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This article is really about the first two new plane iron steel options I’ve seen in a while, viewed both in the context of older plane irons as well as vs. Lee Valley’s V11, which was long ago outed on Sawmill Creek. XHP and V11 are used interchangeably here. The two new options are CPM 10V (sounds like V11, but much different composition) and CPM Magnacut. The former, like XHP, isn’t a new steel. The latter is. But to my knowledge, 10V hasn’t been offered as a production plane iron in the US previously. Now, on to the story….

Somewhere in the early 2010s, Lee Valley introduced their V11 plane irons. Based on XRF (analysis) of the composition of those irons, they are either CTS-XHP or something very close. XRF analysis still doesn’t provide carbon content, but the rest of the alloying was on the mark.

What is XHP? It’s a high-carbide-content and relatively high carbon powder metal steel that’s almost stainless. The carbides are generally carbon and chromium, without what is now more typical in popular steels – harder smaller carbides like vanadium and niobium.

What XHP has is wear resistance. In spades. You can experience this by planing an edge with one of these irons and then planing an edge with O1 or A2 or whatever else you’d like, carefully preparing each iron the same way. You’ll find that V11 will plane about twice as far as a good O1 iron.

What I’ve found since doing the same thing is that there’s not much regular work where I can get that interval to hold up, but it should last longer. It will take about twice as long to grind and twice the effort to remove a similar amount of metal on a sharpening stone, too, but the abrasion resistance is double so the fact that it won’t hone as fast *when you’re abrading it* shouldn’t be a surprise.

V11 Came and Went and Little Else Followed

The rumor being passed around when V11 arrived was that “Lee Valley developed a new steel”. This is extremely unlikely given what they mentioned their costs were. It seems more likely that they tried various steels that already exist, and based on how they typically operate – sending tools to users for feedback before full production – probably solicited feedback.

It’s my opinion so far that if you really feel the need to dip your toes in something that wears longer than older steel, the inexpensive Chinese high speed steel irons and V11 are the only reasonable irons that return what they say they will. It’s possible that there is a powder D2 iron out there somewhere that could also be included in that, but if you buy a conventional D2 steel iron, you’ll find that it has large carbides that are poorly distributed and they will be big enough to fail even in sharpening and then the iron will be notchy or gritty and leave lines on work.

Before these irons, Academy Saw Works made M2 irons that were good ,and Stanley Hobart did, too. The former were too expensive for them to make economic sense woodworking if that’s important, and the latter probably are only easy to find in Australia and maybe no longer easy. None of these were ever widely sold, though. There were also other small batches made in the US with CPM steels – 3V and M4 at least.

In my opinion, Lee Valley was concerned that someone may make an iron with the same steel if they had just called the alloy what it is. I don’t think this is likely, but at the time, who knows. Why wouldn’t it be likely? XHP isn’t really widely available and when it is, it’s very expensive. The option when steel isn’t available is to order a melt of your own, but the average small maker isn’t going to do this either. I don’t know what Lee Valley does, but I would imagine that they do enough volume to order or trigger a melt being done for their order. The rest of us, you can get CTS-XHP at retail from a retailer that specializes in carpenter products (I don’t recall the name, but if you search for XHP bar stock, you’ll find it – I only remember the background is red at the site), but you’ll find the bar stock itself will be $25 or so per iron that you make. This is *a lot* of money compared to other conventional steels.

So, the fanfare came and went, and the market got little more educated, it seems. One of LVs fans suggested at one point that I should “leave the steel to the experts”, which I thought was humorous. A few more educated individuals called out the idea that the composition of a steel being secret was nonsense in a world where it’s touted in knives, and XRF tests are often done publicly to line out retailers who sell things that are too good to be true.

I was pleased enough with a test planing clean wood that I made myself a set of XHP irons, tested one against V11 and found it was comparable. And then, I started back to regular woodworking and found that once the wood wasn’t already clean wood, I couldn’t get the same interval, and the chipping and other things that can occur in regular work took longer to hone, and I eventually just went back to plain steels. I also sold off the three V11 irons that I’d gotten in the past – no bueno for me. For a beginner who has a prescription honing method and will never progress, maybe that’s different. I still have my XHP irons, but they’re not in any other planes.

From time to time, I’d see custom made irons sold on ebay but consider the cost mentioned above, then the cost to get a small batch heat treated and ground and what will you find? irons for about $100. We’re not the knife community, and LV charges about $10 more for V11. They’re not lining their pockets – in my opinion, they have been the only reasonable option if you’re not going to learn to sharpen faster and find out why plain steel irons are all that really ever sold in volume. And most woodworkers are going to imagine woodworking more than they do it, so this is probably most of the market.

So, from my point of view, that’s where we are. Lie Nielsen is still using A2, which I would assume is for their convenience because it moves little in heat treatment. They may tell you otherwise, and so too may other retailers. A2 does cost a little more in bar stock form than O1, but we have become so lacking in skill as a society that heat treatment services are cutting back what they will heat treat with several posting notice that they will no longer heat treat O1 steel. Lie Nielsen did mention that their heat treatment service or perhaps a separate service informed them, too, no more O1.

So, What’s the Point?

Two things – First, I’ve found over time that the steel in the iron doesn’t matter that much if it’s not defective. Your ability to use a plane properly will dictate how much you get done, and on the chisel side of things, V11 isn’t that great in my opinion. What it has is hardness, which often allows beginners to get an easier sharp edge, and hardness does help a chisel in a side by side test. However, when I did a chisel test making an article about the Unicorn method, i didn’t find V11 to perform better or as well as some other lower cost options. This isn’t a surprise – abrasion resistance is a cutting or planing boon, but not so much for chisels. If you imagine yourself paring a chisel until the edge is round, it’ll never happen.

Second, over time, I’ve realized that most of the people who talk a lot about hand tools use them relatively little. They become indignant if you suggest that, but it is certainly the case that if you don’t do much work rough to finish with hand tools, you’ll have an unreliable opinion about what hand tools are actually capable of. I would refer to this as some woodworking, but a lot more imagining woodworking. Imagining woodworking leads to things like focusing on backlash, scanning tool reviews in fine woodworking and buying what’s recommended. Woodworking is finding something acceptable and learning to use it well, focusing on learning incremental little bits that make “well” better and better.

An example of woodworking vs. imagining it and what the result is is using a plane with a cap iron. Few people do it, but it’s at the core of getting a volume of wood planed between sharpenings. A common stanley iron used with a cap iron will do several multiples of the volume of work that a V11 iron will do without using the cap iron. Something I also found when I believed the converse early on – even a wooden plane with an iron that wears less long than O1 will outwork a metal plane *with the cap iron set*. That doesn’t seem like it should be, but it is the case.

Another example would be use of chisels – a good worker can use any decent chisel and figure out how to set up the chisel so that the edge doesn’t fail. This is rarely discussed online. I’d call this the magic of experience. Sometimes we don’t even know what’s causing the improvement, but it occurs just with experience. Sometimes the changes are conscious.

Long story short, if there is a mention about how revolutionary harder or more abrasion resistant irons are, I generally assume that the person making the statement hasn’t done much hand work, or if they have, it’s been a narrow bit of work done after shoveling wood through power tools, with significant sanding always being the final go after the plane finishes. If that wasn’t the case, we’d see a lot more posts asking how to stop iron nicking.

So, is there really any need for someone to work their way through lists of steels that aren’t designed for woodworking and see if any are “better”. I think V11 offers a fair bargain in some cases (effort to grind and sharpen is in proportion to more plain steels as long as work doesn’t nick the edge). Higher hardness PM D2 would do the same, at least as well. So would high quality M2, which could be done inexpensively and just isn’t. I think the answer is no – but someone could, anyway, for curiosity and also because while few will admit they’re just practicing escapism with hand tools, most are.

And just recently, I noticed there are now at least two available small batch options – CPM Magnacut and CPM 10V

Magnacut is a small particle / small carbide stainless, and 10V is a higher carbide volume steel that’s “kind of” similar to V11 except that the carbide volume is mostly vanadium carbides and not chromium. Magnacut is vanadium and niobium.

What does that mean? Both of the steels above have smaller harder carbides than V11. One technically wears longer (10V) and one doesn’t (magnacut).

Magnacut can achieve about the same hardness as V11, is far more stainless, and is tougher with finer particles. Going deep into the properties probably isn’t worthwhile here, but it would appear that Magnacut will have an edge life about 90% of V11/XHP in abrasion tests – only time will tell if it handles rougher work better than V11.

10V can technically reach edge life intervals of 40-45% longer than V11. This is bonkers long. It is also going to be tolerant to heavy handed grinding as the tempering range is above 1000F. You can brown or blue the edge of it.

This isn’t true for V11 and Magnacut, which will both hone and grind with more heat than more plain steels, but they won’t tolerate more heat.

The Magnacut irons are made by Lake Erie Toolworks, and the 10V irons appear to be a test run by a toolmaker in Chicago. As of this writing, the former are about $90 with tax and shipping, a little more for wider irons, and the 10V irons are $50 – but only available in 2″ size.

I have bought one of each (not given, not offered to test, nothing like that – I just bought them full price. Anyone reviewing tools to make a video or get free stuff – no bueno). I think either has potential merits, just like V11. based on some initial planing and sharpening with each, I don’t think they’ll be great for rough to finish work, but people like me aren’t the market for these irons, so I’ll address how well they work from the context of someone who would also buy V11 and feel like it makes a big difference.

Where to get Information on the steels

Larrin Thomas has the most accurate “usable” information I’ve seen anywhere. Larrin isn’t a woodworker, and I haven’t convinced any knife makers or other folks that maybe there’s something different about edge properties in woodworking tools, but the information on the site is generalized, so it won’t matter.

It’s semi-technical. That’s what you need if you want to actually learn anything. If you want a one paragraph narrative that uses word like “super fine grain” or “really tough”, without explaining those things, you can read woodworkers or watch youtube channels who really are only there to sell you things.

For information about XHP, 10V and Magnacut, see the following:

Knife Steel Nerds on XHP

Knife Steel Nerds on Magnacut

Knife Steel Nerds on 10V

Lastly – 10V is not new, and it’s widely used for dies and other industrial purposes where high wear is needed. Magnacut is new – it’s something Larrin developed and if you want to read further, you’ll find that it’s more or less a Stainless version of CPM 4V – that’s loosely put. 4V would probably be a good option for woodworking, but while magnacut and 10V bar stock is expensive, 4V is hardly any less expensive itself.

XHP has been around for a long time. You can ignore Larrin’s distaste for its carbide size – knife steel fanatics are obsessed with toughness, but there are other properties that are ahead of it to a reasonable point for woodworking. We don’t put tools in tree stumps and then see how much energy it takes to bend them over and break them.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about XHP/V11 being “almost stainless”, for woodworking purposes, it’s stainless. Even for reasonable kitchen use, it would be – I’ve made knives out of it, too, and while it can take very light staining in regular use from certain foods, I’ve left it unwashed in a drawer to find no rust later.

It’s not that important as it’s not a steel I’ll use for much of anything, but solving the grain growth and proving it is something I wanted to follow up on. I may be repeating something from yesterday’s blog post, but you may recall that I made some samples of 1084 and one that I intentionally overheated but only for a short time showed drastic grain growth.

This is a picture of that sample – for scale, 0.1″ thick.

I can tell what made it grow like this, but the loop isn’t closed until I can set up a process that will shrink the grain regardless of where it starts, and I would at least like it to match the best results with a low temperature heat and quick quench. A furnace may do all kinds of things that improve results greater than grain growth, but I’m only concerned with whether or not the steel is good enough for woodworking and if the cycle can be done easily.

The problem was temperature, though – what 26c3 (1.25% carbon with a small amount of chromium) likes and doesn’t suffer from at all is terrible for 1084. it’s just a little too hot, but only a little.

That means modifying the thermal treatment cycles a little and heating a little bit less upon quench, and then the results with the exact same bloated grain tab above moves back to this on the first try:

This is visually similar to what it would look like before overheating at all. I’m pleased with this. The change in what I typically would do is very small.

if I have a use for 1084, at some point, i will have samples tested, but right now, the need doesn’t go past good hardness and toughness “good enough”.

Good enough means not chipping in a plane a hardness above 60.

I’ve learned another lesson – don’t ask any questions about heat treatment on a knife forum unless you’re going to nod and say yes when half of the group says “sell everything you’ve got, you’re not getting good results no matter what, and you won’t until you buy a furnace”. But it’s hard to criticize that, how would someone making knives know what works well in a chisel. One is biased toward toughness first, the other toward appropriate hardness (strength). After all, they’re selling boutique knives that people are going to hit with clubs to split wood. We will probably pick up an axe or a froe.

Just how easy this issue (low toughness in my 1084 samples) was to address, first in preventing growth and then in reversing it without a difficult, expensive or time-intensive process does egg on my desire to solve problems rather than only go for the book solution.

If you want to sell things (including yourself), you’ve got to go with the flow. I have no idea why one-dimensional answers have to apply when someone isn’t doing that, though.

I’ve been making blades out of sharon 50-100 all week – one a day as it’s something I can do in less than an hour, and the ability to use a plane and then examine the edge under a microscope to see what I have is just about the ultimate initial test. If the iron is good, it will sharpen easily and well and wear evenly without chipping and folding.

If it passes that, then it’s time to use it rougher wood. The dilemma in this case is that it’s an antiquated steel by now and the found lot is 0.145″ thick. So, I can make infill irons with it and maybe large moulding irons.

Making a plane iron in a shop without machine tools and then quenching and tempering – especially a water hardening steel that’s just mill finish to begin with – means flattening an iron and getting an initial edge. I consider the entire establishing of the bevel, flattening the back and honing both to be a 10 minute job. I’ve been doing this for a while and have gotten good at all of the steps. That reminds me, I have an improved back flattening jig to share, but I’ll post about that separately.

Forums and Assigning Fault

When you read forums, you’ll hear all kinds of suppositions. Any time someone talks about a commercial iron being chippy or microchippy, or whatever else, I always challenge them to get a hand held microscope and view the edge of the iron before they start planing. A2 is relatively notorious because Lie Nielsen recommends hand grinding it and it’s more resistant to stones than most simpler steels. If someone even manages to properly finish an edge, they’re faced with nicking an iron, perhaps, and having to hand grind out the nicking.

They have practically no chance.

Hand grinding a small nick or small nicks out of an iron means honing off several thousandths of edge length, perhaps 4 or 5 at the most if there isn’t catastrophic damage, and the idea that you’ll do this in the middle of working on something is a no-go. Most of us have calipers – I’d estimate that a brisk sharpening session on a secondary bevel takes about 1 thousandth of length off of an iron.

My point is that what you see occurring is easy to attribute to “microchippiness” of A2. This is often the accusation. However, I fully honed, examined and planed a couple of thousand feet with A2 irons and found no evidence of chipping. The edge can get ever so slightly rough when it’s absolutely dead dull, but what people are generally observing is failure to remove nicks. Not evidence that they’re a victim of a steel that has an underlying monte carlo simulation resident in it to determine when it will mercilessly let out a ball of line-leaving filth.

The failure to get a good surface or good performance of almost any decent tool is either abuse or quite often, blaming damage left in the tool on boogeymen.

Annealed 50-100

I’m looking for super bright and no defects at all on a test edge or test face of a board. This is after dry grinding a full bevel on a new plane iron with a 36 grit belt and then hand honing on an initial microbevel. This is rough treatment – 36 grit ceramic belts grind much cooler than regular belts or a wheel, but they are extremely aggressive. Those two probably go together.

Yesterday while looking at carbides in an annealed iron that’s then quickly quenched – as in, the iron is placed in vermiculite below the temperature where it could be quenched and then it’s allowed to cool slowly in a “sandwich” of pieces of metal. This does nice things to the carbide structure, hopefully making them smaller and more round.

I saw lines on my work. Just two. The annealed iron tempered a point or so softer than another iron I’d done the day before, so I was starting to guess at reasons.

The carbides looked like this.

I scrolled the iron back and forth on the microscope looking for the folded over little area of poor results, and found this.

I guess it’s hard to complain about the quality of the edge when the diagonal scratch points the finger directly back at me. The height of this picture is only about .0095″ (just under a hundredth of an inch). This garish scratch is a couple of thousandths wide, but it looks pretty spectacular here. Interestingly, the edge seems to be closing over it.

The reality is, the steel isn’t at fault here. I’d like the iron to be a little harder, but could hardly claim the edge folded. This isn’t visible with the naked eye and I’m not sure if there’s even enough there to easily catch a thumbnail.

I fit in my own suggestion here – look to the sharpening first when pointing fingers at a blade or steel and thinking that it’s the blade. In fact, I can rarely count any time other than in rough lumber or knots or silica, where edge damage occurs in regular planing.

This idea of finding the right culprit and not being lazy and attributing it to something else is necessary for solving problems. Even though this is a simple one, the trouble is you’re your own feedback loop. If you have an iron that you often see defects without checking the iron, soon your supposition becomes truth with repetition. Except it’s often not true. That becomes even less helpful when you assert that it is when attempting to help someone else having the same problem.

I’ve removed this scratch, of course. But it’s not something the average person will get out of the back of an iron with 20 extra seconds in a fine waterstone.

There’s a rumor that the market included plain steels in tools along with the idea that synthetic sharpening stones are also a new thing. Neither is true, but it is the case that prior attempts at tarting up woodworking hand tools with high speed steel (HSS), or razors with significant amounts of tungsten in them were relatively unpopular.

A lot of synthetic stones were marketed in the late 1800s and early 1900s at high cost and also were hit or miss.

High speed steel goes back at least as far as Mushet steel. Think O-1 steel, which is easier to harden thanks to a big dose of manganese, but with much more manganese to the point that if you overheat the steel, it rehardens just with exposure to air. Hardenability is a term that’s used to describe how slowly a steel can cool and still reharden, and “hot hardness” is a term to describe how well it performs when it’s hot. Air hardening high speed steels are both highly hardenable and with good hot hardness. Others, like A2, are air hardening “high hardenability” steels that don’t fare well once they’re exposed to heat.

Mushet was an early (first?) example, but the steel was brittle and what we will find in woodworking tools is more likely to be earlier tungsten alloys followed by the more common M-series, where M2 took over thanks in large part to being lower cost than tungsten high speed steels.

Mountford’s Revilo HSS Iron

Mountford was apparently a scythe or farm tool manufacturer, and at some point in the late 1800s or probably more likely, early 1900s, they marketed a high speed steel parallel iron for infill planes. You see them from time to time, but they’re not as common as Ward and Payne, for example. If I had to guess about the age of the one that I have by the font and style, I’d guess 1925-1930. An iron like this is something I might buy out of curiosity, but in this case, I bought a plane that already had the iron below as a replacement iron.

What I found interesting before getting this iron is that sometimes I would see listings for planes with a Revilo HSS type iron that was well used. Some even to the slot. When you see this, that usually means the iron was sharpenable and pleasant to use.

We get confused now with boutique offerings that are high hardness and one of the myths of HSS is that it’s always really hard. I looked up an M-2 alloy hardening and tempering schedule and it provided instructions for tempered hardness from 56 to 66 on the rockwell c scale. For someone sharpening on stones, this makes for a huge variation in what you perceive, and most amateurs wouldn’t think two irons at the extreme ends – or even middle and one end – were the same steel.

Where does his hardness myth come from? I guess it must make some kind of sense that a steel that does well cutting other steels would be really hard, but the high speed reference is related to the fact that the alloy can be used for “hot work”. Allowing work to be cut and shaped at higher speed means higher volume, more efficiency. The steel doesn’t have to be hard to do this hot work – it just needs to retain its hardness well past temperatures where cold work steels will become soft.

Moving on to the idea of consumed high speed steel older irons – I suspected that the Mountford/Revilo irons were tempered a bit soft so that they could be sharpened on typical sharpening stones, and that’s the case. Most older tools that are overhard without later correction just go unused, and the listings that I’ve found of these half or mostly consumed tips us off. I can sharpen this particular iron easily with an india stone and washita stone as a finisher.

What is the composition? I have no idea, but an XRF analysis would figure it out pretty quickly. At its early age, the hard steel lamination on the iron could be a T-series high speed steel. It looks like Mountford was in business at least until just prior to WWII, but since plane irons weren’t their main business, there’s no reason to conclude they were making these from introduction to closing business. If I ever have the chance to get XRF analysis done on a group of irons, I’ll try to remember to include this one.

What is it like to use the Iron?

Since it’s tempered fairly soft, it’s hard to tell that it’s high speed steel. If it wasn’t marked, I wouldn’t know either, until grinding it and seeing that it probably wouldn’t spark like a typical older iron. I haven’t ground the bevel on this one in a while, though, and don’t remember if that’s the case. But you can just use it like you would anything else without special grinding or sharpening considerations.

Why didn’t they ever catch on? Unless you want to heat the iron on a grinder, high speed steels in hand tools and things of the like offer no real improvement for professionals. The cost was probably also higher than typical irons, but one would have to find a listing to prove that. I have used this particular iron occasionally and would speculate that the edge life is similar to a good carbon steel iron, but to get a picture of the carbides, I paid a little bit more attention. It seems to lose sharpness and the ability to keep the plane easily at a point and fairly quickly. That is, it planes well for a while, and when it starts to fall over in sharpness, it does so quickly.

This is back to cork sniffing talk again, but I have this same experience with 52100. The edge seems to wear more in a rounded shape and less crisply and if you just keep pushing it, it’ll cut for a while, but it feels less nice to use than O-1. This iron has that, too. I think it would fare fine if it was higher hardness and hold a more “pointy” apex as it wears, but that’s just speculating and at higher hardness, craftsmen would also have liked it little. Could it be that the ability to grind it briskly with a wheel grinder was the selling point? Maybe.

A picture of the carbide pattern and the worn edge is below to illustrate what I found. In short, it does wear a little bit unevenly, and I think the lattice between the carbides lacks hardness a little bit. This is after several hundred feet of planing, though, so it doesn’t just fall on its face. Interestingly, since I work the back with a washita, it retains a haze instead of a polish and often under the microscope, you can find out why. In this case, it looks like the washita hones the lattice but some of the carbides remain in place. They don’t look large. which is good, but the edge still looks kind of ragged.

You can compare the uniformity of the worn edge with yesterday’s darling – the very plain “cold work” 50-100 alloy (1% carbon, 0.6% chromium, and some manganese plus only little bits of anything else).

Sharon Steel Worn Edge / Carbides Picture

I’d rather have a good quality traditional iron if a solid conclusion is desired. I think the market decided the same thing. Around this time or not long after, though, Norris went to R. Sorby irons, which are also soft and disappointing in the planes where they appear, so I don’t know if a crisp new Ward iron was still a possibility.

In the prior blog post, I mentioned that 1095 knives are probably not 1095 steel alloy, and implied that what’s often asked on woodworking forums “Is this old tool O-1 or A2?”. The answer to the latter is in most cases, neither.

After finding 1095 to be unlikely as a plane or chisel steel due to poor toughness at high hardness, I looked around and finally found old stock being sold of one “improved” 1095. It’s called Sharon 50-100. This series of steels is at least three or four different alloys. 1-1.1% carbon steels with some chromium added, and for a B version, a small amount of vanadium.

And for the people lurching in their seats because they would never use chrome vanadium steels, only O1 or V11 – V11 has both chromium and vanadium in it, and O-1 also chromium in it with many of the variants from high quality mills also having additive vanadium.

The 50-100 variant that I was able to find was monstrously inexpensive – think $5.50 of steel to make an infill plane parallel iron with enough left to make at least two or three kitchen knives. It’s only available in one thickness, so no stanley plane irons and no chisels with it, which is kind of a bummer as it may have made a nice change up to the high hardness 26c3 carbon steel that I like to use. Once in a while, I come across someone who doesn’t like a high hardness chisel and there’s no real reason to make a 26c3 chisel, for example, and temper it down to 61 hardness. It excels being 63 on the low side at least, and up from there several points if you desire.

So, back to the irons. 0.145″ is OK for an infill plane iron – or maybe a Lie-Nielsen 8…..a plane I don’t have.

Making the Iron

Making the first iron, the only one I’ve made, I like to see what I can feel. By my estimation, the steel is spheroidized. This means treated in a way so that the steel is very soft and the carbides have been conditioned into little round carbides vs. the elongated types usually found in rolled annealed stock. It cuts like butter, and it won’t air harden while cutting and grinding. That translates to easy working, drilling and sawing.

From bar stock to finished heat treatment is about 45 minutes. I can’t tell anything from the sample other than it is spheroidized-like softness and there’s no feel of alloying like you’d get with highly alloyed steel. By the way, you can find information about spheroidized steel and its workability but sometimes-impediementary (new word!) properties for furnace heat treaters. The way I heat treat in a forge, it makes no difference and given the choice, I like starting from spheroidized stock.

The steel still has scale on it as delivered, but that will disappear just in the making of the iron and finishing of it later.

All in all, a delight to work with. I don’t care about decarb – that is, I don’t care if the outer layer is decarburized from rolling as it’ll be ground off or honed off in short order.

The iron, along with two O-1 tapered irons recently made, shown below. these could be perfectly finished to remove the marks and eliminate evidence they were hand made, but that’s kind of prissy. There’s already too much prissy stuff in amateur woodworking and toolmaking that aims at beginners.

What I am hoping to see in this steel – the 50-100 steel – is a small array of carbides – I’ll show pictures of that in a second, as I have a method to see how they appear, how big, how many, how even. True 1095 itself has excess carbon and I would’ve expected to see iron carbides forming from anything over the eutectoid limit (0.77% carbon, or something like that). For the uninitiated, 0.77% is about the limit of carbon that can reside in a steel lattice before excess amounts start to look for places to reside. At any rate, my method to find the carbide pattern is simple – put the cap iron on the plane, use it and then take a 300x microscopic picture to see what’s not wearing away as fast.

The cap iron holds the shaving against the back of the iron and it neatly wears away a small cup in the top of the iron back. In a sense, it sands away the lattice of the metal leaving anything harder either to be broken and pulled out or standing proud. Whatever happens other than uniformity with the lattice itself, you’ll see the evidence.

Reality in practice, as I’ve found and later read about, isn’t as simple as the eutectoid limit “squeezing” excess carbon out into iron carbides. The reality is excess (beyond 0.77%) carbon can dissolve into solution and remain in the lattice. As temperatures increase in a furnace or forge, more carbon can dissolve into and reside in the lattice. Based on what Larrin Thomas has published in patreon bits, probably public now, 1095 does result in a lot of excess carbon in solution. This results in higher hardness, but lower toughness. Or at least I think it results in higher hardness as I saw an average of about 61.5 rockwell C hardness with O-1 steel and 63.1 with the basic 1095 alloy steel.

So, let’s see some lattice/carbide pictures. What follows is a comparison of 1095 and 50-100 showing that 1095 doesn’t seem to “seed” carbides, but the 50-100 steel has a nice neat even spherically shaped pattern of carbides. Yay! that’s a start. Hopefully, it will lead to a steel that’s a lot like 1095 on the stones and in the cut, but just without nicking. First, “real” plain 1095 steel:

And Sharon 50-100 steel, roughly 1095 plus 0.6% chromium:

Both pictures are taken at the same magnification – light levels are a bit different and the cap iron was set a bit close on the second picture – not recalling the first, so the wear is shorter and steeper. The carbides in the second are the smallest I’ve seen. 26c3 has much more excess carbon, but it seems like fast formation of those carbides leads to less carbon staying in the lattice and despite the formation of those, 26c3 is tough and makes a good plane iron. It doesn’t last long in a plane, though – apparently iron carbides are good for hardness, but they don’t seem to have much of an effect increasing edge life. So I love it in chisels, I like it (26c3) in plane irons, but expect most of the beginner public would have fits with needing to increase sharpening frequency a little bit, no matter how easy it is.

Looking at 26c3, it doesn’t look like there are necessarily more carbides than 50-100, just that they’re larger. They are, however, smaller than something like V11. I no longer have a V11 iron, but I do have XHP, which is probably the same thing. If that’s true, Lee Valley isn’t in danger of anyone copying them. The steel is low availability and it’s expensive. Lee Valley is nearly providing a public service by offering their V11 irons at the price that they ask. I don’t care for the chisels having tested one – I can make a better chisel, but I didn’t go down this rabbit hole to start believing that somehow a chisel that is fine for a plane iron will be the same level of “yay” for a chisel.

What’s the Wear Resistance Like for 50-100? What Else?

I haven’t tested 50-100 against O-1. I suspect it will last less long, or fewer feet. Something that an experienced user won’t care about as it sharpens really easily. I think the edge life of 50-100 is probably about the same as a vintage mathieson or ward laminated iron, and that’s fine with me.

For comparison, 52100, a ball bearing steel, has much more chromium (1.5%) and bigger carbides and lasts about as long as O-1 in a plane iron. If you’re not that famliar with steels 50-100, 52100 – yes, I know these are like calling one guy Mark and another guy Marc and then talking about how different the Mar(c)ks are.

What about sharpenability – not just ease, but how the edge comes about. Sharpenability is as good as anything I’ve seen. Beware, this is about to go full cork sniffer….. though one man’s cork sniffing is another man’s blue collar practicality. 50-100 gets a click or two less hard than 1095 – I’d estimate 60/61 hardness in the test iron, and the grain is fine and uniform with the small carbides. There’s no perceived resistance to the stones – even O1 provides some feel of abrasion resistance compared to older steels. Creating a wire edge on a fine india stone to remove wear and get to finishing an edge is effortless – a matter of several seconds following the india with a worn washita stone.

When resharpening the iron above, I worked through these steps at a leisurely pace, but not dawdling. The total time including walking over to the buffer to buff strop after the washita – 47 seconds. The wire edge after the india stone can be teased off in very few strokes on the washita and the resulting edge would show a microscopic burr but none can be felt by hand. Pure joy in simplicity and ease, especially given it’s not harder than it is. That is, really hard steels often release their wire edge a little bit more easily on a fine stone, and this iron is hard enough, but it’s not icy hardness.

And the beauty of a steel like this becomes apparent to an experienced user if the lack of chipping that I’m hoping for also materializes. That is, it looks like it may be a good candidate to be a steel that maintains a constant undamaged edge. Sharpening probably removes about a thousandth of an inch of the edge and can be done in less than a minute. Add nicking several thousandths deep, and that’s sucky. For what it’s worth, good O-1 is also pretty favorable at this whole idea – sweet to use, but not too easy to nick and not much burden to deal with unexpected nicks.

I have more experience-based work to do. Initial impressions can be misleading and I think there’s a little left in the tank to go a click harder as I worked the quench routine with a bias toward straightness rather than all out hardness chasing. This kind of experience being my change of heart with V11 after being wowed in a standardized planing test planing several 5k’s worth of board length…..and then being unwowed with the same steel as soon as conditions even went to rough lumber planing.

So, confirming that the 50-100 iron will remain defect free just with regular sharpening – something I found V11 unable to do, and the same with house-made XHP irons – is all that’s left. And since it’ll never be commercially available as replacement irons….that’s perhaps the end of this pleasant journey. Hey – do I expect to make waves with 26c3 chisels? No, I’m making them and I think they’re better than anything commercially offered, but the way I’m making them isn’t scaleable.

Pictures of the Results of the First Grind after Making

I gave the iron a quick edge, but a good one, planed a little bit and then refreshed once. I always cut the bevel on a 36 grit ceramic belt, and I had no water available, so I cut the bevel on this iron using only my palm to cool it. This isn’t like your typical sandpaper, so don’t read too much into that. It’s designed for cool metal removal and excels at that. But fetching water would’ve been smarter and faster. 2 minutes instead of 5 minutes, perhaps, to cut the full initial bevel.

The point? I doubt it ever got too warm, but the first grind goes all the way ot the edge, and a 36 grit ceramic belt cuts deep and roughly. Only improvement would be ahead of this if any of the damage due to the rough treatment by the belt goes a little bit past the visible grinding marks.

One Last Speculation

Without doing a whole bunch of research, I would speculate that many of the older irons that are really a treat are that not necessarily due to the complete lack of existence of any other alloying elements, but rather that the ore shown to provide good results was then used. And whether it was known or not, what differentiated one ore from the next was not just lack of undesirable elements, but also lack of traces of desirable elements.

I haven’t had a chance to look much more closely at this because one of my tricks in my small bag now is to wear away some steel by planing and see what shows. I have a lot of older double irons, and expect that in general, they were not high carbon and probably shied away from the 1% carbon level staying more like 0.9% or a little below to avoid the problem mentioned above with 1095 – too much carbon remaining in the lattice. The one thing that could disprove this or may, at least, would be finding familiar patterns of carbides in these older irons – something I’ve really only seen in one laminated stanley 2″ iron.

Another woodworker has mentioned the chance to XRF (nondestructive analysis) some older tools to see what is in them other than carbon. The test does not identify carbon, but does identify most other things we would consider interesting. It is the same test used by two different people (at least) to find out what’s in PM-V11 when LV rolled it out. I had nothing to do with that effort and at the time am not sure I cared that much about it other than minor annoyance of not knowing what’s in the steel. The prevailing notion on woodworking boards, that the steel was a developed proprietary alloy, didn’t make sense to a few people who knew that LV’s cost figure for selecting the steel wasn’t high enough to actually fully develop a new alloy.

But, that’s just another example of overconfidence of the majority aided by lack of exposure or real experience. Sometimes it’s fine to just say “I don’t really know”. Even as much as I’ve gotten my hands dirty, I’m looking for outcomes. As for why they are what they are in each case, “I really don’t know” quite often.

This isn’t really a guitar blog, but one of the things that I want to do along with continuing to make tools is to get better at making instruments and then branch out beyond guitars (potentially to violins and mandolins, supposing I have the nerve, time, money and initiative to do it in the future – at 45, it’s easy to tell that I have more focus and patience as a kid, but getting turned around thinking about something is easier. Or maybe it’s just also the case that with age comes more intolerance for mistakes and desire to not abandon projects)..

At any rate, this is my first carved top guitar. Indian rosewood top, limba back (to get good low/mid density one piece honduran billets these days is tough, and limba has the nice open low note when tapped that honduran mahogany does).

The neck is hard maple. The hardware is all good stuff (nothing cheap, but nothing weird, either – just tone pros stuff, grover keystones, bourns pots, good wiring and seymour duncan antiquities, which I don’t like the look of. Duncan makes these in “not distressed” version, but a guy who buys used pickups is also a guy who will get distressed when that’s what’s available used).

If this guitar ever makes it out of my hands, the instant assumption will be that the rosewood is a veneer over who knows what under…finding an 8/4 wide board of rosewood that I could justify was a stroke of luck. The equally showy maple cost very little and the limba was a steal (a 16″ wide dead QS board for $170 that I found on ebay years ago – but the board is big enough to make three bodies like this plus some and it’s a little heavy for limba, which puts it in the range where you’d expect mahogany to be).

The result is this guitar is acoustically snappy, filled with all sorts of little unwanted evidence that it’s hand done (that’s sloppy when seen close up, with little mistakes).

It’s a guitar that was designed to be made with carving/duplicator machines, pin routers and jigs and some hand fitting and belt sanding. And there are a few doofuses like me, I’m sure, who want to do it mostly by hand with bits by eye wherever possible.

Maybe it’s OCD, but I can’t build the “keep it moving and use the patterns and power tools” way – I’d need to build 5 at a time to trust at least a couple would turn out OK.

This guitar won’t satisfy purists – especially the peghead design. I didn’t want to copy Gibson’s open book style as I don’t think I’ll ever sell this guitar, but that may change in the future if I make a whole gaggle of things. Listing a guitar with a copied peghead pattern is not a good idea – especially if it’s one of a number of companies (Gibson is definitely one of them).

Working by hand provided the freedom to do a lot of this. planing blanks precisely, match planing top wood precisely and not fearing using a top wood board that is expensive and will be hard to replace. Using incannel gouges to cut the celluloid inlay, working to a thousandth or two when needed, and just to eyeball on others.

I can’t imagine what this would be like without purposely focusing on the freedom of working unjigged elsewhere.

Oh, and the finish? Buttonlac. It’s going to shrink a little and at a later date, I’ll take the stuff that sticks up off of the body and refresh any pores that appear.

In yesterday’s blog post, I used 1 micron diamond on a stone and then on cast. The results remind me of something I’d forgotten to some extent thanks to the buffer and thanks to not doing only finish work with planes – the abrasives at really small size cut slowly (they won’t fix any mistakes you’ve left behind) and getting photo perfect finishes off of the scopes is difficult.

But, beyond that, comparing older photos of plane irons honed on 1 micron diamonds, it just looked like the finish was really coarse. I’ve had to change cameras on the microscope – could that be the cause? It’s possible that has something to do with it – the new camera is more crisp and will interpret detail that I think the software in the prior camera would smooth over.

I was puzzled – maybe it’s just dirty surfaces on sharpening supplies that I haven’t used for a long time, but it’s inconvenient when you’re posting blog pictures of 1 micron diamonds on cast and one looks like a sheet of paper with no marks, and a more recent attempt looks stringy and striated. To see what I mean, I’ll show two pictures.

First – the 1 micron diamond finish pictures that I captured doing a plane iron test in 2019:

Older picture of plane iron honed on diamond – either hardwood or cast plate, I can’t recall (at the time, both produced very clear pictures with few defects at or near the edge). At the time, the cast plate was fresh and hadn’t collected any ambient dust or dirt, either)

And second, yesterday’s picture on cast (albeit, sitting mostly in disuse since the picture taken above).

Chisel honed – 1 micron diamonds on a finely blanchard ground cast plate.

The top picture is a plane iron, the second a chisel just under an inch. Both of these are blindingly tools with a thin starting edge. Both pictures are the same size top to bottom, and the diamonds used at the bottom are from the same supplier with the same size mark (I lost the original vial). 1 micron.

Later in the day yesterday, I decided that I’d still like to test a plane iron on the black stone with diamonds – recall from the prior blog post or assume based on my comment here, the second picture above is *finer* appearing with a straighter edge than the chisel was on the black stone, so you may expect a picture of the back of a plane iron to appear less fine.

Maybe it would just be better to repost that picture here – the chisel honed on a black arkansas stone with 1 micron diamonds. I realize that these start to all look the same after a while, but notice the crispness of the actual edge. It’s possible to get the edge itself thinner on cast as far as I can tell, and you can feel that in initial sharpness on a plane. The edge off of the black stone is a little less perfect (there’s a slurry of diamonds on it, and probably some stone particles) :

Chisel honed – 1 micron diamonds sprinkled on a black arkansas stone.

And finally, the plane iron honed last night (just a newer surprisingly decent and appropriately hard stanley plane iron that came on a mex-made stanley 4). This honed on the black arkansas stone both bevel and back side (all of these are bevel and back side).

The very first picture had an edge that was lightly stropped on bare leather. Lightly is important because the finer your edge is, the lighter your touch should be stropping – you can deflect the edge with brisk stropping.

The remaining edges are unstropped – they would be slightly straighter looking and the last two, especially, a bit closer to a straight perfect line at the edge.

But notice how fine the surface is on the plane iron vs. the chisel thanks to the benefit of distributing sharpening pressure over a much wider area. I took a picture of this plane iron edge not for the purpose of making this article, but because I was thinking it’d be a good idea to show the difference in sharpness on the black stone with and without diamonds. In my wisdom at the time, I didn’t pay attention and spread the diamond powder all over the stone (the iron is definitely sharper than it would ever be off of only a black stone, an I know that’s hard for some people to handle, but that’s just the way it is).

This also takes away some of the annoyance I had seeing the old pictures and the newer ones done here with a narrower tool. It’s just another illustration of not changing anything if you want to make comparisons, with a sprinkle of “you can vary pressure even with the same tool” and do your last 10 seconds of edge finishing with lighter pressure (presuming the prior work was complete) and get a finer edge.

I think with some further use of the cast plate to remove any filth or light scratching that may have occurred jostling in the drawer, the last plane iron can get a little closer to the first picture, too. If I were reading the blog and comparing 1 micron diamond honed pictures, I would certainly wonder how reliable visuals are if the visuals of the same abrasive don’t make a similar picture.

The rehardening of Stanley tools is encouraging. The steel quality is there to do it, but not all older tools have fared as well. I’ve rehardened a few Ohio Tool irons, which exhibit the characteristics of an iron that is not top quality, though I couldn’t say specifically why. It could be low quality steel or lack of carbon (both can show the same thing).

I’ve also had some specialty irons from oddball toolmakers in the 1800s where rehardening didn’t result in a hard iron. With Parks 50 and an iron (Which is a relatively thin cross section) this shouldn’t be the case and the result suggests the iron isn’t hardenable to the extent that a woodworker would want it to be.

I’ve also had excellent experience with defective new tools. About five years ago, I saw a new set of boxwood handle Marples chisels (tang style, but round tang. I would guess something like 70s or 80s make). I do not recall a tool that was suitably hardened in the group, but three fourths or more of the group was unhardened for any practical purpose (softer than a saw would be) and any attempt to strop a chisel would roll an edge. One push through softwood and the edge would roll badly. In that case, a simple quick heat and quench (handle still on the chisels, just sticking out of the forge with a very wet towel around the wood), and then a blacksmith temper (holding the chisel over heat and tempering to straw and then quenching again to stop the tempering process) results in a good working chisel.

New for those chisels may not be a great term – they were unused, and $160 for a set of 10. I doubt the owner of the chisels knew they were bad, they were probably just a flipper (none had any signs of use or sharpening).

So, A current Version

Buck Brothers used to sell a cheaply made iron (stamped out) for a stanley 4/5 sized plane in home depot. Interestingly, over time, the origin of the plane irons changed from USA to china and back. Some of the blades I’d found (and bought) said “USA” on the packet and had a sticker over the packet that said “CHINA”. Who knows what the case was – maybe they were just packaged here. It doesn’t matter, they were $2.99.

Those irons were actually usable, but they hone and slough on an india stone very quickly, and then they need a little help on the final bevel to hold up to hardwoods. A bit of a roundover with the bevel and they’re OK, but they have the feel of a steel with 0.6% carbon (like cheap imported chisels). They give themselves up in how they feel on stones – lower carbon steels feel a little smoother on a stone without any grip, but hone quickly.

I don’t think there’s much of anything else in those irons, so I rehardened one, and then tempered again in the 400F sweet spot.

What happened? Almost no change. Why? When you lower carbon, you can get high initial hardness, almost as high as a 1% steel iron, maybe just short. If you under-temper an iron you can keep it at high hardness, but it will chip. If you continue tempering, then the hardness of the tool being tempered will be lower than something with a higher carbon content.

26c3 sort of illustrates this. It’s about 2 points harder than O1 or A2 at the same temper, it has more carbon. This comparison goes a little awry when you add lots of other alloying elements – like bunches of chromium, but that’s outside of my scope. The only stainless I heat treat is XHP, which has a huge amount of carbon, but comes out of the quench lower than something like O1, and then lands around the same hardness after tempering. It’s got far more carbon than 26c3, so just carbon content alone isn’t a perfect indicator.

Back to the Cheap Iron

I didn’t take any pictures or do testing, but I did buff the edge of the iron and plane some Louro Preto (high hardness dusty wood, about as hard as indian rosewood). It worked fine, but it wouldn’t wear long in that – buffing the edge helps it avoid instant damage.

The thinner you would get in terms of taking shavings with an iron like this, the faster you’d find out that it’s not that hard. Low carbon and low hardness result in inability to hold a fine edge.

Is the iron useless? No, I used a pair of them to plane knotty pine a couple of years ago. When they get damaged, they grind and hone really quickly. To make them usable, use the cap iron on a plane, buff the tip and keep the plane in the cut and just sharpen quickly.

But they do help illustrate in this case, if the quality of the underlying steel isn’t there, just rehardening it isn’t going to improve anything – it’ll go back close to where it was after temper, and if you try to cheat by undertempering, you’ll have worse problems.

Interestingly, these irons were fair exchange at a $3 price, but I have seen them on ebay now for anywhere between $8 and $25. Avoid them at that cost. I’m guessing flippers feel like they can find a buyer for them because they say “Made in USA” on them. The Chevette diesel was made here. too. That doesn’t make it as good as a truck made in Louisville.

If you have some of these because you couldn’t resist the $3 price, they’re not at all bad in a jack plane where you’re doing just as much wedging of wood as you are cutting.

This is the last of three honest discussions about what really makes for efficiency when working in the shop, though it could carry on into marking tools, rules, squares, etc. Almost nothing that’s marketed now really improves making with the possible exception of the convenience of some japanese saws when you want to saw from any direction and have work elevated where it may not be convenient with a western saw. Even those are annoyingly marked up (for example, you may find a Z-saw replacement blade in the US for $20 and then spot one sold by a dealer on Japan’s version of ebay for $7.50 including shipping, or $5 per in a group of five). But, let’s put that aside (you can explore yahoo-Japan proxy shippers if you’d like and view saws there. If you’re not sure what that is, that’s eBay in Japan, functionally. They seem to prefer Yahoo).

Not Advice for a Mostly Power Tool User

There are some things that go into using saws and being the filer and noticing what’s efficient and what’s not. Someone who cuts dovetails and the odd M&T joint isn’t going to follow this. If you’re working entirely by hand, you may be filing a saw once a week, or more if you’re in the shop a lot. You’ll also physically benefit a whole lot from a long saw with good tension and that shines in the Cycle of Work when it comes to sawing vs. filing. Filing is essential. It’s also not very difficult if you can do it a few times in a row. You don’t need to be great at it, but you need to be able to get the tips of the teeth refreshed without them being too far out of line, and then once you’re there, keep a level set of teeth relatively level without jointing. It’s not hard.

What’s important in long saws is reasonable tension, no broken teeth, the ability to be filed well and length. Why gentleman’s saws and toolbox saws became a thing for someone working in a fixed location, I don’t know.

As far as 1935 goes, that’s about the time that the circular saw appeared and the end of good saws was almost immediate. I can’t see a reason to buy any long saws made now, and there’s no great reason to buy any of the short ones if you have the skill to file. If you do a lot of rough work with rip and crosscut saws, you’ll soon saw very accurately and the discussion of plate thickness on small saws (within reason – again, toss out the saws made in the 1970s or whatever, those are to be avoided – even if you start looking at scandinavia, there’s nothing that’s close to an early 1900s Disston saw when the whole saw is considered).

The good news is that there really isn’t a better saw than a Disston long saw, and the various patterns are overblown (as in, a #12 really isn’t much better, or functionally any better than a same-era D8). The only other maker that I can think of that’s floating around that’s the equal of Disston’s relatively common long saws is Woodrough and McParlin, and I recently found and old catalogue that showed that W&McP’s saws were actually more expensive – I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t say they’re better in function, but they can be a bit harder and stiffer. They’re nice, but what they gain in stiffness and hardness is probably offset by the fact that they can be a little hard on files.

What about new boutique saws? I don’t get it in the large ones. How many will have very strong double tapering and tensioning that matches the stones or wheels that tensioned disston’s saws while leaving the overall saw fileable? The idea of a $400-$500 boutique long saw just doesn’t make a great deal of sense. But if you like them because they’re pretty and they’re new and filed well, that’s up to you. Just don’t let anyone convince you that there is something special about saws made for a limited market vs. saws made in a golden era and sold to professionals.

What about the Small Ones?

I’ve made a few saws (mostly from purchased parts) – joinery saws – and one large frame saw from 1095 coil and scraps. If you’re working entirely by hand and you have the filing skill, you don’t need a new saw. I can’t actually see the advantage over an old saw. Don’t get fascinate by super thin plates (if you look at the older English saws, lots of them had thin plates – it’s not something that’s never been done before) – if you have sawing skill, whether a plate is. .016″ or .022″ isn’t going to make any difference to you.

But as with not getting floppy long saws, don’t get something that’s absurdly thin or absurdly fat (again, 1970s – some of those have really soft fat plates).

If it’s hard to find decent older back saws, then some newer saws start to make sense. I haven’t noticed it, but I’m not afraid to order saws from England to get something that looks a little more human and a little less pin router in terms of aesthetics, and that will have a folded back and not a kind of tacky slotted back with the blade fixed permanently in it.

In terms of dovetail saws rising into mid three figures in price – you’ll never find utility in it (beyond having something pretty – if that’s what you like). It will come down to your filing, and if a saw is really that bad, you may want to replate one at some point. It’s not a bad learning experience. Over time, my Things Made forum will show chisels, planes, and who knows what else – I’ve made a few saws, as mentioned, but the urge to make them for leisure just isn’t there. If I had additional space, I would raid the UK and ebay of older more elegant saws, but that has nothing to do with making.

A theme will develop here. For the average person who wouldn’t replate a saw, or file their own saw, or who is afraid of older tools – I don’t really have great advice for that crowd. I think it becomes very limiting when it comes to working by hand if you can’t manipulate your own tools to be what you want. And it should be little time before you’d prefer a $50 saw filed the way you want it over a $500 saw that’s not quite filed the way you like.