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| Lie-Nielsen W1 |
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| Finest abrasives. | ||
| Microbevels front and back. | ||
| Use a jig. | ||
| Copyright (c) 2002-09, Brent Beach |
Test Summary
W1 is another variety of high carbon tool steel. Lie-Nielsen appears to be the only supplier of W1 steel blades, although they may be switching to A2 steel. (The Lie-Nielsen web pages no longer mention what type of steel they are using for plane blades).Poor durability, reasonable edge quality with use.
The Test
May 7, 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.
This is a replacement iron, sold by Lie-Nielsen for use with Stanley type planes. At 0.121" thick, it is thinner than the irons they use for their planes, but the same steel.
| The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after the 0.5 micron paper. |
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The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after 50 passes along 4 foot douglas-fir board.
The wear bevel is about 7 pixels wide. Most of the edge is still pretty good, but there appear to be two small edge defects. |
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The front bevel, 200 X magnification, after 100 passes along 4 foot douglas-fir board.
The wear bevel is about 10 pixels wide. There are no defects in this section of blade (the blob is probably a bit of sawdust). The wear bevel was wide enough though that I did not complete the test of the next 50 passes along the douglas-fir board. |
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