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| Sharpening Station |
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| Finest abrasives. | ||
| Microbevels front and back. | ||
| Use a jig. | ||
| Copyright (c) 2002-08, Brent Beach |
Test Summary
A High Speed Steel iron, made by Carl Holtey in the U.K.The edge was a surprise. This is a very high-tech steel, but while very wear resistant, there were edge defects not found in other blades.
Holtey S53
Carl Holtey makes planes and plane blades. This blade was purchased directly from Holtey. The blade is quite thick, fitting only a limited number of standard planes - only those with very wide mouths.The Test
April 10, 2002.As with all my other tests, I honed three front and back bevels using 15, 5, and 0.5 micron 3M micro abrasive paper.
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The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after the 0.5 micron paper.
The 0.5 microbevel looks much different from other irons. This is the only iron that showed this pattern of bright spots. I understand that these blades are made of powdered bits of carbide (or something like that). Perhaps the individual bits of carbide are reflecting separately from whatever holds them together. Then again, it could just be the angle of the light. |
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The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after 100 passes along 4 foot douglas-fir board.
Very narrow wear bevel, about 4 pixels wide, but the edge has several failures. |
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The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after 150 passes.
The wear bevel is still only about 4 pixels wide, but the edge has large failures. The surface of the wood has a much different feel and there are visible lines corresponding to the defects in the edge. The board was clear of knots, the same board as used in the other tests around this time. While I used up several boards during these tests, the boards were uniformly clear, straight grained, and from the same tree. |
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