Lee Valley announcement of a new steel for chisels and plane blades

[Mike Henderson]

Maybe I missed it but I haven't seen any discussion of the recent Lee Valley announcement of their new steel for chisels and plane blades. Or was that discussed quite some time ago? I know Rob Lee did some postings about a new steel some time back.

Anyway, any opinions on the announcement? I'd like to buy one of the chisels (when they're available) to see how the new steel holds up. It's not that I'm unhappy with the chisels I have now but if this new steel is a real advance I'll likely buy a set of chisels.

I don't know if this link is allowed, but here's a link to Chris Schwarz discussing the new steel.

Mike

[george wilson]

Someone else mentioned it,but his post was moved. To where I don't know,as I cannot access the page for some reason. I went to the LV site to read about it.

[Bruce Haugen]

For a good discussion, go to WoodCentral handtool forum.

[Dave Anderson NH]

The thread about the new steel was removed by me. The thread posted word for word from Chris Schwarz's blog the complete article on the PWW website. Used without permission, this is copyright infringement and is both a SMC Terms of Service (TOS) violation and a major legal no no. SMC can not allow that to happen since it opens the Creek to a lawsuit and it is just plain wrong.

I think this is a great topic for discussion but we have to do things legally.

[Mike Henderson]

Someone else mentioned it,but his post was moved. To where I don't know,as I cannot access the page for some reason. I went to the LV site to read about it.

I didn't know that LV had anything on their site about the new steel. Your post, George, caused me to go search and I found it here.

Mike

[David Weaver]

It looks like an all around improvement from their testing, it appears to be better in chisels and plane irons than the standard stuff out there now, and according to them, sharpens similar to A2 in terms of difficulty.

We've been weeding through this on another forum, as another question is how does it grind?

It does appear on the surface to be an overall improvement, but if it my experience with HSS plane irons holds, don't expect it to be a 5 to 1 thing in plane irons vs. A2 in "regular wood". Something that does much better in abrasive stuff should still do better in regular wood, but just by a lower ratio (I saw derek said somewhere else he felt like it was lasting twice as long).

It won't be long before a few beginners register in the future and tell us that we can't do good work with anything less

[Derek Cohen]

Someone else mentioned it,but his post was moved. To where I don't know,as I cannot access the page for some reason. I went to the LV site to read about it.

George, that was probably me. I have posted the info below on WC as well, where the discussion came up.

I only have first hand experience of one PM-Vlll plane blade, which is used in a Veritas Small BU Smoother. This was put through a great deal of testing about 12 months ago (and then used on a regular basis ever since). On the basis of this I can state that, using Pro Shaptons, the PM-Vlll blade honed about as quickly as an A2 equivalent, and lasted about twice its duration planing abrasive Jarrah boards (yes, I stood there counting shavings).


I have not used PM-Vlll in chisels. The PM-Vlll was a late entry into the chisel testing conducted (that I was involved in) nearly 2 years ago. Steels included M4 and 3V, and the PM-Vlll was subsequently chosen above these. I did, however, use the PM-Vlll steel with a 25 degree bevel to shoot Jarrah endgrain later on. It held up very well. According to Rob Lee it can be used at 15 degrees ... which would make for an interesting paring chisel!


Don't forget the obvious - that steel and tools are two separate items. If you are already stocked for tools, then you will not be planning to add more, regardless of the steel composition of the new tools.


I do not plan to replace all my blades with PM-Vlll just because it is better (and it is). That would be silly. However, the next time I purchase a blade, it will definitely be made of PM-Vlll steel. It would be silly not to do so.


Regards from Perth


Derek

[bill tindall]

Chris's Blog.....He states an often make falsehood that the "higher performance" steels can not be sharpened to as keen an edge as traditional steels. Steve Elliott has convincingly shown that this statement is not correct (see his web site for data). A correct statement could be that these abrasion resistant steels aren't sharpened to a keen edge with traditional woodworking abrasives techniques. These steels, CPM 3V, M2, M4 etc, achieve their abrasion resistance by incorporation of extremely hard carbide particles, for example vanadium or tungsten carbide. If the abrasive is soft relative to these carbides it simply can not cut these carbides and the blade will not sharpen to a high degree. The simple and inexpensive solution is to use diamond abrasives. I use no more effort to sharpen these steels than others use for carbon steel. A $15 syringe of diamond will last many woodworkers a life time if used properly. The bottom line is you can't use modern steel technology without updating sharpening technology.

A word on the LV testing procedure. The test they used for plane blade wear is remote from practical wood planing. The material, relief angle and bedding angle are substantially different. LV has provided no data to show that the plane blade wear test has any relevance to predicting edge life for planing wood with a conventional plane such as a Stanley for example. Worrisome is the fact that the plane wear data show little correlation to the abrasive wear data in the sharpening results. Either abrasion resistance is not an important factor in edge life or the test is a flawed predictor.

I would add that some steels have relatively huge carbide particles and tools from such a steel may not sharpen well. However, the high quality versions of these steels have small carbide particles and they sharpen just fine if one is willing to choose an appropriate abrasive.

[george wilson]

It wasn't you,Derek,whose post was moved. Someone else.

[David Weaver]

I think it was johnny kleso

[george wilson]

I didn't want to name names!!

[David Weaver]

Oh...we know johnny well enough to know that he thought it's something we'd find interesting, and not that he was trying to break rules.

[James Taglienti]

I think the FBI already picked him up

[george wilson]

Federal Blog Investigators!!

[Will Blick]

Derek put this in perspective for me, thx Derek...
On the LV site, it shows the PMV to score 10 vs. 1 for A2, this would lead you to think, the PMV blade can be sharpened 1/10th with equal cutting integrity. Dereks test with real world plane strokes reveal more useful data for use in hand planes. 2x longer is significant indeed.

I always wondered why my A2 blades sharpened on Shapton ceramic waterstones dulled relatively quickly... its just the metal. First few strokes when sharpened to 15k-30k stones is like cutting butter, then it goes down hill pretty fast on hard woods. Then remains usable for some time before it must come out. Its that "ultra sharp" period that always seems tooo short.