Polychrome

An easy approach to making the plane blade is as follows: start with O-1 tool steel, which is available from a huge number of suppliers in a terrific assortment of sizes. In 5 minutes of web searching, I located 1/8" x 1/8" stock, 18" long selling for about $10. (You are not stuck with these dimensions!). This saves a lot of trouble grinding something to the right size, it arrives with very nicely milled surface from the vendor. Cut the stock to length. Even annealed tool steel is tough on hacksaw blades, I prefer to notch the steel with an abrasive disk (such as the type found in Dremel tools or similar) Once the notch is partway across the stock, clamp it in a vice and snap it off at the notched point. (This is an old knifemaker trick, I'm an old knifemaker.) Grind or file your cutting bevel. Hardening in O-1 means heat the cutting to bright orange in a torch, then quickly dunk the still-glowing hot end into a little cup of oil (Peanut or olive oil will work!). Turn on your oven to 350 F, put your part in for an hour to temper it, which should give you roughly Rc 61 (Rockwell C hardness scale), plenty hard for a small cutting tool. The tempering process relieves some brittleness at the cost of loss of some hardness. Now hone your final edge.