The blade is tapered, and he will make a solid steel blade of the same configuration.

DJM,

The plane blades are great. Steel costs 5 times that of wrought iron in the nineteenth century and more earlier.

Dale,

Chris over at Galoot Tools imports laid steel replacement blades, they are thick and not tapered, but nice blades.

AA,

Many English makers imported and used Swedish steel as well, in the 19th century the costs were 5:1

David,

The Japanese tools are laminated in a similar manner, I converted a chisel over to Western. Galoot Tools sells laid blades for new planes.

Michael,

You are correct about being able to case harden wrought iron and mild steel, but it is a different process of encasing the piece with highly carbon materials and forcing them through reduction heat into the softer material.

Sorry if my subjective comment sounded bad, you are right and I apologize.

Gary,

I agree.

Chuck,

I am working on that one, I have made the suggestion to the blacksmith.

David,

Thanks for your comments.

Stephen

1) Is there an argument for laminating western irons when steel is no longer expensive? I don’t know. I haven’t ever seen anywhere that stated the reason for the irons being laminated was a function of anything other than cost of importing steel being greater than the cost of a smith’s time.

2) Is there really an argument that the stability and damping effect of the wrought iron is a material contributor to the function of a plane when compared to whether or not the plane is properly made with the iron properly bedded and wedge properly fit. I don’t know. I would subjectively think that it’s more the plane than the irons as long as the irons aren’t some wonky shape that can’t be properly fitted to the planes.

The preference I come to with older irons is the fact that they’re cast steel, but I don’t prefer the laminated edge of them over any other cast steel (like in chisels that aren’t laminated). The cast steel fails in a predictable way, no surprising large nicks in a smoother, just uniform wear.

The other issue I have with older irons is that a lot of them are too soft. I’d assume this is a function of ability to sharpen the irons with oilstones. I have left O1 untempered and not had too much issue with brittleness in joinery planes and in a pair of newly made hollows and rounds – planes that will not see knots, or likely very hard or abrasive wood, so the brittleness isn’t an issue. I like the way it holds an edge, and I’m not going to temper them unless I have to. I have not tried to sharpen them on oilstones, maybe I wouldn’t be so high on them if I did.

Anyway, in the modern era with power grinding and aggressive abrasives, I don’t know if there is really a benefit to having laminated irons – aside from japanese planes where the steel is extremely hard and does not tolerate much in terms of temperatures.

I’d love to bed one in some of my Clark & Williams bench planes.

Also, I think you mean to say later in the post, “This is completely subjective, so you can’t disagree with me…” I think you meant to say, “This is completely subjective, so you might have different view on the matter…”. If something is subjective, then it’s definitely an arguable point.