Chris Scholz
This was a fun project!

I payed a traditional sword maker in PR China to manufacture (in then litteral sense of the word) plane blades for me.

He did an outstanding job. Building pane blades for modern metal plants using traditional methods is extremely challenging. In addition, modern manufacturing technologies makes customer expect a level of consistency that you simply cannot achieve with traditional methods.

We did look into laminating A2-type steel to low carbon steel. In principle this is possible. However A2 does not ‘stick’ to low carbon steel with manual hammering and elbow grease. To make this work would require similar equipment that many of the Japanese ‘traditional’ outfits use.

I fondly remember Steve Knight’s workshop in Portland, wonder how he is doing these days.

Maybe something to pick up in retirement, still a long way to go.