Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)
I have noticed that there is quite a difference in blade life between (1) high-impact: giving the plane a running start and having high impact at the board edge, vs. (2) low-impact: ease the plane up to the board edge, verify you have a bite, and pull the plane through the cut.

Wiley, there should never be "high impact" when shooting end grain. In my book, that signifies poor technique.

The blade should be sharpe enough that one can rest the edge against the work piece and simply push it through.

There is another issue. One of the tests I did was comparing bevel up vs bevel down shooting planes. I was fortunate to have both the LN #51 and the Veritas Shooting Plane. Both have a 20 degree skew and both fit the Stanley #52 shooting plane. The only difference is the 45 degree bed on the LN and the 12 degree bed on the Veritas. I held the bevel angles equal (30 degrees) and also used lower (25 degrees) for the BU. That should have favoured the LN. But the BU "won" by the proverbial mile. It was no contest whatsoever.

One of the conclusions reached was that a higher cutting angle will be associated with more wear. Another way of looking at it is that the higher cutting angle created more impact, which creates more wear.

Regards from Perth

Derek