All about plane irons – a summary
Right, that’s quite enough about plane irons. Here is a summary: Sharpening bench planes – preparing the iron bench planes – grinding bench planes – …
Laminated plane irons – Stanley and Record
Following the previous articles about iron, steel and plane cutters it may be tempting to view laminated cutters as an historical curiosity from a forgotten …
laminated plane irons revisited
An earlier post about laminated plane irons asked why manufacturers went to the trouble of making their blades by welding a steel bit on to …
Sheffield Crucible steel, end of an era
Crucible steel was still in demand well into the twentieth century, despite competition from the steel created by the spectacularly successful (and much cheaper) large-scale …
The Bessemer Process
By the 1850s the demand for the high quality steel – driven by the rapidly expanding railway, armaments and ship building industries – was beginning …
Crucible steel
Sheffield made Crucible steel maintained a unassailed reputation as the best steel in the world for nearly two centuries, a success built on a combination …
Early Steel Making – Blister steel
Bar-iron (also known as wrought iron) was the raw ingredient for creating a form of steel known commonly as blister steel, and blister steel was …
Wrought Iron
As discussed in the previous post, plane blades from the 19th century were typically made of a wrought iron backing with a hard steel bit …
bench planes – laminated vs steel blades
If you pick up a wooden bench plane from the the last century (there are lots of them about still!) the chances are it will …
Bench planes – blade steel choices
Makers of edge tools, including plane blades, need to be concerned about several different properties of steel: Toughness: This is the ability of the steel …