Plane Test Results ALL THE DATA and SPREADSHEETS!!!!
Plane Test Results ALL THE DATA and SPREADSHEETS!!!!
Plain Iron test data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BX7Reja0P8bI78Pe1DgVy-5D7WD8YuDzg_q4Z3qIlH8/edit?usp=sharing
How the test was conducted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAqzHLMJ0pU
Update to the test method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bARPvLAoYG8
Live test video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHg2u4b4uk&list=UUQNFJVAUF-qWtK0dawxcOaQ
Main Channel Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DykzsRWznro
Support the Test Here: https://www.woodbywright.com/shop/part-of-the-project
All the irons Testes
Stanley Sweetheart http://www.handtoolfinder.com
Sheffield England Steel http://www.handtoolfinder.com
Lie Nielsen https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4104/lie-nielsen-replacement-blades
Wood River https://amzn.to/2RO3GGF
DFM Tool Works https://dfmtoolworks.com/
Caliastro https://amzn.to/33zOqmc
Bench Dog https://www.rockler.com/replacement-blade-40-402-for-bench-dog-40-401-no-4-smoothing-plane
Tay Tools https://lddy.no/p5ga
IBC https://www.ibctools.ca/product/ibc-blades-that-fit-older-stanleyrecord-bench-planes/
Hock High Carbon http://www.hocktools.com/products/bp.html
Hock A2 Cryo http://www.hocktools.com/products/bp.html
Union https://www.unionmfgco.com/products
Veritas PMV11 https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/blades/42607-stanley-record-bench-plane-blades-made-by-veritas
Veritas O1 https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/blades/42607-stanley-record-bench-plane-blades-made-by-veritas
Veritas A2 https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/blades/42607-stanley-record-bench-plane-blades-made-by-veritas
Harbor Freight https://www.harborfreight.com/no-33-bench-plane-97544.html
Clifton https://www.workshopheaven.com/clifton-2-inch-cryogenic-plane-iron.html
Tsunesaburo Laminated Japanese https://www.workshopheaven.com/tsunesaburo-aogami-plane-blade-50mm-2.html
Ray Iles https://www.classichandtools.com/acatalog/Ray-Iles-Replacement-Irons-RIRI.html#SID=236
kimmonsh O1 https://www.etsy.com/shop/Kimmonshandtools
kimmonsh A2 https://www.etsy.com/shop/Kimmonshandtools
Tay Tools Cryo https://lddy.no/cdid
Grizzly https://www.grizzly.com/products/stanley-plane-replacement-blade-for-t22600-and-t22601/t29126
Narex Not On sale yet
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James, very helpful tests. Thank you.
Wow. That. Was. Amazing! Unbelievable data. Great job!
Great to know the results, I was hoping to see a modern stanley sweetheart blade tested, maybe you can throw it & get rid of the harbor freight iron.
I admire the amount of work to perform. Thank you for the job!
One (possibly) interesting remark from me: I use a wooden jointer with an old Sheffield iron and I’ve noticed that the steel doesn’t like diamonds at all. Sharpened on softer abrasives, the lifespan of the edge increases dramatically. This phenomenon is known to some degree among the fellow sharpeners, and there are many theories why it happens. Most plausible one states that there is some sort of "work hardening" happening on the microscopic scale it the abrasive crystal lacks the sharp corners. The best results I’ve got so far were with the translucent Arkansas and no strop. Classic Japanese waterstones work also well, but not as well.
As an engineer and a woodworker, this is heavenly! We’ll done sir!
Two comments – first, there’s a lot of labor involved here. What would you think about crowd sourcing the work? You could publish a test method and let others help you contribute data. Might be a good way to increase your sample size and get to the harder to find blades (not to mention, easier on your wallet!)
Second comment/question – I picked up a woodcraft blade but it’s so thick I can’t get it to protrude through my older non-adjustable throat with the frog pulled all the way back. Any suggestions?
I knew you were a mater woodworker but had no idea you were a master at spreadsheets, too! I am VERY impressed!
I just bought three Grizzlys on Black Friday sale (no.4 5 & 7). Ranking all categories as 1, other than speed to 300 & final sharpness at 10…. Wood Rivers are basically twice the blade for twice the price. For anything scoring beyond Wood River the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Doubling down again for the Veritas pre-flat might be worth, maybe.
Wow… wow.
Well done!
This is a super informative test! Awesome work!
Thank you so much for all your work! Really great!
only pmv11 on all my goodies
i’d love to see how the E.A.Berg eskilstuna sweden plane irons perform
Great Work. thanks a lot! Keep up the great work!
The numbers on the downloaded spreadsheet do not match the numbers displayed in your video. For example, for "Strokes to 300" plane irons 1-5 in your video the values are 200, 40, 360, 280, 200 and in your spreadsheet they are 160, 40, 160, 80, 120. I just purchased two Woodriver irons, but if the "Strokes to 300" is 80 per rather than 280t, I’ll probably return them. Which is correct?
Thanks so much for all this data! For what it’s worth, I absolutely love my high-speed steel tipped iron the most. Mine is an old discontinued type that was made by Titan in Australia. Stanley made them in Australia too, but only Australia it seems. The HSS is brazed onto the business end of the iron with ordinary steel for the rest of the blade. It is a fair bit harder to sharpen, but lasts what feels like five times longer than my ordinary or laminated SW Stanley blades. They are still available here. I would love to see it tested using your methodology!
Holy moly, James. Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this! I’ve long had issues getting my #4 to work as well as my #5. I think I’m going to pick up a new Wood River blade and see how that goes.
I’ll be making my own irons out of 52100 steel. I made a prototype with only an angle grinder and a Dremel.
I’m no fundi, but AI113 cell in your spreadsheet seems to be incorrect in the spreadsheet version downloaded March 18 2023. Other than that, this is incredible, and thanks to it, I went and resharpened all my irons (ok, I have only 7) to 35deg. And I’ll be passing this along. Many thanks for the excellence.
Can you put a new iron & chip breaker in an old plane?
Thanks for doing this! Nothing beats quantifiable data for evaluating performance. Especially when there are so many variable aspects to consider. I have an anecdotal comparison to add though, for a couple of irons not on your extensive list. One was a Footprint iron, I bought new this year from Home Hardware (in Canada). And the other was a Stanley which had come with a type 20 #5, made in Canada also, best guess circa 1950. That iron was nicked badly so I had acquired the footprint to get the plane usable quickly. Recently I finished restoring the original Stanley iron, and swapped it back into the #5. Both irons were comparable in hardness, and neither were particularly quick or easy to sharpen. The Stanley took a finer edge – shaving sharp all hairs severed vs. the Footprint which would shave some hairs, but that’s all. This was with the same methods and jigs – 1000 grit diamond plate, 3000 grit sandpaper on glass, green compound on a strop. Even though the keenness was less, the edge retention of the footprint was quite decent. On the same plane, with the same setup the Footprint could get ~.001" shavings, and the Stanley will take .0005".
The Footprint did not come flat it was bad enough and I ended up putting a back bevel on rather than spend the many hours it would take to get it flat. All that said it only cost ~$12 Canadian so the value wasn’t too bad, probably not that different from the results obtained with the Caliastro.
Old steel isn’t better by any stretch of the imagination but lately I’ve been seeing people replacing near full length vintage irons with new steel for no real reason. I have a Stanley Type 14 No. 7 with the original iron in it with plenty of length and it works perfectly well. If I ever use up the blade, then I’ll replace it but if not, not a chance. Why spend the money when you already have a solid iron?
That being said, I have purchased new irons for alternate uses to just swap out the iron to give me a different cut because I don’t have a stock of old irons laying around to pilfer.
I’m shocked at the IBC results. I have a PMV-11 and an IBC blade in a No. 6, and I think I prefer the IBC! The sharpness might even exceed my Richter chisels, which get seriously sharp. Maybe I got a lucky iron.
You are the Project Farm of woodworking. Thank you for all of the time, effort, and money you put into these videos. You save me a lot of the same!
Great job! Very good video. Data beats marketing hype any day of the week!
Seriously awesome. So glad my little bit of patron bucks are going to you!
Thanks for doing the work for us. And, thanks for saving me the little bit of cash on buying the HF plane. The Calistro looks like a decent budget replacement iron choice for those of us on a tight fixed budget, or those of us making our own planes as a hobby. Kuddos, James.
Your work answers EVERY question I had (or had not yet even thought of) on plane blades. Thanks for the diligence and the free sharing of the information (which is supposed to be the whole idea of YouTube and the internet….).
James – once again thank you for all your hard work on this. This is very informative. My first chisels are Narex Richter thanks to your previous test. Thank you also for the PayPal tip link on your website. I don’t need a jar of shavings but wanted to contribute to your efforts on this project so that was the perfect way to do so! Rob Cosman will be very happy with your findings!
Have you ever crossed paths with a laminated Stanley blade. I have a transitional #26, not type I, or 2, no frog adjustment, it has a laminated blade. Any Ideas ? Thanks for your video.
A couple questions:
1) After 1000 hours of shaving, do you see wood shavings when you close your eyes?
2) How can hardness not correlate to edge retention? Assuming all the blades are at the same angle, what property of the metal could make a softer blade stay sharper longer than a harder one?
Amazing data, unbelievable amount of work. Most appreciative for this, James!!
Found your channel from Rex’s videos. Both of you are awesome!
You guys should do some videos together, I think with both of you guys working together, I think you guys could create some really amazing stuff for the craft.
Lol #NOTALLHEROESWEARCAPES TKS! Been looking forward to this!
I looked through all of the comments before writing this one in case someone else had already asked the same question. My apologies if I missed it. Because of this test, i purchased 3 Woodriver blades of various sizes. Basically, ones that fit the 3, 4 and 6. Because the blades are thicker than the Stanley’s, I am finding the screw that attaches the chip breaker to be a little short. I can get it to work if I am very careful. Are there longer chip breaker screws available?
Do you have any impression of the flatness of the backs of these blades? I know LN’s and Veritas (maybe Hocks?) are supposed to be real flat, but how cheap can I go before I start to have to spend hours flattening the leading inch of the back?
First off, incredible work! I’m a data guy so this really speaks to me! Amazing, amazing work! If you want to look into reporting tools, try Tableau, its a phenomenal tool for displaying graphs and charts that work well with spreadsheets, tables etc as your data sources
One minor point – You may want to check the spelling of "tests" in your description.
Question, it seems thickness is important for wood bodied planes, however based on your new steel vs old steel comment, what do you think would be the best irons and important categories for a wood bodied plane? (I’m hoping to build my first wood bodied plane soon)
Legend! Thanks!. I think America made tools are they only way to go.
next might be a test of different diamond stones – how fast they wear out after N strokes of plane blade sharpening.
I am guessing that the PMV 11would mean powder metal 11% vanadium. That would be very similar to the Doug Thompson wood lathe tools. One unmentioned thing about that metal is that you can not get it hot enough when grinding for them to lose the temper. I still wonder why no one has used M42 high speed steel. Another popular wood lathe metal. Again, as with the vanadium tools, you can not get them hot enough on the grinder for them to lose their temper.
Jim, did Hock ever contact you about your less-than-stellar results? Everywhere (else) that I look, I see Hock recommended and can’t understand why they rated so low in your tests. I’m at the point of replacing the original blade in my old Stanley #3. I called the local Wood Craft and while they have Wood River blade in stock for me, they also are trying to steer me toward Hock, saying that several of the store employees prefer them over Wood River.
Amazing work! <3 What’s your opinion on thickness? Why are so many new blades so thick? Is it significantly heavier? More metal to remove but is it significantly slower to sharpen? The only thing I’ve read that could related to performance is that it could maintain lower temperature for longer.. so smoothing-plane sharpness for longer? 😛
sub earned….THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow. Just wow. You are now the Project Farm for woodworkers. Very well done.
Very odd I replaced my woodriver blade with a IBC matched chipbreaker and could immediately tell the difference in performance and sound plus the IBC stayed sharp a lot longer in my experience but great video either way very interesting results.
Unbelievable test James. I know everyone in the community really appreciates all of your hard work on this. I’m really surprised by the Wood River results and will be buying one of their replacement blades for my #3 Stanley this week. Cheers!
Thank you for doing this – I need to dive into it more, but the most shocking result is "Edge retention versus hardness" My new question for our metallurgy friends out there is then what is the "Factor" or a test to determine edge retention if we negate hardness based on these data?!
How did you get the number for strokes to 300? It seems the data does not correspond to this number very well? You’re not using the average but the best round?
Even so data is not consistent, wood river should be 200, not 280?
DMF 120 not 200?
Hock 160? etc
Also what is final dullness if not sharpness after 400?
Sorry if i missed something, thanks again!
I’m looking to replace a blade for my Stanley #112, and realize I have just as many options. But, would testing scraper blades (#80, #12, #112….etc) be totally different, since you are working off a burr rather than the bevel? Without 600 hours of testing, what do you think the most important characteristics for the iron be? I would venture to guess this would also be important for steel used for card scrapers as well. I was geeking on this test thinking about my favorite smoothing plane, but honestly….I love my scrapers for glassy smooth surfaces.
In the video description it says “all the iron testes” hahahah nice.
Someone has some balls of steel