Steve Elliot is investigating some very interesting plane blade topics:
After reading Steve's pages this is how I have summarized them in my head: He is using a thread cutting test as his measure of blade sharpness to emperically measure the following function and compare this to the visual appearances of the cutting edge and the resulting wood surfaces.
blade sharpness = f(blade, bevel angle, back bevel angle, honing abrasive, wood species, length planed)
Steve believes the thread cutting test is a good measure of inital sharpeness (length planed = 0) and correlates well to the visual appearance of the cutting edge and the wood surface. However, this test may not be good for measuring edge retention (length planed > 0) because blades can loose their edges different ways with different resulting geometry. So after the blade has been used, the cutting of the thread may not be directly comparable for different blades.
Steve is also investigating some other plane topics
Similar to above I think this can be summarized as
wood finish = f(wood species, grain angle, mouth opening, chip breaker bevel angle, chip breaker distance from cutting edge)
Scary Sharp The original post on the rec.woodworking newsgroup about the Scary Sharp (tm) sharpening method of using sandpaper glued to glass.
Brent's Sharpening Pages where he describes a faster version of the scary sharp system and a whole lot more. Very thought provoking. It seems to me that Brent's main goal is ensuring that all the worn metal at the cutting edge is removed when sharpening. He believes that using a low angle back bevel will help insure his goal is achieved. He acknowledges that this is not the only way to remove all wear but it may save blade metal with each sharpening. Brent also has some very interesting thoughts about why a blade feels dull to the user.
Questions? Comments?