david weaver
I noticed that, too, when bill was passing the docs around initially, I think I noticed it because bill told me about it.

Against the grain is less wear, but it does make some sense, I suppose, at least that the length of the wear bevel might be a little bit less.

I have noticed one thing, the obvious - the wear bevel stops at the cap iron, as opposed to seeing a series of small lines of wear on an un-capped iron.

The self sharpening effect is probably what we notice (maybe you have noticed, too) in that as the iron is dulling, the surface still seems to stay nice, as long as the iron isn't defective and chippy. i don't know what this is attributed to in reality, though, whether it's self sharpening, or whether it's just the cap iron affording the ability to continue to smooth something nicely with an iron that is less sharp. I notice lack of sharpness more in my single iron planes, but by how much, I don't know, because I rarely drive those to the point that they don't cut, especially if they are used for finish work.

I think a lot of the wear principles are more applicable to machine work where running for more linear feet is something someone would notice in a production environment. I'm pleased that the effect in the end is that you can carry on sharpening as you always would, and there's no real "penalty" to the extra wear depth.