knowledge that is built up by tradition.
> 
> Keith



A specialist made the steel, a specialist examined it and the customers were professionals who couldn't afford to waste money. That adds up to the product being excellent in general, despite some modern notions that 100% uniformity is better than how absolutely good something is. 

The spec sheet notion that higher hardness means better steel is another modern thing. I don't like dead soft irons, but I've got two that you could almost file, and as long as you don't use them in a smoother (I've got plenty of use for non-smoothers), they are really wonderful. If you used them in commodity work, they could do smoothing fine, too, they just can't hold the tissue paper shaving type edge that everyone wants to use now between their 9 minute sharpening sessions. 

The only thing I can really think of that came very late in terms of the improvement cycle was perfecting straight razors. that didn't occur until about 1900, but that had more to do with hardening and tempering and developing cutler's tools to work with something so thin and hard.


----------



## nabs (13 Oct 2017)

so....it seems likely that until the middle of the 19th century (at least) laminated irons were the preferred option, being both cost effective for the manufacturers and being easier to sharpen for the tradesmen who used them. 

We also know they eventually fell out of fashion in the 20th century, at least in the UK and the US (perhaps because of the popularity of thin stanley irons, where the sharpening time-savings are minimized, and perhaps because the cost equation changed so that laminating became more costly than creating solid cast steel irons).

What happened in between I hear you cry?! Well taking a look at Howarths 1884 catalogue we see that they offer both _Cast Steel_ chisels and _Common_ chisels. 

Helpfully the catalogue explicitly says that the former are solid cast steel and the latter are _steel lined_. The section on plane irons does not explicitly say solid vs lined, but does keep the terminology of _Cast Steel_ and _Common_ so I think it is safe to assume it is the same distinction.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the Cast Steel versions are the more expensive (by about 15-20%), but my question is why are they there at all? If laminated blades were superior from an end-user perspective, why offer a more expensive/worse option alongside it?

answers on a postcard please!

Also, I notice on the catalogue pictures that the abbreviations C S (cast steel) and G S are used. Presumably GS relates to the 'common' variety, but what does it stand for?








More thrills await us when we peer into the Mathieson catalogue from about the same time. Stay tuned, and please answer my questions above!


----------



## custard (13 Oct 2017)

nabs":1ef21yqw said:


> so....it seems likely that until the middle of the 19th century (at least) laminated irons were the preferred option.
> 
> We also know they eventually fell out of fashion in the 20th century...perhaps because of the popularity of thin stanley irons



Record and Stanley used to have thin laminated plane irons, jolly nice they are too. I'm no tool historian so I don't know when they began or when they ended, I guess it was pre war. There's also some suggestion that they were subbed out and possibly all plane manufacturers got their laminated irons from the same source?

record-stanley-laminated-plane-irons-t106851.html


----------



## nabs (13 Oct 2017)

yes that is another intriguing bit of info + the fact that Stanley did produce adverts justifying their decision. I wonder if they were actually a re-introduction after solid cast steel became dominant? Although then you have to ask why Record would have done the same without any fanfare (no mention of them in planecraft!) - unless of course they were simply copying Stanley (as they did with every other aspect of the bench planes ). Most mysterious!


----------



## custard (13 Oct 2017)

nabs":24grcrc8 said:


> yes that is another intriguing bit of info + the fact that Stanley did produce adverts justifying their decision. I wonder if they were actually a re-introduction after solid cast steel became dominant? Although then you have to ask why Record would have done the same without any fanfare (no mention of them in planecraft!) - unless of course they were simply copying Stanley (as they did with every other aspect of the bench planes ). Most mysterious!



Planecraft was first published in 1934. It's possible laminated irons were out by then. I pretty sure they were gone by 1939. If you look at the designs of the tops of the irons it's a bit suspicious they all move in lockstep across all the plane manufacturers, my guess was they were made by a third party. I'm speculating here, not only am I not a tool historian I'm also neither an engineer nor a metallurgist! But surely plane makers are primarily foundry operations, so wouldn't it just be common sense for them to buy in irons from one or more specialist makers?


----------



## AndyT (13 Oct 2017)

nabs":1982d451 said:


> Also, I notice on the catalogue pictures that the abbreviations C S (cast steel) and G S are used. Presumably GS relates to the 'common' variety, but what does it stand for?



Only an unconfirmed guess, but do you think it could have been "German Steel"?


----------



## nabs (13 Oct 2017)

in my reading I have been looking at some of the contemporary explanations of steel manufacture and based on this account ( from the 1850s) I do not think German Steel would be chosen for edge tools, particularly when you keep encountering the continued insistence in these accounts (mainly from the sheffield makers) that cast steel is the best for tools (and the apparent acceptance of this view by all the other countries they exported to).

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bOJ ... 22&f=false


----------



## AndyT (13 Oct 2017)

I've switched from phone to PC so I can look at the rest of the Haworth catalogue, and judging from the other references on the plane irons page, I think German Steel is right, though I agree it's odd to see it offered so late.

I couldn't remember if it was a meaningful term or a bit of advertising fluff like you get on a saw blade ("Best London" etc) so I have been looking in "Sheffield Steel" by KC Barraclough. (I'm pretty sure this was recommended by CheshireChappie. Nabs, if you've not got a copy, get one; I'm sure you'd enjoy it.)

In there, German Steel is described as an early version of steel, developed in Germany in the seventeenth century, in which a small amount of cast iron is added to molten wrought iron and the mixture held at high temperature. This gives a higher carbon content to the steel. Same as referred to in your RSA Journal.

So, in the 1884 Howarth catalogue, was it a very old fashioned option, or an old name applied to a more modern product? According to Barraclough, Cast Steel (Crucible Steel) took off at the beginning of the nineteenth century and by 1873 100,000 tons a year were being made in the Sheffield region, a tenfold increase in just over thirty years.

It's probably worth adding at this point that production of crucible steel continued, with its expensive, labour and fuel intensive batch production, long after the Bessemer and Open Hearth methods were developed, right up to the middle of the twentieth century. Was it just innate conservatism of the craftsmen who bought the tools, or was it really the ideal compromise between hardness, durability, sharpenability and consistency?


----------



## AndyT (13 Oct 2017)

Standing on the shoulders of convenient giants, I've had a look at what Simon Barley has to say about grades of steel good enough for sawmaking. Summing up a long detailed section, he writes that by about 1913 it was accepted that the best steel for saws was crucible cast steel; the next level down was German Steel and the next level below that was often described as "Common" and would have been an inferior blister or cementation steel. (BSSM page 7.)


----------



## nabs (13 Oct 2017)

it is a fascinating area Andy - much of the 'journal of the arts' discussion on steel relate to various attempts to come up with cheaper alternatives to the eye-wateringly expensive cast steel, and nowhere in the discussion does the idea that cast-steel was signficantly better go seriously challenged. Even Sanderson, qouted above, who had patented inventions to improve the quality of steel converted directly from bar iron was convinced cast was far superior. I will be putting an order in for the steel book!

Interesting point about cementation steel. I read somewherre (the Seaton book?) that it was traditionally the choice for laminated irons before 1830s because until then it was very unreliable to weld cast steel to wrought iron - unfortunately it did not say what was discovered in the 1830s that solved the problem...


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

thanks for the correction about the meaning of 'German Steel' Andy - every time I think I have made a bit of progress in understanding this topic I immediately find something to undo my new found confidence! 

You are quite right about the clue being in the usage of the term related to saws: since 'German Steel' was commonly stamped on saws and the same GS abbreviation is used in the Howards catalogue saw section it is surely the case that this is what GS stands for wrt to plane irons and chisels too. 

The only apparent anomaly is that in the section on steel for sale the phrase _German Steel_ is written out in full but the description only mentions soft items like cotter pins. However I think this is explained by your other recollection of S Barley's view that the term had two usages in the 19th C - steel made in Germany; and a generic term for Sheffield made steel that was secondary in quality to Cast Steel (commonly blister/cementation steel). Perhaps this is a reference to steel imported from germany specifically for this type of use.

I should have thought to look at BSSM before! These two online contributions from Barley that complement the BSSM content:
http://hus-saws2.wkfinetools.com/z_msRe ... dSaws3.asp

http://www.backsaw.net/forum/index.php? ... #post-4261

thanks again - the scales are gradually falling from my eyes 

PS the link I provided to the Sanderson paper from 1850s is not helpful in this context I'm afraid as the references to 'german steel' are about manufacturing processes of that country, not the generic term. It is still quite an interesting read, though (if you like that kind of thing!)


----------



## AndyT (14 Oct 2017)

Just to add to your reading list - the book Simon Barley refers to - The Cutlery Trades by Lloyd - is available at the Internet Archive and looks like it might yield more interesting facts.
You can also read several books by Harry Brearley himself online (though derived from poor microfilm copies and missing important pages). These are unsurprisingly rather technical - but serve as a reminder of the rate of progress in scientific metallurgy which was part of Sheffield's success.

[Edited to correct spelling of Brearley.]


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

Laminated seems the norm on all my old planes and also mortice chisels. Sharpening would be extremely difficult on thick blades if not laminated on to a soft back easy to grind off.
Also found on modern Stanley and Record plane blades. I hadn't realised this until one day I noticed the line visible across a newly ground edge.
Have a modern Japanese laminated blade - you can really feel the difference when you dip the blade on the stone and the work moves from difficult grinding the hard face/edge, to the easier soft back with material being removed much faster.


----------



## Just4Fun (14 Oct 2017)

Is it always possible to identify a laminated iron visibly?
I bought my first wooden plane at a flea market recently. The blade is thick, much thicker than in my Stanleys, but it is a treat to sharpen and use. The blade & chip iron were made by Erik Anton Berg and writing on them mentions gold medals won at fairs in Paris in 1900 and Stockholm in 1897. Would this be a laminated iron?


----------



## bugbear (14 Oct 2017)

Jacob":13u2eqmv said:


> Also found on modern Stanley and Record plane blades. I hadn't realised this until one day I noticed the line visible across a newly ground edge.


By modern do you mean _current_ production/sale?

BugBear


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

... modern in the sense of 20th century I think.

they are certainly a boon to people using oil stones to do their grinding/honing, which may explain why they have not been reintroduced with the modern trend for fat special alloy irons (which seem to go hand-in-hand with more extravagant sharpening systems).

Following Andy's comments I have revised my interpretation of the Howarth catalogue and my hunch is that both the plane iron options are are laminated, but you have a choice between the 1st class cast iron bit or a slightly lower quality blister steel option. The reason for my hunch is the sheer quantity of laminated old irons from the 19th C that survive (I have only seen one old solid steel iron and it was a posh parallel iron in an infill - are there many others?)

For chisels the choice is between a solid cast steel or the cheaper blister steel laminated option. Interestingly a Mathieson catalogue from the around the same time has the same plane iron options, but only offers solid cast steel chisels. Why the apparent bias for solid cast steel on chisels but not plane irons? I have two theories (probably wrong!):

1. chisels, unlike slotted plane irons, can potentially be hardened (and thus used) for their full length (remember the Marples ads claiming their chisels held an edge 'right up to the trademark'?
2. frequently used chisel sizes have a comparatively small amount of metal to remove when sharpening so savings from using as soft back are less noticable (possibly mortice chisels are an exception?)

Other views welcome!

PS the other interesting thing about the Mathieson catalogue is the prices for chisels and irons are identical to the prices from Howarth - the explanation (price fixing) had been staring me in the face but I had never noticed it  





(from the Howarth catalogue)

PPS Andy thanks for the suggestions on online reading - I could not find the Barraclough Steel book for < £100!


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

also, all my convoluted reasoning about how to justify GS=German Steel was unnecessary, from the Howarth catalogue:





doh!


----------



## AndyT (14 Oct 2017)

nabs":3kz3l7mq said:


> PPS Andy thanks for the suggestions on online reading - I could not find the Barraclough Steel book for < £100!



I should have been clearer. KC Barraclough wrote a couple of very scholarly books on steelmaking, which are expensive - I don't have them.

What I do have is a 112 page book, first published in 1976 by Moorland Publications, ISBN 0 90348 531 1 then reprinted without revision by the Sheffield City Museums in 1989, ISBN 0 86321 109 7.

It's a well illustrated history of the trade describing the cementation process, crucible steel, the Bessemer process and open hearth; forging, rolling etc. 

You should be able to find copies for under £10 inc postage - Bookfinder.com currently lists over 20, with more at higher prices.


----------



## Phil Pascoe (14 Oct 2017)

A few here as well http://www.waterstonesmarketplace.com/b ... &hs=Submit


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

bugbear":2w42t7ru said:


> Jacob":2w42t7ru said:
> 
> 
> > Also found on modern Stanley and Record plane blades. I hadn't realised this until one day I noticed the line visible across a newly ground edge.
> ...


Not as far as I know. But I found several on oldish planes so they seem to have been common, if not the norm.


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

thanks for the Barraclough links - my copy is on the way for a very reasonable £6.41 including postage!


----------



## bugbear (14 Oct 2017)

Jacob":40u95jpd said:


> bugbear":40u95jpd said:
> 
> 
> > Jacob":40u95jpd said:
> ...



Thanks - so by "modern" you meant "oldish". Obvious, now you point it out.

BugBear


----------



## Phil Pascoe (14 Oct 2017)

:lol:


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

bugbear":2i5h2t9h said:


> Jacob":2i5h2t9h said:
> 
> 
> > bugbear":2i5h2t9h said:
> ...


You do get confused easily BB!
By modern I meant modern i.e. steel plane type - thin, unlike the thick ones in woodies. There are older and newer 'modern' planes, but I guess that would confuse you even more. :roll:


----------



## bugbear (14 Oct 2017)

Jacob":28vz6qkr said:


> By modern I meant modern i.e. steel plane type - thin, unlike the thick ones in woodies.


So when you said "modern" you meant "Bailey", first patent in 1855. :roll: 

BugBear


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

bugbear":1qswrm7x said:


> Jacob":1qswrm7x said:
> 
> 
> > By modern I meant modern i.e. steel plane type - thin, unlike the thick ones in woodies.
> ...


Yes that's when modern plane design kicked off, thin blade and all.


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

to quote Richard Hammond* of Top Gear fame 'The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough'. I hope these deep thoughts will help you see eye-to-eye on this one.

more fascinating info is pending on 'modern' thin laminated blades - hold on to your hats!
* possible incorrect attribution


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

nabs":750azpku said:


> to quote Richard Hammond* of Top Gear fame 'The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough'. I hope these deep thoughts will help you see eye-to-eye on this one.
> 
> more fascinating info is pending on 'modern' thin laminated blades - hold on to your hats!
> * possible incorrect attribution


Rabindranath Tagore. :lol:


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

doh! of course!


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

custard":3kkq1pt7 said:


> There's also some suggestion that they were subbed out and possibly all plane manufacturers got their laminated irons from the same source?


interesting thought Custard, and look what has turned up in my laminated iron investigations.

to quote the 1937 leaflet 'For several generations the steel used In Stanley Plane Cutters has been especially made for Stanley, in one of the Steel mills in Sheffield, England, and it is called "Composite" Steel.'







(thanks to BrentBeach http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/nov2002.html) 


And on that bombshell, I think we all know who to thank for the inspiration:


----------



## Jacob (14 Oct 2017)

In Sheffield most work was subbed out. There were many specialist in making one thing or another. A toolmaker with a brand would be just the firm who got the bits together, perhaps adding bits of its own making. The same saw blade steel maker would be supplying many saw makers etc.
Record planes castings were made in Derby by Qualcast at one time.


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

yep I know Record in later years used Qualcast for some of their castings, but in their prime (30s) they had a huge factory and I had previously assumed part of it was being put to good use melting blister steel in order to make their own special recipe 'tungsten' cast steel blades. Now I am not so sure.

Does anyone know one way or the other?


----------



## iNewbie (14 Oct 2017)

nabs":2btxnco0 said:


> and look what has turned up in my laminated iron investigations.
> 
> to quote the 1937 leaflet 'For several generations the steel used In Stanley Plane Cutters has been especially made for Stanley, in one of the Steel mills in Sheffield, England, and it is called "Composite" Steel.'



*cough*  

post1163233.html#p1163233


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

I was going to go on to say that Brent Beach did the smart thing and worked out the date of the pamphlet (1937- not 1921 as reported in the other link to a scan http://galootopia.com/old_tools/planes/ ... dish-iron/)) by adding 65 years to the date Stanley started making planes 

I also think the end-of-production date (1941) is wrong in that link (c.f this advert from April 1946 in Popular Mechanics https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=teE ... &q&f=false)

... but I was saving these thrills in the hope someone would confirm that Record made their own irons in the meantime!


----------



## custard (14 Oct 2017)

I think it was Andy who mentioned that the laminated irons were manufactured in pairs, they were joined at what would become the sharp edge before being cut into two separate irons. I wonder how that was done? It'd be a long job with a Dremel!


----------



## nabs (14 Oct 2017)

actually it was your original comment that made me re-read the advert again a bit more carefully and for the point about the irons being made elsewhere to sink in - I think there is a more subtle clue about the way they were made also:

'For several generations the steel used In Stanley Plane Cutters has been ....and it is called *"Composite" Steel*'

.. which I think implies it was delivered already laminated, (which is what Andy was suggesting?)...


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

... the most puzzling thing about the advert for the Stanley 'composite irons' is the subsequent comment that _'Both parts (A and B) are welded together when originally cast in the Ingot and positively cannot be separated.'_

Can anyone think of how this could be done so you would end up with the kind of layered effect that is shown in the picture, and also in the examples we have see (e.g Custard's example below - my record laminated irons are the same, incidentally). 

Surely if the irons were somehow cut from an ingot made of two steels parts welded together you would end up with a solid cast steel tip?.

Furthermore, if the whole part of the blade under the slot was the same material, wouldn't that undo all the benefits Stanley claim in their flier (easier sharpening etc)?

hard bit layered on softer back:





hard bit forming the whole section under the slot (this is a HSS tipped bladed offered in Australia, and is apparently soldered on):


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

nabs":fmfivcbe said:


> ... the most puzzling thing about the advert for the Stanley 'composite irons' is the subsequent comment that _'Both parts (A and B) are welded together when originally cast in the Ingot and positively cannot be separated.'_
> 
> Can anyone think of how this could be done so you would end up with the kind of layered effect that is shown in the picture, and also in the examples we have see (e.g Custard's example below - my record laminated irons are the same, incidentally).
> 
> Surely if the irons were somehow cut from an ingot made of two steels parts welded together you would end up with a solid cast steel tip?.



If we concentrate on the word "welded" and treat "cast" and "ingot" as loose talk from a copywriter, this could just possibly mean the thing that I think I half remember reading somewhere, though I have no idea where. This was the suggestion that these mass-produced irons were made by taking a relatively large rectangular strip of iron and then welding a narrower strip of steel along one long edge. (You then have a big lump of composite material - let's call it an "ingot" in the sense of a biggish lump which will get rolled or hammered to size.) Having made the weld and hammered or rolled the big strip down to something like the thickness that was required, you then cut blade sized pieces out of it, each of them having a portion of the steel strip at its tip. This sounds more efficient than making each cutting iron as a separate object.

Do bear in mind that I have no evidence at all for this theory except the shaky belief that I have not deliberately made it up myself!


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

and good point about the marketing peeps. that process does sound efficient, but wouldn't you end up with a thin strip of hard steel across the whole length of the iron, rather than just a section at the cutting end? Or did I misunderstand the description?


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

The strip of steel is narrower than the rectangle of iron.
The division into individual blades is at right angles to the strip. 

I must learn to type some diagrams!


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

ah, I see!


----------



## MusicMan (15 Oct 2017)

I did say way back in this thread that laminated blades were superior metallurgically, and one should necessarily not think of cost as the driver.

I don't think the words "cast" and "ingot" are copywriters' blurb. The brochure says:

"Both parts, (A and B) are welded together when cast in the ingot and positively cannot be separated".

It looks to me (as a trained metallurgist, though not a steel specialist) that it its describing the "casting on" process. Here, a piece of the harder metal is placed in the mould, in a recess in this case, and the backing, softer metal is cast on to it. That seems to me to describe exactly what is said in the brochure.

Temperature control of the melt and the mould needs to be quite tight, in order that the molten metal does not simply melt the hard metal. If the mould has reasonably good thermal conductivity, this would be manageable, and certainly so if the hard slip was cooled from the back side. This is the basis of modern continuous casting. So it's not a trivial process, but perfectly possible.

Note that the source of iron is the same for both components but the edge part is alloyed quite extensively with carbon, tungsten, manganese and other elements. This is going to be a hard steel, and I don't think it would be easy to roll or forge without cracking, though I wouldn't rule it out. Laminated sword blades were certainly made this way historically (see wikipedia on laminated steels). However, Stanley state that the blades are made by casting, not forging, and I see no reason to doubt this.

It's possible that two blades were cast together, end to end. Since they would be ground anyway, a V-shaped grinding wheel is the obvious way to do this, probably just snapping the last bit off. This is speculation, though. 

It does look to me as if Stanley developed a very good process, which resulted in the best combination of properties as could formerly be achieved by skilled swordsmiths, but in an economical, production environment.


----------



## custard (15 Oct 2017)

MusicMan":2bdeu03s said:


> Note that the source of iron is the same for both components but the edge part is alloyed quite extensively with carbon, tungsten, manganese and other elements. This is going to be a hard steel, and I don't think it would be easy to roll or forge without cracking




I've got one or two Record or Stanley laminated irons that do indeed show cracking, here's one,






DW suggested it might be corrosion, I guess that's possible but this iron shows very little corrosion, plus I've seen other laminated irons which have worse corrosion but no cracking, and I can't find any similar crazing pattern on non laminated Bailey style irons. However, my sample size is a couple of dozen irons, so probably not statistically reliable.

Incidentally, while checking through the irons for this cracked example I also found another laminated Record iron that has a War Office logo together with the date 1951. I've posted a photo on my previous laminated iron thread. That might scupper my suggestion that laminated irons were finished by 1939.


----------



## Jacob (15 Oct 2017)

MusicMan":2lp7h2u1 said:


> .......
> "Both parts, (A and B) are welded together when cast in the ingot and positively cannot be separated".
> 
> It looks to me (as a trained metallurgist, though not a steel specialist) that it its describing the "casting on" process. Here, a piece of the harder metal is placed in the mould, in a recess in this case, and the backing, softer metal is cast on to it. That seems to me to describe exactly what is said in the brochure......


I read somewhere that a similar process was used for making cast iron hinges. One leaf would be cast, bearing faces machined, pin inserted, then the other leaf cast on to it in a mould but kept loose by having some sort of oil compo put on meeting faces first. 
There's a historical site somewhere, google Baldwin, Paton cast iron hinges, how made etc.
Similar process with sash pulleys - the pulley made first, the casing cast around it. Presumably separated, and internal spaces formed, by some sort of casting sand compo.


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

Thanks for that MusicMan, most enlightening. 

It's remarkable that the soft/hard combination construction survived so long - from the 12th century to the 20th. 
Also, it makes perfect sense that the details of _how_ the two metals were combined into a single cutter developed and changed over that time.

In the eighteenth century it makes sense to think of quite small pieces of metal being heated at a forge and welded together by a smith, then beaten out to the required flat shape, but that would not have made sense for Stanley in the 1930s, so thanks for describing the "casting on" process as the successor to welding.

Also, I've found the source for what I was wittering on about.

This is from John Whelan. Not in his big encyclopedic survey of the wooden plane but in his shorter book, "Making Traditional Wooden Planes" (1996) page 114. It's a bit vague as to what period he is describing. 

_
"Authentic irons were made by forge welding together long strips of steel and wrought iron, then cutting or punching the product into blanks. The line of union of the wrought iron (the shank end, if a molding iron) and the steel is usually visible. There must be enough steel remaining to permit shaping the profile you need." _


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

And here's another bit of evidence from history to put on the table for discussion. 

In "The Wooden Plane" page 34, John Whelan described the tapered form of bench plane irons and wrote:

"The wedge shape may have originated as a natural result of welding the steel tip to the body and dressing the final product, but it does have the advantage of resisting the thrust of the work better. A patent by William Harvey (10 Mar 1830 restored US 5867X) describes running steel and iron blanks through eccentric rolls to produce this taper."

I didn't look at this patent at first, as I was looking for evidence of welding long strips of iron and steel to make multiple irons, but I've now had a proper look and found this. Before introducing his improvement - the use of eccentric rollers to make the taper - he describes current practice:

_"In forming or producing the moulds for my plane irons, up to the point where my improvement commences, I take the following method. I weld the steel on to large bars of iron and roll them into plates, the steel being applied to the whole length of the plate. I then cut the plate crosswise into pieces of suitable width for plane irons."_

He then goes on to describe his method of tapering by rolling rather than hammering. 
There are no drawings and the patent is handwritten - the whole thing is here https://www.google.com/patents/USX5867 

This must be the source of Whelan's statement in his other book. 

And there is also this earlier patent, from Charles West, in 1827, claiming the idea of the combination of long strips of iron and steel, rolled out and chopped across to make individual irons https://www.google.com/patents/USX4632 

So, I tentatively reckon we have at least three methods of production of composite or laminated plane irons. I expect the old methods continued even after newer ones had been devised. 

1 The original fire welding and hand forging, as demonstrated by Peter Ross in the axemaking videos. 
2 Welding of bigger pieces and cutting out individual irons as described here, in the early 19th century.
3 Casting on, in the 20th century.


----------



## Cheshirechappie (15 Oct 2017)

Very interesting thread, with some thoughtful and insightful comments.

Just a short note about 'ingots'. We tend to think of ingots as huge lumps weighing tons - indeed, in modern bulk steel production, they are. However, in the crucible cast steel process, an ingot was limited in size to about as much as a strong man could lift from the furnace and pour into a mould, so allowing for the weight of the crucible itself, the cast ingot would be about a hundredweight or a bit less.

Considering this in regard to the 'casting-on' process Musicman outlined, the resulting billet would not be that large, so the rolling mill required to bring it to near finished blade thickness would also not be large (at least, not in modern rolling mill terms). By casting the softer backing onto a hard strip inset into the mould in it's middle, and rolling out the resulting billet into a strip about two blade-lengths wide (possible if care is taken to maintain sufficient heat to keep the hard steel plastic), then cropped to blade width required in a shear, and the two blades seperated by shearing, blanks ready for slot-punching (easier with the slot being in softer steel) and finish grinding, the whole process would not need a huge works or major capital investment.

I have no idea whether that was the case, but I do know that Sheffield had a huge range of works of sizes ranging from one-man shops to works employing several thousand people, and produced not just edge tools, but cutlery, silver plate, and steel products of all sorts from engineer's tools to specialist machine part forgings, springs, blades for almost anything from scalpels to shipyard shears. There was considerable business in making railway wheels and axles, rail rolling, heavy castings, armanents and armour plate - indeed, pretty well anything steel. Woodworking tools were actually a minor side-line! Consequently, a medium-sized firm of crucible steel makers with a rolling shop could have made laminated blade blanks almost as a sideline, without any publicity, and dropped the work under wartime pressure to support the war effort.

That's mostly speculative - except for Sheffield's variety of steel products!


----------



## MusicMan (15 Oct 2017)

Interesting stuff, Andy. I can add another - case hardening. That is, packing the iron in a container with carbon, heating and letting it diffuse into the surface for several hours. This forms a high-carbon steel as an outer skin that is very hard, and can be hardened further by quenching. This is still sometimes used, having the advantage that it can be done after the component is made from a softer steel. It's an old process, still used.

Also, induction hardening uses an induction coil to heat the outside surface of a component, usually medium carbon steel, which can then be quickly cooled or quenched to harden it.

Quite a few processes have been developed to make a hard outer layer or skin with a tough, ductile interior. It's pretty much an ideal tool material.

It's relatively recently that alloy steels (such as the fancy ones now used for planes) have been developed that are hard throughout but can be worked into shape without cracking. That is, for a factory with big expensive equipment, they can be relatively cheaply made as is is a one-step process and gives good marketing copy. As Custard and others have pointed out, it is not so obvious that they are useful in the workshop, since they are hard (literally) to sharpen. Hence also the multiplicity of threads on the Voldemart topic. 

One could even argue that they are really aimed at well-off amateurs rather than pros. The professional might get the advantage of sharpening every hour or two rather than every 10-20 mins, but it's a harder (slower) job. The amateur will use the tool far less, and may only have to sharpen every month or two rather than every day, so will think that it's a miracle!

I'd personally go for a laminated blade rather than a super hard one, except on tools that get only occasional use such as the shooting plane. In this case the lower wear is useful as it has a heavy task, but is only used for a few strokes, once or twice per board. I've had one a few months and only needed to sharpen it once. (And yes, I know that it is not necessary, it's a treat).


----------



## MusicMan (15 Oct 2017)

Cheshirechappie, I think you are spot on. I've even seen this change in my career. In my younger days it was dead easy to get a modest local foundry to cast steel or aluminium in more or less any size, inexpensively even for a one off. In fact the cost was the pattern not the casting. Now these shops have largely disappeared. OTOH, one can now get laser cutting and 3D printing done in small job shops so it's not all bad!


----------



## custard (15 Oct 2017)

Music Man's raised an important question, are the laminated irons for Bailey style planes superior to the irons that superseded them?

I've used them a lot, and on a wide range of timbers. IMO any advantage is pretty marginal, maybe they're a tiny bit easier to sharpen, a whisker better at dealing with awkward grain, last a few strokes longer. But for all practical purposes your woodwork won't suffer if you're using the later irons in your Bailey plane. If anyone's passing my workshop you're welcome to try a laminated iron and a later iron, identically sharpened, on the same timber, and in the same plane. I'd bet a pound to a penny that in real life usage you can't tell them apart.

If laminated irons were materially better wouldn't they have been retained even as a premium option? Wouldn't knowledgeable users in the 50's, 60's and 70's have snapped them up and worn them all out? Wouldn't Record or Stanley have tried to take a competitive advantage by hanging on to them? Wouldn't informed professionals have passed the secret on to generations of apprentices? Wouldn't they be celebrated and command a premium in the used tool market? The fact that none of this happened suggests the collective experience of the market agrees, laminated irons are nice tools, but they don't represent a chalk and cheese benefit over their successors. They might have been superior to their predecessors, but not to their Bailey style plane iron successors.

Furthermore, laminated irons may suffer from a serious disadvantage. One of the most frustrating issues for many new users is buying a used Bailey style plane and discovering the cap iron doesn't seat properly on the iron, so shavings get jammed in the gap. The traditional fix of flattening the two components to an accurate mating surface is perfectly possible, but it's a long, hard, dirty job. For an older hobbyist user, who doesn't have the finger strength they once had, it might be unrealistic. One quick and easy solution is a well aimed whack to the non bevelled side of the iron with a nylon hammer, it doesn't always work, but when it does it's revelatory in it's effectiveness. The problem is that I'd be hesitant to do that on a laminated iron because of the cracking issue previously discussed.


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

arghh Custard, that question is a border-line sharpening-discussion provoker! Nonetheless I'd be very interested to hear from MusicMan on whether the softer steel back might help reduce the risk of splitting the cast steel even if it was made harder than would have been wise with solid steel (although of course for the reasons mentioned earlier it is not necessarily the case the makers would have made the blades harder, just because the lamination meant they could).


very good work on sumarizing the manufacturing techniques chaps -most educational. The spirit of Rabindranath Tagore flows strongly through you all today!

While you were hard at work on this I was sat in The Spotted Dog browsing an ancient old-tools thread on this topic. For those of you unwilling to navigate the bizzare threading system on swingley.com (still no idea how it works!) the gist is that someone was convinced that as well as the laminated type blades we have been discussing, Stanley also made a solid tipped version (a bit like the HSS shown earlier but cast rather than soldered on).

This had to be explained and the theory suggested was that a melted low carbon steel was poured into a donut shaped mould after which high carbon steel was melted and poured into the middle. The resulting circular ingot was rolled and the blades cut out as if you were quarter-sawing a tree trunk.

It was thus slightly disapointing to come back from my revels only to learn about 'casting-on' which I suspect makes it likely that the above excellent process never happened.


----------



## Jacob (15 Oct 2017)

custard":13jxgjwp said:


> ......The traditional fix of flattening the two components to an accurate mating surface is perfectly possible, but it's a long, hard, dirty job. ......


I doubt that was 'traditional' when there's a very simple fix available - you have to flatten the face in the area of contact with the cap iron (2 or 3mm only) and then bend and/or file the cap iron edge to get a tighter fit. It helps to back it off a bit so that the cap front edge closes tight against the plane iron face.
When you hear "flattening ... long hard dirty job" etc you know someone has been infected with the modern sharpening virus! :lol:


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

on a more serious (non-sharpening) note , I suspect the first part of Custard's question is going to very hard to answer without some more info.

I think it would be instructive to know the dates that the laminated Bailey irons were in production, as it might give us a clue to why Stanley introduced them (and subsequently abandoned the idea)

There seems to be a general consensus on the US forums that the initial stanley irons were solid steel, but the dates for the laminated versions suggested vary from 1909-WWII to 1920s/30s and I have not found any conclusive evidence one way or the other.

We made a bit of progress in this thread and can move the earliest end-date out to >1951 for record (Custard's broad arrow Iron) and > WWII for Stanley (1946 popular science ad linked above). But when did they start? (and, while you are at it when did they stop!?)


----------



## D_W (15 Oct 2017)

I'll have to look in my bin. I have a double iron set from a pre 1892 transitional. The iron set is almost unused and certainly worth more than the plane was with the iron in it, but i haven't used it. 

I'm pretty sure that it's laminated. It's also thinner than later irons. We'll see, I'm in the office today working on something deadline related so can't look right now.


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

that would be a very interesting data-point DW.




Just4Fun":3ihlw0ku said:


> Is it always possible to identify a laminated iron visibly?
> I bought my first wooden plane at a flea market recently. The blade is thick, much thicker than in my Stanleys, but it is a treat to sharpen and use. The blade & chip iron were made by Erik Anton Berg and writing on them mentions gold medals won at fairs in Paris in 1900 and Stockholm in 1897. Would this be a laminated iron?


there is a bit of discussion on identifying laminated irons below, but for the old thick irons in wooden planes it is often very visible since the two metals generally corrode differently and have been around long enough for the differences to be obvious
record-stanley-laminated-plane-irons-t106851.html


----------



## D_W (15 Oct 2017)

nabs":2y6t6pwb said:


> that would be a very interesting data-point DW.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



the other thing I've noticed about wooden planes, being an amateur maker and purchaser of the old irons is that there was a time when single iron planes had thin irons (probably pre 1800?) in a lot of cases. Then we went through a phase where laminated irons were about 3/16ths on the business end with some makers in the US offering 1/4" thick "premium" laminated irons in some planes (which is a step backwards because they take much longer to grind - especially by hand).

And then, as you get back to Sheffield going all steel again, the irons are thinner with less taper. You can quite often identify all-steel wooden plane irons from England (no chance for this in the US, production was pretty gone too early to switch) just by looking at the thickness and confirming that a thin iron is a newer make. 

Bit harder with stanley, though.


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

nabs":1p6ry6gm said:


> on a more serious (non-sharpening) note , I suspect the first part of Custard's question is going to very hard to answer without some more info.
> 
> I think it would be instructive to know the dates that the laminated Bailey irons were in production, as it might give us a clue to why Stanley introduced them (and subsequently abandoned the idea)
> 
> ...



Re the end date for production:

It's getting a bit confusing with these two closely related threads becoming a collective statement of everything we know about laminated plane irons, but over in the Record/Stanley thread, on page 1,iNewbie posted a link to a Paul Sellers blog on the topic. 

Scroll down this page a Graeme Cook made this comment:

Confirming Andrew’s comments; when I did a school excursion through the Stanley Titan facory at New Town, a suburb of Hobart, Tasmania I saw laminated plane blades still being made in the mid-1960’s. They had a bunch of five or six women who had been doing it since the war years. Alas, that works has now gone to China

- so Stanley were still making laminated irons into the 60s, though possibly not in UK or USA.

And I'm not sure which page of which thread they were on, but I'm pretty sure Axminster were still selling Samurai brand irons into the 90s, so someone was still making them quite recently.


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

yes you are right Andy, this thread took a slightly different turn than I expected and now overlaps a lot. I also noticed that you made another relevant observation on dates too in the last post on the other thread regarding the subtle change in later editions of Planecraft in the description of the status of laminated blade production (implication being it was stopped late 50s for Record at least)


records-laminated-how-many-t100944-45.html


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

D_W":2mxowkuy said:


> the other thing I've noticed about wooden planes, being an amateur maker and purchaser of the old irons is that there was a time when single iron planes had thin irons (probably pre 1800?) in a lot of cases. Then we went through a phase where laminated irons were about 3/16ths on the business end with some makers in the US offering 1/4" thick "premium" laminated irons in some planes (which is a step backwards because they take much longer to grind - especially by hand).
> 
> And then, as you get back to Sheffield going all steel again, the irons are thinner with less taper. You can quite often identify all-steel wooden plane irons from England (no chance for this in the US, production was pretty gone too early to switch) just by looking at the thickness and confirming that a thin iron is a newer make.
> 
> Bit harder with stanley, though.



there was an interesting comment on the old-tools thread that I mentioned earlier where it was suggested that the mechanism of hand-forge welding a cast steel bit on to an iron backing lent itself to creating a tapered iron (presumably it is easier to exaggerate an already started taper by adding some more metal to the fat bit than trying to get the whole iron back into parallel). I also read somewhere else that there was some discovery around 1830 that made welding cast steel to wrought iron reliable where it had been difficult earlier.

is that a possible explanation from the move from (all steel?) thin 18C irons to the 19C fatter tapered laminated ones?
also when do you think the all steel tapered irons became prevalent in the UK? End of the 19C?


----------



## custard (15 Oct 2017)

AndyT":1i5h7m0j said:


> Scroll down this page a Graeme Cook made this comment:
> 
> Confirming Andrew’s comments; when I did a school excursion through the Stanley Titan facory at New Town, a suburb of Hobart, Tasmania I saw laminated plane blades still being made in the mid-1960’s. They had a bunch of five or six women who had been doing it since the war years. Alas, that works has now gone to China
> 
> - so Stanley were still making laminated irons into the 60s, though possibly not in UK or USA.



Maybe that's true, maybe it's a mis-recollection. How realistic is that "a bunch of five or six women who had been doing it since the war" were manufacturing laminated irons? Reading this thread I'm struck by the technical challenges involved in laminating steel, it just doesn't sound like a cottage industry type task that's being done in the corner of a factory. Then there's the matter of the design of the iron's top. Every single laminated iron I've seen has a severely angular top, and I've never seen a laminated iron with a curved top. This applies to Record, Stanley, Sorby, and Marples (which is why I suspect the irons were manufactured by a third party and stamped with different brand names), by the mid 60's were Australian Stanley irons angular or rounded? And if rounded can anyone produce one that's laminated? Anything's possible I guess, but without evidence to the contrary I'm sticking with the hypothesis that some anonymous subbing contractor made all the laminated irons, and they packed up around about the time war broke out.


----------



## D_W (15 Oct 2017)

nabs":zf9b5lii said:


> D_W":zf9b5lii said:
> 
> 
> > the other thing I've noticed about wooden planes, being an amateur maker and purchaser of the old irons is that there was a time when single iron planes had thin irons (probably pre 1800?) in a lot of cases. Then we went through a phase where laminated irons were about 3/16ths on the business end with some makers in the US offering 1/4" thick "premium" laminated irons in some planes (which is a step backwards because they take much longer to grind - especially by hand).
> ...



not sure what caused the change, but the biases you talk about (taper from end to end), as well as there being taper of width from end to end along with the thickness taper, and the often not-mentioned fact that the back side of the iron is hollow - all of those things allow you to make an iron fairly inaccurately, but still have it work well. 

The hollow along the back is one that I'd still like to see in wooden plane irons, but that is probably not that easy to make by machine without someone just applying it by hand. At any rate, I'd suspect that when making things by hand, you always have to bias them in the direction that the bias doesn't hurt so that you give yourself a nice wide margin for error without affecting performance too much. 

The double iron also works much better on an iron that has a little more taper in it when the plane is wedged. Otherwise, it tends to need fettling to keep it from moving (waxing the top of the cap, sanding the area where the cap screw grabs on the iron, etc). But the taper existed before the cap iron, so it's not as if that's controlling as far as i know.


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

custard":s6siq6yz said:


> maybe it's a mis-recollection.


actually, now you say it Custard that is surely right - particularly since we now know that until 1946 (at least) the laminated steel was pre-prepared in a mill based in Sheffield.

I wonder if the Tasmanian outfit were experimenting with the 'gobbed on' HSS steel blades mentioned before?

One more tantalizing clue on dates from this google search which shows a preview from a copy of an journal called 'Education' apparently from 1959. The snippet contains the following:

"The new Stanley cutter is made of Nickel Chrome Alloy Steel throughout (the old-fashioned ..." 

unfortunately I can't find the original doc and therefore can't tell who wrote these words (or what came after 'old fashioned'!). Could this be the date that Stanley stopped buying their irons from GB and started doing it all wrong in the US 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C5 ... BzN6zEBYrE


----------



## AndyT (15 Oct 2017)

"The old-fashioned composite steel has been discontinued"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5b4 ... shioned%22

- use the search box on the page to search for a fresh snippet!


----------



## nabs (15 Oct 2017)

top tip!

Also I may have been a bit hasty about our Tasmanian friends - for the sake of argument let's assume the cast-on/pre-welded ingots were sent to Australia to be rolled out, stamped, ground and heat treated. Is it conceivable the women were doing one of the last two activities by hand even in the 60s? What say you MusicMan?

it is certainly believable that these traditionally male vocations moved to women during the war and that they subsequently stuck at it, and plausible that Stanley Oz requested to keep up with the laminated option longer than Stanley US since they would be able to specify a harder steel bit to deal with their weird hardwoods.


PS yet another titbit from old-tools - someone quoted a Stanley publication from 1937 (Tool Tips #6m? Sorry forgot to note the link) in which a Stanley Temperer is interviewed and he describes tempering each iron by hand.


----------



## MusicMan (15 Oct 2017)

custard":tlpu7cso said:


> Music Man's raised an important question, are the laminated irons for Bailey style planes superior to the irons that superseded them?
> 
> I've used them a lot, and on a wide range of timbers. IMO any advantage is pretty marginal, maybe they're a tiny bit easier to sharpen, a whisker better at dealing with awkward grain, last a few strokes longer. But for all practical purposes your woodwork won't suffer if you're using the later irons in your Bailey plane. If anyone's passing my workshop you're welcome to try a laminated iron and a later iron, identically sharpened, on the same timber, and in the same plane. I'd bet a pound to a penny that in real life usage you can't tell them apart.



I'm sure you're right, Custard. I didn't mean to say that later types were inferior in use; rather that amateurs may perceive greater advantages (in frequency of sharpening) than professionals. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. 



custard":tlpu7cso said:


> If laminated irons were materially better wouldn't they have been retained even as a premium option? Wouldn't knowledgeable users in the 50's, 60's and 70's have snapped them up and worn them all out? Wouldn't Record or Stanley have tried to take a competitive advantage by hanging on to them? Wouldn't informed professionals have passed the secret on to generations of apprentices? Wouldn't they be celebrated and command a premium in the used tool market? The fact that none of this happened suggests the collective experience of the market agrees, laminated irons are nice tools, but they don't represent a chalk and cheese benefit over their successors. They might have been superior to their predecessors, but not to their Bailey style plane iron successors.



I generally agree, though enough people on this forum do in fact swear by the old tools of any sort, and Japanese blades do seem to be prized. But I think the issue changed with the modern steels and concentration of manufacture into a few large companies with massive equipment. It rather became "we can now make plane irons that are at least as good if not better than the laminated ones, by a cheaper process". There is an surprising rule in manufacturing: if (and only if) you have mass production and a large market, the manufacturing equipment to make a large number of items costs you almost nothing per item; whereas items made essentially by hand cost you the same significant amount per item, i.e. the hourly rate of the worker. With good enough manufacturing processes and a large enough market, the cost per item is eventually limited only by material costs. Startup is of course limited by the capital costs of the equipment, which is why small manufacturing firms struggle to compete. 



custard":tlpu7cso said:


> Furthermore, laminated irons may suffer from a serious disadvantage. One of the most frustrating issues for many new users is buying a used Bailey style plane and discovering the cap iron doesn't seat properly on the iron, so shavings get jammed in the gap. The traditional fix of flattening the two components to an accurate mating surface is perfectly possible, but it's a long, hard, dirty job. For an older hobbyist user, who doesn't have the finger strength they once had, it might be unrealistic. One quick and easy solution is a well aimed whack to the non bevelled side of the iron with a nylon hammer, it doesn't always work, but when it does it's revelatory in it's effectiveness. The problem is that I'd be hesitant to do that on a laminated iron because of the cracking issue previously discussed.



And you'd be quite right to be hesitant! Still, I'm glad to know this trick.


----------



## MusicMan (15 Oct 2017)

nabs":24jyzuok said:


> arghh Custard, that question is a border-line sharpening-discussion provoker! Nonetheless I'd be very interested to hear from MusicMan on whether the softer steel back might help reduce the risk of splitting the cast steel even if it was made harder than would have been wise with solid steel (although of course for the reasons mentioned earlier it is not necessarily the case the makers would have made the blades harder, just because the lamination meant they could).



It's possible, as the softer stuff would blunt cracks that tried to get through. I have no idea whether this was a big effect, whether it happened in practice, or was even a consideration.

Keith


----------



## D_W (17 Oct 2017)

nabs":1xngx5qd said:


> that would be a very interesting data-point DW.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



One 1867 patent date on the iron, and no lamination. So nothing new As I thought it might be.


----------



## nabs (18 Oct 2017)

thanks Dave, at least it is consistent with the theory that Bailey/Stanley started off with solid steel cutters, then introduced laminated blades later on having realized/remembered that they are quite a good idea (1900s-1920s? No one seems to know for sure) only to going back to solid steel in the 1950s having concluded laminated irons were 'old-fashioned' (possibly abandoning British made cast steel at the same time?).

Here is an article about a sheffield steel maker (Jessop and son) from 1893 that mentions a US plane maker using the other non-forging approach to welding a laminated plane iron mentioned by Andy (referred to as 'roll welding' in the article).
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... up;seq=334

I found the article via a wkfinetools post below which also mentioned that the Jesson's brightside works eventually occupied 35 acres! This has further shaken my confidence that Record actually melted their own crucible steel since their factory is piddly in comparison. Perhaps the lab they mention in planecraft etc is just for testing/specifying cast steel made elsewhere?

toodles

http://huk1.wkfinetools.com/05-Steel/Je ... hist-1.asp


----------



## AndyT (18 Oct 2017)

Another thought about the demise of laminated irons by the 50s or so.

From what I have read, it's surprising how long crucible cast steel continued to be made. It must have remained the craftsman's choice for edge tools, long after 20th century metallurgy brought in scientifically controlled alloy steels of comparable properties. But the skills to make it became unavailable after WW2, when there was an attempt to modernise UK steel production. 

There's a very good episode of Time Team where they go to Sheffield, excavate an old furnace, and have a go at making crucible steel again, with what could be remembered of the old techniques. It's available on YouTube and well worth a watch. 

[youtube]Xu5R-xUyZXg[/youtube]

(Bonus content - towards the end - Ken Hawley shows how a saw smith's hammer worked!)


----------



## D_W (18 Oct 2017)

A separate and aside, I wonder how the yasuki steels are made - what the process is. I've never looked into it, but the higher grades (white 1 and 2) of carbon steel have a very low tolerance level for impurities, and as much as i like vintage steel, I have to admit that white 2 would make a better western plane iron than any vintage steel I've ever used. It is so pure and so fine, even as a commodity, that if it's brought down to about 61 hardness (which is where my iyoroi chisels are), it sharpens well on natural stones and still holds a very good edge that fails only by wear. 

In terms of the iron I mentioned above, I don't know why I thought it would be laminated, but you never know. I have more natural stones than anyone else I've ever met (perhaps 100 at the moment) so finding a stone to illuminate the lamination line at the bevel is no problem. I can see the records on the grinder, but sometimes with other irons, not so easily - the right natural stone always shows a good contrast on the bevel. 

But also what I've said elsewhere (and I think this gets confused) using the natural stone to show the bevel line also gives me a very good idea regarding the hardness of an iron. I would guess this older stanley to be 57-58 (intentional, I'm sure), and there is a very large difference between that and 61 when it comes to something like a washita. I'm sure some of the laminated stanley irons were closer to 60-61. 

Strange, though, that in the land of cheap steel (by the time they were making laminated irons) they decided to laminate. Wonder if it was customer pressure, because it sure couldn't have been any savings by then, unless there was a savings on tooling to mill the slot in soft iron. Perhaps better behavior in heat treating, too? But the old irons that I've gotten, including this set that has no 1892 patent date, are nicely flat. This one was completely unused.


----------



## MusicMan (18 Oct 2017)

The way a metallurgist would see if a blade is laminated is to polish the bevel (enough so that scratches do not obscure the contrast, and a fine oilstone or emery would do) then etch it. For regular irons, dilute nitric acid is the usual choice, but many dilute acids would work, probably vinegar though I never tried it. Brief electrolysis in almost any salt solution - with the blade on the + terminal - would also work. As mentioned above, in old irons corrosion has often done this for you. 

Keith


----------



## Jacob (19 Oct 2017)

MusicMan":12kcwhx2 said:


> The way a metallurgist would see if a blade is laminated is to polish the bevel (enough so that scratches do not obscure the contrast, and a fine oilstone or emery would do) .............
> 
> Keith


Exactly the opposite.
In my limited experience fine _polishing _the bevel obscures the join line between hard and soft, but coarse grinding reveals it. Don't ask me why. That's how a discovered I'd got some laminated blades.


----------



## Phil Pascoe (19 Oct 2017)

He did say polish then etch. I assume as a metallurgist he's looking at it under a microscope not just giving it a cursory glance.
i agree with you though on looking at it from the grind - to the naked eye it's more obvious then.


----------



## Cheshirechappie (19 Oct 2017)

Yes indeed - Musicman set out the standard METALLURGICAL preparation for examination. The clue is in what he wrote - "The way a metallurgist would...". The WORKSHOP tests wouldn't involve etching. 

Good workshop tests include rubbing a file down the bevel to see if some parts are hard and some soft, or cleaning off patina and oxide skin to reveal differences in colour and texture, which is often quite easily seen. Also, of course, using the tool for it's intended duty will tell all a craftsman needs to know about the metal at the cutting edge.


----------



## nabs (19 Oct 2017)

a good 'etch' which may be close at hand for tool collectors/fiddlers is Sheild rust remover which discolours the two metals to different shades of grey


----------



## Jacob (19 Oct 2017)

nabs":3slxtk73 said:


> a good 'etch' which may be close at hand for tool collectors/fiddlers is Sheild rust remover which discolours the two metals to different shades of grey


I wouldn't touch Shield products with a barge pole. They are extremely expensive - verging on rip off. Designed for a small but gullible market of amateur woodworkers.
Basically the same stuff available under many brand names at a fraction of the price


----------



## D_W (19 Oct 2017)

That's not the same stuff as "hone rite" is it?


----------



## D_W (19 Oct 2017)

a cheap cold blue (don't know if you guys are into that kind of stuff over there) would do the same thing as the etch, but with enough exposure, it will just make all of the metal black. 

Also, any fine natural stone slurried will make a dull finish on the soft backer and bright polish on the hardened steel - almost instantly.

(i like the file idea presented above - very practical).


----------



## Phil Pascoe (19 Oct 2017)

Same firm. :lol:


----------



## MusicMan (19 Oct 2017)

Cheshirechappie":39y06u5x said:


> Yes indeed - Musicman set out the standard METALLURGICAL preparation for examination. The clue is in what he wrote - "The way a metallurgist would...". The WORKSHOP tests wouldn't involve etching.
> 
> Good workshop tests include rubbing a file down the bevel to see if some parts are hard and some soft, or cleaning off patina and oxide skin to reveal differences in colour and texture, which is often quite easily seen. Also, of course, using the tool for it's intended duty will tell all a craftsman needs to know about the metal at the cutting edge.



Yes exactly (Phil.P too). Of course polishing on its own would show nothing. The point was that sometimes you need an etchant to reveal details of the structure. Normally done with a microscope, but the naked eye would be good enough for this job.

Keith


----------



## nabs (19 Oct 2017)

Jacob":1bew3jp7 said:


> I wouldn't touch Shield products with a barge pole. They are extremely expensive - verging on rip off. Designed for a small but gullible market of amateur woodworkers.
> Basically the same stuff available under many brand names at a fraction of the price


the rust remover is expensive, but I only use mine for my extensive collection of sharpening jigs and chisel back-flatteing equiptment so it is lasting ages!


----------



## Jacob (19 Oct 2017)

nabs":dqq4g1q6 said:


> Jacob":dqq4g1q6 said:
> 
> 
> > I wouldn't touch Shield products with a barge pole. They are extremely expensive - verging on rip off. Designed for a small but gullible market of amateur woodworkers.
> ...


Spend, spend! :roll:


----------



## nabs (19 Oct 2017)

I have completely forgotten what this thread was about - was it something to do with polishing? in other news i have completed a thrilling calculation on the costs of making a laminated iron in 1850 and will report back soon (as far as I know they could not get rust remover in those days so the calculation was much simplified!).


----------



## MusicMan (22 Oct 2017)

I can't find the post now, but Bugbear posted a pic of lines of corrosion on old irons and Custard asked if laminated steels were more prone to corrosion. I replied that they could be, due to a different composition. BB has kindly emailed me to point out that the ones he posted showed corrosion along the line of the cap iron. He correctly says that this would be due to moisture getting trapped by the crevice between the iron and the cap, aided by any shavings jammed in there.

Technically know as crevice corrosion, this is caused by the oxygen concentration being higher at the surface than deep in the crevice, setting up a little battery. The surface part is cathodic and the deep down part anodic so it is that which corrodes.

Laminated irons could still corrode at the junction between the steels, but that wasn't an example!

Thanks for the correction, BB! 

Keith


----------



## nabs (10 Jan 2018)

many moons ago I said I was trying to investigate the economics of making laminated edge tools in the 19C (yes I know :roll: ). I have now reached a tentative conclusion:

with some worst-case assumptions on wages and material costs I worked out that a tool maker producing laminated (e.g) plane irons would be able to produce them at the same cost as a maker doing the same but with solid steel, so long as the extra work to weld the two bits of metal together did not slow the blacksmith down by more than 50%. 

Using more favourable, but I think still plausible, assumptions then the tool maker could create tools at the same cost even if the blacksmith needed 3x as long to forge the laminated version. 

I am making two other major assumptions - 
1) hand forged blades were the norm up to the end of the 19th century 
2) the welding process adds some time to making the tool, but does not _double_ the amount of time needed. 

Quite possibly my sums and/or assumptions are nonsense, but if if not they indicate that - regardless of utility to the end user - it would have been economic for makers to create laminated edge tools despite the extra labour involved. And the (not very revealing) reason was that they preferred to use crucible steel and this was extremely expensive.

workings out can be found here : http://www.smallworkshop.co.uk/2018/01/ ... revisited/ (note very boring!). 

Corrections/comments gratefully received!


----------



## D_W (10 Jan 2018)

Thanks, Nabs. I'm sure that the blacksmiths enjoyed working wrought (for the remainder of the iron) a lot more than they would've enjoyed hammering a full tool steel iron, too. 

Presumably, the irons were made (before 1800) in water powered shops with power hammers of the wooden beam type?

Another presumption is that before commercial heat treating processes, quenching water hardening steel attached to wrought was a lot safer than quenching water hardening steel (which would've cracked at the thickness of irons if it was quenched unlaminated in water or brine). I have quenched water hardening steel in oil when it's thin, but i have no idea if it's "great" because it's just knife blades, and they don't get the kind of wear cycle that irons do.

I can attest that hand hammering high carbon steel harder (it moves more slowly with each blow) than I expected.


----------



## nabs (11 Jan 2018)

D_W":2x6k3ogi said:


> I can attest that hand hammering high carbon steel harder (it moves more slowly with each blow) than I expected.



my own investigations were inspired by Stephen Shepperd's post on laminated irons (where, btw, he concluded the exact opposite to me, based on the prices he uncovered!). 

http://www.fullchisel.com/blog/?p=1215

one of the comments to his post suggests it may even have been _faster_ to laminate the blade than forge a solid steel piece. I hope this is not true else laminated blades would be cheaper for both materials _and_ labour, meaning all my calculations will have been a waste of time 

In terms of the use of machinery in the forging process, by the time my figures were taken (1880s) steam hammers were old technology and machines for stamping and drop forging existed, but it seems that Sheffield tool makers were very slow to adopt the technologies. 

Even larger makers with permanent staff relied heavily on 'little mesters' for much of their production and it seems they continued with hand forging right into the 20th century. 

I haven't found any detailed contemporary account of how the work was organised at large factories, but there is plenty of physical evidence that piece work done by hand was the norm (not least all the obviously hand forged tapered irons still in existence, but also the pictures and remains of factories with rows of tell-tale small rooms with their own access etc).

It is fascinating to consider the circumstances that allowed such an archaic system to persist from so long. Here is a interesting interview with Albert Craven, a Sheffield blade forger who was trained by a large firm at the turn of the 20th century and worked as a little mester.

[youtube]zpeyhC-UIFg[/youtube]


----------



## D_W (11 Jan 2018)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr4VTCwEfko

This video has the type of hammer I was talking about. The hammer is at 2:49 (and around 5 minutes, the shop master lights his pipe with a heated axe blank!)

While I find it satisfying to hammer the knife blanks out of old stuff by hand (it is), it's not very economical. I am using a 4 pound hammer, too (if you had a hammer man, you could increase that by a factor of two to four for rough work). A die and a hydraulic press would make a lot more sense.

I'd bet that in the 1800s, if you were hand hammering, the ability to work wrought and laminate high carbon to it would be far less labor than just working all high carbon steel. It moves better, I'm sure it's easier on files and drills, etc. 

I've bought some bench planes recently intentionally because they have laminated irons. My first laminated stanley iron was superb, but the last two have been a touch soft, so I'm not sure what they were aiming for or if that changed over time. The harder iron was older than the two softer laminated irons.

All of the record irons that I've used have been a touch on the soft side, but they're nice, as are the softer stanley irons. Just not quite as hard as I'd like in a smoother, but excellent for jack, jointer, try plane stuff. I don't know why that is (that it seems nice to work with softer irons in coarser planes), but it's just so.


----------



## nabs (11 Jan 2018)

thanks that is a good film.

From what I have read if you have a 19C laminated iron made in sheffield then the chances are it was forged by hand on an anvil in a small workshop housing one or two blacksmiths. 

It seems Sheffield's reputation for quality + an abundance of good steel and hand skills meant the old methods could continue for a long time despite mechanised competition from abroad, however, by the 20th century foreign competition was having serious impact on trade in GB and something had to change, and it did. Thus as we learned earlier in this thread, the Stanley and Record laminated blades were, in comparison, modern tools made from a 'cast-on' laminate and rolled and stamped out by machine. 

I am not sure when automatic heat treatment techniques were introduced. Is it possible that even the modern thin blades were still hardened and tempered by hand and that explains the variations in hardness you found?


----------



## Cheshirechappie (11 Jan 2018)

Couple of points. Firstly, Sheffield adopted the use of 'power' hammers sooner than some might think. The standard small (spring) hammer for toolsmithing was made by Pattinson Brothers, and was of about 1 cwt capacity, depending on the dies fitted. Ashley Iles started his business with one just after WW2. They're still using it. I don't know when spring hammers were first introduced, but by WW1 they were everywhere in Sheffield.

The second point is about metallurgical development. The techniques of making edge tools and cutlery evolved around the use of wrought iron and plain carbon steels because until the end of the 19th century, that's all there was (Bessemer added bulk mild steel in the 1860s, but didn't crack tool steel manufacture by his process). However, experiments with alloy steels started in the mid to late 19th century. You've mentioned Mushet's air-hardening steel on your blog, and another example of early commercial success was Robert Hadfield's 1882 discovery of Manganese Steel.

More pertinently from our point of view is the development some time in the 1890s of what became known to us today as 01. Straight carbon steel was used for all manner of applications were a hardenable steel was needed, including engineering gauges. Carbon steel has a couple of snags, in that when quenched on hardening, it is prone to distortion and also to slight dimensional changes; neither of these properties (whilst pretty much immaterial to edge-tool makers) help gauge-makers maintain accuracy of their products one bit. However, 01 can be hardened in oil rather than water, and is thus much less prone to distortion and dimensional change. It also makes pretty good edge tools. Tool makers soon found that they could do things with O1 that they couldn't with straight carbon steel - bevelled edged chisels being an example (try finding any examples in the catalogues much before 1900). 

O1 changed edge-tool making, possibly spelling the beginning of the end of laminated blades, I reckon.


----------



## nabs (11 Jan 2018)

that's very interesting CC - hopefully you can save me some reading (I have read quite a lot of stuff up to about 1885!): is O1 a particular alloy or a group of steels? Do you know who invented/discovered it?


----------



## nabs (11 Jan 2018)

PS I came across a number of references to 'goff hammers' in the 19th C literature (normally criticising their use by 'foreigners' to make inferior goods ! ). Are they the same as spring hammers?


----------



## Cheshirechappie (11 Jan 2018)

No. Unfortunately, I've never been able to pin down exactly who or when. It was during a time when lots of experiments were going on. Hadfield's steel is often quoted in the history books because it was one of the first. Molybdenum steel followed soon after, because the railways found they could use it in rails, particularly the ones on pointwork that saw a lot of wear. A later example was Harry Brearley's discovery of stainless steel (or 'rustless iron' as was originally called in 1913. Brearley was looking for longer-lasting steels for gun barrels, and discovered that a high chromium content resisted the etching power of the acids used for metallurgical examination preparation. Many other alloys came about during that time, and in the years after WW1.

Edit to add - not sure about 'Goff Hammer', but this is the sort of spring hammer much used in Sheffield;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAOFfPbuRs


----------



## AndyT (11 Jan 2018)

nabs":23nvbdrn said:


> PS I came across a number of references to 'goff hammers' in the 19th C literature (normally criticising their use by 'foreigners' to make inferior goods ! ). Are they the same as spring hammers?



According to this excellent book(only £5!) a goff hammer is a "fast-running powered trip hammer used in forging."


----------



## Cheshirechappie (11 Jan 2018)

On the basis of that definition, a Goff hammer and a spring hammer are probably pretty much the same thing, or different names for the same thing.

Just a thought - hand forging a pen-knife blade by hand hammer is one thing, but a plane iron would be an altogether different undertaking. Some smiths used a striker with a bigger, long-handled sledge, but my guess is that for bits bigger than small knife blades, gimlets and the like, as the spring hammer could give more and heavier blows per minute it would increase a man's productivity significantly.


----------



## D_W (11 Jan 2018)

Cheshirechappie":2qtkr6ym said:


> On the basis of that definition, a Goff hammer and a spring hammer are probably pretty much the same thing, or different names for the same thing.
> 
> Just a thought - hand forging a pen-knife blade by hand hammer is one thing, but a plane iron would be an altogether different undertaking. Some smiths used a striker with a bigger, long-handled sledge, but my guess is that for bits bigger than small knife blades, gimlets and the like, as the spring hammer could give more and heavier blows per minute it would increase a man's productivity significantly.



A little bigger than pen knife. So far, I've forged blades of 2 (that's a pen knife), 3 1/2 and 5 inches.

Out of files and chisels. I don't have anything large enough to forge into a plane iron (especially not reasonable quality wrought iron) or I'd give it a shot.

I'd guess a power hammer would increase production by a factor of five or more in large things. Perhaps ten - and it would allow hammering of larger items from less perfect starting sources of stock. 

I'm sure I could hammer a 2 1/2" wide iron, though - but I wouldn't want to do it out of high carbon steel. What I'm not sure of is whether or not I could get a forge weld between wrought and something like 1095 steel. I heard that in making irons by hand (which they did at colonial williamsburg here) that they had trouble with steel of the garden variety for tools (1% carbon range) and ultimately decided to use 1070, which forge welded much more easily. 

If they're having trouble with it, what's going to happen with a guy who has a couple of propane bottles and no helper?

In terms of increasing productivity beyond the power hammer, the mid-level japanese makers (who make chisels for about $50 each), or at least some of them, use dies and a hydraulic press. They smash the soft iron (you can get wrought, but the price is higher) and hagane layer together and shape all at once and then use grinding jigs to do the rest of the work. 

The process that die forges razors (and is still in use) is a two step squash from a large hammer and then a trimming die to remove the excess. that's not laminating, but still an illustration of how much faster die forging is and there's no real loss of quality vs. a skilled user working a power hammer. An unskilled laborer can then run the die forge process and the result is much closer to final shape than it would be if someone attempted to do something by hand. You can see the point in history where razors went from being less precisely shaped billets turned into wedges to finely made hollow ground razors that resulted from die forging.

If there was a demand, I'd imagine that a shade tree type person could make a die and laminate with a hydraulic press. There's no demand that I'm aware of. It's probably difficult to get people to even pay $70 for a milled tapered iron, and even those irons have lost some of the subtleties that make for a good wooden plane iron (a hollow along the length of the iron, etc, to make sure they will bed on the right places even if the plane moves a little with the seasons). 

I've thought about giving some of this a try. Not the laminating, but forging a plane iron. The reality of it, though, is a high quality O1 iron that's heat treated properly is really difficult to beat. The dirty secret (well, not dirty) is that the better oil hardening steel irons actually outperform A2 in use in normal wood, wearing at a similar rate but staying more even wearing and providing a better finish as they do. Or, in short, I'm sure the iron that I drill, saw and file out of western-made O1 stock will be better than one that I hammer out of a large file. I don't know what the file is made of, but I know O1 stock is very easy to harden and temper if you're willing to stick to a certain mfr's stock and do the same thing each time. My best plane iron, aside from two japanese irons, is an iron that I just cut and filed out of starrett O1 stock and tempered right at 60. It is a better iron than Hock's (hock HCS irons chip), though maybe not quite as good as the irons steve knight had made. 

Apologies for the tangent. I do intent to hammer out some larger knives, though, and would attempt an iron if I actually had wrought (that would be easy enough to fix with a little bit of spending) and thought I could freehand a forge weld (I have no confidence in being able to do that part).


----------



## D_W (11 Jan 2018)

https://s13.postimg.org/yn8ui6z1z/20180101_145842.jpg

This is the second knife that I've made - it's wharncliffe, so the sharp edge is the straight one and the groove on the back is a false edge to attempt that just for fun. Since it's only the second thing I've hammered, it's not an issue of actually wanting this particular knife (the chisel is junk - a long socket firmer from lakeside), but seeing if it was easy to forge one that's straight enough to be hand finished on files and stones (it is), which then means if you're going to do a project by hand (like making a lockback or slipjoint knife), you can make a fairly large one with a hand-made blade - more stimulating if you're the maker than belt grinding and filing (or milling if you're inclined) out of bar stock. 

I also wanted to see if heating and hammering this chisel (which was no good) might help to make the quality of the steel a little bit better - and maybe that does sometimes, but it didn't do anything in this case. it still fails by chipping far more than decent quality O1 despite not being any harder than 60 hardness. I'm guessing lakeside was a second rate lower-cost maker.

I'd guess hammering time on this to get to this point (before hand filing and stoning) was a couple of minutes - three heats? a shade tree person could hammer a fat 1" wide chisel into an iron blank in about an hour (perhaps two inches wide - I ground away a lot of tapered hammered material), I'd guess - and at the cost of a couple of bottles of gas. It's not a small knife blade, though - 3 1/2 inches long or so with some excess ground off of the end. A can forge makes enough heat to do an iron 8 inches long or so if you're willing to do each side.

I may still attempt a solid steel forged iron if I can come across a wide and thick, but inexpensive chisel.


----------



## nabs (12 Jan 2018)

D_W":4za1r3i5 said:


> You can see the point in history where razors went from being less precisely shaped billets turned into wedges to finely made hollow ground razors that resulted from die forging.



this is a good example of the inertia that beset the Sheffield trades - the techniques for hollow grinding razors were actually invented in Sheffield, but it took makers in Hamburg to see the opportunity and put it to good use. By the time Sheffield cutlery makers realised that consumers wanted the newer product it was too late - by then the German makers had a well earned reputation in this area that was hard to dislodge.

I would be fascinated to hear more about real world experiences of hand forging plane irons so don't forget to film it if you do more experiments!


----------



## D_W (12 Jan 2018)

nabs":1svqv9le said:


> D_W":1svqv9le said:
> 
> 
> > You can see the point in history where razors went from being less precisely shaped billets turned into wedges to finely made hollow ground razors that resulted from die forging.
> ...



I'm scouting firmer chisels right now for one that can have the socket cut off and be hammered into a tapered iron. I don't know anything about forging in general, but would guess that hammering a laminated chisel below laminating heat might cause delamination, so I'm going to try first with a good quality all-steel firmer. 

The trick is finding one about 7 inches long before the socket that is of a good make - I've learned already that hammering a junk chisel into a knife is a good way to make a knife that doesn't hold an edge the way you'd want one to. I could very well spend about $70 to end up with a $20 iron, but it should be a good learning experience. 

I so value the way that the older sheffield irons are put together, with little biases in favor of the planemaker, that I won't use modern irons until or unless I absolutely have to. If I can hammer out an iron instead, it would be nice. If I can hammer one out of solid and then hammer one out of an old wrought firmer to compare, it would be doubly interesting. Just the shape of the firmers to start (fatter toward the socket) is a bit backwards, though. 

This is the kind of thing i like to do, though - experiment first without reading too much about what you can't do, and then see how it goes. If I could get my wife to hold the iron with blacksmith tongs, I could hit it with a full sledge - but there is zero chance of that happening. Anything that isn't finished with the forging requires hand work (which is enjoyable, but not particularly productive).


----------

