New Veritas Tool Steel - PM-V11

[Noel]

I would tend to agree with you Ed regarding these cryptic one liners that some are spouting are indeed not helpful.
As you mention, it will be interesting to see where the new material positions itself in the blade market over the coming months.

 

[woodbloke]

I planed a couple of dozen strokes with Rob's blade in a LA jack on Saturday and it was fine. By that I mean it felt basically the same as my own LA jack with an A2 blade in it, which is exactly what I would expect. These kind of short term experiences don't tell us a great deal about the blades performance, since I imagine we could sharpen any bit of steel to plane nicely in the short term*. I'm not saying that to criticise the blade, merely that to understand the steel's qualities will take weeks, if not months, of use to properly appraise the benefits. I think Rob Lee has done this so he's obviously satisfied himself that there is a benefit in the new steel, but for the rest of us we need to go through the process.

I would agree entirely with Ed's analysis, suffice to say that initial impressions indicate that 'it's good' which was the whole point of my statement in the first place. It's far too early to say whether on not it's the definitive blade material, if indeed there is such a thing. For example, how will it perform honed to 25deg?...or what will impact tests with a chisel blade reveal? It has, at this very early stage, got all the characteristics of setting the 'gold standard' by which other blade materials are judged. It's very early days and time, testing and extended usage will provide us with a lot more experience - Rob