Question for Chris Scholz *LINK*

I wish you wouldn't have done that ;)

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>

I am sick and tired of this!

Roy Anderson

>Just when I thought I had my budget under control, here comes another temptation. Oh, Retirement, will I ever see you? AARP doesn't have any advice on this.

When my daughter came home with yet another pair of shoes, I gave her a long lecture about how material goods don't create happiness. That doesn't include laminated Damascus steel plane blades, however, which will obviously create happiness.

Cheers~

Re: vent

Dave Burnard

>Pardon my vent...

Seriously I would have hoped a self proclaimed galoot tool company would refrain from using so much marketing crap in their product descriptions. It's like reading an old Banana Republic catalog (Garrett-Wade and Japan Woodworker catalogs come to mind as well).

Several Japanese mfrs have been selling laminated blades for Stanley-type planes since the mid 1980's, some are even pattern welded. And you don't have to speak japanese to use one.

"Comparing the cost of our blades to today's after-market blades is not a fair comparison"

(Hee Hee. That way we can charge more!)

Pattern welded blades are all the rage these days. They certainly are pretty - but that's not the cutting edge. Do they work any better than a Ron Hock high carbon steel blade (a good reference point for Galoots) or a Tsunesaburo (JW has them) japanese blue steel replacement blade?

There are lots of pattern welded knives and swords coming out of China these days. Unfortunately the recent market for these items was in fact created by western custom knife and sword makers popularizing the pattern welded look. On a knife, the cutting edge is made from the pattern welded material. Pick up a copy of Knife magazine to see what the western devils with power hammers have been up to, and what the Chinese are now copying.

There's no doubt that the guys swinging the hammers and (trying to avoid) breathing the grinding dust are working d*mn hard, wherever they are.

Attempts to Answer

Chris Scholz

>Wiley,

sorry, I have not properly introduced myself properly.

We have been experimenting with a variety of steel types. Traditional sword steel is too soft for decent woodworking tools. We settled now on a Chinese steel that is very similar to the well-known blue steel.

All of our blades use the same steel for the cutting edge. The difference is in the soft backing that determines how well the blade can absorb vibrations and reduce chatter. The Economy Series blades use "monosteel" as backing, Performance Series blades use folded steel and the Master Series blades use a combination of hard folded steel and soft folded steel. The Master Series blades are built exactly the same way as the very best Chinese Jian or Japanese Samurai swords are built (using a different steel for the cutting edge of course).

Our blades are made by a critically acclaimed swordmaker who has built a small business in a remote village during the opening of the Chinese economy (i.e. not a government sponsored semi-private factory).

In general, our goal is to provide innovative tools the woodworking community. I had various request to copy XYZ tool at a fraction of the price. I have no interest in doing that. Legally this might be ok (as long as patents are expired), but I don't believe that would be fair or ethical. Instead we focus on innovative tools that help you making better furniture.

For example our blades are easy to sharpen, hold an edge very well and have exceptional dynamic properties.

I am particularly proud that Steve Knight now offers our blades as an upgrade option for some of his planes (not on his website yet, so you need to contact him directly and ask)

The scope of our scope is limited to human-powered hand tools and the approach is via modern engineering and worldwide sourcing.

Of course we are at the very beginning and there are plenty of potholes in the road towards this goal (believe me, I had a really interesting weekend!) but I will try to hang out on woodcentral as much as I can.

You can always contact me with any questions, concerns, and most importantly I 'd like to hear your suggestions and recommendations.

Chris

Re: vent

Chris Scholz

>Dave,

I appreciate your opinion. I am an engineer not a marketer, I certainly need to rephrase some verbiage on the website. What do you suggest?

Chris

Re: Attempts to Answer

Dave Burnard

>Chris,

Sorry for the vent. Nice that you're online and available to answer questions, etc.

Rather than specific suggestions, I'll offer more general advice.

It's way too easy to get wrapped up in the mystique of sword making and "samurai" forging techniques. I'd give less play to mysterious sword making techniques that probably don't apply to a modern alloyed tool steel plane blade. There is plenty of smithing skill and experience required to properly laminate, forge and heat treat a plane blade.

Hand hammered vs power hammered - either way the smith is still holding the tongs in one hand. The contrast would be to a modern factory turning out coils of roll laminated or pattern "welded" material - or even powder laminated/patterned these days.

The pattern welded steel backing material is nice, but to read the descriptions it sounds like its folded construction either applies to the edge steel as well, or that it imparts special qualities to the cutting edge. I'd emphasize why a laminated blade is a good thing in the first place, yes it's the old way, but why does it still make sense? There's more to it than the old "steel was hard to come by" reasoning.

I hope this gets my point across,

Dave

Dave, what is pattern welded steel?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Might I suggest

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>You make your irons from wrought iron and forge on cast steel, like they use to make them.

Stephen

Where is he going to get wrought iron?

Paul Kierstead

>And what makes it superior to all other possibilities?

Re: Attempts to Answer

Chris Scholz

>Dave,

point well taken. We are not using any mystery steel that we scraped from the bottom of who-knows-where while the moon was aligned within a certain constellation. It sounds like we went overboard a bit with the mystery thing.

Our raw material is commercial steel, the cutting edge is a Chinese product that does not have a direct Western equivalent. As anybody who as worked with a forge can confirm, it is really the knowhow of the smith that makes a good blade. These guys do absolutely amazing work with just a few hammers and a forge, I have not seen anything like that anywhere else.

Of course there are tangible advantages in forged steel (as opposed to tools cut out of a rolled piece of sheet metal). The hammering and folding of the steel this is described heuristically as "compressing" the steel (as far as I can tell is technically incorrect, you can't "compress" the atomic structure of steel with a hammer). The whole forging, hammering and forging process is more about arresting the movement of dislocations. Google "dislocation slip plane crack propagation" and similar terms and you'll get more information than you might be interested in. A topic of active research with generally little understanding, extremely challenging to present concisely on a website that is not geared toward the scientific community (and I don't know an awful lot about it either).

In any case, I am amazed, and you may or may not agree, what the old swordsmiths knew about steel, just by careful observation and generations of trial and error (it does not bother me that they explained it via mysterious concepts foreign to our thinking today). It seem to me as if some of these 1,000 year old techniques were pretty close to as good as it will ever get.

Thanks also for the note about folded vs. laminated steel, it is the total system that determines the properties of the blade, not only the material of the cutting edge. Maybe a simple graphic will make this clearer. We are working on a ways to demonstrates this better.

Really appreciate your advice, a website is never done, it is a living document, we are working on it...

Now back to polishing blades.

Chris

Re: Where is he going to get wrought iron?

Dave Burnard

>Same place the rest of us get it... Old bridges, buildings, boilers, old iron work, railroad tracks, anchors, anchor chains, etc. China certainly has it's share of the stuff.

When etched it can be just as beautiful as modern pattern welded stuff.

Because of it's low carbon and low alloy (no recycled metals added) content its rather clean iron plus slag so it's relatively soft and sharpens easier than a modern low carbon mild steel.

So it's a good backing material even if you don't dress it up visually.

Chris, thank you very much for the detailed

Wiley Horne

>answer. I take it, then, that the tool steel you are using is a high-carbon, tungsten alloy similar to Hitachi blue steel. Sounds like a good choice. I have often wondered why this steel, or something similar, is not more widely available. It's great stuff. Makes good chisels, too.

I want to congratulate you for reintroducing laminated irons, and I look forward to hearing more about your blades from users of them. It takes plenty of courage to start a business, and all of us on this forum appreciate the hardy breed of toolmakers who take all the risks to offer us new wares.

Very best wishes!

Wiley

Re: Attempts to Answer

Dave Burnard

>Dang I wanted some of that moon aligned stuff too. ;)

Modern metallurgy certainly has a hard time explaining everything those old smiths figured out how to do by trial and error hundreds of years ago. It's amazing how well they understood what they needed to do and how little they, or anyone else, actually knew about metallurgy back then.

Graphics would be great, verifiable data and a little science beats marketing hype hands down. Don't shy away from the metallurgical side if you know it, it won't scare anyone away.

FYI. I have used for years and now actually make a variety of laminated woodworking tools in the japanese style just for "fun". I was convinced it was the right way to make tools a long time ago. I've spent time at several forges in Japan and use a hand blown charcoal forge in my work. So in some sense we're rowing in the same boat.

Good luck,

Dave

Re: Dave, what is pattern welded steel?

Dave Burnard

>Pattern welded usually means two or more types of steel are laminated (typically forge welded) together and either folded or initially stacked to achieve some large number of layers, but not so large that the visual distinction vanishes. The goal is to reveal this pattern in the design of the object it's used in. It's often called "Damascus Steel" which has turned out to be an unfortunate misnomer since the fabled old steel blades from Persia/India have turned out to be neither pattern welded nor even folded.

Good examples are many of the fancy patterned kitchen knives in the Japan Woodworker catalogue or the jigane (backing material) on the fancy Tasai chisels and plane blades or the top level Imai chisels.

So repeated folding of one material is not typically thought of as pattern welding even though it may reveal a layered appearance under the right conditions. Traditionally made Japanese swords contain this type of layering and depending on the polisher and era this may or may not be emphasized in the polish.

Got it, many thanks.

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Blade review *LINK*

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Hi Wiley

Below is a link to a review of one of the pre-production Galoot blades I completed some while back. Background details of the assessment are noted in the article, which I subsequently published with Chris' permission when the blades became available commercially.

Regards from Perth

Derek


Galoot Tools Performance Series bench plane blade

Re: Where is he going to get wrought iron?

Paul Kierstead

>Depending on scrap for a commercial product (versus one-offs) is a pretty risky venture. Success is likely to drive you out of business.

I understand the pluses of wrought iron, but that doesn't mean it is superior to the alternatives; it just means it is very good. The question is specifically why we should use wrought iron *over* a more modern steel which is available in a vast range of properties. I would imagine if we understood the desired properties (it terms of hardness, etc) well enough one could source a modern production steel which met the desired requirements.

They still make the stuff in...

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Sweden. One of the main reasons it is still being made is for traditional toolmaking, reenactors, living history museums, etc. There are other reasons they make it but that is one of them.

As for its properties, It works like butter in the forge, because of the layering of slag it has grain like wood, and that adds to its properties. I am not the best one to describe the differences but people who have used the stuff say it is dreamy to work with, what ever that means. I have done a little forge work and WI is much easier to work that mild steel or what ever the new stuff is.

Why use wrought iron on tools, because it is traditional, sometimes it is difficult to improve upon the past.

Stephen