Terek Johnson
07-01-2007, 11:52 PM
Greetings all.
I recently purchased a L-N #4. Great plane, love it. However, I'm curious if any other L-N owners out there have had any issues with brittleness in the blades.
In a nutshell here's my situation: yesterday I was planing away happy as can be when I noticed a small nick in the blade. Proceeded to lap it out using a 220 grit Norton waterstone. I then worked through the grits up to 8000. Put a nice secondary bevel on the blade, set it back up in the plane. I then made a test run on a piece of western yellow pine... Several little chips immediately appeared on the blade.
As a control check a ran another plane over the same board. No damage to that blade.
Sharpened the blade again, tried it on another board, same results - little chips.
My reason for this question is that I had an identical experience with the blade of my L-N 164 (the low-angle smoother) several months ago. I contacted Lie Nielsen about it and they promptly sent me a replacement blade which has worked flawlessly.
Now that lightning has struck twice so as to say, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong. I'm relatively new to the wonderful world of L-N, do L-N blades require a different approach relative to a run o' the mill Stanely? Are waterstones the wrong thing to use with these blades.
I hesitate contacting L-N again until I can determine that there isn't something I'm doing wrong to these wonderful blades
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
I recently purchased a L-N #4. Great plane, love it. However, I'm curious if any other L-N owners out there have had any issues with brittleness in the blades.
In a nutshell here's my situation: yesterday I was planing away happy as can be when I noticed a small nick in the blade. Proceeded to lap it out using a 220 grit Norton waterstone. I then worked through the grits up to 8000. Put a nice secondary bevel on the blade, set it back up in the plane. I then made a test run on a piece of western yellow pine... Several little chips immediately appeared on the blade.
As a control check a ran another plane over the same board. No damage to that blade.
Sharpened the blade again, tried it on another board, same results - little chips.
My reason for this question is that I had an identical experience with the blade of my L-N 164 (the low-angle smoother) several months ago. I contacted Lie Nielsen about it and they promptly sent me a replacement blade which has worked flawlessly.
Now that lightning has struck twice so as to say, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong. I'm relatively new to the wonderful world of L-N, do L-N blades require a different approach relative to a run o' the mill Stanely? Are waterstones the wrong thing to use with these blades.
I hesitate contacting L-N again until I can determine that there isn't something I'm doing wrong to these wonderful blades
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.