High Speed Steel in an Old Plane

[bugbear]

I found a Record #4 being sold on a Russian woodwork forum; look at the blade!!!

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

They just keep coming!!

The full 2'' cutter is marked REVILO LONG LIFE, and is a hefty 3/16'' thick.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ ... teel-brass

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

The HSS appears "laid on"

(eBay item 232546236533 sold for 14 quid, 02 Nov, 2017)

Laminated HSS parallel plane iron by F. Mountford & Sons, Sheffield (edge tool makers taken over by Tyzack in the 1950's). 2 1/4" wide, 7" long, approx. 5/32" (4mm) thick, 1 3/16" of life left. Very good clean condition. Will need honing before use. Weighs approx. 275 grams.


Tyzack is "new knowledge"

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

SPIERS WOOD PLANE WITH F MOUNTFORD AND SONS BLADE

Auction date:
Sep 20, 2014 10am BST

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

British Newspaper Archive again: Sheffield Daily Telegraph - Thursday 17 April 1924

Image © Johnston Press plc. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

BugBear

 

[D_W]

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

Jeez - 36 pounds. Pretty stiff for a third used-up very pitted iron!!

 

[D_W]

Here's the blade from the auction:


Pretty modern looking typeface (relatively speaking)

BugBear

I was thinking WWII era the first I saw it, but i'm not an expert on when the plain modern typefaces like that became common. They were used fairly early by pocket watch companies over here - in the movements, not on the faces (which is unfortunate, because they probably thought they looked progressive at the time - but now they just make a 90 year-old watch look less classy).

Just hoping that it predates the Molybdenum high speed steels, as the older tungsten steels that were tried (without much long-term success) in razors could take a reasonable edge on a razor - albeit with more time spent on the hone. They would make good edge tools whereas M2 is OK, but gives up carbides too easily.

 

[patrickjchase]

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

Mushet steel did indeed have excellent heat resistance, but use of the term "High Speed Steel" dates from the turn of the 20th Century, so I think that we can rule out anything earlier than that.

 

[nabs]

The HSS appears "laid on"


BugBear

looking again at the W&P patent, what they claim to have invented was a chisel where the HSS bit was butt welded to the body. if I remember rightly (from pictures - I have never come across one) that is how the Stanley HSS irons were made too. This is a puzzling choice in as far as they chose to forgo a key benefit of laminating - at least from a user perspective - namely reduced effort spent sharpening.

DW how is your one made?
PS Ward's justification for butt welding the two parts was that it meant they could use a less brittle metal for the shank. The patent also says:

'the expedient of laminating two grades of steels, for long practised with axes and hatches, does not provide a practical solution of the attainment of longer life for the cutting edges of chisels or gouges'

... I wonder if this is a reference to the potential for chisels to delaminate if given a lot of heavy use (perhaps because of the relatively small area of the weld)?

 

[bugbear]

Taking a step back, and looking at the wide range of blades I found, it appears that Mountford manufactured these blades for quite and extended period - it was not a brief marketing experiment.

BugBear

 

[nabs]

.. and it seems the Stanley HSS irons were available in Oz and NZ for a long time too, so there must have been a demand for them. I wonder if it is practical to sharpen them with oil stones (and if that is the reason they are relatively uncommon)?

 

[Cheshirechappie]

From my machine shop experience, it's normal in the metalworking world to sharpen HSS cutters by grinding, sometimes on offhand grinders (lathe and shaper tools, generally) but more usually on complex and expensive specialist tool grinding machines. I think specialist grinding machines were available for grinding woodworking planer knives.

However, a long-established practice among turners and toolmakers was to polish the cutting edges of freshly-ground HSS cutting tools to gain a better finish on the workpiece. I've done that, and it works - it works with ordinary India oilstones. However, That's only to take out the grinder scratches. I wouldn't want to remove any bulk from a HSS tool with an oilstone - you'd be there all day!

(All pretty much history in the world of metal machining these days, since inserted tip tooling using sintered carbides and all sorts of fancy powder metallurgy alloys and coatings have pretty much supplanted the HSS toolbit for anything except the odd repair shop one-off.)

In consequence, I reckon anybody with a HSS hand-plane blade will sharpen it on a grinder, and just polish out the finish grinding marks with an oilstone, or whatever other finer abrasive medium.

 

[D_W]

.. and it seems the Stanley HSS irons were available in Oz and NZ for a long time too, so there must have been a demand for them. I wonder if it is practical to sharpen them with oil stones (and if that is the reason they are relatively uncommon)?

This is sort of a two part answer. Yes, you can use oilstones, but the bulk of the work needs to be done with crystolon and india stones. However, when you refine the india stone work with an arkansas stone, strange things can happen, like carbides appearing to leave whole, and leave a coarse edge.

Crystolon to india is actually better than any waterstones I've used, but waterstones and diamonds are safer for the fine work. I'll post how well this iron finishes on natural stones.

 

[patrickjchase]

However, a long-established practice among turners and toolmakers was to polish the cutting edges of freshly-ground HSS cutting tools to gain a better finish on the workpiece. I've done that, and it works - it works with ordinary India oilstones. However, That's only to take out the grinder scratches. I wouldn't want to remove any bulk from a HSS tool with an oilstone - you'd be there all day!

It's probably worth noting that synthetic oilstones like Indias use Aluminum Oxide, which is harder than most of the carbides in typical HSS variants. Natural oilstones are mostly silicate-based, and will be more "challenged". I would not want to hone any of my (few) HSS tools hand tools on anything less than AlOx (and I'd be sorely tempted to use SiC, CBN, or diamond).

 

[D_W]

I'll provide pictures. I've found a couple of natural stones that work well on HSS, but nothing is universal. If you sharpen something several times and it doesn't seem to be that sharp, the problem will show up under the miscroscope (like the mystery pits on freshly sharpened A2 that's seen a washita).

The washita seems to be the biggest offender in separating bits and pieces from alloy steel that it technically shouldn't be able to sharpen. It will raise a wire edge and sometimes make all kinds of nasty things happen.

Crystolon stones, on the other hand, have shown to have frightening working speed on HSS. I could make the SGPS fallkniven knife disappear in about 15 minutes of heavy grinding on a crystolon stone, and then the same knife didn't seem to be abraded much by the washita, but it didn't like the washita, either...or anything. Not even loose diamonds on wood. Took an excellent edge off of a buffer with no sign of strangeness.

You just never know. I have high hopes for an iron that's got more tungsten in it based on my experience with the short-lived but relatively common high tungsten razors from the early 1900s. And wishes for edge wear that looks visually like carbon steel as the iron dulls.

 

[patrickjchase]

Crystolon stones, on the other hand, have shown to have frightening working speed on HSS. I could make the SGPS fallkniven knife disappear in about 15 minutes of heavy grinding on a crystolon stone, and then the same knife didn't seem to be abraded much by the washita, but it didn't like the washita, either...or anything. Not even loose diamonds on wood. Took an excellent edge off of a buffer with no sign of strangeness.

Crystolon is SiC, which is harder than most other carbides. It's also very frangible, such that it continually exposes fresh, sharp edges in use. As you say there are cases where it can be more appropriate than diamond, though individual edges don't last very long.

 

[D_W]

I don't know what level SiC is a finisher, but I have carborundum barber hones, and they're still coarse. The application of a barber hone doesn't involve going all of the way to the edge, but it's still surprising how fast the fine stones cut (and how they don't leave a good edge).

Let alone the mediums. They don't cut vanadium carbides, but since they cut the entire matrix really fast and aren't doing the finish work, so it doesn't matter whether they cut them or not, as long as the removal is fast.

 

[patrickjchase]

I don't know what level SiC is a finisher, but I have carborundum barber hones, and they're still coarse. The application of a barber hone doesn't involve going all of the way to the edge, but it's still surprising how fast the fine stones cut (and how they don't leave a good edge).

Let alone the mediums. They don't cut vanadium carbides, but since they cut the entire matrix really fast and aren't doing the finish work, so it doesn't matter whether they cut them or not, as long as the removal is fast.

You can get SiC down to about 3 microns, or ~4000#, and 3M Wet-or-Dry paper is widely available to 3000#. With that said it's mostly used for metal work at coarse and medium grits. For example SiC waterstones are available up to 1000# IIRC (Sigma Select II 1000).

When I said that SiC is harder than "most carbides", the notable exceptions are Vanadium Carbide (as you point out) and Boron Carbide. It would be challenged by M4, but should be able to handle more pedestrian HSS alloys fairly easily.

 

[D_W]

You can get it a bit smaller than that, but there's no reason to. Even at 3 microns, it has an ability to make a bit of a jagged edge. I'm not sure who the customers were of SiC that small, and I'm fairly sure that carborundum's barber hones were coarser than that (most barber hones are somewhere around grit 1200FF, but the way they're used would be confusing to a woodworker).

Silicon carbide does exist in some well regarded hones, though, and it's different in feel. The super punjab by am. hone comes to mind (yes, I've used one, yes I often remeber things that are of little consequence, like the fact that the green side of a super punjab smells like a fart). It's in a binder, though, and the edge is a little bit better than the more pure abrasive type hone like a crystolon.

I have but one M4 chisel. I'll see what the crystolon does to it (never tried), but I'm assuming it will shred it (not sharpen it properly, but waste it away easily and blast all of the carbides out by just shredding everything around them like it does to SGPS ).

 

[patrickjchase]

You can get it a bit smaller than that, but there's no reason to. Even at 3 microns, it has an ability to make a bit of a jagged edge.

The finer grits are mostly used on finishes, not metal work.