Reply To: Paul's hammer trick for flattening irons / blades
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@etmo I must confess to likely being the cause of the belly. I haven’t treated this blade well. If you looked at the blade new, it would like the Veritas blades.
In my comment about variations in thickness, I was trying to point out that there are multiple reasons for a belly. For example, if you are restoring an old “banana blade,” the belly may be because the blade was ground unevenly over the years, e.g., on a dished stone.
In the end, I think what happened with this blade was that it was relatively flat except I’d probably dubbed the final 1/4″ near the edge in the process of going back and forth between a heavy scrub-plane like camber and straight by being either rushed or careless. When I tried to use the “just whack it,” technique, this lead to a twist, for whatever reason. It wasn’t a big twist, certainly not enough to see with your eye, but certain enough to keep the end from being ground when on a plate.
My Clifton #3 is my single best plane. I’m hoping to get my Clifton #5, the source of this blade, to the same level of performance.