When to replace a plane blade

[Jacob]

Just dug up this pic of a blade I saved.
The hard laminate extends beyond the slot so the blade can be used down to the last fraction of an inch.
Plenty of use still left in this one!

 

[Inspector]

Actually more if you want to use it to cut tongues.

Pete

 

[marcros]

A microbevel would extend the life. Veritas jig often recommended.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

That needs polishing on the back, too. A mirror finish to just shy of the maker's stamp should do it.

 

[Jacob]

That needs polishing on the back, too. A mirror finish to just shy of the maker's stamp should do it.

OK if you say so, will do!
Do you mean the face? That's where the maker's mark is. If that's the back what would you call the other side; the back of the back?
For those that don't know; calling the face the "back" is a code that modern sharpening nuts use to identify themselves, like a secret hand shake!

 

[TominDales]

For those that don't know; calling the face the "back" is a code that modern sharpening nuts use to identify themselves, like a secret hand shake!

Its the trend of 'modern sharpening nuts' that has caused so many old plane blades to get so short. Unless one hits a nail, I am one of the 'old fashioned 'nuts' that prefer just a light rub by hand on a stone and hone on a strop. I still have plenty of life left in a 40 year old no. 4

 

[Jacob]

Its the trend of 'modern sharpening nuts' that has caused so many old plane blades to get so short. Unless one hits a nail, I am one of the 'old fashioned 'nuts' that prefer just a light rub by hand on a stone and hone on a strop. I still have plenty of life left in a 40 year old no. 4

They are persuaded to grind and polish them to destruction and also to buy several blades for each plane! Different bevel angles yer know - in case of the dreaded gnarly bit of Australian kookaburra!
Never give a sucker an even break!

 

[D_W]

I've heard this comment many times ,but of all of the short blades I've ever received, none have been sharpened recently.

Far more common is the modern woodworker who uses 2 hundredths off of a few of their blades.

The modern sharpening nuts are generally doing the opposite when they're using tools (I've fixed, refitted, repaired a fair number of tools) and not even staying ahead of edge damage or stray scratches.

The fast consumption of tools hand sharpening was done by people using carborundum and india stones.

There's no shortage of blades, though, and this has come up on the american forums by people who designate themselves preservationists or something, decrying the constant consumption of blades - you'll have to show me the pictures of short lie nielsen blades, though, or short modern stanley blades.

an educated guess at sharpening would be less than a thousandth per cycle by beginners, and amateurs, and they're at the head of the list for not sharpening enough because it takes them too long. I'm calculating a full sharpening every 20 minutes (which they don't do) to create 700 straight hours of planing labor to get a 2" bit to the slot. It'll never happen.

 

[TominDales]

I take your point (D_W) wholeheartedly about beginners not sharping enough, saws and planes alike. I was fortunate to have an old school teacher who took the trouble to show and let us make a bit of a mess. Hand tools are not sold with good enough instructions and encouragement to sharpen. Also these extra hard finishes encourage buy and throw away, which suits certain volume suppliers. So one way of looking at it, is the sharpening craze is a least shedding light on this subject.

 

[D_W]

Sorry, not to be too crabby about it.

I went through that phase when I first started, but make my own irons now. I had occasion to see how fast steel leaves an iron and generally if you really want to be stingy, a super fine finish at the tip will give about 30-50% more edge life for medium fine to fine work.

But would also guess that as I dimension by hand, to work through a set of try plane, jack and smoother irons, I will need to dimension at least 10,000 board feet of hardwoods.

(The phase that I went through when I started was trying to be as absolutely sparing as possible with everything). Now, I've made so many irons I couldn't use them in four lifetimes of full time work).

 

[D_W]

I take your point (D_W) wholeheartedly about beginners not sharping enough, saws and planes alike. I was fortunate to have an old school teacher who took the trouble to show and let us make a bit of a mess. Hand tools are not sold with good enough instructions and encouragement to sharpen. Also these extra hard finishes encourage buy and throw away, which suits certain volume suppliers. So one way of looking at it, is the sharpening craze is a least shedding light on this subject.

I've made and given away lot of irons and now some chisels. I have sold a few irons when I've had excess and nowhere for them to go and don't have good insight as to why nothing comes with sharpening instructions (old stanley irons flatly showed how to sharpen an edge and remove the burr - simple as that), but have thought that if I keep making chisels and maybe more plane irons, It may not be a good idea for me to ship them sharp as someone could sue me.

Plus, I could send chisels and irons sharper than anyone has ever seen, and they would still complain that I didn't use whatever their favorite method was to do it.

I decided that if I could ever wear an iron out, I would celebrate it, but I can't keep track of the large pile of house made stanley style irons so none stays in my favorite plane long enough to get much wear. I can track the length lost, though (a thousandth or so) and then extrapolate that to time spent in the shop. I figure you could smooth around 10k board feet of hardwood even with bad technique - by the time you got part of the way through as a beginner, laziness would take over and teach sharpening economy (the smallest amount needed to get a sharp iron and keep it there).

The state of the user world though is pretty well described by the fascination with sharpening and dovetails. Both would be afterthoughts in the first year anywhere.

 

[TominDales]

D_W, I'm pretty new to this forum, so guess there are a few touch points on subjects with entrenched opinions, I guess sharpening and dovetails are likely to be two of them!. I was taught to do lapped and secret dovetails to reduce the appearance of the joint ( I think it was perceived as an indication of skill NOT to show the joint). Now the fashion is to show that it is joined with a proper through-joint and not bolted together with kreg or Ikea fasteners - not that they don't have their place in the world - he hastens to add. But increasingly, modern furniture shows the tenon and dovetail joint stark naked, so-to-speak. I like it in moderation,as I like to see wood in all its glory. No doubt these topics bubble up on the forum from time to time. Thanks for your insights TT

 

[D_W]

you and me will get along fine! I'm more of a toolmaker than anything else, but I like a narration from a friend of mine here in the states (he did the work making a harpsichord on video for colonial williamsburg).

In the video, the narrator said something like "one seldom wants to see such joints"



No dovetail is too fine for me to dream of a moulding to cover it with long grain.

I'm not a fine maker by any means, but interesting lines and long grain look nicer to my eye. I can make a fine plane, though.

 

[Jacob]

..... I was taught to do lapped and secret dovetails to reduce the appearance of the joint ( I think it was perceived as an indication of skill NOT to show the joint). ......

When I first started pulling furniture apart I was really surprised about how many half lapped DTs were hidden within . You can see them on drawer sides of course but until you pull it apart you wouldn't know that the solid sides of a chest of drawers were DT'd together but concealed by plinth below, moulding above or other strategy.
Another surprise was the evidence of extreme haste - saw lines over-cut, housings under-cut, dovetail pinholes obviously freehanded, always odd angles, sometimes with irregular spacings not even laid out, and so on.
They were just a utilitarian and extremely efficient way of joining timbers.
Making them a feature to be looked was another decision altogether and relatively uncommon, but fashions come and go.

 

[D_W]

Except for the cheapest of stuff, which may have been nailed, I'm sure a lot of those joints were cut in haste because someone with taste had design and proportion in mind. What we have now is exposed joint furniture with thick drawer sides and blocky proportions. It's perfectly executed and has no potential to be attractive. Too bad.

Our little spats about sharpening are nothing compared to the lack of taste in furniture/design in general and the need to show off everything at every step of the way rather than sharpen aesthetics and proportion first at the same time as learning to execute joints.

Anyone remember the unintentionally fat and bulky pieces on antique shows that were perfectly executed? I don't, unless the subject matter is an intentionally fat person or object (like a buddha or something).

 

[TominDales]

When I first started pulling furniture apart I was really surprised about how many half lapped DTs were hidden within . You can see them on drawer sides of course but until you pull it apart you wouldn't know that the solid sides of a chest of drawers were DT'd together but concealed by plinth below, moulding above or other strategy.
Another surprise was the evidence of extreme haste - saw lines over-cut, housings under-cut, dovetail pinholes obviously freehanded, always odd angles, sometimes with irregular spacings not even laid out, and so on.

Hard to imagine that not so long ago it was ALL made by hand and it would have been in haste as they were often paid by piece work. A fast joiner wont even mark up much of the joint except some guide lines and then just cut roughly equal spaced pins and use them as the guide for marking the tails. As with so much these days we have to have precision and absolute symmetry, but the variation is what makes hand made so much more interesting.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

I decided that if I could ever wear an iron out, I would celebrate it, but I can't keep track of the large pile of house made stanley style irons so none stays in my favorite plane long enough to get much wear.

That's kind of interesting, David. It made me think about the number of plane irons I've worn out. I can think of only one, and that is the iron from what was my first purchased plane, a brand new Stanley or Record no 4. As I recall, I bought the plane in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and the iron was worn out towards the end of the 1980s - my boss at the time said he's buy it for me which I suppose was unexpected enough for it to stick in my mind. I didn't see any need to celebrate, but I was pleased to retain functionality. I still own that plane, but since the early 1990s it hasn't been used anywhere near as intensively as it was in its first couple of decades and there's still quite a bit of meat left on the replacement iron which, by a rough count, must be close to 32 years old. I put that longevity discrepancy down to the fact that towards the end of the 1980s and into the late 1990s I acquired three more smoothing planes, all better performing than my old original plane which has sort of been relegated to occasional use, I suppose, whereas before it was my one and only smoothing plane.

I may have worn out one or two more plane irons, but I don't remember, and that may be because if I did get replacement irons the cost came out of my own pocket, something I'd perhaps prefer to forget, ha ha. Slainte.

 

[Jacob]

Hard to imagine that not so long ago it was ALL made by hand and it would have been in haste as they were often paid by piece work. A fast joiner wont even mark up much of the joint except some guide lines and then just cut roughly equal spaced pins and use them as the guide for marking the tails. As with so much these days we have to have precision and absolute symmetry, but the variation is what makes hand made so much more interesting.

Yep. Except I'd do pin holes first and pins second. All the drawers I've ever looked at are done that way with the drawer sides sawn as a pair clamped together - so all the little variations (or mistakes) show up same on each side like a mirror image.
Replacing irons - I've done it once on a 220 block plane. It got a lot of use doing site work.
I've bought a couple of blades I didn't need, Hock and Japanese Smoothcut, under pressure from the endless wittering of the enthusiasts, to see if they really were superior. They weren't particularly.

 

[D_W]

That's kind of interesting, David. It made me think about the number of plane irons I've worn out. I can think of only one, and that is the iron from what was my first purchased plane, a brand new Stanley or Record no 4. As I recall, I bought the plane in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and the iron was worn out towards the end of the 1980s - my boss at the time said he's buy it for me which I suppose was unexpected enough for it to stick in my mind. I didn't see any need to celebrate, but I was pleased to retain functionality. I still own that plane, but since the early 1990s it hasn't been used anywhere near as intensively as it was in its first couple of decades and there's still quite a bit of meat left on the replacement iron which, by a rough count, must be close to 32 years old. I put that longevity discrepancy down to the fact that towards the end of the 1980s and into the late 1990s I acquired three more smoothing planes, all better performing than my old original plane which has sort of been relegated to occasional use, I suppose, whereas before it was my one and only smoothing plane.

I may have worn out one or two more plane irons, but I don't remember, and that may be because if I did get replacement irons the cost came out of my own pocket, something I'd perhaps prefer to forget, ha ha. Slainte.

thanks for that account, Richard. I'm confident I could wear an iron out if I could limit myself to using just one, but curiosity gets the best of me and I make another. It would take somewhere around 10-15 years of avid amateur work to do it, though.

Your account matches what warren has said. It's a wild guess to figure out how much warren is actually planing, but he does mention from time to time trying to make production items entirely by hand a few decades ago. I've seen him mention two or three times that one of his planes is on its third iron. I suspect that economic reality switched him to carving and repair a few decades ago, though.

I can almost guarantee that if I said to most amateurs that they'll get about 2000 sharpenings out of an iron, and 1000 if they tend to nick the iron off and on, many would still worry about "how long will that be?". How can I make that double? Most will never see 100. This is a stack sitting on top of my file cabinet. 7 irons. I think all but the bottom two, I made. They are all good irons, and some are great (less dependent on me, and more dependent on what they're made of - 1084, O1 and 52100 are kind of slam dunk good steels for irons - 1084 being a bit shorter wearing than the latter two, but in a "it only planes 1000 feet of maple instead of 1350" way. They're good steels because all they need is a heat to critical and can't be messed up that easily - heat, quench, temper in an oven - nothing special needed (no computer controlled cycles and stainless wraps or inert atmospheres, etc).

 

[Sgian Dubh]

I can almost guarantee that if I said to most amateurs that they'll get about 2000 sharpenings out of an iron,

This is a stack sitting on top of my file cabinet. 7 irons. I think all but the bottom two, I made. They are all good irons, and some are great (less dependent on me, and more dependent on what they're made of - 1084, O1 and 52100 are kind of slam dunk good steels for irons - 1084 being a bit shorter wearing than the latter two, but in a "it only planes 1000 feet of maple instead of 1350" way. They're good steels because all they need is a heat to critical and can't be messed up that easily - heat, quench, temper in an oven - nothing special needed (no computer controlled cycles and stainless wraps or inert atmospheres, etc).

David, you're way ahead of me on metallurgy for plane irons and chisels. For some reason I've never found a need to get excited about the subject. When it comes to plane irons and chisels I have always simply sharpened and used whatever variety of steel the tool came with. And I've got a bit of a mix of tools, e.g., Stanley, Record, Clifton, Spiers and a couple of pretty useless Norris jobs, and an old wooden plane or two, and my collection of bench and carving chisels is a right old dog's dinner of old examples (forty or fifty years old) to I've no idea back through the 20th and 19th century.

Some seem to perform a bit better than others through things like edge retention, resistance to chipping, lack of folding over, and ability to regrind and sharpen without overheating or taking a long time. They all work and I'm used to all their little quirks regarding those listed performance criteria, and some I've probably forgotten.

The point I'm getting to is that I've nearly always taken an interest in those discussions where metallurgy gets discussed, where frequently you are a major participant. I usually find those sorts of threads interesting enough to follow all the minutiae and sometimes the nit-picking between participants. Yet, somehow none of those discussions seem to ever inspire me to change any of my plane irons or seek out new 'better' chisels. I just keep doing away sharpening and using whatever steel came with my tools. What a boring old stick in the mud I must be, ha ha. Slainte.