I am replacing the blade in my #4 and most of the popular names offer these in A2 (IBC, Hock, LN, etc.) but Ray Isles uses D2 steel. Has anyone reviewed the Isles D2 blades/had experience with them? Does it really make a difference over A2? I’m concerned that A2 steel is already hard enough to work and D2 will be a bear to sharpen on my new Japanese water stones, but if the edge retention is that good then I think I can deal with it.
I have also heard talk that A2 and other similar steels will not take as fine an edge as O1 – David Charlesworth specifically reccomends O1 to his students I’m told, for the reasons that it sharpens faster and takes a better edge… but why is that? If the sharpening stone has particles of a given size, wouldn’t those particles have an equal scratch pattern on both types of steel and therefore an equally sharp edge?
Thanks
-Ian
Replies
Awww Don't Worry About It. Fun to Talk About Though
I will leave the D2 to someone else since I have no real, hands on, experience with it. Seems to me I read about it once. Is it the stuff they further toughen after heat treat by freezing it in nitrogen ? I would guess for normal sharpening the Japanese stones will do just fine on D2.
Anyway . . . why is the O1 able to be sharpened better than the A2 by the same stones ?
The O1 readily releases the wire edge when working the edge on the final, finest, stones. The A2 has alloys in it for toughness and this tends to allow the wire edge to stay on even when extremely thin. The damned wire just hangs on and flexes back and forth and keeps getting thinner and thinner.
Partly this is why people like stropping they can wear it away ( I secretly believe it actually . . . effectively . . . is broken off and polished over. Not a horrible way to go about getting rid of the wire but not the ultimate.
Do you see how if the wire is broken off it effectively blunts the edge ? Steepens the cutting geometry in the very least. With the O1 if one abrades the wire off then compares it to a broken off A2 then the O1 will be a tiny bit sharper.
I tend to keep at it until I abrade the wire edge off on the stones. With a lot of practice, flat stones and some attention to subtle details it isn't that big a deal. If you do this then the O1 and the A2 will have to be the same sharpness. The geometry will be equal. The surface polish will be equal and perhaps even smoother on the A2. This gets into the terminology I have mentioned here before. "Cut" verses "Color". Jewelry polishing terms. See this guy's ( Oppi Untracht ) books for the true skinny on polishing and burnishing metal :
http://www.amazon.com/Jewelry-Concepts-Technology-Oppi-Untracht/dp/0385041853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311397151&sr=1-1
Nearly ALL of my blades are A2 and we get along just fine. Sharp enough to shave curls off of a single hair so that is pretty near as sharp as a blade gets.
It is just that it is possible to get the O1 s that sharp faster and with a bit less precision in ones methods.
Still . . .
the advantage of the A2 is that it stays sharp enough longer when working the extra hard woods than the O1 s will. This is due to alloys such as chromium, maybe some nickel and ohidontknowwhatallium. The O1 is pretty much iron and a tiny bit of carbon. Not putting O1 down; it is great stuff.
My biggest problem with A2 is trying to flatten the back of a badly ground blade. It is so tough it just takes for ever even with a brand new extra coarse diamond stone. D2 probably the same but high quality blades should not need flattening ever.
I can't say I understand the process behind making D2, its partly why I asked the question, but I know some toolmakers are using it in lieu of A2 because it supposedly holds up even better in some situations - like hard-core mortising.
I have had the same experience with the wire edge on my Veritas LA block plane - the only tool I currently have with an A2 blade - it takes a serious amount of work to get rid of that sucker, and generally for me that includes some kind of stropping as you also noted. That particular blade came fairly well ground, so I can't say it took a disproportionate time to lap the back - all my other blades were in poor shape when I got to them so they took a significant amount of time to flatten anyway.
My other blades are all reconditioned originals that came with the tool, pre-1940 on most, so its easy to chase the wire on them.... with the downside being that I have to touch up the edge fairly often as I work or change out blades to keep the finish quality up. Not that I mind sharpening, I just don't like breaking the rythym of my work.
I'm just curious to see what the vibe is on D2 and the other exotic steels, more for my own knowlege than anything. I hope to pick up a couple Ashley Isles English mortising chisels soon anyway, so I will have first-hand experience soon enough.
-Ian
Mortise Chisel
I have a 1/4 inch Ray Isles mortise chisel made from D2 steel. I may have honed it once or twice in the last two years, and I've made several projects - desk, tables and raised panel doors - with it. Very good buy for a mortise chisel. Very tough, hard steel.
Can't help myself
I'll be honest, I have a predisposition for American made tools. Call me old fashioned if you want, but I would rather keep the money in house. However those chisels are a thing of beauty in an almost awe inspiring way - the kind of feeling that makes you want to cut mortises totally by hand for the rest of your life, as long as its with that tool. I was also looking at Lie Nielsen's mortise chisels but they appear to be more of a heavy duty sash mortise chisel, whereas the Isles chisels are true blood, hard core, kick the crap out of the job and smile, mortising chisels.
I'm not knocking LN, In fact I'm sure I will own a few of both in the end, but these will come first.
Looking Good
Ed Harrison,
Judging by the great terrain in your new photo and your Ray Isles D2 mortise chisel looks to me like you are living very well !
That is the best revenge they say.
Curious Vibe
Ian,
I have an artical inn a magazine around here some place that talks about heat treating. A fairly recent article not the FWW from back in the seventies. Have not found it yet
Until then here are some things I dug up :
Your submission has triggered the spam filter and will not be accepted
Well just use your imagination about how much fun it would be to read what I found and how much we could all learn.
It's just the same.
Right ?
yah . . .
Maybe we should all start cussing like sailors until some body on the FWW notices and then let them know just how much we all "APPRECIATE" what they have done for us.
The Pain staking process begins to circumvent the Spam BS
I will try pasting in one at a time what I found until I discover what triggered our illustrious guardian THIS TIME.
PISSSSSS ON THIS
I found this chart , see photo ( only way I could get it to format, and info that I copied and pasted here. ( Keep in mind the high end Japanese chisels and plane blades are up around 66 hardness ! )
Cryogenic Treating
Most tool steels actually develop their hardened structure (martensite) during the quench, between about 600°F and 200°F. For various reasons, however, in some cases, transformation to martensite may not be complete even at 125/150°F. In such cases, some of the high temperature microstructure, austenite, may be retained after normal heat treating. A2 and D2 are two common grades which may contain significant (20% or more) retained austenite after normal heat treating. Retained austenite may be undesirable for a number of reasons. By cooling the steel to cryogenic (sub-zero) temperatures, this retained austenite may be transformed to martensite. The newly formed martensite is similar to the original as-quenched structure and must be tempered. Cryogenic treatments should include a temper after freezing. Often the freezing may be performed between normally scheduled multiple tempers. Technically, cryogenic treatments are most effective as an integral part of the original quench, but due to the high risk of cracking, as discussed in the “Quenching” section above, we recommend tempering material normally at least once before performing any cryogenic treatments.
http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/cSchwarz/z_art/mortChisel/mortChis1.asp
What triggered Mr. Spammy Pants was my link to :
.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merchant/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=toolshop&Product_Code=MS-RID2IRON.XX&Category_Code=
Paste this on the front end of it and go to town :
http://www
For more see:
http://www.crucible.com/eselector/general/generalpart2.html
Never sharpen again
How can we develop a solid diamond edge that never has to be resharpened ? ;-) Probably a very limited market !
Diamond Edge
Hey now there's a thought.
Do you remember the old leather working knives from Tandy leather ? Seems to me the top of the line tooling knife had a solid ruby edge. Not kidding.
An interesting side note :
Metal machinists use diamond tipped cutting tools to machine aluminum, gives a nice finish, but it is not practical to machine ferris metals with diamond tipped tools. So we have a case of using the hardest material to machine aluminum a very soft and easily cut metal.
Along that line, I believe the ancient Egyptians used rope and sand to cut the large stone blocks needed for the pyramids - they also used the sand as an abrasive with logs and a bow/string (think survival fire starting) to bore holes in said stone.
And I know most are aware that the particles in water stones are friable so that they break apart in use to expose new cutting edges which then break..... and so on and so forth so that the harder metal is worn away by softer particles.
-Ian
Sure they did. I don't believe that for a minute.
>Egyptians used rope and sand to cut the large stone blocks needed for the pyramids<
Nah Dude Nah
Everybody knows they had help from the aliens from outer space who had antigrav fields and lasers and stuff.
: )
It's not often I find myself in disagreement with Ed, but I think there's a lot of hype out there about steels. Most dulling wear to woodworking edge tools is the result of adhesive wear, not abrasive wear. Abrasive wear resistance most woodworkers encounter happens when grinding or honing. Some manufacturers give more information in their specs than just stuff from their marketing department. Attached is an example of one of the better producers' information. There's so much more involved in the various steels than just a general "wear resistance" classification. I had a D2 chisel and gave it away because it wasn't worth the effort to maintain.
Ok this opens up a whole new can of worms - I understand abrasive wear, but could you definte adhesive wear? Do you mean that is the resistance encountered when cutting wood fibers bonded together (i.e. lignum)? If so I do not understand why O1 would have a greater adhesive wear resistance than both A2 and D2 (per your chart) when my experience has been that A2 steel has better edge retention - shouldn't these two properties be related?
Thanks
-Ian
Hey there are still one or two warm bodies out there . . .
. . . with circulation to the cranial regions. I think the L man is saying molecular adhesive bonds in the steel ( hey that sounded good didn't it ? I pulled that one out of nether regions better not mentioned ) . I was going to ask but . . . you know . . . .
Not much Larry that I could find. A little help please.
adhesive wear is . . . between metallic surfaces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galling
What I found is Larry here:
Your submission has triggered the spam filter and will not be accepted.
woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/handtools.pl/pro/search/pmd/sread/srchid/270676eakTwELBeP7h5U1311819046/spage/1/sanc/155662/sbid/3000/md/read/id/155689/sbj/adhesive-wear/
Put first
http://www.
quote
Adhesive wear is generally the most important type of wear at all non-lubricated moving parts, or moving parts which operate at partly lubricated conditions. Coldwelding describes the formation of small connections whereby tiny disruptions arise during translation. These disruptions leave small malformations at the surface, called adhesive wear.
end quote
They are taking it for granted that we are refering to METAL parts.
I have yet to see black from the blade or metal pips come off on the wood and adhere.
I have yet to see wood adhear to the blade.
I do see this often between metal to metal surfaces with zero lubrication and maybe poor surface prep such as slightly roughly threaded fasteners. Especially stainless steel threaded parts.
Galling / adheasion BAD. Lube on parts GOOD.
Roc,
Adhesive wear isn't exclusive to metals and "cold welding" is an unfortunate description that's often used in explaining adhesive wear. Adhesive wear happens when two solids rub together. Want to see wood that has adhered to a plane iron? If you use steeper cutting geometry in planes you've probably seen it. It's incredibly small particles and you see it by color, wood starts to char at about 120º. All you see is the discoloration on a plane iron. I used to look at my smooth plane iron and think it had been getting real hot, hot enough to change the temper of the steel, but it never effected the iron's ability to hold an edge. The temperature would have to get over 300º for that to happen and over 600º to turn steel black. Here's a photo of what my single iron middle pitch plane iron looks like by the time it needs sharpening. There's just as much steel in the shavings and of similar particle size.
Lwilliams,
You just answered a question I have had since I began using planes - I noticed that same "burnt" color on some of my blades and also on the sole of my smoother, just after the mouth. I made the assumption that since I work with mostly softer woods that this was some kind of reaction between the pitch in the wood and the casting/blade. It makes much more sense that what I am experiencing is adhesive wear between my tools and work, especially since the problem worsened when I upped my cutting angle to handle some difficult grain - a chemical reaction alone doesn't explain that.
I suppose the question now would be why Mr. Isles decided to offer these blades and his mortising chisels in D2 knowing (I would assume) that it has poor adhesive wear properties?
I will probably still buy one of the mortisers to test out because I like the other features of the tool, but thanks to this discussion I'll stick to A2 for my plane blades.
Thanks For Corresponding
Mr Williams,
This is a fascinating turn of awareness in the sharpening/tool topic.
Some thoughts I had as I read along :
I had not thought 120 degrees would be hot enough for the charing. Hmmm. I mean it gets that hot in Iraq during the day. I sure don't have to tell that to some readers hear because they have been there. In it. Wow. That's some thing !
Any chance that dark color comes from heating the residual sharpening fluid from the oil stone. I mean I NEVER see that even up to 70 degree angle or more (56 degree sharpening angle bedded at 20 degrees BU ) . A2. Water on the stones.
I did notice when I enlarged your photo way up that the adhesive wear area APPEARED to be shiny not dark from the charing. Hard to say for sure.
I am not really drawing a big conclusion here just noting data.
I look forward to spending time with 01 blades. A simpler, better, way to go for most work.
PS: It just occurred to me the wood in the plane body can act as an insulator and hold heat in the blade and the iron my BU plane with the steep angle edge is cast from acts as a heat sink. Maybe that is why my blades don't get dark areas. Maybe it has nothing to do with sharpening fluid residue.
Does the other reader here, Cedargroves, use " oil " to sharpen and do they use a wood body plane ? He says "casting" so I suspect an iron or bronze bodied plane.
I do not know if Mr. Williams uses oilstones or waterstones, but I can say that I was using oilstones at the time I noticed the worst discoloration - and it was not black as in the photo, more of a straw color. I use a pre-WWII bedrock #4, my cutting geometry when I noticed the discoloration was with a 45 deg. frog, a 30-35 deg. micro bevel on my iron, 25 deg. primary. The iron is the old style that came with the plane, though I am not sure if it was the original iron sold with the plane.
Unfortunately, I haven't had a good, long planing session since I switched over to waterstones about a week ago so I cannot compare these methods in regards to the issue at hand.
-Ian
Roc, Check out table 2.1.1
Roc,
Oops, I remembered wrong. That's 120º C or 248º F. Check out table 2.1.1 at this link for temperature effect on wood:
http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html
For a while, before I got tired of the mess and maintenance, I tried water stones. I experienced the same discoloration. One thing for sure is that the discoloration isn't color change because the metal overheats. The blues and other colors that metals show when heating never show up. The only thing this discoloration can be is scorching and charring of wood particles.
If you look again at the photos on WoodCentral, you will see the pitting which is one telltale sign of adhesive wear. It can't be abrasive wear unless you can explain why the wood is forming tiny vortexes to scour out pits.
Cedar : Trust Me, Mr Williams Uses ONLY Fine Oil Stones Now.
>F vs C<
I kind of had the Celsius scale in the back of my mind but figured you were a Fahrenheit man all the way.
and
Oh well so much for my oil theory.
>Scouring vortexes<
I keep trying to envision that much reversed grain with abrasive in the end of the fibers but can not really make that happen in my imagination.
>Straw color<
That is a sign the steel was up above 200º F, but not much, in the area you see the color. The steel has been optimally annealed. In theory in that area. Some chisels come that color from the maker to prove they were "correctly " heat treated.
If you can see a color change in steel at 200º you've got better eyes than me, Roc. In good light I can compare steel that's been tempered at 325º to unheated steel and not see a color change.
Larry You Are Right
Now you got me doing it. I ment > 200 C
http://www.anvilfire.com/FAQ-article.php?bodyName=/FAQs/temper_colors_hardness.htm&titleName=Temper%20Colors%20and%20Steel%20Hardness%20:%20anvilfire.com
Chart 2.1.1
Great ! I book marked that site into my Reference folder.
I have to laugh and think about that though.
According to that chart I would be better off wearing thick layered paper for my heavy duty welding gloves instead of the leather ones I have now.
Paper ignites 218º -246º C vs Leather ignites 212º C
Ha Ha Ha
I don't know.
energy vortices and adhesive pitting
I believe the energy vortex folks around Sedona recommend planing under a pyramid and wearing a quartz crystal around your neck to avoid adhesive-wear pitting. ;-)
It should also be noted that gekkos are experts at using molecular-leval adhesion. Same properties, different application.
Pyramid and Quartz Crystal Woodworking Environment
I SIMPLY cannot imagine doing it any other way. Do you mean to say some are not so equiped ?
Unimaginable.
: )
There's a whole field of
There's the whole field of surface engineering that deals with trying to limit surface changes as a result of mechanical action. Here's a very over simplified explanation:
http://www.gordonengland.co.uk/wear.htm
Over on another woodworking forum there are people trying to play around with this but they seem in denial about adhesive wear. I've tried to explain it and am tired of wasting my time. One of them did put up a microphotograph that pretty clearly shows the difference between adhesive wear and abrasive wear. In the upper portions of the plane irons one can see the long signatures cut by abrasives and near the cutting edge you can see the pitting caused by particles being pulled from the surface by adhesive wear. My best guess is that the pitting is large because it's A-2 steel with relatively large carbide particles being pulled from the steel. The photo is in a post at:
http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/handtools.pl/page/1/md/read/id/156585/sbj/does-the-back-of-the-plane-blade-need-sharpening/
Larry,
This is interesting.
Have you excluded the possibility of acid attack from the tannin in many timbers?
Cedar Groves,
Afraid someone has misled you. I am one of the heretics who like A2.....
David Charlesworth
"Have you excluded the
"Have you excluded the possibility of acid attack from the tannin in many timbers?"
Since tannin is a major componant of many corrosion preventatives in boilers, I hadn't considered that. I do know the discoloration has some thickness by the way it flakes away at the edge of the wear bevel. While there are two types of tannin both are soluable in water or alcohol so it'll be an easy thing to check.
To add a little more; an acid would etch the steel not build up on the surface.
David,
Thanks for setting me straight, I will no longer parrot that advice.
But as far as A2 being heresy.... I never had much use for rigid ideologies that prevent the flow of ideas - especially experimentation to find new and possibly better ways of doing things.
Thanks for contributing to that end.
-Ian
Other issues with replacement blades
The original poster needs to know that whatever steel is used on some of the replacement blades, they won't do much good if they are too thick. That is what I encountered when I tried to put a Hock blade into a Stanley #4 type 10. The blade is just too thick. There is no clearance for chips. So, in the end, it doesn't matter what the characteristics of the steel may be -- I can't use that blade on that plane.
That is correct, the added thickness of a new Hock blade and chipbreaker will cause problems with chip clearance at the mouth - I solved the issue by carefully filing the mouth to allow for the thicker setup. I was planning to touch it up anyway because I followed the process of tuning hand planes outlined by David Charlesworth in his article Handplane Tune-up in the September/October 2004 issue of FWW - you can find this article yourself by searching the archives. Its an excellent read and I guarantee if you follow his advice you will have a revelation when you try out your newly-tuned plane.
The only other problem you may run into is not having enough length on the blade/chipbreaker retention screw to accomodate the additional thickness - this was not a problem for me but something to keep in mind.
I did that
My son was in Maine and picked me up 2 old Bailey hand planes. A #4 and a #5.
I loved the #4 so well I purchased a Kock blade and chip breaker for it.
The blade was a little thick however I moved the frog back until I got the clearence in the throat I wanted.
Very nice plane and for almost nothing compared to a new Lie Neilsen.
BTW I use A-2 steel.
D-2 Tool steel
I did not read all of the threads here. D-2 steel and A-2 steel are about the same. D-2 costs more. Both are air hardened steels. In most cases, depending on hardening practices, D-2 will be a bit harder and tougher. I used D-2 and A-2 as a Die Maker. I would think, as I have read here about a chisel, that once you get it sharp it should stay sharp for quite awhile. It may take some rubbing to get an edge on it though. A-2 should withstand more impact than D-2, but not much. neither are good impact steels. O-1 is an oil hardened steel. The O-6 I used had grapite in it. We never used it for cutting. It was not tough enough. We cut metal though. I use A-2 which appears to work well. I thinks some of the blade for my planes may be a bit too brittle. The cryogenics (sp) process is a must in all tool steels now days. One of the posts explains it better than I could. The above is just my thoughs. Things I was taught as a Die Maker. I have found that the harder the steel the more brittle it is. Most tool steels should top out at about 62rc. If they are harder than that they get really brittle. Tough and hard in tool steels usually don't go together well. It is either tough or it is hard.
.
.
Abrasive Adhesive.........
1) Wood happens to be a very abrasive media because of the entrapped silica which comes in with the water as a tree grows. Silica content is routinely reported in data on various types of wood and can vary from 2-3% up to as high as 10-12% for african exotics. This is also encountered in paper processing, cigarette production cutting, "Pamper stamping - that is right, diapers", and processing many gasket materials.
2) the chart referenced from Uddeholm which shows an adhesive wear component is referencing a phenonena normally seen in metal processing not wood. It is based on the inherent toughness of the material - tougher (more resistance to breakage) . That is why there is a toughness component to most wear issues. Wood will not adhere and pull carbides from a steel, but it will abrade the matrix allowing the release of carbides. In processing green woods, corrosion is a very real portion of tool life.
3) O1, A2, D2 is a normal progression in cold work tooling as one moves through applications requiring increased wear resistance. They actually are the original and most elemental grades considered tool steels. For those hand sharpening D2 vs A2, O1 there will be considerable more time and effort expended. All of these grades can get as sharp as the next IF one is using appropriate abrasives for the grade. There have been some very nice studies published using high depth of focus, digital imaging to show equivalent edges as well as cut wood surfaces on a range of alloys from simple to as much as 10% vanadium bearing CPM 10V.
4) When one cannot easily see a process such as sharpening and edge retention, (especially exhibited in the lore of hand tool and knife sharpening) there is a tendency to invent science to support beliefs. I spent a good portion of my career servicing and developing new alloys for custom knifemakers. Google 154CM, CPM S30V, CPM S35VN - these grades have very high alloy contents with exceptional, if not legendary edge holding capabilities. There is a whole world out there beyond O1, A2, and D2, but it is tough sledding for those using only elbow grease during sharpening.
Jerry Wright, retired V.P. Technolgy, Crucible
Straight Shooting
Jerry,
"All of these grades can get as sharp as the next IF one is using appropriate abrasives for the grade."
"there is a tendency to invent science to support beliefs"
The first quote from your post flies in the face of the often repeated (regurgitated) claims that O1 steel is capable of producing a finer sharper edge than, say, A2. The second quote sheds a lot of light on why such is the case.
Philip Marcou (of blessed memory?) was good with facts about tool steels (in addition to his craftsmanship).
I would like to see more 'factual' posts like yours - and sure cappreciate it.
Best wishes,
Metod
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