The bevel angle must be 25 - 30 degrees.
This is a common misconception. On bevel down planes the angle of the bevel makes no difference to the cut because the presentation angle of the iron to the wood doesn't change. Tool makers grind their bevels to around 23 degrees, for no other reason other than speed production as their tool setup.
On bevel up planes the bevels angle does make a difference, the angle presented to the wood changes as you change the angle. So, honing an angle of 50 degrees on a bevel up plane will reduce or eliminate tear out in some woods, but honing the same angle on a bevel down plane wouldn't, which is why Lie Nielsen offers a high angle frog. The common primary bevel on all plane irons is at 25 degrees, on bevel up and bevel down planes with A2 irons it is recommended to hone a secondary bevel of 30 degrees or higher for better performance. Honing a secondary bevel will significantly reduce your sharpening time but will greatly increase when you need to re-establish the primary bevel.
Placing the plane on its side to protect the irons edge.
This idea was stressed upon heavily in woodworking schools in the past, but mostly abandoned today. Some schools continue to teach this even though it's baseless. This method was once common practice with construction workers i.e. carpenters. To protect their irons from concrete floors, nails on timber and general debris they would place their hand planes on their side. This practice flowed onto cabinet makers surprisingly though which eventually became the golden rule in schools. Having a hand plane resting on its side on the bench poses more risk of accidental slicing of your hand or knocking the exposed blade with another tool than having it safely rest flat on the bench. Fortunately, someone with enough courage has spoken up against this practice and the majority has made the switch.
You must lift the plane off the wood when planing
The claim is when you're pulling back the plane without lifting it off the wood your dulling, the
iron. I personally don't believe that to be the case if anything you're slightly stropping the back of the iron every time you pull back. Tilting the plane when pulling back in some cases of softwoods will Marr the work. Until there is definitive proof of the blade dulling I will reserve judgement on this.
Thin irons chatter while thicker ones don't.
The claim is that due to the pressure of the wood springing back, would cause thin irons to flex back and forth causing the iron to vibrate. Paul Sellers is adamantly against this belief and I am of the same opinion, yet neither of us have any actual evidence to disprove this claim. I have experienced chatter with thicker irons and the manufacturer's claim is, thicker irons will reduce chatter. Notice the word reduce is used and not eliminate, because I as well as they do not believe that the thickness of the iron has anything to do with chatter.
I think chatter is caused by applying too much pressure on the tote at the beginning of the cut and also the wood itself can be a contributor to this unexplained phenomenon. Either way it's a myth until proven otherwise.
New and improved chip breakers.
The purpose of the cap iron i.e. chip breaker is to deflect shavings. Leonard Bailey introduced the curved cap iron to his thin irons to eliminate the vibrations which caused chatter. This may sound contradictory to what I said earlier about thin irons, but read on and all shall be clarified.
Leonard Bailey introduced a hump to the cap iron as the thin iron did vibrate excessively which thus caused chatter, with the addition of the hump this eliminated all chatter. With the Bailey/Stanley versioned cap irons you can modify them to completely eliminate tear out altogether by slightly honing a small bevel on the front edge.
The mouth opening no longer plays a part and you can safely even plane against the grain with no tear out, which eliminates the need for a scraper. Derek Cohen demonstrated this in a lengthy forum discussion, sorry I don't have the link for this.
With the modern so called improved version you can't do that. I have tried and ruined the cap iron. The reason why toolmakers refuse to reproduce the Stanley/Bailey cap irons is due to the high costs involved in creating a hump in the steel. They need to renew their advertised claim of "new and improved chip breakers" to "new and not so costly to us chipbreaker" if you have an old Stanley plane do not replace it with a thicker iron nor the chip breaker with the modern one.
A2 is better than O1
Your edge will last longer in A2 but O1 you will get a keener edge but will not last as long as A2. The thicker irons in A2 we have today takes much longer to sharpen than you would normally get with the standard thin irons of Record and Stanley. Sharpening an A2 on an oil stone is almost next to impossible but not so with water stones. Waterstones wear faster, as they wear new fresh grits are always exposed which cuts through the metal fast, but none the less it takes more strokes to sharpen A2 irons than it does a thin iron. An equivalent thick O1 iron would take equally as long so, realistically speaking it all boils down to the thickness of the iron on how fast or slow the sharpening process will go. A2 steel will plane better on certain tough end grains of particularly hardwoods, resulting in a much more pleasing result than a standard thin O1 iron. Different horses for different courses neither myth nor true.
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