Question for the folks below who said the new Hock irons are buffed. Can you post a picture? I’m curious about this because the Hock irons I got in the past that were for stanley planes were really bare bones – the whole design is. It’s square but for a tiny rounded corner, it’s cut out by some machine – probably not blanked, but a laser or something? Waterjet? Don’t know. 

To buff the irons when done with a buffer seems odd, but it wouldn’t be that out of the norm for someone to try to step up the finish level of an iron after a surface grinder with a surface finishing belt or some kind of linear sander that may appear to remove some crispness but not affect function. 

I’m hoping to make plane irons and tools in retirement in about 10 years if things go well, but one thing I’m not at all interested in is making cookie cutter kind of machine done irons that look like they’re contracted to be cut by one group, heat treated by another and surface ground and then sent to me to put in a box. 

I’ve made quite a few tools now, so I’m kind of curious when someone does something a little different vs. what they did before. Could be a change in tooling or process that would drive using a surface finishing belt or wheel.