LV low angle jack...pmv or O1?

[Nathan Johnson]

I'm going to order the LV low angle Jack. I'd like to use it on the shooting board and for whatever else. (I want the ability to shoot right or left handed as I'm not sure how my right shoulder is going to hold up, so going this route versus the shooting plane.)

Is the pmv11 advantageous in this case? I have come to prefer my O1 Stanley blades over the A2 in my Woodriver plane. Will pmv11 still be easy to sharpen and retain the edge a bit better? If it's not a significant advantage I'd just order O1.

Thanks

[Derek Cohen]

I'd suggest either PM-V11 or A2. Either will serve you well with a 25 degree bevel on a 12 degree bed.

I used an A2 blade for many years, and it never chipped. More recently I completed comparisons of the Veritas and LN shooting planes with a variety of blades. Both the PM and A2 blades performed superbly. O1 is not in the running for shooting end grain.

Article: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolRev...tingPlane.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Nathan Johnson]

Pmv11 it is. Thanks, Derek.

[John C Cox]

What sort of sharpening equipment do you have? If you already own and use diamond plates or Scary Sharp - you will be able to sharpen either. If you have conventional Arkansas and India stones - I recommend you purchase the O1 iron so you can sharpen it with what you already have.

If you can sharpen anything - then the next cut is the sort of wood you work 98% of the time....

Soft woods like Spruce, Cedar, and Pine - O1. Hair popping sharp is the primary determinate.

Medium density hardwoods like mahogany, maple, and walnut - either will work fine. The PM steel has the edge on life between sharpenings.

Hard, dense, abrasive exotics - PM steel all the way.

I very highly respect LV and all that Leonard Lee has done for the woodworking community... But forever now - every 5 or 10 years, the best ever new steel comes out and the whole world goes Ga-ga for it.... I have a stack of HSS irons I hate because I bought into that in the mid 2000's....

And yes yes yes - this time it is different..... But the reality is still that nobody has ever been able to really unseat the Standard good properly heat treated high carbon steel - Because it works well and is easy to sharpen.

[Nathan Johnson]

I've got diamonds for sharpening. Mix of soft and medium woods. I like the idea of the longer edge life on the pmv11.

[Jim Koepke]

My experience with PM-V11 is one blade that seems to stay sharp for a very long time.

(I want the ability to shoot right or left handed as I'm not sure how my right shoulder is going to hold up, so going this route versus the shooting plane.)

My situation is similar to yours from an old shoulder injury. My main shooting board is double sided. Tried looking for my old thread on this. Didn't have any luck and it is about time for me to run into town.

Maybe it can be found later.

jtk

[John C Cox]

Would you consider buying both irons... Their prices are quite reasonable... And that way - if you change your mind (or if something happens to LV) you will have the O1 iron..

If it was a standard Stanley pattern - no problem.. They are available aftermarket...

The only reason I keep going on about this is that I just bought a Stanley Made in China iron to replace the Made in England Stanley iron I cut up and tipped with HSS - and then didn't like it..

And there are tons of people here who bought A2 irons and didn't like them either..

[Rob Luter]

I have the A2 blades with mine. No complaints.

[Patrick Chase]

I have the A2 blades with mine. No complaints.

LV's A2 irons are as good as anybody's in my experience. I suspect that they austenitize "hot" and then cryo treat just like LN, Hock, and everybody else with access to professional heat-treating. With that said the PM-V11 irons are as good or better in every respect except for cost. They're easier to hone on "slow" media like Arks, hold an edge longer, are less prone to tracking. and as a bonus they're stainless.

I have several planes that use the same "05P34" iron family that you're asking about (LA jack, LA jointer, BU smoother, shooter) and I have those irons in both O1 and PM-V11. I think that the O1 irons are slightly more resistant to carbide chip-out and tracking when sharpened at low angle (~25 deg secondary), so I use them for final smoothing of cooperative grain at 37 deg where even the slightest hint of tracking is intolerable [*]. The PM-V11 irons are also capable of track-free results for low-angle final smoothing, but in my experience the O1 irons last a bit longer before they have to be rehoned in that specific application, because they dull more uniformly and continue to leave a more uniform finish even as they start to degrade. Both O1 and PM-V11 are better than A2 in that regard IMO.

Other than that it's pretty much all PM-V11, all the time in those planes.
[*] If I'm smoothing at such a low angle then that means I'm trying for maximum sheen/reflectivity, which in turn tends to show up any striations that the plane may leave.

[Derek Cohen]

Would you consider buying both irons... Their prices are quite reasonable... And that way - if you change your mind (or if something happens to LV) you will have the O1 iron..

If it was a standard Stanley pattern - no problem.. They are available aftermarket...

The only reason I keep going on about this is that I just bought a Stanley Made in China iron to replace the Made in England Stanley iron I cut up and tipped with HSS - and then didn't like it..

And there are tons of people here who bought A2 irons and didn't like them either..

John, have you actually used the Veritas blades? Your comments appear predicated on an experience with HSS blades. I apologise if I am going to come across strong and insistent, but the comparison with HSS muddies the waters.

My advice for the LAJ with the various blades comes from over a decade of use in the shop with the LAJ, as well as testing them specifically for longevity. I have used PM-V11 from before it was offered for sale. To emphasise what I said earlier, both A2 and PM- V11 will perform exceptionally well at 25 degrees when shooting end grain (which is not something I would recommend for either steel if they were used in a BD plane). I recommend them over O1. If cost is a factor, go for the A2. My preference is PM-V11.

I would agree with you that abrasion resistant steel is better honed on media designed for this purpose. However .. I hollow grind all my blades. This leaves a miminal amount of steel to sharpen. Even less-than-ideally-suited media, such as oil stones, will work as a result.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Patrick Chase]

To emphasise what I said earlier, both A2 and PM- V11 will perform exceptionally well at 25 degrees when shooting end grain (which is not something I would recommend for either steel if they were used in a BD plane).

This is very true. End-grain places a premium on wear resistance, and in my experience both A2 and PM-V11 are much better than O1 in that regard.

O1's "special power" is that it dulls very uniformly and gradually even when honed at very low angles, which is beneficial when surface uniformity is a bigger concern than outright sharpness. PM-V11 is also good in that respect, and better than any A2 I've seen. End grain doesn't really test that attribute. Final smoothing can, depending on the circumstances.

I would agree with you that abrasion resistant steel is better honed on media designed for this purpose.

I think that depends on how large the carbides are. PM-V11's grain structure is tight enough that it can be brought to a good edge on basically anything, Arks included. A2, not so much. PM-V11 is noticeably slow on silicate media like Arks and Washitas, though.

[Patrick Chase]

John, have you actually used the Veritas blades? Your comments appear predicated on an experience with HSS blades. I apologise if I am going to come across strong and insistent, but the comparison with HSS muddies the waters.

Amplifying what Derek is saying here: The things that make steels both abrasion-resistant and difficult to hone are the carbides. PM-V11 contains very different carbides than HSS, so they're literally incomparable in terms of ease of sharpening.

A2 and PM-V11 both derive their wear resistance from Chromium carbide, which has a Knoop hardness of ~1700. That's harder than the Quartz abrasive in an Ark (~800 Knoop) but softer than the Alumina in most synthetic waterstones and ceramic media such as Spyderco (~2100 knoop).

In my experience the most common HSS alloys in hand tools are M2 and M4. Both contain Vanadium carbide, with M4 containing over twice as much V as M2. Vanadium carbide has a Knoop hardness of ~2700, and is immune to basically everything but CBN (Knoop hardness of ~5000) and diamond (~7000). John, your bad experiences with HSS were almost certainly caused by those Vanadium carbides, and are completely irrelevant to PM-V11. I wouldn't recommend CPM-3V or CPM-10V for you, though :-).

The other thing that comes into play is grain size. When the abrasive you use is softer than the carbides in your steel, the abrasive ends up "eroding" the ferrite matrix around the carbides until they fall out. You can actually produce a perfectly good edge that way, but only if the carbides are similar in size to or smaller than the finest abrasive that you use to hone. That's true of PM-V11 most of the time, which is why a lot of people are perfectly happy with the results they get honing it on Arks and other silicate (quartz) media. It is generally not true of A2.

[Simon MacGowen]

Amplifying what Derek is saying here: The things that make steels both abrasion-resistant and difficult to hone are the carbides. PM-V11 contains very different carbides than HSS, so they're literally incomparable in terms of ease of sharpening.

A2 and PM-V11 both derive their wear resistance from Chromium carbide, which has a Knoop hardness of ~1700. That's harder than the Quartz abrasive in an Ark (~800 Knoop) but softer than the Alumina in most synthetic waterstones and ceramic media such as Spyderco (~2100 knoop).

In my experience the most common HSS alloys in hand tools are M2 and M4. Both contain Vanadium carbide, with M4 containing over twice as much V as M2. Vanadium carbide has a Knoop hardness of ~2700, and is immune to basically everything but CBN (Knoop hardness of ~5000) and diamond (~7000). John, your bad experiences with HSS were almost certainly caused by those Vanadium carbides, and are completely irrelevant to PM-V11. I wouldn't recommend CPM-3V or CPM-10V for you, though :-).

The other thing that comes into play is grain size. When the abrasive you use is softer than the carbides in your steel, the abrasive ends up "eroding" the ferrite matrix around the carbides until they fall out. You can actually produce a perfectly good edge that way, but only if the carbides are similar in size to or smaller than the finest abrasive that you use to hone. That's true of PM-V11 most of the time, which is why a lot of people are perfectly happy with the results they get honing it on Arks and other silicate (quartz) media. It is generally not true of A2.

Easy-to-understand explanations on their differences. Thanks.

Simon

[Stewie Simpson]

I used an LN A2 iron in a smoothing plane build. It was easy enough to sharpen on my oilstones. It holds a decent edge but does require a steeper secondary bevel of around 34 degrees to gain a slight improvement over W1 and 01. (Not enough to warrant the additional cost of continuing down that track.) In retrospect, had I read the feedback by Mr Pallas that PMV doesn't require sharpening over several lifetimes the substantial cost of a full make-over would have been worth it.

[Patrick Chase]

In retrospect, had I read the feedback by Mr Pallas that PMV doesn't require sharpening over several lifetimes the substantial cost of a full make-over would have been worth it.

Yeah, so about that...

As I noted above and in other threads, PM-V11 is broadly similar to D2 but with much finer grain structure. If you see durability claims for it that wouldn't seem credible if applied to D2, then they're probably not credible for PM-V11 either. This in turn brings us to Mr Pallas' claim, which does not ring true to me based on my own experience with the steel (the vast majority of my plane irons and many of my chisels are PM-V11). It lasts longer than O1 or A2, and does so without the edge roughness and "chunkiness" that bedevils other such high-wear-life steels, but it doesn't last THAT much longer.

More broadly, tool steel selection for Western hand tools (so ignoring shock) has always been a tradeoff between wear resistance and edge-taking. The very same carbides that make some steels last longer than others also cause those steels' edges to become ragged, degrading edge-taking and leaving tracks on the work. Processes like Hot Isothermal Pressing (HIP, the most common "PM" technology for tool steels) improve matters by "shifting the curve", such that a steel can have better wear resistance for any given level of edge-taking performance or vice-versa. That's how PM-V11 can achieve D2-like wear performance with O1-like edge taking.

There is however no magic, and no easily-honed steel I know of that can last "several lifetimes", at least for my standards of "sharp". Some of the Vanadium-rich PM "super steels" (CPM-10V, CPM-S30V, CPM-S90V, etc) can do quite a bit better than PM-V11, but good luck honing those on anything short of diamond.