Block Plane for Travel Tool Chest Build Process
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Posted 2nd May 2024
I decided to make a spare blade for the block plane. It's always handy having two blades (even if only because it occasionally allows me to lazy and put off sharpening for a bit!).
This one was a bit of an ordeal to be honest. Making it proceeded in much the same way as the last blade (and took about 2 hours). I then hardened it and tempered it as before. When I came to sharpen it, I was finding it impossible to get an edge on it, suggesting it wasn't properly hardened. This will be for one of the following reasons, but I've no idea which:
- I didn't heat it up enough before quenching when hardening.
- I took too long going from heating to quenching.
- I overcooked it when tempering.
Whichever was the cause, it needed to be dealt with, so I went back to the start and heated it up to cherry red before plunging in oil. I decided to use the domestic fan oven for the tempering process this time, so I set the oven on 220°C and chucked it in. With hindsight, I should have wrapped it in something to even out the heat a bit: when I came back to it a little later, the tip was blue, suggesting it had reached a temperature in excess of 285°C (according to the chart in the book I use for reference when heat treating. I wouldn't have expected that from a fan oven (and I've tempered stuff in there before with no issues).
Ah well, back to square one again. Third time lucky thankfully (I was going to give up if it didn't work this time): I heated it back up to cherry red, plunged it in oil, tempered with the blow torch again this time and then the process of grinding and sharpening went nice and smoothly. All's well that ends well as the bard put it.
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