# Save your time and get the real thing



## FatScratch

Thanks for the review. I really appreciate you posting the picture too. Too bad you had to go through so much time flatening. I'll stick to Veritas.


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## spaids

Wow that must have been frustrating. Thats a long time at the paper. Having a non flat back is very bad for an after market blade. I would expect it to be pretty close to action ready when thats all you're actually buying is a blade. Otherwise its really just a piece of steel isn't it?

I'm curious about the cryogenic treatment. Do you suspect that the steel was extra hard because of this and that is why it was so difficult to flatten? Maybe there is something to the cryogenic treatment after all. If Veritas was to offer their blades with an option of cryogenic treatment for a couple bucks more it might be worth it. It might even be worth paying a couple bucks more for a cryogenic treatment on the IBC blade if it was FLAT!

Good Review man thanks for the heads up.


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## PurpLev

Thanks for the review. I love Veritas and LV hands down, and have personally had poor experience with my local woodcraft.

That said - to flatten irons, I never start at 180… but at 100 grit paper. 180 is a bit too fine to flatten anything in my experience. I've actually flattened the soles of a couple of planes and reestablished bevel/back on a few plane blades, and the 100 did a decent job - still some work had to be done (lots of metal to take off from the sole) but doable.

Another food for thought - if the blade was that badly shaped - you might have considered returning it for a replacement.


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## manumurf

Looking at the prices for the IBC blades Cosman was showing off in that video last week, I would not expect to have to spend hours working on it.

I just got a 2" blade by Lei Nielsen I picked up from Ebay and it was flat and like a razor right out of the package.


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## wch

In retrospect, I probably should have used a coarser sandpaper, but I certainly wasn't expecting to have to use sandpaper at all for this blade. For a $3 Buck Bros. blade from Home Depot, sure, but not for a $40 blade. Also, probably part of the reason that it took so long is that, although the sandpaper (3M Sandblaster) cut quickly at first, after 15 seconds or so, it was much, much slower. That's fairly typical in my experience.

@spaids: I don't know if the cryogenic treatment made it harder to flatten - I don't have any measurements of just how convex the blade was, so it could just be that the blade needed a lot of material ground away. I agree that if it were actually flat, the cryogenic treatment might be worth a couple bucks!

@PurpLev: The thought of returning it did cross my mind, but at first I figured it would be a quick job to flatten it (because of the advertising claims), and by the time I realized that it wasn't, I'd already put all this work into it. I don't know if they'd take back an obviously used blade without any trouble. I'd also have to go to the trouble of shipping it back, and I still wouldn't have any assurance that the next one would be any better. If I had a Woodcraft store nearby, I'd definitely consider taking it back and checking the replacement for flatness in the store.


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## bigike

these blades are a bit harder to sharpen and in your case flaten the treatment does make the metal harder and the thicker the blade the less chance for chatter don't know if you did your homework on that part of blade sharpening. Anyway the ends of the blade ore suposed to ground off so you leave no tracks when planeing. I think there a cool blade they give good proformance over my hocks and my regular stanley plane blades, i do want to get a lie nielson and see how they hold up as for the cryo treatment giving a longer edge life i see this too in the hocks and pinnacle blades but i don't do much planeing in projects yet. My next project i will have to use one of my planes as much as i can and see what happens. Well sorry to hear you had a bad experience they did make my work alot better after being tuned the most time ispent on it was about 30 mins cuz i have quite a few planes to sharpen other than that and draining my bank acc. just as any other tool/tools would these are the only set back i found. Good Luck on your next purchase! As for the review you sent to woodcraft i would try to send an email to rob cosman i do have some words for him too but that's another story.


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## Chinitorama

I wonder if Pinnacle uses rotary lapping on their blades? Apparently LN and Veritas use this process and it's the main reason their blades are so easy to flatten.

-J.


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## Jon_Banquer

What makes A2 harder to sharpen is the make up of the material itself. A2 has more Chromium in it than O1 or 02 steel does. Cryogenics is just use to stabilize the metal so it doesn't "move". There is little or no difference in the Rockwell hardness that either O1, O2 or A2 can be hardened to. A2's real advantage is the fact it doesn't "move" like O1 or O2 so you can leave less material on before sending it to heat treating. This means when you get it back from heat treating you can finish the part faster because less material has to come off when surface grinding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_steel

Hope this helps,

Jon Banquer
CAD/CAM Programmer / CNC machinist
San Diego, CA


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## mcase

Thanks,

I just bought a Woodriver #4 . Its the new v3 improved version. Its actually flat unlike earlier versions. The blade is crap however, and very briefly I toyed with the idea of putting one of the Pinnacle irons in it. That is now out of the question and I'm returning it and ordering a Veritas plane. Thanks for the post.


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