W2 steel as offered by New Jersey Steel Baron is a fine grained steel that’s more plain in composition than oil hardening steels like O1. O1 is often described as being plain carbon steel, but it’s really nowhere close to that. W2 steel is a 0.9-1% carbon steel that’s more similar to 1095 with the addition of vanadium to help prevent grain from growing in heat treatment or forging as quickly as very plain steels allow.
In general, the steel is capable of high hardness, excellent for chisels, and makes a very vintage feeling plane iron that does not hold a burr or wire edge to the point of being obnoxious while sharpening or using.
The trade off in plain steels for plane irons is that there is nothing in plain steel to prevent wear from occurring quickly. An initial guess at edge life would suggest somewhere around 80% of the edge life of O1, but even easier sharpenability. This is unlikely to appeal to beginners, but probably would appeal to very serious hand tool users (of which there are few) who will use planes efficiently and prefer an iron that does not accumulate damage that isn’t eliminated with regular sharpening.
The fine grain of the steel and higher hardness potential allows for good stability at the very edge, and even wear.
Given all of those things, the steel is not for beginners in regard to heat treating, even though it’s very low cost and not expensive to try. It requires a very fast quench medium (e.g., Parks 50 oil), but not water. Cracking is guaranteed with water. And a fast quench means dealing with some warp is unavoidable. The chances of any current tool maker making good quality tools with W2 are close to zero as the philosophy for heat treatment has changed to be steel that’s easier to heat treat with automated schedules and less warping.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 