In this entry I will be conducting a comparison of the Stanley and Veritas irons, and seeing how they work in the other planes
The irons are the same thickness, but the #45 irons are a little longer. This particular #45 iron is about 1/8″ shorter than what a new/old stock #45 iron would have been, but they still work (see note below, though). The notches in them are the same, or at least close enough to the same to work in either of the two planes.
The Veritas iron works fine in the Stanley plane. The notch works with the depth adjustment mechanism and it’s not too thick to fit in the casting. The only thing is that the Veritas irons shorter length means you’re close to the end of how far you can adjust the iron in the #45. once it’s been sharpened down far enough, you could eke out a little more life of the cutter by not using the notch for adjustment but instead just having the depth adjuster push on the end of the iron. Regardless, the point is they work, and it should take a while before you’d wear through that much iron anyway.
Since the Veritas irons work in the Stanley plane, we’d assume the reverse is true too, right? Well it is, though with a slight caveat. They fit and work with the plane; however if the Stanley iron is, or is close to, full length it gets really close to running out of threads on the depth adjustment knurled nut. It fits and works fine, but I would prefer to have more than just a couple threads engaged on the depth adjustment nut myself.
It’s tough to get a picture of it well, but here you can sort of see how far out the depth adjustment nut is, and how far down the threaded rod is.
Being that the Stanley irons are longer, you won’t be able to buy the Veritas boxes to house your Stanley irons, unless they’ve all been sharpened enough to be shorter.
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