thomd
>Right Derek, you sound like a cat 4&5 sharpener except without the sneer I unintentionally imparted. I'm a bit like that too, though I have some ways around it that put me in the fast sharpener area, but I have never been able to set aside the shop space to do it properly.

At the end of the day it really doens't mater, starts to sound like wine tasting, which would be fine if what we are searching is , and it may well be, primarily an aesthetic experience. All these steels work well enough that the work or the speed of complesion shouldn't suffer either way.

If I could advise a person starting out, I would probably advise them to stick with one kind of steel, like O1, that is available in all tools one is likely to buy. I have many different steels all of which ideally like something a little different in the way of a sharpening processes. I'm moving into O1 since it's readily available, and I am gradually getting all my tools in that steel, though even there there are variation that are quite vivid. That simplifies the whole thing and I think the results are every bit as good. I think the path I have been following is to try as many options as possible just to see what works. Ironically that's not what works.

The next part is to get all the planes so they have only one or two parts to remove for sharpening, and maybe someday get the sharpening sorted out in a logical fashion.