Hi John,
Could you please help me to find a solution about blade choices for standard block-plane and low-angle block plane. The Veritas planes sold by Lee Valley put on the market two choices ;A2 or 01 tool steel. The A2 blades are a hardness of Rc 60-62 with chromium 5%.The 01 blades are a hardness of Rc 58-60 with chromium 0.5% In the Lee Valley Catalog , they precise that A2 blades take more effort to sharpen
My question is; What do they mean by that? Is it so hard to sharpen that it becomes a problem? I plan on buying a power sharpening system, I want to be sure to do a good job. I work only with hardwood. what is your opinion ???
Thanks a lot for your help.
Luc L.
Replies
If you were sharpening entirely by hand with relatively slow cutting oil or water stones it might make sense to use an O1 blade. But using a grinder followed up by final honing with an abrasive paper on glass or a diamond stone will go very fast, so you would be better served by using the harder A2 steel blades.
John White
Thank you very much for your expert advice. It will be of great use to me and I will follow your advice for my future purchase.
Luc L. ( cat 325 )
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