A long-standing solution.
A plane blade has to be easy to sharpen and has to hold its edge, and the two demands pull against each other. Hard steel holds an edge longer and takes longer to sharpen.
For most of their history, plane blades were laminated, all over the world: a thin layer of hard steel welded to a softer body. Steel was expensive, and the smith used only as much as the edge needed. Once steel became cheap in the nineteenth century, solid steel blades took over, because they were simpler to make. The cost moved to the woodworker, who now had to sharpen a blade that was hard steel all the way through. Blades also grew thinner, and the narrow bevel of a thin blade is harder to hold steady on a stone. The honing guide arrived to solve the problem the thin blade had created.
Zen-Wu makes laminated blades for the same reason the old smiths did. A layer of high-performance tool steel forms the edge, and a softer body carries it. The hard layer gives edge retention and the soft body makes the blade quicker to sharpen, and less prone to chipping as a whole. The softer body also damps vibration, which reduces tear-out. The effect is most noticeable in our titanium-bodied blades.
Laminating is also a choice about materials. A body that does not rust gives the blade a longer service life, and putting tool steel only where the edge needs it uses less of a carbon-intensive material. In the end, an edge that is still sharp says more than any of this.
Cheers,
Luke
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