Do Hock blades work with vintage Stanley chip breakers?

[Jared Walters]

I'm concerned that the extra thickness will cause the screw to engage poorly.

[David Turner]

I have Hock blades in a vintage #3 Stanley, a #604 1/2 Stanley Bedrock, and a #5 Stanley; all without any problem with original chip breakers.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

[Al Weber]

I have a 6 with a Hock blade and chipbreaker and the original cap iron so I doubt you will have any significant problem.

[Jim Koepke]

My Hock blades have also worked well with Stanley chip breakers.

jtk

[Prashun Patel]

Mine did fit. Just barely. It performed better though when I changed to the hock cb also.

[Roy Lindberry]

Mine all fit. My number 8 is a little iffy on the screw length, though. It works, but just barely.

[Chris Hachet]

Doesn't Lee Valley make a PMV-11 replacement blade for the Stanley? It seems to me if I were going to retrofit a blade, I would choose that over the Hock blade.

Chris

[Jim Matthews]

Mine did fit. Just barely. It performed better though when I changed to the hock cb also.

+1 on this.
I believe that Ron also stocks longer screws for those that want to keep their stock cap iron.

[Jim Matthews]

For those of us that grind and hone by hand, Hock blades are very good.

Harder steel takes longer to touch up,
if you're doing it with plates/stones/abrasive sheets.

[Chris Hachet]

For those of us that grind and hone by hand, Hock blades are very good.

Harder steel takes longer to touch up,
if you're doing it with plates/stones/abrasive sheets.


Good to know. I have no problems getting PMV-11 sharp by hand, but I do have several vintage Stanley planes I would like to retro fit. I assume the Hock blades hold a really nice edge?

[David Weaver]

There is no better chipbreaker for actually breaking chips than the stock stanley cap iron. It works fine with any iron The stock profile of the stanley cap iron is absolutely perfect for chipbreaker duty and I'd choose it over any other, including all of the "improved" chipbreakers that manufacturers have issued.

When you're starting out and sharpening is a problem, you'll probably prefer the irons that are harder and that wear a little slower. When you've been working wood for a while, and especially if your work doesn't involve 100 strokes of smoothing for one stroke of everything else, don't be surprised if you find you prefer something more along the lines of the vintage irons. That's what happened for me, at least, both in chisels and plane irons (I give japanese bench chisels a bye, though, but I did trade off all of my parers and replaced them with some relatively pedestrian vintage marples english parers that I like better than the japanese parers I had).