Car spring plane irons???

might be worth a try. i’ve made turning chisels out of car spring. they stayed sharp and held up well. they were made to turn pattern that i wanted to repeat many times. i made them 30 years ago and still use them.

-- jerryw-wva.

Check out Phil Edwards site. He makes irons from plain old tool steel or HS. Phil is a member of Lumber Jocks. He can fill you in on tempering with real simple tools.

-- Thos. Angle

My Dad used to make sheet metal cutting tools out of car springs. He was an auto body repair man for a long time. I have one of the springs that he made into a cutting tool for cutting of quarter panels on cars. It works great and really holds an edge. So I would think that they would work rather well.

-- Max "Desperado", Salt Lake City, UT

Spring steel and reclaimed railroad iron both work well. After you have them made they need to be re-tempered properly. If you really want to do this you might look at some black smithing web sites, there’s a art to it.

-- Only the Shadow knows....................

They work fine. Made one once. It just takes time and patience. Something at the time I didn’t have. Honing the edge is the more time consuming.

-- The wood slayer - Yes dear I did plan to make more kindling out of that wood I have been drying for the last year - honest!

spring steel is difficult to work with..if possible find springs off as old a car as possible…pre 70’s ideally….now a steel that works wonderfully is the cutting edges bolted to the bottom of heavy equipment blades..say on bulldozers…or graders…the cutting edges on this type of equipment need replacement routinely…so access to these used cutting edges is readily available. Another good steel is the gatts or steel shanks used in large heavy equipment jack hammers…I have 2 used gatts from a backhoe sized jackhammer and also have one enormous gatt from a hammer originally used on a 750 komatsu excavator, 8” in diameter and almost 4’ long…although it’s wonderful steel…it is also incredibly heavy, in fact when I unloaded it from my pickup it rolled down a small embankment coming to rest against a small pine tree next to my driveway….

-- If knowledge is not shared, it is forgotten.

Daryl,

Don’t have any experience with spring steel but the others seem to think it will work. I have seen plane blades here in Thailand but it may take some detective work to find some of any quality as most seem to be from China.

Let me know if you want me to look around for ya.

Doug

-- I can so I wood but why are my learning curves always circles