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, bench planes – laminated vs steel blades, asked why manufacturers went to the trouble of making plane irons by welding a steel bit …
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 …
Iron and steel – part IV (Bessemer steel)
By the 1850s the best crucible steel was the standard choice for makers of edge tools and no other steel had been found that could …
Iron and steel – part III (Crucible steel)
As explained in the previous post the carbon in blister-steel was not absorbed consistently throughout the metal and, since the amount of carbon in the metal …
Iron and steel – part II (Blister steel)
Bar-iron (aka wrought iron) was the raw ingredient for creating a form of steel known commonly as blister steel, and blister steel was in turn …
Iron and steel – part I (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 …