Shooting with a buffed blade in a bevel-up plane

Well done...

David Weaver

I also haven't had issues with blades honed above 30 degrees or so for shooting, but I didn't get a chance to do this kind of testing because I no longer have a bevel up plane to shoot with.

32 is about where good chisels hold up really well, and shooting is a little bit easier than chiseling unless the wood is very hard and interrupted (saw cuts on the end, etc), so the results look good.

As far as folks complaining about sharpening off the uni and saying they may not sharpen that much off of their blades, they're just used to working with damaged blades. It's possible to hone off only part of the uni if it's just dull and re-buff, but I didn't want to present this encouraging that from the start as it's more dependent on a higher speed buffer and faster abrasive to remove a more gradual profile. I saw a comment on SMC about not removing half a thousandth or something with each sharpening, and anyone who is sharpening that little is just used to using a dull blade.

Not everyone can be convinced, and that's OK. It's advice offered for free - at least the price isn't the turn off!!!

(long suspected A2 was chosen because of its behavior for the toolmaker and not for the plane or chisel user. I did early testing of hock A2 vs. O1, and the A2 does last longer. In the last durability test we did, A2 lasted in clean wood about 25% longer, but it takes 25% more time to hone - at least, and for people grinding by hand, the only stone that may be really usable for it is the norton medium crystolon in an oil bath, but it's entirely tolerable with an inexpensive dry grinder. It's obsoleted by XHP/V11 and matched for practical purposes - in less than perfect conditions - by O1 that's got sweet spot hardness).

What warren describes seeing at LN events is what people who sharpen by hand will see (not warren, but LN recommends not using a grinder, thus they leave themselves with notches in their irons at shows - no big surprise).

Thanks for the honest assessment. I would read this and say "if I have chipping, maybe I should try 32 degrees in my shooter first", which is a relevant outcome. If someone is already using the uni for chisels, then it'll just be faster to use the uni on a shooter, and when the rubber hits the road in something less nice to shoot, the uni will separate itself. Even without regard to the speed of the bevel side making it so that people will spend more time on the back.

A2 in a BU shooter

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

(long suspected A2 was chosen because of its behavior for the toolmaker and not for the plane or chisel user. I did early testing of hock A2 vs. O1, and the A2 does last longer. In the last durability test we did, A2 lasted in clean wood about 25% longer, but it takes 25% more time to hone - at least, and for people grinding by hand, the only stone that may be really usable for it is the norton medium crystolon in an oil bath, but it's entirely tolerable with an inexpensive dry grinder. It's obsoleted by XHP/V11 and matched for practical purposes - in less than perfect conditions - by O1 that's got sweet spot hardness).

What warren describes seeing at LN events is what people who sharpen by hand will see (not warren, but LN recommends not using a grinder, thus they leave themselves with notches in their irons at shows - no big surprise).

Thanks for the honest assessment. I would read this and say "if I have chipping, maybe I should try 32 degrees in my shooter first", which is a relevant outcome. If someone is already using the uni for chisels, then it'll just be faster to use the uni on a shooter, and when the rubber hits the road in something less nice to shoot, the uni will separate itself. Even without regard to the speed of the bevel side making it so that people will spend more time on the back.

David, A2 appears to behave differently when used in a low bed plane, such as the LA Jack and the Veritas Shooting Plane. A 25-degree bevel will completely outperform a 30 degree bevel in a common angle (45 degree) bevel down plane (such as the LN #51). As you know, I have replicated this result many times over.

When I recently completed some informal tests in my workshop using a unicorn edge in a Veritas Shooting Plane (BU at 25 degrees), all I was interested in at that stage was whether it would plane end grain as well as before. This appears to be the case, so the potential is looking good.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: A2 in a BU shooter

David Weaver

Yes, I recall that. I didn't have identical experience, but didn't stick with a lower angle for long as I'm never shooting large amounts off of the ends of boards.

But I did stick with a lower angle on shootenstein (just bevel down) probably around 30 - an intentional slight drop hand honing, and it's held up well in shooting.

Only purpleheart has mauled it so far (but that's just a nasty wood to shoot end grain off of, and the sample that I made shootenstein out of was the hardest and densest I've seen of the stuff).

Re: A2 in a BU shooter

Winston

> David, A2 appears to behave differently when used in a low bed plane, such as the LA Jack and the Veritas Shooting Plane. A 25-degree bevel will completely outperform a 30 degree bevel in a common angle (45 degree) bevel down plane (such as the LN #51). As you know, I have replicated this result many times over.

Derek, from reading your articles, I thought that you had better results with the 30 degree blades in a bevel-down plane. Am I reading the article wrong?

From

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/LVShootingPlane.html

> All three of the blades used in the LN show chipping, the O1 having the most (and for less than half the shavings completed by the other blades), followed by the 25-degree A2, and then the 30-degree A2.

Re: A2 in a BU shooter

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Derek, from reading your articles, I thought that you had better results with the 30 degree blades in a bevel-down plane. Am I reading the article wrong?

From

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolReviews/LVShootingPlane.html

> All three of the blades used in the LN show chipping, the O1 having the most (and for less than half the shavings completed by the other blades), followed by the 25-degree A2, and then the 30-degree A2.

Hi Winston

It is important to quote in context. Chipping, per se, can occur without affecting the planed result. Sharpness trumps all. The final surface is what counts.

The conclusions read (comparing the BU Veritas Shooting plane, which used A2 steel alongside PM-V11, and the LN #51, which used O1 and A2 ... and later, in a second assessment, PM-V11 steel) ....

"The most obvious feature was that the Veritas was significantly and increasingly smoother and less effort to push through the end grain than the LN as the number of shavings increased. At the start, when all blades were freshly sharp, the extra heft of the LN was evident in it maintaining momentum. However, as the blades on the LN dulled, the lighter Veritas continued to slice the end grain without faltering. The continued ease of the Veritas was clearly due to the better edge retention of its blades.

The Clifton O1 blade [in the BD plane] proved to be the worst performer of all, even with the added insurance of a higher bevel angle. Planing was stopped after 22 shavings as it was struggling at that stage. This steel simply does not have much credibility for use in a dedicated shooting plane.

The LN blades began dulling after about 30 shavings, at which point they increasingly were required to take more passes to complete a full shaving – instead of cleanly slicing the end grain, they skipped and left untouched sections.

By contrast, the Veritas blades were still sharp at the end of 60 shavings, and could have gone on planing for much longer. Of the two blades, the A2 began to feel a little more difficult to push at about the 55 shaving mark, but continued to the end of its 60 without skipping a beat.

The PM-V11 did feel sharper and the end grain looked a little more polished at the end of 60 shavings, but at this stage it was difficult to judge which was more durable since a limit was set that proved well within the range of both blades.

Below are photographs of the edges of the blades at the end of the shooting session.

All three of the blades used in the LN show chipping, the O1 having the most (and for less than half the shavings completed by the other blades), followed by the 25-degree A2, and then the 30-degree A2."

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Well done...

Winston

> Thanks for the honest assessment. I would read this and say "if I have chipping, maybe I should try 32 degrees in my shooter first", which is a relevant outcome. If someone is already using the uni for chisels, then it'll just be faster to use the uni on a shooter, and when the rubber hits the road in something less nice to shoot, the uni will separate itself. Even without regard to the speed of the bevel side making it so that people will spend more time on the back.

Yeah, I think that for people who want to stick with their existing sharpening technique, 32 does a good job. I suppose lower angles might lead to less cutting resistance at first, but that advantage is negated very quickly as the edge gets damaged.

One thing I didn't make a big deal of is that it's a lot easier and faster to get a perfect, consistent edge with buffing. I had a bit of difficulty getting a clean uniform edge with this blade when using stones only. You can see in the pictures that the flat honing in both the 32 and 25 degree conditions left a slightly imperfect edge, and that's even when I went back to the stones an additional time after seeing raggedness in the microscope. The buffer makes it trivially easy. (With chisels, I had better results, probably due to the smaller size, and easier-to-sharpen steels.)

Two steps...

David Weaver

..the part of these discussions that fell flat before I had a buffer was that realistically, aside of the various chisel tests online and on youtube, one has to figure out what to do to accommodate an edge, and then the second decision is whether or not its tolerable.

My article when it's posted will show just how drastic the experience can be for one chisel at 30 vs. 32. And 32 is around my magic number for good chisels. the Sorby needs to go to 34 to be close to what the others are at 32 (the japanese and AI chisels held up well at 32, but not unicorn well).

While all of this stuff is a great fascination to me, and is what the origin of all of this geometry on the tool vs. the tip started from (you can even see it on my kamisori sharpening thread - the extreme sharpness of the pointed edge is a temptation, but it doesn't even last through a single shave - not even on a kamisori).....at any rate, where I've failed discussing things is these subtleties.

Put short, the first thing that forced my hand with this is purchasing a >100 imai architectural mortising chisel only to have it fail spectacularly in beech. It needed to be accommodated just as much or more than my stanley chisel because the imai was overhard, and vs. an ideal chopping chisel, the stanley was under. the real issue was the stanley chisel took a fraction of the time to sharpen and when it did fail, it was moderate small failure once accommodated. The imai is chasing some kind of super high hardness ideal and it failed a second time, and each time it did was *extremely* punitive.

The japanese tool ideal is out of date because a click softer for most of their tools and they would all work better, but nobody is going to buy master forger X who sells a $225 hand finished chisel at 63-64 hardness when imais' brand says they're 66 (who buys the car that gets lower mileage on the spec sheet but gets higher mileage in your driving situation? You don't know looking at that at the outset).

All of this comes to a head when you take someone like me who has probably had now going on 500 chisels or more, and not a single one of them will perform like the unicorn without accommodation. I have something like another 50 japanese chisels junked off of buyee yesterday that I"ll clean quickly, use for a while and then dump. I'm fascinated with seeing the differences. The more definitive statement about this or that maker or this or that type of western chisel being better is rooted in standard parameter testing that ends up catering to certain chisels while the rest are never accommodated, but understanding what this means is - I guess - advanced. I do nothing advanced, by my spending is advanced level, thus the chance to go with all of this stuff and figure it out!!

What does this mean for A2 on a shooting plane? If the edge can be honed precisely around 34 degrees, it should hold up in end grain.

Whether or not that's tolerable is a different question, but it fits in the context of accommodating first and then examining if it's tolerable.

The nature of a defective tool or one that's unsuitable for its purpose is one that is intolerable once it's been properly accommodated.

I knew the unicorn would be a hit not because of all of the things folks appreciate so far, but because it took tools that were undesirable when accommodated previously to desirable to use.

Bill and I had an angels on a pin kind of discussion yesterday that involved my viewpoint of what makes an AI MK 2 chisel a good chisel (really bordering on great in my opinion) and a narex chisel solidly in the mediocre category. Most people love narex because they're enamored with usable at the cost. The magic of the unicorn is the things that make a narex chisel mediocre partially get wiped out by the unicorn profile (the coarseness of how the tools are made with bulky proportions, etc, still needs to be addressed, but suddenly the rubbery 58*59 hardness steel is more easily accommodated and while they're still very mediocre chisels with a bunch of concessions in them to process and cost, there's no case that you can't do spectacular work with them to the very highest standards).

Most of the forum traffic would say 30 is a lot of angle and there is no benefit to going higher, but on bevel down planes, I don't agree. The microscope says otherwise. Even kiyotada's better later chisels won't stand up to use at 30 degrees. At 40 degrees bedded, up or down, irons *do* seem to tolerate a little less angle through end grain better, but that probably has a lot to do with Rob's mention of the balance of forces. At 45, the wood is pushing and prying on the edge more.

Re: Well done...

David Weaver

we're getting into the crux of why I thought planes would be a lateral move at the outset of this, but you guys did egg me into getting very good with the buffer and plane irons. I just took advantage of that major big time yesterday planing dry 2x4s that obliterated everything other than the plainest vintage cast steel.

But not surprisingly, as the feedback rolls in, I'm seeing the balance of folks tending toward not being able to master bevel down planes (and that's OK). What they may learn from this is that they will be better off on bevel down planes with a terminal microbevel of 33 than they were of something less. To the point that losing clearance is actually far less work with better results.

I neglected to think about bevel up planes, though - the uni is a super treat on them.

Context again

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

David, the comparison with A2 steel BU at 25 degrees versus BD at 30 degrees was made in 2013. If I did it again, now, I would make the BD angle at 32 degrees.

Nevertheless, it is clear that A2 at 25 degrees on a bevel up plane shooting edge grain is likely to be a solid performer. No doubt, with a unicorn profile, it should last even longer. Could the BD set up beat this? Unicorn profile against unicorn profile, I doubt this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Toolmakers and public research

Winston

After doing a number of these tests, it's become clear to me that the big companies selling this stuff really should be doing some of this research and publishing detailed reports.

The general question that people have is: How do I get the most out of my chisel or plane? One possible way of answering this is to buy a tool with fancy steel, like PM-V11. Another way is to provide information about bevel angles. I found, for example, that for a normal (non-unicorn) bevel, 32 degrees works way better than 25 degrees. But they don't tell you that anywhere, as far as I know. If Lee Valley had performed and published a test like the one I did, I would know how to use my Veritas plane better and I wouldn't have put it on the shelf, and I would have been more likely to recommend it to others.

And similarly, David, the findings you've had with small changes in bevel angle for chisels can make a big difference in usability. But people are just left to figure it out for themselves, or listen to sharpening gurus who may or may not have good answers -- it's hard to tell just by reading debates on the internet.

Doing these tests and publishing them might not give one company an edge over another in this space, but by making hand tools more attractive and usable in general, it would grow the entire market.

The tests aren't difficult to do -- they're way easier than actually building furniture. It's just that someone has to do it.

Re: Context again

David Weaver

I see two take-aways. Around that time, I was using "charlesworth angles" and putting a final microbevel on with a guide for smoothing planes (or i probably wasn't by then, but I remembered the final steep angle because A2 chipped if it wasn't really accommodated, but it wore longer in clean wood test, so I was swayed by that).

Take away 1 - the bevel up plane is a better platform in general for shooting because it doesn't need as much accommodation and can probably work well with lower angles. How much of that is due to the overall bed angle (which can't be manipulated on the LN plane) and how much is due to the lower angle regardless of bevel orientation, I don't know.

Take away 2 - the LN iron will need a lot of help. I'd be surprised if it worked well at 32, but didn't at 35. The end point of looking at it is that if it still doesn't hold up at 35, then clearance is a problem and only a back bevel can do even more and at some point the accommodation isn't worth it.

So, i'm more or less agreeing with you. I did have damage at 25 degrees on a bus, but some of it may have been the source of the ends (all hand sawn). What's damage (to the point of being a functional issue) and what's not, I guess, is also subjective.

Not being harsh on your tests, either. I have never seen an objective test in a magazine that takes the route I'm suggesting, but it's the more practical route for someone who has tools and just wants to get the best out of them.

The unicorn isn't really a savior of any sort, it's just a lazy way of meeting a goal. Once in a great while, the lazy way can be a method that turns out to be hard to beat the high effort way.

I had a hard time conceptually with believing that I could better my early time consuming flat bevel efforts on a japanese plane by polishing only the tips of the tool, and I said something to pam N. about 11 years ago along the lines of "nearly everyone would have better edges if they just gave in to the fact that if they polish only the tip with slight adjustments to the original bevel, it'll match their best efforts and usually be better".

I learned about pam by making that comment. Would've fit well in a movie lead in where there's a scene of chaos, and the frame is frozen for a second under it and in the frame it says "meet pam" as an introduction of a character.

Nice piece of Work

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Successes with Unicorning keep piling up.

Re: Shooting with a buffed blade in a bevel-up pla

Wiley Horne

This strikes me as a very significant result. The Lie Nielsen company at its website recommends A2 be given a 35 degree hone to avert chipping. Winston has shown us 200 endgrain cuts at 25 degrees using A2, with zero chipping! This was enabled simply by buffing the very tip in the unicorn manner.

This result augurs well for A2 chisels, as well as plane blades. The LN company might well take notice and duplicate these tests in its own research.

I am curious what was the species of wood being sliced?

Wiley

2nd paragraph...maple

Re: Shooting with a buffed blade in a bevel-up pla

Warren in Lancaster, PA

I have been to a number of Lie Nielsen events. One time I took a loupe along and looked at the chisels; every one had a chipped edge. Several years later I tried it again with the same result. Either they are not honing them at the right angle or they are getting chipping anyway. It might be more reasonable to conclude that A2 is a poor choice of steel than to try to accommodate its deficiencies. I have sharpened chisels at 30 degrees for fifty years now without chipping at all.

Maple is a genus. In Pennsylvania there are five species that are used for lumber.

Re: Shooting with a buffed blade in a bevel-up pla

David Weaver

It can be accommodated relatively easily. The problem for lie nielsen is pretty simple and I think they'd have a problem no matter what because they're trying to hand grind defects out of an edge, and letting people bull the planes around all day, or just not handle them the way we would.

That doesn't negate the apparent fact that it does have toughness problems compared to oil and water hardening steels and then rewards the user on the back side by being slower to hand grind and hone than other steels. It's kind of a clean wood primadonna, but it moves much less in quench and temper than O1, so it's popular.

George suggested A2 to LN before they used it (but probably so did anyone else familiar with it) as he'd been providing it to the coopers on the sly who were using steel lower in carbon than we'd typically used as hand laminating high carbon steel to wrought proved to be a problem. I believe that he mentioned 1070 or 1075 as being in use at the time that he started sneaking A2 irons to the coopers. Not sure how they sharpened them.

I have no issues with it chipping if the clearance is set at 10 or 11 degrees on a bevel down plane, and no A2 chisels left to experiment with the unicorn on. V11 in rough situations will exhibit less of the same behavior, but it doesn't tolerate rough work as well as O1, and O1 in turn doesn't tolerate rough work as well as water hardening steel. At least in cases that I've seen.

LN's suggestion to buyers that they not use a dry grinder compounds the problem further. V11 is a better version (and is dominant in clean wood), but in less than ideal work and tip of the edge retention, the plainer the better/tougher.

Just like razors.

Writing off A2 by rule is fine, but it ignores the fact that there are a lot of people using it and they would be helped by understanding how to accommodate it. As delivered by LN (I have none of their chisels now, but had some in the past. They do re-sell well!!), it's far better than the sorby chisels, but I fail to believe anyone sharpening entirely by hand will stay ahead of the damage on either V11 or A2 just because of how slow both of them slough off on abrasives.

A2 metallurgical properties

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If one looks up the data on A2 it is apparent it is deficient in toughness at high hardness compared to a high carbon tool steel. It is more abrasion resistant. This property coupled with the fact it can be forged, and it was different, likely led to the decision to use it. It would be a simple matter for someone to call LN and ask why they use it. The reasons to choose it are probably in their customer literature.

Re: A2 metallurgical properties

David Weaver

I don't think they'd be forthcoming, but I could be wrong. When they stopped making O1 tools, I think they flatly said that the company who does their O1 tools either went out of business or stopped doing them.

The time spent to work on ideally hardened O1 is probably problematic to boutique producers. To a garage guy, you use the warp to your advantage and bias it toward the flat side by partially cutting the bevel before quenching.

They (LN) switched somewhere in the early-mid 2000s and my lloyd's bet guess was that they found it to be suitable in clean wood and they or a company doing heat treat for them found it easier to get cosmetically perfect.

Rob gave us a little clue on this when he mentioned that he likes O1, but the Rob with a business hat likes V11. I'm guessing much of that has to do with how stable V11 is when quenched. It seems to move about a quarter or a fifth (subjective guess) or less vs. O1 - it's really pleasant if you can get it to heat quickly). It's got to be far more expensive in material costs than O1 and the fact that they don't charge more for it vs. O1 because of that (other than the minimal incremental increase) is, in my opinion, pretty polite.

I wouldn't want to dance the dance that the boutique sellers need to. There are tons of alloys better than A2, and there will always be customers who think they need "better than" ideally hardened good quality O1. The two will always be at odds. LN, for example, would be dead in the water using 61 hardened 3V because they advise customers not to use power grinders. I can't imagine grinding it with a long strip of sandpaper.

Long story short with all of this, the tip-of-the-tool toughness where A2 is lacking can still be accommodated pretty easily if the rules of accommodation and efficient sharpening are followed, and in clean wood, I've done three separate tests and it does outlast the most ideal O1, whether that's my O1, hocks, or whatever else. In more than just smoothing, and especially in chisels, I doubt it outlasts O1, though.

One of my earliest youtube videos was to tell people to use 34 degrees as a final microbevel on it and they'd see all or nearly all of the chipping cease. The problem with that for chisels is 34 is around where chisels start to feel really blunt, even small microbevels.

maple

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If one buys maple that has passed through the commercial hardwood lumber food chain it will be sold as "soft maple" and tree it came from will be Red Maple, or it will be sold as "Hard Maple" and the tree source Sugar Maple. When delivering logs to a mill selling into the national and international market the bark on the logs needs to look like it came from one of these two trees or the log will be rejected. The tree will have been harvested from some place commercial sized loggers harvest timber from, likely, national forest or large private holdings. If it passed through the wholesale chain it may have come from Canada.

So, if you are buying in AZ your maple will be limited to these two choices because these two choices are the only two entering the wholesale lumber market.

The possibilities expand when buying local. There is a retailer in Shelbyville KY that sells Coffeewood in quantity, because it grows around there and there is a local mill that saws and dries it. Looks like pinkish ash. But you won't be able to order a 1000 bdft pack from Hunterville Hardwoods (for example) delivered to your retain shop in MPLS.

Re: A2 metallurgical properties

Wiley Horne

“ Long story short with all of this, the tip-of-the-tool toughness where A2 is lacking can still be accommodated pretty easily...”

Yes! That is what Winston, and you in your tests, have each demonstrated. Many people have these chisels and plane irons, and they are receiving good news!

Will an A2 chisel, at 30 degrees and buffed, chip when chopping cherry? Maybe this has already been tested.

Wiley

Re: A2 metallurgical properties

David Weaver

I wish I had one to try it out. I planed a huge gaggle of pine the other day, filled with dry knots. It was pretty hard on everything, soft or hard. It seemed like A2 was the least tolerant of the bunch with it (developing chips the soonest).

But this is pure torture compared to clear wood (there were much bigger knots than those photos, but I was fixated on the growing waterfall that formed while I was squaring bed posts. You can see the holes in the shavings - they look like cigarette burns. If this wood had been planed when it wasn't as old and dry, I think I could've planed all of the knots smoothly, but they break when planed.

That said, I also observed no issues with A2 sharpened at 35 degrees final bevel in the plane iron test. That's like ideal smoothing after a try plane (clean wood, continuous cut, iron stays in it). The junky store pine is a much harsher test. The edge of A2 seems to kind of flake apart around 80% through its wear cycle, but it's easier just to sharpen it once it gets there. I've observed this behavior a decade apart in two different tests on three types of wood - every steel seems to kind of have it's own moves, and then on top of that, they do different things in different woods. V11 looks under the scope like carbon steel does in maple, but in beech, the edge looks like powder, and as the A2 flakes apart at the end, it does, too (in beech...my maple tests didn't make it far enough to see what would happen there).

I suspect that A2 would be fine in chisels at lowered angles because it's the tip that's the problem and even at 20/23 setup, the very edge is well accommodated.

I will generally whine about jack planing the worst of what shows up in a #1 common lot of cherry, so planing this stuff is foreign territory for me.

I made several stack-ups like this - they make a shaving bridge until the bridge gets too heavy and then they fall on the bench, but the work is relatively pleasant.

Interestingly, the ward iron in my try plane took little damage from the knots. I've stopped using XHP for anything other than clean wood work where it works well. In rough sawn lumber, I think simpler steels end up being less work overall, even if the XHP outlasts them with a little bit of nicking in the edge.

Black knots

Warren in Lancaster, PA

Black knots in pine are from branches that died long before the tree was cut. The lower branches tend to die from lack of light but the dead branch could persist for years as the tree grows around it. Eventually the dead branch breaks or rots and the tree heals over it, but leaves a stub inside.

Knots that come from live branches are more like reddish brown, resinous, and not loose.

Re: Black knots

David Weaver

I didn't even think to look, but sure enough, both types are in each of the 2x4s.

I recall all of the knots being dry, but only remembered the brown (live) knots as they plane nicely except under heavier planing crack in the center and gradually little fingers of material stick up out of them. I expected them to be a little more wet.

The black knots don't have enough solid material in them to do anything other than break out as filth.