It was on the market too soon!
It came and went before the fad came on.
Nowdays, there are a legion of guys are using elaborate jigs and expensive stones and equipment and polishing blades out to 20,000 grit. Rubbing and rubbing they spend hours on a single blade.
Most of them don't really cut any wood, or if they do its mostly for test purposes.
I know a guy who mirror polishes blades out to the atom, and then photographs the edges with a microscopic camera and then tests the edges to the tune of 4 or 5 hundred full length shavings (from a 6" plank)
to rephotograph and record the edge retention/degradation.
One time he asked me, "Can your edges do this?"
I answered, "I don't know. I spend about 2 minutes resharpening a plane blade and if I had to make 4 hundred test cuts I'd kill myself.
Its has become a national obsession. Its an entire hobby of sharpening steel.
So many newbies and wanna-be's are insecure about their ability to sharpen a simple edge tool, that sharpening equipment has eclipsed all other woodworking tool sales.
And its growing. Guy are paying hundreds of dollars for a single sharpening stone. The Japanese are catering to this insecurity and the Yuppie-puppy syndrome of one upsmanship in price, with "designer" label goods and 10 times the asking price.
Me, I make things from wood. I make tools themselves, and I make other things.
I can get a comfortable shave from any edge tool in 2 minutes or less time, and its a plenty good enough edge to let me work in the hardest woods.
But then, I was already working wood before much of the current crop was born or certainly ever know what a plane was.
I had a jig almost just like the Stanley shown, once.
I used it when I was first starting, in the 60's. It worked, but it took too long.
I started sharpening freehand, got better at it, and never went back.
yours Scott
