High Speed Steel in an Old Plane

[D_W]

Have a look at this thing on ebay

371790783324

I've got no stake in it, and I'm sure in the end, it'll go higher than I'd want to bid. But I noticed the picture of the iron "High Speed" - and it is by no means remotely close to being a new iron.

How old are these irons? Some of the exotic alloys showed up in razors for a very short period of time early on, and then disappeared, only to reappear now in the days of the shaver who has no clue. Barbers never found the exotic hard-honing razor stuff worthwhile.

Presumably, nobody found these high speed irons worth much, either, as they didn't get any market share. Of course, we have the renaissance now of woodworking where "if the old masters only had the options now, they'd have bought all of the boutique tools, too."

Apparently they didn't think much of the high speed steel irons!! (this one has survived well, depending on how hard it is, probably has something to do with how much of a pain in is to hone and grind).

 

[D_W]

A look around google finds only a couple of strikes for the same thing "Revilo High Speed Steel". It shows up in a couple of long expired listings for infills.

 

[ED65]

I can't recall the exact date but I think the earliest mention I've read of using HSS for a woodworking tool was from the teens or 20s.

 

[bugbear]

I've got no stake in it, and I'm sure in the end, it'll go higher than I'd want to bid. But I noticed the picture of the iron "High Speed" - and it is by no means remotely close to being a new iron.

Mushet Steel dates to 1868, so it doesn't have to be very new...

F[rederick] Mountford were a horticultural edge tool makers
(scythes and so on), so perhaps plane blades were a short lived diversification.

BugBear

 

[MIGNAL]

Stanley Australia were using HSS blades but I've no idea when they started, probably long after that one.

 

[D_W]

Stanley Australia were using HSS blades but I've no idea when they started, probably long after that one.

Yes, they're newer, and M2 steel if I understand correctly. I think the original tungsten high speed steels probably would've made better irons, but they'd be expensive.

 

[Trafalgar]

Both Stanley and Record provided HSS irons to the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Kunz still make them as far as I know. They are also still to be found in the E.C. Emmerich catalog. The Kunz irons used to run in the $75 dollar range if memory serves for a 2" iron -- would fit Stanley and Record planes.

Jack plane iron by Kunz in HSS, 77 Euros:

https://www.fine-tools.com/eputz5.html

 

[D_W]

Yeah, the kunz price is absurd. I remember when I was building some planes out of cocobolo years ago, I thought that some HSS planes would be ideal (they did work pretty well). A full iron and cap iron set with an ebony plane wrapped around it made by mujingfang was $59. Same style as an emmerich plane - continental.

No clue what the aussie irons cost new, but I saw someone selling one on an aussie forum for $45 sometime last year.

I've come to like them not quite so much, it just took doing a lot more dimensioning by hand to get comfortable making a soft iron do a lot of work before sharpening. Clearance is gone faster on a thin shaving, and wear occurs faster. It's a dumb way to go if you're trying to remove material, but you can't afford the tearout that you get with a thick iron if you don't have a cap iron (and you can't push a steep iron through a thick shaving).

Anyway, curiosity got me on this one because I've seen more than one person say "if they had high speed steel in the old days, they would've used it". I figured they did and they wouldn't. This is the first really old iron I've seen that was any kind of HSS, and all of google finds them pretty infrequently. The razors that have tons and tons of tungsten in them are a little more common, but tend to be very little used when you find them.

There would've been no shortage of stones available to sharpen these HSS irons at the time, the standard carborundum stones cut them just fine, but they do raise a wire edge, and anything high speed steel is a real bear with the wire edge - everything is a conundrum with it other than a hard surface and diamonds, and then the steel itself presents the issue of dropping its initial edge right away.

But glad to have finally found an early one - wouldn't be surprised if the other one was little used like this one (the only other one showing up sold 2 years ago, so no opportunity to view the images from the sale).

 

[Trafalgar]

$70 isn't all that much. I don't know if you turn, but if you do I'm sure you've noticed the price of HSS turning tools.

 

[MIGNAL]

I have a few of the Chinese HSS blades but none of them have the keyhole. They were made for the wooden planes. They are difficult to get sharp, you really do need to go at them with the fine polishing stuff and for a long time too. The edge does last longer.

 

[D_W]

I have a few of the Chinese HSS blades but none of them have the keyhole. They were made for the wooden planes. They are difficult to get sharp, you really do need to go at them with the fine polishing stuff and for a long time too. The edge does last longer.

They work well with several things, but most of it is due to their wire edge. As you say, if you want just edge longevity, they last.

I've found the following work well with them:
* natural waterstones with a slurry (the slurry prevents the formation of much of a wire edge). That can be an expensive option, though. For some reason, they finish sharpen really easy on a suita stone...like I said, expensive, but strange how they respond to one of those and sharpen really well on it.
* loose fine diamonds (best option, fast and fine on HSS)
* the really tiny sub micron artificial waterstones
* burnishing the wire edge off with something like a jasper until it's so thin that it just gives up

Not really worth the trouble, though, if you're finish smoothing without scraping. they will just give up little nicks and leave tiny lines everywhere - just enough that you can see the direction the wood was planed. They do last at the "sort of sharp" level for a very long time, though, and the more silica there is in the wood, the more they outlast something else. I've probably had half a dozen muji planes, and I have a set of strange chisels they made that taper in width and not thickness (opposite of most) and are just stuck into a wooden handle without much thought. They are all the same steel. They make carbon steel stuff, too, but I've never had any of it. There's no shortage of that from any other place.

 

[D_W]

$70 isn't all that much. I don't know if you turn, but if you do I'm sure you've noticed the price of HSS turning tools.

Yes, I don't know of any cheap good ones - and some of the expensive ones seem a little soft, too. Never sourced bar stock metal in HSS, or drill rod, but I'm sure anything reputable is expensive.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

On dating, Wiki gives the first date of commercially available high speed steel as 1910.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_steel

That followed a fairly lengthy period of development from Mushet's steel, manufactured and supplied by Samuel Osborne and Co of Sheffield from about 1870. In America in 1880, the machine shop foreman of the Midvale Steel Company, Frederick Taylor, began a series of experiments trying to increase his shop's productivity; these investigations were to last 20 years, latterly at the Bethlehem Steelworks and in conjunction with their (British) metallurgist Maunsel White. They were financed by Midvale's president, William Sellers - it is estimated that the experiments eventually cost $200,000. They not only developed new grades of steel from which cutting tools could be made, but in the process effectively had to redesign the machine tools on which the tools were used. The whole exercise is thought to be the first extensive application of scientific method to steel manufacture.

The first use of the term 'high speed steel' I can find was to one of Taylor and White's experimental grades in about 1900 -

http://www.westyorkssteel.com/blog/a-hi ... eed-steel/

However, that wasn't made commercially available.

I don't know when British manufacturers started to produce HSS, but I'd guess it was during WW1. I do know that Sheffield installed quite a few small electric arc furnaces during the war, to replace the labour-intensive crucible process. It may be that with the cessation of hostilities and the drop in production of war materiel, manufacturers in the early 1920s were looking for any application for special steels to keep their plants in production. It could be that HSS plane irons date from about that time or later. It's hard to see how they could be earlier than that in the UK; they couldn't be earlier than 1910 in the US, either.

 

[MIGNAL]

I have a few of the Chinese HSS blades but none of them have the keyhole. They were made for the wooden planes. They are difficult to get sharp, you really do need to go at them with the fine polishing stuff and for a long time too. The edge does last longer.

They work well with several things, but most of it is due to their wire edge. As you say, if you want just edge longevity, they last.

I've found the following work well with them:
* natural waterstones with a slurry (the slurry prevents the formation of much of a wire edge). That can be an expensive option, though. For some reason, they finish sharpen really easy on a suita stone...like I said, expensive, but strange how they respond to one of those and sharpen really well on it.
* loose fine diamonds (best option, fast and fine on HSS)
* the really tiny sub micron artificial waterstones
* burnishing the wire edge off with something like a jasper until it's so thin that it just gives up

Not really worth the trouble, though, if you're finish smoothing without scraping. they will just give up little nicks and leave tiny lines everywhere - just enough that you can see the direction the wood was planed. They do last at the "sort of sharp" level for a very long time, though, and the more silica there is in the wood, the more they outlast something else. I've probably had half a dozen muji planes, and I have a set of strange chisels they made that taper in width and not thickness (opposite of most) and are just stuck into a wooden handle without much thought. They are all the same steel. They make carbon steel stuff, too, but I've never had any of it. There's no shortage of that from any other place.

I used an 8,000G waterstone with mine, followed by stropping on compound/leather. I haven't used a HSS blade for a good few years now.
I think I've had one Muji type plane with a carbon blade. I guess it must have been carbon because it certainly wasn't HSS. I was impressed with that blade though, given the cost. I'm not saying it was anything special but it wasn't any worse than the Veritas, Ray Iles that I've had. I could probably include others but those were what I was using at that particular time.

 

[D_W]

I've managed to get a hold of one of these irons in a coffin smoother here in the US. A 55mm little used parallel iron (I'll put it in an infill and see how it works). It was on ebay in a griffiths coffin smoother for the princely sum of $15 for the pair - it'll be at least until the end of the week before I have it in hand.

Given the age for these irons ("F. Mountford and Sons, Revilo High Speed Steel"), i'm hoping that they're tungsten-based HSS.

The only reference I can see for Mountford and Sons is that they were listed a scythe manufacturer. Does anyone have any information on when they were in business? So far, I can find confirmation that they were operating at least 1893 through 1925.

Regardless of the novelty of this iron, if it's good, it's a win for me because it's a $15 iron that I'll stuff into an infill smoother down the road when I make another one, and it's in a nice size for an infill smoother (55mm). I don't think I've ever gotten a good full parallel iron and cap for less than $50.

 

[bugbear]

Here's the blade from the auction:

Pretty modern looking typeface (relatively speaking)

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

This looks relevant, from the British Newspaper Archive: Sheffield Independent - Saturday 08 December 1928

Note "machine knife" in the list of products. The same Archive shows they were still working in 1939.

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

May 1936 - description is now "Messrs. F. Mountford and Sons, Itd. machine knife and shear blade manufacturers of Wellford Works, 93, St Mary's road. Sheffield"

EDIT; still working in 1950

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

Tool bazaar have a MUCH later iron, judging by the way it's marked (lightly etched, like a modern tap or drill bit)

http://www.toolbazaar.co.uk/shop/mountf ... -iron.html

Good clean 2 1/4" wide, 3/16" thick HIGH SPEED STEEL parallel plane iron by MOUNTFORD, SHEFFIELD. Slight pitting in places but basically good. 1 1/2" left to slot.

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

Great research there BB!

I wonder if the featured plane iron was trying to appeal to the same market as the HSS chisels we discussed a while ago - post1105571.html#p1105571 - which also seem to be rather rare.