Let's suss out some OWTs

[D_W]

Here are some OWTs that I hear from time to time that I've never seen proven
(1) natural stones are gentle to steel and will create a longer lasting edge
(2) nothing is better than the finest carbon steel (attributable to planing - for chiseling, this may still be true)
(3) you cannot prepare a good surface with alloyed plane irons
(4) hollow grinds make bevels and/or edges weaker (materially, like in a way that you'll see) at the same final angle
(5) heavier and thicker are always better - more modern, usually (for context, I saw asserted today that the clifton/SS type cap iron sets the bar for determining what a cap iron is good for)
(6) old tools are inconsistent because quality standards weren't good and people really didn't know what they were doing
(7) crasftmen would've used waterstones if they were available, especially the synthetic kind we have now. They just weren't available 100 years ago.
(8) sharpen sharpen sharpen to remove tearout. you cannot do it with anything other than super fine stones
(9) bench planes won't work well until you lap all of the contact surfaces like the frog bed, etc. They were made cheaply with belt sanders and don't work well - someone needs to finish the work

Have at it, kids. I've tested quite a few of these. #1 is one that I held on to for a while until testing sharpening media and finding out I just didn't have a single natural stone in my gigantic arsenal that could create a smoothing plane edge that lasted as long as 1 micron diamond on wood. Gigantic amounts of purchases kind of let me shoot holes in some of the others.

 

[D_W]

OWTs are old wives' tales.

 

[MikeG.]

Has anyone actually ever said anything like number 6? There are plenty of old wives tales which are utter nonsense, and if number 6 really was ever said it's right up there with taking liverwort as a cure for liver disease.

I suppose sometimes number 9 could be right. Some very rare times. For instance, some "restorations" slop paint all over some of those bearing surfaces.

I'm going to confess that I have never heard anyone say (or seen anyone write) anything along the lines of 1,3,4,6 or 7. but hey, it's woodworking. I don't care what people say, I care what they make.

 

[D_W]

6 is often said on american forums - I don't know if my reputation for buying stuff and just flipping it around is known here, but I've had probably 400 chisels.

The engineering answer (quite often, the assertion in the states comes from engineers who confuse adherence to spec as meaning narrow tolerances) is that there wasn't process, people didn't understand what they were doing and the result was inconsistent tools (the argument presented is usually a list of dates when metallurgical things became known).

The reality that I've seen with old tools from similar eras is that different manufacturers did different things. Ward parallel irons are generally hard. Once in a while there's one that's out of spec, but usually they're in a narrow range. But harder than most irons from butcher or buck.

Ward chisels generally are pretty consistent, as are any other maker, but someone getting a grab bag of chisels that included two bucks, two wards and a marples could mistakenly believe that the differences between brands is was lack of consistency within brands.

#1 is often said - there may be cases where it's true, but the differences between sharpening media are too great to generalize. For example, coarse diamonds leave a poorly finished edge, while coarse novaculite stones of larger particle size (by chart) don't. That may be true, but coarse diamonds are not fine diamonds. very fine diamonds appear to leave a very sharp, uniform, and good performing edge.

4 is often said also - partially attributable to gurus advocating rounded bevels (convex) and partially due to people drawing charts with lines on them showing angles and inferring things from their drawings. I won't name names ,but I could - would you believe that people who say things to which I say "prove it" don't favor me too much.

7 is especially fun because there were early attempts at making baked/resinous (not sure exactly what they were) synthetic stones in bench stone sizes, but they didn't do that well. Very small alumina (like submicron) is probably a modern thing, but alumina of several microns less closely graded wasn't uncommon. It was in razor hones in droves at various fineness levels. Grinding stones in silicon carbide did catch on extremely well, but use of them in practice will show why. In an oil bath, they're probably still the best manual bevel grinding method (and will destroy a lot of the "tough" modern alloys used in knives that some other things won't touch).

My experience with blue chip marples chisels in 5 sets (stanley 5000 series, too) is that you have a decent chance of getting one unhardened or not properly hardened in a set. They actually tolerate rehardening fine. I have an entire set of nice marples boxwod handled chisels while they were undergoing "the change" (moving toward modern steel) and something like 8 out of 10 are unhardened. You can't pare anything with them, they roll their edges - but rehardening and some fairly crude tempering, and they're fine. Ward never would've made that mistake.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Ward chisels generally are pretty consistent, as are any other maker, but someone getting a grab bag of chisels that included two bucks, two wards and a marples could mistakenly believe that the differences between brands is was lack of consistency within brands?

Only if they are remarkably stupid.

 

[D_W]

Combine naive with that, too (lack of exposure)

Actually, there is some credence for some of the claims. alloyed steels before what's out there now (especially in high speed steels) could be pretty good at letting bits of their edges go.

the college professors who did the study on the cap iron (where the video came from) also tested a bunch of alloys in the 1980s and determined that the only alloy that they had that would leave a uniform surface was yellow steel (a precursor to white steel, I believe - slightly lower constraints, but tighter in constrain than western carbon steels).

They did find that M2 lasted much longer. The advent of *good* powder HSS and powder stainless gives steels that have the same wear resistance, but more uniformity. When I did my testing, included with V11 was also 3V and M4, all powder. They all had the nice uniform wear that plain steel does, even if they had a very persistent wire edge that was hard to remove.

Separate from all of this - I've had a bunch of english razors that were made prior to the point where razor manufacturing was modernized (old butchers and other makers from the UK - wedge and hollow wedge styles) and they're nothing to write home about. Razor manufacturing took a gigantic leap forward somewhere around 1890 and probably didn't start to go to crap until the mid 1900s whereas tools were on the decline before then, presumably due to cost constraints that hit razors later (power tools took the market away for planes, and I guess DE razors after WWI slowly took away the straight razor market. Gillette in the states was smart enough to have their razors sent along with GIs). Paid for push marketing.

 

[bridger]

(1) natural stones are gentle to steel and will create a longer lasting edge
.....
Tactile feel suggests that there may be some truth here. Logic says there isn't. I have no data.


(2) nothing is better than the finest carbon steel (attributable to planing - for chiseling, this may still be true)
.....
Define "better"


(3) you cannot prepare a good surface with alloyed plane irons
.....
This may have been true 100 years ago.


(4) hollow grinds make bevels and/or edges weaker (materially, like in a way that you'll see) at the same final angle
.....
This is true in extreme cases. Think full wedge vs. full hollow grind straight razors. Which would last better chopping down trees?



(5) heavier and thicker are always better - more modern, usually (for context, I saw asserted today that the clifton/SS type cap iron sets the bar for determining what a cap iron is good for)
.....
Leonard bailey was a smarter man than tom lie nielsen.


(6) old tools are inconsistent because quality standards weren't good and people really didn't know what they were doing
.....
Old tools are inconsistent because they are, well, old. A lot of them are worn out or have been neglected.


(7) crasftmen would've used waterstones if they were available, especially the synthetic kind we have now. They just weren't available 100 years ago.
.....
As soon as i get my time machine finished i'll go back and take a survey.



(8) sharpen sharpen sharpen to remove tearout. you cannot do it with anything other than super fine stones
.....
Sharp is the first prerequisite, but far from the last.


(9) bench planes won't work well until you lap all of the contact surfaces like the frog bed, etc. They were made cheaply with belt sanders and don't work well - someone needs to finish the work
.....
Most modern cheap planes need work.

 

[thetyreman]

one OWT is that you can do anything just with the cap iron, I did a test of my own yesterday, I tried the cap iron in 3 different positions 0.3mm, 1.5mm and 3mm away from the cutting edge on my krenov 55 degree angle plane (hock blade and cap iron), guess which produced the best results? the 3mm distance, so my conclusion is that mouth size is a lot more important than cap iron distance. I will admit I'm not scientifically qualified :lol:

 

[D_W]

you're lacking experience using a cap iron if you think that it's less effective than mouth size. You may not like to hear that, but the problem with your proof is lack of qualification.

How do I know? I made this plane years ago:

https://imgur.com/ZBtX1Et

https://i.imgur.com/NK7Ank4.jpg

I'll admit, I was pretty pleased with myself even though it's got some aesthetic problems, the mouth is uniformly 3-4 thousandths (Depending on the season - yes, it changes)

It would be difficult to get something with a more controlled mouth, but this plane cannot plane anything better than a stanley 4 (when the stanley is used properly) and there are some cases where it creates more tearout.

Given the time that I spent making this (almost entirely with hand tools), I was disappointed to find this out.

My testing of the cap iron was more extensive, though - and it was before any videos existed or any of this stuff that's out now. I started testing it because someone who advocates use of it (and who is a slight fellow and a little older) went to one of the woodworking shows here and blew away everyone in a smooth planing competition. Timed and surface quality. I was using a progression of single iron planes and trying to move to working by hand, and since there was suddenly credible proof that I might be wrong, I forced myself to use common pitch planes with a cap iron dimensioning wood and finishing it for about two weeks. It took well less than a week for me to learn to set the stanley 4 to beat this infill - something I'd have never thought possible.

It's simply this - you can't measure it. Set the cap iron as close the edge as you can see - you can fairly easily set a cap iron to 2 thousandths or so if you have good eyes (this can be measured in a microscope - I finally measured it about 8 years later), and then relieve the cap iron from the edge just about the smallest amount that you can.

It's no harder to learn to set the cap properly (by eye) than it is to saw a dovetail well, but you probably won't figure it out in one set. You could learn to saw dovetails in a weekend if you forced yourself to cut a few hundred, and if you forced yourself to use a common pitch stanley in heavy work, you could learn to set the cap iron pretty easily.

There's no point in using one on a 55 degree iron, though it can theoretically improve performance, the same as there's no reason to have a super tight mouth. Norris and others made their planes with wider mouths than that (but tight - probably as a show of quality) and then carefully filed away the top of the casting inside so that the cap could be set close. This was extra work for them, but their market would've demanded it. The market wouldn't have tolerated 55 degree planes because they don't improve the result and they put much more physical strain on a pro.

 

[D_W]

(1) natural stones are gentle to steel and will create a longer lasting edge
.....
Tactile feel suggests that there may be some truth here. Logic says there isn't. I have no data.


(2) nothing is better than the finest carbon steel (attributable to planing - for chiseling, this may still be true)
.....
Define "better"


(3) you cannot prepare a good surface with alloyed plane irons
.....
This may have been true 100 years ago.


(4) hollow grinds make bevels and/or edges weaker (materially, like in a way that you'll see) at the same final angle
.....
This is true in extreme cases. Think full wedge vs. full hollow grind straight razors. Which would last better chopping down trees?



(5) heavier and thicker are always better - more modern, usually (for context, I saw asserted today that the clifton/SS type cap iron sets the bar for determining what a cap iron is good for)
.....
Leonard bailey was a smarter man than tom lie nielsen.


(6) old tools are inconsistent because quality standards weren't good and people really didn't know what they were doing
.....
Old tools are inconsistent because they are, well, old. A lot of them are worn out or have been neglected.


(7) crasftmen would've used waterstones if they were available, especially the synthetic kind we have now. They just weren't available 100 years ago.
.....
As soon as i get my time machine finished i'll go back and take a survey.



(8) sharpen sharpen sharpen to remove tearout. you cannot do it with anything other than super fine stones
.....
Sharp is the first prerequisite, but far from the last.


(9) bench planes won't work well until you lap all of the contact surfaces like the frog bed, etc. They were made cheaply with belt sanders and don't work well - someone needs to finish the work
.....
Most modern cheap planes need work.

Hi bridger - for #1, I felt like there could be some truth to it, too. I still use a washita to sharpen - when I tested plane irons, it did something like 85% of the footage of 1 micron diamonds. That's good enough for me. I like the way it feels. But I was wrong about very small diamonds - the quality of the edge was better at the start and for the entirety of the test (judging by surface brightness) and none of the irons tested (even a non-powder M2-ish chinese iron, which would suffer toughness problems vs. carbon steel) showed any quick defects.

I still use the natural stones, anyway, but recognize much of the japanese supposition about natural stones (or oilstones in the US) imparting something measurable as an improvement as hocum. *but they're pleasant to use and I prefer them*, so I still do.

The carbon steel "better" would equate to two things - ultimately, longer duration in planing, as well as fewer defects. In clean wood, I was surprised again to find that the V11 (and subsequently, my own made XHP irons) had better sharpness, imparted a brighter surface and lasted a lot longer. There are two faults with them for the average user:
* they hone half as fast
* you're likely to encounter double the number of damaging things in wood with double the footage planed (dirt, mineral/silica in things like maple)

That will lead to a lot of newbies coming short of honing the damage out of irons. The microscope ratted me out on this again, and my older supposition that alloyed irons take on damage when set up properly (in clean wood) is more likely due to them taking on damage in use and then that damage not being fully honed out.

Yes on the extremes with hollow grinds - I've experimented making knives out of files - the slickest through cardboard (going into the recycling bin) are hollow ground at a slight angle. They're a treat. But they don't tolerate mistreatment. Razors are a little different - the ideally hollow ground types end up at about the same angle at the edge, but with a smaller bevel, they end up being better shavers (less friction on the face). If they're dropped, parts of the edge can break off, though. In chisels, the material difference just isn't there, though. I sent quite some time afraid of a 6" grinder because of this OWT, and then George came along and told us that he'd done almost all of his work with rather common chisels and a flat front craftsman grinder ("craftsman block") with 6" wheels. Decades of it with the same set of chisels- so it didn't even present an additional wear issue - something asserted by a few on wood central - that modern sharpening methods would cause valuable chisels and irons to be unduly consumed.

Leonard Bailey is on the level of genius of folks like Faber (creating an inexpensive pencil that could be easily mass produced). If I had to choose the most genius-involved tool of all that I've ever owned, it would have to be the LB plane design. In capable hands, it matches any plane ever made, but it doesn't require precision manufacturing or super close tolerances. It is absolute genius.

No need for the time machine survey -I've had some of the waterstones sold in the last 100 years (they started in bench stone size very early). There's nothing really wrong with them, but the only ones that took hold were actually coarse and medium crystolon and medium and fine india - but they're oilstones. If I was on a time constraint, I'd still use an india stone and a washita - it's far faster than modern baked stones in the grand scheme and the washita will match an 8k waterstone if it's allowed to settle in, but you can sharpen faster on it despite the fact that it cuts steel more slowly.

I still use carbon steel irons in coarse planes - they take damage from rough wood. On the fence a little bit about metal jointers. In smoothers, much to my dismay, XHP is a better steel even than my favorite wards. as long as something is available to overcome the fact that XHP grinds and hones half as fast.

That flies in the face of some of the claims "it's just as easy to hone as ___". That statement is a two parter:
* it releases its wire edge easily and attains good sharpness
* even though that's true, stones still only cut it half as fast (a metallurgist told bill tindall and I that, but Bill also confirmed that kees put it in his planing machine or some device and did a machine controlled test to see how fast metal is removed, and it's half of O1 at the same hardness).

(I still don't know that the V11/XHP saves any time in the shop for someone with some experience - I doubt it does).

 

[thetyreman]

you're lacking experience using a cap iron if you think that it's less effective than mouth size. You may not like to hear that, but the problem with your proof is lack of qualification.

How do I know? I made this plane years ago:

https://imgur.com/ZBtX1Et

https://i.imgur.com/NK7Ank4.jpg

I'll admit, I was pretty pleased with myself even though it's got some aesthetic problems, the mouth is uniformly 3-4 thousandths (Depending on the season - yes, it changes)

It would be difficult to get something with a more controlled mouth, but this plane cannot plane anything better than a stanley 4 (when the stanley is used properly) and there are some cases where it creates more tearout.

Given the time that I spent making this (almost entirely with hand tools), I was disappointed to find this out.

My testing of the cap iron was more extensive, though - and it was before any videos existed or any of this stuff that's out now. I started testing it because someone who advocates use of it (and who is a slight fellow and a little older) went to one of the woodworking shows here and blew away everyone in a smooth planing competition. Timed and surface quality. I was using a progression of single iron planes and trying to move to working by hand, and since there was suddenly credible proof that I might be wrong, I forced myself to use common pitch planes with a cap iron dimensioning wood and finishing it for about two weeks. It took well less than a week for me to learn to set the stanley 4 to beat this infill - something I'd have never thought possible.

It's simply this - you can't measure it. Set the cap iron as close the edge as you can see - you can fairly easily set a cap iron to 2 thousandths or so if you have good eyes (this can be measured in a microscope - I finally measured it about 8 years later), and then relieve the cap iron from the edge just about the smallest amount that you can.

It's no harder to learn to set the cap properly (by eye) than it is to saw a dovetail well, but you probably won't figure it out in one set. You could learn to saw dovetails in a weekend if you forced yourself to cut a few hundred, and if you forced yourself to use a common pitch stanley in heavy work, you could learn to set the cap iron pretty easily.

There's no point in using one on a 55 degree iron, though it can theoretically improve performance, the same as there's no reason to have a super tight mouth. Norris and others made their planes with wider mouths than that (but tight - probably as a show of quality) and then carefully filed away the top of the casting inside so that the cap could be set close. This was extra work for them, but their market would've demanded it. The market wouldn't have tolerated 55 degree planes because they don't improve the result and they put much more physical strain on a pro.

all fair points there but answer me this, if the cap iron is so important, why are veritas low angle planes so effective at planing even the most extreme woods? there's no cap iron on those, I know it's a different type of plane but still, all you can adjust is the mouth, having a tight mouth removes 99% of tearout issues, I've seen it in person, it works...

 

[That would work]

N0 10
Salted popcorn is better for you than sweet.

 

[Ttrees]

Try the experiment with one of your Bailey's Ben.
You will see that you won't be restricted to taking thin shavings.
Make sure the mouth is open on your plane!
Tom

 

[D_W]

you're lacking experience using a cap iron if you think that it's less effective than mouth size. You may not like to hear that, but the problem with your proof is lack of qualification.

How do I know? I made this plane years ago:

https://imgur.com/ZBtX1Et

https://i.imgur.com/NK7Ank4.jpg

I'll admit, I was pretty pleased with myself even though it's got some aesthetic problems, the mouth is uniformly 3-4 thousandths (Depending on the season - yes, it changes)

It would be difficult to get something with a more controlled mouth, but this plane cannot plane anything better than a stanley 4 (when the stanley is used properly) and there are some cases where it creates more tearout.

Given the time that I spent making this (almost entirely with hand tools), I was disappointed to find this out.

My testing of the cap iron was more extensive, though - and it was before any videos existed or any of this stuff that's out now. I started testing it because someone who advocates use of it (and who is a slight fellow and a little older) went to one of the woodworking shows here and blew away everyone in a smooth planing competition. Timed and surface quality. I was using a progression of single iron planes and trying to move to working by hand, and since there was suddenly credible proof that I might be wrong, I forced myself to use common pitch planes with a cap iron dimensioning wood and finishing it for about two weeks. It took well less than a week for me to learn to set the stanley 4 to beat this infill - something I'd have never thought possible.

It's simply this - you can't measure it. Set the cap iron as close the edge as you can see - you can fairly easily set a cap iron to 2 thousandths or so if you have good eyes (this can be measured in a microscope - I finally measured it about 8 years later), and then relieve the cap iron from the edge just about the smallest amount that you can.

It's no harder to learn to set the cap properly (by eye) than it is to saw a dovetail well, but you probably won't figure it out in one set. You could learn to saw dovetails in a weekend if you forced yourself to cut a few hundred, and if you forced yourself to use a common pitch stanley in heavy work, you could learn to set the cap iron pretty easily.

There's no point in using one on a 55 degree iron, though it can theoretically improve performance, the same as there's no reason to have a super tight mouth. Norris and others made their planes with wider mouths than that (but tight - probably as a show of quality) and then carefully filed away the top of the casting inside so that the cap could be set close. This was extra work for them, but their market would've demanded it. The market wouldn't have tolerated 55 degree planes because they don't improve the result and they put much more physical strain on a pro.

all fair points there but answer me this, if the cap iron is so important, why are veritas low angle planes so effective at planing even the most extreme woods? there's no cap iron on those, I know it's a different type of plane but still, all you can adjust is the mouth, having a tight mouth removes 99% of tearout issues, I've seen it in person, it works...

I had two of those planes, so I'm familiar with them. They work well as long as shavings don't lift (so keep the shaving thin, planing downgrain or the bevel high enough so that the shaving is pushed forward and smashed into itself instead of being allowed to lift.

All of these things create extra work compared to a cap iron, though they still do work. I have seen it the same as you, and my torrid pace of tool purchases early on allowed me to become very familiar with:
* steep infills (i made those -great for thin shavings, pretty terrible for anything else)
* steep wooden planes (i had planes to 63 degrees - they were really punishing to use)
* bevel up planes (great for thin shavings, pretty terrible for anything else)
* scraper planes from LN, veritas and stanley (I have a well heeled buddy, we actually would each purchase one of the premium planes and trade them around, so I got good time on the big LN and the big veritas, and then also bought the little LN scraping plane and only sold that recently - it was good for scraping a hollow on japanese planes)

I'm sure there are others. None of the above really beat a cap iron for tearout prevention (though you can once in a while find a sample of wood that will not be planed or scraped by anything - especially if there's a huge differential between early and late wood, it's quartered and was improperly dried), but all of the other methods do work more easily for someone who is a beginner.

There are certain limitations to them if you don't sand out their work, though. Scrapers and high planes work great for very hard woods and thin shavings, but they can leave a fuzzy surface on softer woods like poplar and things you may make drawer sides out of, etc. The other issue with them is they will plane about 1/4th the volume of wood before refusing to have a net pull into the cut (when the net pull is gone, you will not do neat work). Maybe less than 1/4th - not because a common pitch plane will go four times as far, but because with the cap set, it'll probably go more than 1 1/2 times as far and can do most of its work with a much thicker shaving.

If you use a thickness planer, table saw and a machine jointer, will these ever be a big issue? Probably not. If you start making larger things working by hand, it will become instantly evident why low angle metal planes (like stanley's) didn't just catch on easily, and why the double iron made most of the other fixtures disappear in a matter of a couple of decades 2+ centuries ago. It's just a far better tool, but it requires someone to have some experience with it - not an instruction sheet and then you're good to go, rather working a volume of work and learning to use it.

The 1 thousandth shaving isn't where it excels, either - we generally set a smoother to straighten a shaving four times as large, get the surface uniform, then back off and take a couple of passes of thin shavings. tissue shavings don't have the strength to lift, and BU planes are attractive to beginners because at high angles, the user doesn't have the strength to push the plane through a thick shaving, anyway.

My infill shown above was a safety plane for me - one that you can't get in much trouble with. Beyond 2 thousandths, shavings start to present resistance to the person planing. If a surface is already smooth, it's a luxurious plane to use. If a surface has just been jointed, tried, or has planer chatter and maybe some defects, it's a pain in the cheeks because you have to make so many passes with it and then you get stuck sharpening more often because it has two handicaps - three, actually:
* the steeper pitch causes clearance to go away faster
* you can't take a thicker shaving to get most of the work done
* there's no cap iron to hold a shaving down as an iron is dulling and keep plane performance acceptable all the way until clearance runs out, so you have to rely on the steep pitch to keep the plane in the cut

In actual work, I was sharpening it all the time and it has a hard hock us-made iron in it (those are very good irons, better than most O1 irons).

 

[D_W]

N0 10
Salted popcorn is better for you than sweet.

This is the states, so people wouldn't understand the subtlety. Especially if you go further south where everything is sugared.

A scottish friend of ours often says when he's here "do you have any savory food at all in this country?"

No. No, we don't. The corn lobby likes for us to eat manufactured sugar and it has become a staple rather than a treat.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

N0 10
Salted popcorn is better for you than sweet.

This is the states, so people wouldn't understand the subtlety. Especially if you go further south where everything is sugared.

A scottish friend of ours often says when he's here "do you have any savory food at all in this country?"

No. No, we don't. The corn lobby likes for us to eat manufactured sugar and it has become a staple rather than a treat.

1: Popcorn needs salt, oregano and cheese (parmesan for preference).

2: OWT: TOP DEFINITION
Owt
"Odors with Taste." Typically used when a person expels gas through burping or a flatus through the anus, that smells so powerfully strong that you can "taste it." Often used in facebooks application FarmVille: when someone acquires too many gas-producing cows, one is said to be creating "owt."
"Ew, owt, dude."
#burp#flatus#gas#smell#poopy

3: "I'm not helping much, am I, dad?"

 

[D_W]

1) this is starting to turn into an entree
2) excellent....this post is a day late, and should've been made yesterday (Turdsday....Thursday)
3) help comes in many ways!!

 

[D_W]

don't forget the alternate names for router planes, old hags teeth - Old Woman's Tooth, another OWT

 

[Cheshirechappie]

.... and if ever tha does owt for nowt, allus do it fer thissen.

 

[Trevanion]

(1) natural stones are gentle to steel and will create a longer lasting edge

Who cares, just sharpen the bloody thing and get on with it! Could be done on a concrete block for all I care so long as the edge is up to snuff :lol:

(2) nothing is better than the finest carbon steel (attributable to planing - for chiseling, this may still be true)

That all depends on what you're using it for, modern cheap steels could be better at being a prybar or for chipping away at cement than the finest carbon steels which might chip or break. I know the Ashley Iles MK2 chisel I have makes for a pretty good paint scraper which is about all it's good for frankly.

(3) you cannot prepare a good surface with alloyed plane irons

I dunno, I get pretty good results with my M42 alloy HSS knives when everything is set up hunky-dory.

(4) hollow grinds make bevels and/or edges weaker (materially, like in a way that you'll see) at the same final angle

That all depends whether you're measuring the bevel correctly, if you're measuring the bevel right on the tip of the cutting edge for about the first couple of millimeters to whatever your angle needs to be it shouldn't be any different to a completely flat bevel. I think the confusion comes from people thinking as if it's ground like completely flat bevel but with a hollow removed, which would make it a lower angle. A hollow grind done correctly will look like a higher bevel angle than a flat bevel but will actually be the same at the important bit.

(5) heavier and thicker are always better - more modern, usually (for context, I saw asserted today that the clifton/SS type cap iron sets the bar for determining what a cap iron is good for)

I always insist that size doesn't matter and it's what you do with it, she doesn't agree

(6) old tools are inconsistent because quality standards weren't good and people really didn't know what they were doing

Do they actually know what they're doing now? I suppose we'd know all the answers to these questions if that were the case actually. You can't really knock the old Sheffield generation, they were working in absolutely horrendous conditions where the average life expectancy was below 30, noses to the grindstones batching out chisels which are still around in droves today so people can critique them.

(7) crasftmen would've used waterstones if they were available, especially the synthetic kind we have now. They just weren't available 100 years ago.

They're looooong dead so we can't ask them, so there's no point really worrying about it too much. They made do with what they had, you'll make do with what you've got and the next generation will make do with whatever they come up with in a hundred years. The only thing that really matters a dot is what they left behind when they passed to the ethereal plane which was their work.

(8) sharpen sharpen sharpen to remove tearout. you cannot do it with anything other than super fine stones

You could always just burn the piece of wood, save the trouble and get a more compliant one and show him the ashes as a warning.

(9) bench planes won't work well until you lap all of the contact surfaces like the frog bed, etc. They were made cheaply with belt sanders and don't work well - someone needs to finish the work

I don't think I've ever seen belt sanded mating faces on hand planes, always milled.