Few more years of experience gives question for lv

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

Warren in Lancaster, PA

I think this is all about marketing. How better to promote the myth that Pmv11 is harder steel than O-1 than to deliberately temper the O-1 to a lower value, then report the hardness in the description as if the hardness is an inherent quality of the steel. Rather than a quality they deliberately chose for the chisels.

When Bill Tindall talked about talking to "tech staff" I wondered if he was just talking to customer relations. Anyway according to Bill, If you want a reliable answer just call their tech service staff and ask.

See what kind of spin they can put on this.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

Steve Voigt

Dave,

I haven't been following all the threads on this, but…what do you mean by soft? The LV irons are 58-60. I personally find this perfect, and much preferable to the 60-62 that some other makers use. They won't chip, they sharpen really nicely on oil stones, and they don't wear abnormally fast. I think for anyone who likes vintage cast steel irons, this is the closest you'll get with O1. Full disclosure, I use (specially made for me, but same hardness) LV irons in the planes I sell, so I'm not a neutral observer, but I think I'd feel the same even if I were neutral.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

Warren in Lancaster, PA

As I mentioned on this forum on June 6, the hardness that makers use for their tools seems to be more of a marketing decision than a tool performance decision. I question whether they even have the experience to make hardness decisions.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

John in NM

That's just paranoid.

If LV were like that, they wouldn't have the reputation that they have.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

John in NM

I would bet that the reason these irons seem soft to you has more to do with your own work habits than anything else. Probably the way you work keeps you from having some of the problems that come from super hard O1 - like chipping. The manufacturer doesn't plan on people like you using their product exclusively, they plan on making it as usable as possible to the largest segment of WW'ing population as they can. So the hardness is definitely going to seem like a compromise to some.

In so doing they risk disparagement from Warren and perhaps a dozen others in the US and Canada, and thousands of customers who are perfectly happy with what they get for $35 or so. So it is a marketing decision - no one has presented it as otherwise, many just misunderstand effective marketing.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

David Weaver

58-60 is on the low side of what O1 is capable of. Especially premium stock with the grain oriented with the length of an iron.

I've got a skew iron in a shooting plane that's well above 62 and it holds up well shooting, but I will be tempering it back just for sharpenability.

I've had some exposure to good quality irons by chance (the knight iron, my irons, and one of the untempered irons that comes in the st. james bay kits). Their behavior is such that they work reasonably well even when they're overhard, but generally not seemingly longer than a light straw (which Ron Hock considers to be too much tempering). The light straw is probably 61/62 or so, about the level where it starts to slow honing on the washita and takes a better edge. That part is really of no consequence, just an observation - one can just use a finer stone.

When irons come in around 58/59 hardness, they roll up a large burr and work well for try planing, and great for jack planes, but they're lacking for smoothing in my opinion (just my opinion, of course). When a good quality iron is pushed up just above 60, i don't think the work interval is any different than A2, but the planing quality is better (the surface at every interval is better, you can get a finished surface to dullness, whereas A2 will leave a million tiny scratches in raking light).

This is sort of like the principle of shaving with a straight razor - the more the same an edge is through use, the more satisfying it is to use a plane.

Years ago, I had a knight iron (two of them) and thought at the time they were way too hard and wouldn't hold an edge, but they turned out to be some of the best irons I've ever used of any type. I didn't know what caused them to hold up at the time (whereas the hock bench plane irons don't as well, despite, I suspect, similar hardness). Steve cryo treated the irons, but I don't think that really does that much, as I've gotten similar performance out of Precision Presto O1 and Starrett O1.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

David Weaver

It seems more like aiming to a demand. I'd imagine they get calls requesting irons that are really easy to sharpen and irons that "never need sharpening".

Why the O1 is positioned there, I'm not sure - but I"d love to see them offer irons that are on par with what Steve Knight offered (and in a shape that people can use in traditional planes, whereas steve's irons were 1/4" thick bars of steel for single iron planes).

From perception using the V11, it's a little better than A2, but I'm not sure how much better planing than the best A2 - only a small percentage. Knight's iron and a couple that I've made probably show a longer wear bevel from use, but the edge is very regular and the overall amount of planing that one can do (mine are tempered around 61/62) is very similar.

There may be manufacturing considerations, too. The V11 makes a good iron, but it isn't something I'd move to from good O1 or a good quality undamaged ward iron.

Steve Knight’s irons

Wiley Horne

David and all,

I’ve got one of Steve’s 1/4” O-1 irons and like it plenty. I also like Hock O-1 plenty as well, and Old Street O-1. I just like O-1.

Anyway....I’m pretty sure I recall Steve having his O-1 irons cryo’ed. Maybe that was the secret sauce. If I weren’t so lazy I’d go to the Wayback Machine and try to find out. There was some discussion back in them days about cryo. Lie Nielsen cryo’s their A2 irons. Lee Valley in those days took the position that cryo only speeds up what is going to happen anyway (the complete conversion of all the original austenite which comes out of the heat to martensite). I believe other benefits of cryo were hypothesized about.

Wiley.....who likes O-1, Rc 59-62, whatever. Also vintage high carbon, like whatever is in that ca. 1800 ogee from Providence RI I’m using.

Re: Steve Knight’s irons

David Weaver

Yes on steve cryo treating his irons, but I'm not sure in O1 it makes that much of a difference. I thought maybe it did, but I have seen two irons that are equivalent (i guess three):

1) mine - of domestic stock and oriented in the stock's grain direction. I temper my irons hard, and then back off (to experiment). they hold up well hard

2) Maybe it's by chance, but the st james bay iron that I had was very similar. I remember the kit maker saying that the irons arrived 66 hardness, and I believe they do. For sport, I used mine just to see how it would behave, and it worked surprisingly well but it just skated across natural stones

3) The guy who made "nice ash" planes had a very steve-knight-ish iron. Uber hard, but very fine and didn't fail in sections

I generally buy double irons for wooden planes (taper) and infill planes (parallel). I don't know what hardness they'll be, but the parallel irons are generally a click or two harder, even among the same maker. It's evident that the older irons are some kind of water hardening steel and the later sheffield all steel irons are some kind of oil hardening steel. The oilstones identify them as such if they're in a similar hardness range. The really soft ones and the really hard ones, nobody can tell, but oil hardening steel is a little more greasy on the stones.

The very old butcher laminated irons (like the one Jim Andrews sold (or gave? can't remember) that are a little on the hard side for butcher are just an outright dream. They are like using a white steel iron that is not quite as hard as japanese, but the iron wears off in tiny particles. The experience is much like what you're saying about your old moulders. There is something dreamy about that kind of steel that is unmatched with modern diemaking steels.

My other posts about using irons the way they want to be used has a lot to do with hardness, as you say, whatever hardness it arrives in, I like it, but i purpose the softer irons to try and jack plane use and the harder dryer irons to smoothers. Not essential, but if you can do it, it's wonderful.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

Steve Voigt

Some disconnected observations, in no particular order:

Dave, do you have a hardness tester? If you do, that’s awesome, but if not, I think there are a lot of assumptions involved in translating how an iron feels on stones to RC numbers. I don’t dispute that one can discern fine gradations of hardness based on feel, but I’m not sure that the translations into assumed RC values is accurate unless, as I said, you have a hardness tester.

I bring it up because I can’t square your comments about vintage irons with my own experience. The vast majority of those I’ve used are as soft or softer than LV irons. When I get a really hard one, it seems like an anomaly. What I tend to like best about those irons is how easy they are to sharpen, which also doesn’t really square with claims of extreme hardness. Tangentially, although I like vintage irons, I don’t subscribe to the claims of mystical powers I read about on this and other forums.

I’ve owned one Steve Knight iron, several Hocks, and I’ve made O1 irons in the same hardness. All work fine, but not as nice, IMO, as the LV irons or other irons tempered in the same range. But, to each his own.

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

Rob Lee

Bill talked to me.

Rob

Re: Few more years of experience gives question fo

David Weaver

No hardness tester, but I've had access to a versitron in the past. At this point, I'd judge hardness on O1 tempering colors, which is probably accurate to within a point or two.

-

You're right that many of the tapered double irons are on the low side of the 58-62 spectrum unless you make a point of getting ward double irons (those are on the high side).

Makers like marples and many of the later sheffield all steel irons (marples are generally laminated) are on the soft side of tapered irons as are most of the vintage butcher irons, which makes the one that I favor the most a little unusual (in that it's hardness is probably at the high side of that range).

The parallel irons are probably generally at the high side of that range, ward irons are similar to their taper irons but makers like mathieson tend to have harder parallel irons than taper irons.

The other point to this is that most of the vintage taper irons are a step off of what you'd want in a smoother. They're great in try planes and jack planes, but not a match for the parallel irons in smoothers, and the good quality parallel irons are probably on par with good high hardness stanley replacement irons.

I couldn't say why coffin smoothers generally had softer irons (more mahogany and walnut work, more softwoods? Who knows?), but they aren't a match for a good iron at 61/62.

Re: to be clear...

David Weaver

...nowhere did I say that most vintage taper double irons are hard or have the hard properties we're talking about.

The chisels of the better types like ward and I&H Sorby generally *are* in the harder range vs. early 1900s, and the ward irons as well as most of the parallel irons (ward and others, but not all parallel irons) are relatively hard. Of all of the things out there in old steel, the tapered irons are probably the softest. Perhaps most moulding planes can be included in that, too, but I've got a few sets of old moulding planes and then a lot of lower cost planes (to hack up for things like plywood size dado planes), I couldn't really make a call on whether or not they're all consistent like, for example, ward chisels from one batch to the next.

There has always been a rumor that older chisels are inconsistent in hardness, but it's a myth - it continued on into the thread on the australian forum, and i corrected it. It's true that the chisels are inconsistent in hardness from one make to the next, but not within makes.

All of this diverges from what's good for modern oil hardening steel because even the oil hardening steel is pretty far off from water hardening laminated steel. There's sort of a myth going around that O1 steel doesn't hold up well around 61/62 hardness, but it isn't the case, at least not using good stock. Whether or not the market prefers it soft, I don't know, but with good stock and higher hardness, a better smoothing plane iron is had (and better chisels).

I like to refer back to images on Beach's page because they show what I have noticed (maybe not all of Steve knight's irons did the same thing, and it's fair to say that it was a little harder to tell just how good they were because they were in higher pitch single iron planes. While Hock's US made irons are more uniform than the bench plane irons in how they wear and lack of edge chipping, I can't say I've planed longer with them because those that I had (one directly from Ron H. for an infill and one in a brese smoothing plane kit) were in 55 degree single iron planes, which leads to shortened sharpening intervals for two reasons:

1) the lack of a double iron to keep the plane in the cut dull iron or sharp

2) the pitch

But you can see on irons that take on defects that a shiny wear line at a bevel is broken, the light is broken, that is, allowing you to see the nicks.

The same is true of a straight razor when it needs to see a stone instead of a linen - you can see interruptions in the line at the edge, even with the naked eye. Under a metallurgical scope those are stark.

I'll post beach's page separately...

The Beach Comparison...

David Weaver

http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/bladetest.html

At some point, I may take metallurgical microscope pictures of edges - I have a better scope than beach used, but you can see the same thing I can see (and this scope is what allowed me to see why the washita and A2 don't seem to ever get the sharpness you're looking for, no matter how long you work A2 on a washita or how light of a touch you want to have).

I have this scope to sell razors and to grade stones and what they do on razors. You can't really do it without a decent metallurgical scope - either one.

So, I would like to compare the LN A2 iron as I tested irons at one point on maple, and the A2 irons at that time were the best in edge uniformity. It isn't just cryo treatment that made them better as I had an IBC double iron pair that woodcraft sent me and they didn't test as well as the LN iron - I stroke tested them, counted. A real pain in the arse.

What I found with A2 is that the more uniformly an edge failed, the longer the plane would stay in the cut. I didn't know at the time what I saw except that more edge uniformity meant more longevity.

I think Brent's LN testing information is not very useful, so compare the Knight iron pictures to the LV A2 (let alone the shepherd - I had a shepherd kit, which may have had the worst quality iron that I've ever seen, an the cap iron was an afterthought - like tinfoil on top of a piece of bar stock).

http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/Knighttest.html

http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/LVA2test.html

Beach is fascinated with wear bevel length, but I don't think he grasps edge thickness where the wear bevel occurs.

Knight's iron has a similar wear bevel length to the LV A2, but perhaps it's uniformly more established over its length. However, what I've seen in my own irons (with being able to see visible wear bevels on irons that are still cutting well - visible to the naked eye), suggests that the Knight iron provides better results and better perceived sharpness relative to fresh off of the stone through the cycle to the point shown here and will probably stay in the cut longer with a double iron (last longer - as in, a case where an O1 iron lasts longer than one in a2).

LN's pictures do look similar to this.

Hock's iron doesn't far as well in this photo, and at one point, I got a couple of hock replacement irons in A2 and O1 and the O1 irons lasted about 2/3rds as long planing panels in my first all-hand-tool project (a piece of case work) and I concluded at the time that they just couldn't last as long from a technical standpoint as O1. I suspect the issue now is that the Hock irons aren't on par with better O1 irons.

Fender custom shop guitars ..

David Weaver

Fender's custom shop makes some nonsensical things. They have a guy or a couple of guys winding $550 single coil pickups. This makes no sense given that a winder can probably wind a set of three in an hour.

At the same time, they will make various "custom" similar spec amps and guitars to their open market production items. There is a fairly large part of the market that doesn't really care that a $1500 guitar starts at $3000 if you want to pick the parts for it and have a single contact person. Same guitar.

Lots of supposition on guitar forums about customers being taken advantage of, but it turns out to be what you'd suspect. Fender didn't really come up with the idea of all of this themselves, they got the idea for a lot of their custom offerings because people called and asked for them. If someone like me who would buy a production guitar (probably used) so that I wouldn't get stung too much if I unloaded it doesn't think it makes sense to buy a $4000-$6000 guitar that sounds and plays a lot like a production guitar - especially if its residual value is thousands of dollars less than its initial price....

...well, it doesn't matter. There's an established customer base.

I perceive (which is different than "it is true that") that manufacturers don't make the same strong effort with O1 that they do some of their other offerings, getting the most edge life out of it, etc, and there could be a lot of reasons if my perception is reality...

......if the biggest reason is because each time a selection of irons is provided to people for testing, they like the ones that are generally 58-60 hardness, that sure negates my opinion. Serve a small group of vocal tinkerers or the greater market. Hmm....the latter wins.

When it comes to LV and the potential to purchase replacement irons for stanley, I wish they'd make the A2 iron the soft one and step up the O1 iron. I think that would be lovely. While I don't mind making one or two, I am hand cutting, drilling and filing out any irons I've made. It's really not worth $38 of effort other than to chase the little details I mentioned. Details that might not matter to someone doing most of their planing with a machine and sanding everything they've planed before applying finish.

One more contrary to the beach page...

David Weaver

I mentioned how happy I was to find that it wasn't just me who thought that the hock irons weren't that great in O1 (the A2 versions that I had were fine). I don't know what beach thought, but the pictures of the wear bevel on the hock show what I found in use.

That creates sort of a riddle - why does my shooting plane iron hold up fine at high hardness, and same for the bench plane irons I've cut and filed out. Why does Knight's iron look like it does in pictures and why did the st. james bay kit O1 iron do well at high hardness and need to be tempered really only for sharpenability...

... In seeing the pictures, I thought it would be nice to have a couple of eskilstuna (berg in this case) plane irons to see if they worked like the one at the top of the test list here:

http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/bladetest.html

No dice.

The ones I have are terrible. They wear fast and chip. I made a purpleheart coffin smoother around one chasing what I mentioned in another thread - a good coffin smoother with a hard carbon steel iron in it. It's really uninspiring and only taught me one thing - that you can shoot for a tight mouth by blocking the mouth of a plane (it's really unsightly) and it will indeed make for a really nice working plane. But you could never sell a plane that's had its wear cut out and had a blocked mouth put in on purpose to make a wear profile that looks more like the top side of an infill casting.

Not everything matches what Beach posted.

(I do find the primus plane irons especially terrible, though, and brent's pictures agree).

Hock irons

Philip Duffy

Poppycock! Ron Hock produces great irons, one which I have been using for 13 years with great results.

Totally paranoid. I agree.

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

I think this is all about marketing. How better to promote the myth that Pmv11 is harder steel than O-1 than to deliberately temper the O-1 to a lower value, then report the hardness in the description as if the hardness is an inherent quality of the steel. Rather than a quality they deliberately chose for the chisels.

When Bill Tindall talked about talking to "tech staff" I wondered if he was just talking to customer relations. Anyway according to Bill, If you want a reliable answer just call their tech service staff and ask.

See what kind of spin they can put on this.

I wanted to stay out of this junk, but it sometimes one has to stand up.

Regards from Perth

Derek

super hard - and George's opinion

David weaver

I do have one iron that's almost left full hardness, and I used one that was untempered from st James bay for a while, but generally, I temper them to a light straw.

I should microscope my shooting plane iron before it gets tempered back to light straw just to compare what the wear looks like. I expected something catastrophic from the st James bay iron but it worked ok. It was ungodly hard, took no wire edge and I had to cut the micro bevel with a diamond hone, though, so it's not practical and it didn't hold up better than very light straw temper.

So my definition of best for chisels and smoothers is probably about two points harder than Lv. Not picking on them, they're just the only one left actually making things out of o1, and they don't do hack work.

George, for the record, likes a dark straw to even light brown sometimes.

Re: Hock irons

David weaver

They are okay, but not difficult to better. The older Stanley irons were about their equal.

The us made irons that hock makes are generally finer than the French made bench plane blades.

Fallacy

Frank D. in Montreal

It's a fallacy to state that only a user can make a blade or a tool. Does that mean that only a cigar smoker can make a humidor, or only a farmer can make a tractor? Most manufactured items are not designed or made by users.

Re: Totally paranoid. I agree.

David weaver

There is some truth that there's a bit of Sears good, better, best in it, and v11 in plane irons was oversold some at first due to the experience in MDF. Hss irons tend to do the same thing, something I found out about half a decade prior planning MDF and cocobolo with a lot of silica in it.

If that translated to medium hardwoods, I'd still be using those irons.

I planed a fair amount of cherry and beech with v11 but it could not match volume with my try plane which has a good iron but certainly not as durable as v11. The chisels appear to fare much better , but I don't have those.

Trying to get any technical information out of the pmv11 site is absolutely maddening and the scaling system presenting results is very misleading. Let's be honest, the desire to market overcame more important things in the process. The results should've been spot checked on wood and presented for comparison to MDF.

Its It's better than a2, though. just to be clear.

No

Warren in Lancaster, PA

No, i have said repeatedly that making a good tool is the result of collaboration between users and makers. In studying historic tools one can see a long tradition of this collaboration.

There is a great violin maker who lives in Brooklyn. He could live anywhere in the world and have a market for his violins. Why does he live in Brooklyn? It is because he cherishes his access to the great violins and great musicians who flow through New York City. He needs to hear them play their instruments, play his instruments and hear their feedback in order to stay sharp as a maker. And interaction with other makers. Community is what makes this stuff great.

You cannot just have a technician put a number on a chisel and call it the best chisel.

a president and his advisors

David weaver

Not sure if I got the spelling right. I have the absolute highest regard for rob Lee, and I say that with all sincerity. I think he's the most dandy of fellows, and an illustration of why is as simple as Steve mentioning that he gets irons from them. This isn't the kind of thing that a typical company would do, and I'm sure it's not the only example.

If rob's reading these comments I'd like that much to be clear, as much as I pick about the details and bits and pieces, those are probably things greatly determined by advice of employees and testers.

That doesn't overshadow how fine of a fellow rob is and his connectedness to the community.

I do wish lv would dump the a2, it's been made obsolete by v11 and a better lineup would be soft 01 as it us, then a harder version and v11.

I have no delusions about western companies pressing white steel in does like koyamaichi does.