Thicker replacement blade - wow!
Kerry in Fort Sask, Alberta
>Hi all,
I thought I'd drop a line for anyone who, like me is new to hand tools and is thinking of experimenting with a thicker replacement blade. Yesterday I installed a LV blade into my old Record 4 1/2 bench plane. My word, what a difference!
I believe I had the old blade sharpened quite well and was fairly happy with the performance of this plane, although the iron did end up with a bit more of a radius edge than I had intended. I'd read many times that a replacement blade would improve the performance and finally decided to see for myself; and I'm sure happy that I did. I am nearing the end of building a small table and was ready to smooth the top so I had a perfect project to test the new blade on. The difference was night and day and I'm now planning to finish the table top without sanding or scaping. Your mileage may vary, but as far as my experience with this one - the difference between the stock blade and a thicker replacement was not subtle at all - it was most obvious and I wish I had tried this earlier.
Kerry