Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Bevel Angles

Steve Elliott

>I've been testing plane blades using a small digital microscope to examine the edges after use. I started with a bevel angle of 25 degrees and found that none of my blades could hold an edge at that acute an angle. I increased the bevel angle gradually until almost all of the blades would hold an edge, which happened at about 34 degrees.

New blades are often supplied with a bevel angle of 25 degrees because that allows the user to choose an angle to hone at without having to grind.

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Jim in Burlington Ontario

>I sharpen mine to 30 and add a one-two degree microbevel. Never seen southern yellow pine but don't they put that on floors.

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Frank D. in Montreal

>Hi Tom,

I'm no expert, but southern yellow pine is a softwood, even though it's the hardest of the pines it's still a softwood so I'm not sure it's normal that an edge would roll. I work a lot of pine (though not too much southern yellow) and I always sharpen my LA block at 25�. Were you doing end grain, or planing with/across the grain? Did you hone the blade before using it (if so, with what?).

The LV blades are made of A2 so I don't think it's normal that an edge would roll on yellow pine; it might dull more quickly than on softer pines or it might get little nicks if you were doing end grain.

Frank Desaulniers

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Lyn J. Mangiameli

>In the plane study, I tried bevel angles with the LVLA Smoother down to 20 degrees (32 degrees effective cutting angle). The only times I had problems like you describe were with some very dense woods, particularly some really dense Purpleheart which litterally tore away minute portions of the blade edge after one pass. At 25 degrees, it wasn't much of a problem.

So, my first guess is that you have the misfortune of having a poorly heat treated blade, and I would suggest you contact LV about a possible replacement.

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>It's used for a lot more than floors. It is just about the most important structural timber in the Eastern U. S. and is used in houses, barns, factories, decks, and even wooden boats. When pressure treated, it is used for posts and beams used in contact with the ground or stone or concrete foundations. Some people even make furniture out of it. Ugh!, but "To each his own." And then, there are paper, turpentine, munitions and other chemicals, but I guess we wouldn't be discussing planing any of those products.

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>I agree with Lyn. I have just finished a review of LV LA planes and compared them with planes using LN and Stanley SW blades. The LV blades were clearly the hardest if effort in sharpening is a gauge. In other words, the LV blades required more effort to sharpen on my waterstones. None of them rolled over on a variety of soft- and hardwoods.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Patrick Gibbons, Houston, TX

>I've had a little experience with yellow pine. I use it for shop fixtures a lot and I've been planing some lately. It can be a very dense wood and one that I experience tearout with much worse than most hard woods. Some species can be very dense.

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Rob Lee

>Hi Tom -

If you think it's a problem with the blade - just contact our customer service department, and we'll be glad to ship you another.

Cheers -

Rob

Hijack - LN irons tested?

Jonathan Peck - N.Y.

>Does anybody know what process LV uses to make/heat treat their cutting irons and how it compares to LN processes/irons?

Re: Hijack - LN irons tested?

fkrow

>LN uses the -300 degrees F cryo treatment on their A2 steel.

LV claims the cryo treatment does not make any improvement and does not freeze.

Note: There are two classes of cryo treatment.

1. The most common commercial is -100 F, this is normally with liquid nitrogen alternatively some use dry ice in acetone. Dunk and shock the steel is a risk with this type of treatment.

2. The more expensive cryo is the -300 F which is a 24 hrs plus process. Slow temp drop, hold at -300 F and slow recovery to ambient. A secondary temper is also part of this process.

IMHO the -300 F does make an improvement in metallurgy properties.

Regards,

Fred Krow

heat treating A2

bill tindall

>First, it is a good bet that LV and LN send their metal out to a commercial heat treater for hardening. Wouldn't every heat treating company use the procedure provided by the steel manufacturer and these would all be the same for a commodity tool steel like A2?

Cryo...

Rob Lee

>Hi Fred -

We don't know what the answer is WRT cryo treatment - and are unable to find any evidence (aside from that provided by cryo suppliers) that either supports or negates the claims. The testing we've done on multiple blades, with and without cryo treatment, and with blades from multiple suppliers shows no difference in edge retention.... to give a bit of hint how extensive that testing has been (and is still in process) - I beleive we've now taken a total of more than 100,000 passes ..... that's a lotta chips...(and if it were one shaving, it would be 9.47 miles long!)

That's not to say that there aren't metals/processes that benefit from cryo treatment - but with respect to A2, all we can determine is that is like chicken soup - it can't hurt. Also like chicken soup - it's not free...and it's not a cost we feel we can justify.

Our blade wear study is still in progress - but will eventually be published in one magazine or another....

Cheers -

Rob

Re: heat treating A2

Frank D. in Montreal

>LN claims on their web site that their blades are "double tempered", which translated means that treat them cryogenically. I have no idea which of the cryo processes they use. I haven't tried all the A2 blades out there (understatement) but I do know that LN blades are my personal favourite; they hold their edge a long time.

Frank

Re: Trouble With A LVLA Smooth Plane

Alan Hamilton

>Tom,

I had the same trouble when I tried a twenty-five degree bevel with no micro-bevel. I resharpened the twenty-five degree bevel and then put on a five degree micro bevel. I've had no trouble since, and I've used it on end grain of oak, walnut and ash.

Alan

Re: Cryo...

fkrow

>Mr. Lee,

Interesting comments, thank you.

I made a business visit today to one of the major USA bearing manufacturers, the dept. head of their testing lab is an old classmate. We were discussing bearing life in the rolling mills my company designs. He commented that with one of the commonly used bearings in my machines that his competition has always produced bearings with longer life. He purchased some of their bearings and checked the metallurgy and heat treatment,,,,exactly the same material and hardness, etc.

The only explanation their metallurgists could present was the actual process of making the steel used by the competition was different than their source of steel.

I have also observed this difference in wear with D2 steel rolls for our mills. Some steel makers have superior steel for life and toughness. The chemistry is textbook identical however, the end product is much improved.

Obviously you have tested your source of A2 steel with and without -300F cryo. Have you tested other producers of A2?

We also have had problems with commodity (low price wins the bid) tool steels having poor quality compared to those steels with mill certifications and identified sources.

Here are some cryo articles that are not advertizements from cryo services.

http://lennon.pub.csufresno.edu/~rlk16/cryo.html

http://www.imperialweapons.com/shared/cryo.html

http://www.hocktools.com/A2.htm

I am very interested in seeing the results of your lab testing in the near future. Hopefully you can identify the steel maker and details of the heat treatment cycle.

Regards,

Fred Krow

Double Tempering

Steve Elliott

>The recommended heat treatment schedule for some steels includes double tempering even without cryo treatment. For the CPM 3V steel I've made some plane blades from, the manufacturer recommends triple tempering at 1000 F for a minimum of two hours each time.

Re: Double Tempering

Frank D. in Montreal

>Hi Steve, you are right, in fact I took another peek at the LN site and this is what I found:

"The blade is A-2 cryogenically treated Tool Steel, hardened to Rockwell 60-62 and double tempered."

They changed the terms describing their blades a while ago and I thought they were juste referring to the cryo treatment when they mentioned double tempered. I have some Crucible A2 here at home and it says to temper twice. My mistake.

Frank

Re: Cryo...

paul womack

>I have also observed this difference in wear with D2 steel rolls for our mills. Some steel makers have superior steel for life and toughness. The chemistry is textbook identical however, the end product is much improved.

Do I read this right? Does this say that there is a difference in performance, the reason for which cannot be detected by modern metallurgical analysis? This is bad news.

BugBear

a black art, indeed

Andrew F in Australia

>Hi Paul,

As you know, I'm a metallurgist too and used to run a rolling mill.

Fred's right - as I keep on saying, metallurgy is still a bit of a black art - when you get something right, don't change anything.

Cheers,

Andrew

(ps and as an aside - I have the info from Mick Doherty's infill articles here - interested in a copy?)

Re: Cryo...

Rob Lee

>Hi Fred -

We are testing blades from different sources...

What we are doing is developing some empirical data to determine if there is difference we can discern...we keep an open mind on the subject - but just haven't been convinced to this point...

Cheers -

Rob

Re: Cryo...

fkrow

>Rob,

I agree on the cost vs. benefit study, if the deep cryo results in a very small improvement it is not worth the additional cost in manuf.

We are discussing wood working tools, not exotic aircraft.

Regards,

Fred Krow

Re: a black art, indeed

fkrow

>Yes, it is a black art, we have electron microscopes and very advanced mass spectrogram analysis that tell us the exact chemisty however, their is more to steel making than a blending of elements.

Many times for applications in the real world, steel heat treated identically, Brand A will perform differently wrt Brand B.

The college textbooks will tell you the theory of heat treatment however, the machine operators will tell you which supplier has the "black art" dialed in.

Most of the research on deep cryo was done in the former Soviet Union and the data that was published is difficult to obtain.

I have sales people visit my office and claim some very interesting benefits with -300F treatment.

Brass musical instruments will produce better sound after deep cryo,,,no retained austenite and carbide size changes here?

Nylon stockings for women will have greatly increased life?

Standard carbon steel razor blades will have 5x+ life when shaving.

Automotive racing car parts will have much increased life in service.

Rifle barrels will have 3x life before deterioration of accuracy.

Some is hype however, they can be easily disproved in testing.

Regards,

Fred Krow

confirmed by supplier

bill tindall

>I asked a metalugist at Crucible Products (large US supplier of tool steels) about cryo treatment. He told me that it had no beneficial effect on properly heat treated A2. For me that was the end of the story. LV seems to have spent some additional money coming to the same conclusion.

Heat treating seems to still be regarded by some as a black art and in the 19th century this assumption had some truth. But science has provided the tools to study heat treating. The atomic structure of metals can now be probed in detail and bulk properties measured with gerat precision. If cryo treating did something different this effect would show up in the crystal structure, or some other measureable property of the product. When someone provides scientific data on their tool steel that shows a beneficial effect of cryo treating then we can take notice. If after all the discussion on this topic all we have is circumstantial evidence from uncontrolled "experiments", then we only have a placebo effect and marketing hype to explain differences.

My hat is off to LV that they do not needlessly increase the cost of their product by perfoming a manufacturing operation that has no measureable effect.

chemsitry only part of the issue

bill tindall

>Whether something is D2 or M2 or whatever is determined by the chemical composition(% of alloying elements and carbon). How well the material performs is detemined by this bulk composition as well as the details of the crystal structure and particle morphology of the alloying ingredients. These latter factors are determined by details of the manufacturing process as well as heat treating schedule.