When it comes to the details of all things hand-toolish it's hard to
beat the collective knowledge, experience and technical expertise of
this group. Take your collective hands off that mouse and pat yourselves
on your collective back.

One thing not mentioned in the blade side-bar in the FWW article: while
discussing the advantages of the Holtey and Clifton blades he fails to
mention that thicker blades won't work in the standard Bailey pattern
planes. Since the blade adjuster dog must pass through the blade and
engage the breaker, too much additional blade thickness and the
mechanism won't work. You also have to back out the hold-down screw too
far for it to grip well or at all.

Caveat emptor,
Ron
(who hates to pick nits but is very tired of "experts" glossing over
technical inaccuracies, polluting the watershed of collective knowledge.
Want another one?: on pages 96-97 of the same FWW issue, there is a
question about overheating a blade on the grinder. The answer has
several critical inaccuracies and is much too short to do anything other
than confuse and frustrate.)

>
> I took the article and did something similar to what we do on the porch all
> the time - take an idea and run with it.
>
> Specifically the thickness of irons. The article listed all of the iron
> thicknesses in each review and I never realized there was that much variation
> between makers. So last night I did a wholly unscientific survey of iron
> thickness on a whole bunch 'o irons. I only used dial calipers and didn't
> even separate irons from caps - just snap and go. To my surprise one notched
> logo 2" Stanley iron came in at 0.070" thick (or thin as it were) The
> majority fall in the 0.080" to 0.085" that Garrett lists in his article. Oh,
> BTW our very own Ron Hock's irons all came in at exactly 0.095" (yes, all six
> of them) as listed in the little gray box on pg. 45.  I've got the complete
> study at home that lists iron size, vintage and thickness will post it to the
> list if anyone's interested.