This is basically a 0.8-0.85 carbon steel that's sold here sometimes for the same cost as O1, but in reality, it is a much cheaper steel. I made an order for something else and got a small sheet of it and made plane irons out of it, figuring they'd be a little under hard based on the data sheet for the steel, not wear long or who knows what.
A metallurgist in the US said that the steel, which has the often derided name of "chrome vanadium", as do a whole huge number of steels that are relatively plain in composition, is often used for woodworking tools. the only thing I have no clue about is where exactly those woodworking tools are made and who makes them. It has a little bit of a feel like pfeil, is relatively forgiving to heat treat. I don't need forgiving at this point, but it does make it even easier to get accurate consistent results. I can probably get more consistent results by hand than most large batch furnaces will ever come close to.
I haven't made chisels of it, and don't have a great reason to. But I did a planing test and what I like about O1, it does all of those things at least as well and wears about the same number of feet planing.
It takes a little doing to get higher hardness out of the stuff - a fast oil and understanding what will give an extra point of two of hardness beyond that.
I've screwed around making plane irons out of something like 14 different samples of bar stock and 7 different alloys, This is the first one that I think doesn't compromise anything to O1, and the princely sum of the cost of materials for a #7 plane iron is about $7.
Getting O-1 "good" is easier, so I doubt we'll see this in any boutique tools, but I'd bet I could market a LN replacement iron in 1/8th thick stock and sell as many as I could make to the subset of LN buyers who don't like A2.
Sharing what I've found here because the wife is tired of hearing about it.
Here's a factoid picture just for fun - these are carbides at 300x optical. They are about 1 micron in size. The entire picture is less than 1 hundredth of an inch tall in actual pre-magnified height. The pictures are bright because the wear on the edge of a plane iron forces me to either come up with some way to hold things at a variable angle on a metallurgical scope (unlikely to happen) or turn up the light since the edge rounds. the little dots are something like 3 thousandths of an inch in terms of the worn area.
Typically, a blade that keeps planing but that isn't very nice to use (52100 ball bearing steel comes to mind, as does well worn A2) will show some ragged edge. O1 is usually very uniform, but you can see the edge of this stuff is even more uniform.
80crv2 first.
Then O1
Very very sweet in a plane, and very cheap and very easy to drill, grind, etc, to make an iron.
for reference, that bar that says 20mu is 20 microns. about 25 is equal to a thousandth of an inch. the little things you see hear add up to something you can actually feel - the iron in the top picture takes a smoother shaving as it dulls, and the surface of the wood is a little better.
to compare this to an iron that doesn't really wear uniformly, because O1 is really pretty excellent if it isn't tempered too soft, below is a picture of the Revilo High Speed Steel iron edge made by F. Mountford. Note the uneven wear at the edge, and at much less footage planed than the two others, thus no need to turn up the light to see a rounded over area.
These are a curiosity because they're HSS but can be sharpened on oilstones. They start out great, but the uneven edge makes them feel more dull while they're still cutting after a short period of time. No high speed steel other than matrix types would come close to the even wear of 80crV2 (matrix types are lower carbon versions than anything we normally see - something like M2 will wear longer than all of these irons, but not as evenly).
But the real point remains here - there's a very cheap steel that makes very nice tools and few of us know much of anything about it.
A metallurgist in the US said that the steel, which has the often derided name of "chrome vanadium", as do a whole huge number of steels that are relatively plain in composition, is often used for woodworking tools. the only thing I have no clue about is where exactly those woodworking tools are made and who makes them. It has a little bit of a feel like pfeil, is relatively forgiving to heat treat. I don't need forgiving at this point, but it does make it even easier to get accurate consistent results. I can probably get more consistent results by hand than most large batch furnaces will ever come close to.
I haven't made chisels of it, and don't have a great reason to. But I did a planing test and what I like about O1, it does all of those things at least as well and wears about the same number of feet planing.
It takes a little doing to get higher hardness out of the stuff - a fast oil and understanding what will give an extra point of two of hardness beyond that.
I've screwed around making plane irons out of something like 14 different samples of bar stock and 7 different alloys, This is the first one that I think doesn't compromise anything to O1, and the princely sum of the cost of materials for a #7 plane iron is about $7.
Getting O-1 "good" is easier, so I doubt we'll see this in any boutique tools, but I'd bet I could market a LN replacement iron in 1/8th thick stock and sell as many as I could make to the subset of LN buyers who don't like A2.
Sharing what I've found here because the wife is tired of hearing about it.
Here's a factoid picture just for fun - these are carbides at 300x optical. They are about 1 micron in size. The entire picture is less than 1 hundredth of an inch tall in actual pre-magnified height. The pictures are bright because the wear on the edge of a plane iron forces me to either come up with some way to hold things at a variable angle on a metallurgical scope (unlikely to happen) or turn up the light since the edge rounds. the little dots are something like 3 thousandths of an inch in terms of the worn area.
Typically, a blade that keeps planing but that isn't very nice to use (52100 ball bearing steel comes to mind, as does well worn A2) will show some ragged edge. O1 is usually very uniform, but you can see the edge of this stuff is even more uniform.
80crv2 first.
Then O1
Very very sweet in a plane, and very cheap and very easy to drill, grind, etc, to make an iron.
for reference, that bar that says 20mu is 20 microns. about 25 is equal to a thousandth of an inch. the little things you see hear add up to something you can actually feel - the iron in the top picture takes a smoother shaving as it dulls, and the surface of the wood is a little better.
to compare this to an iron that doesn't really wear uniformly, because O1 is really pretty excellent if it isn't tempered too soft, below is a picture of the Revilo High Speed Steel iron edge made by F. Mountford. Note the uneven wear at the edge, and at much less footage planed than the two others, thus no need to turn up the light to see a rounded over area.
These are a curiosity because they're HSS but can be sharpened on oilstones. They start out great, but the uneven edge makes them feel more dull while they're still cutting after a short period of time. No high speed steel other than matrix types would come close to the even wear of 80crV2 (matrix types are lower carbon versions than anything we normally see - something like M2 will wear longer than all of these irons, but not as evenly).
But the real point remains here - there's a very cheap steel that makes very nice tools and few of us know much of anything about it.
