I use almost exclusively A-2 hand plane blades. Mostly because that was what was available when I was buying them. It was considered a step up from "normal" plane blades. There have since been some advances / options made available. As I have said before, as I see it, A-2 is the "Big Dumb Head" of blade steels. Not spectacular at any one thing but just keeps cutting and won't give up / won't chip. It doesn't stay really sharp long but the working edge is pretty tough.
Some say you can get other steels sharper. Using jigs designed for these blades and water stones up to 8,000 I can consistently put an edge on them that will shave curls off a single hair while it is still in your arm (as seen through my jeweler's visor). AND that's with a 45 to 54° edge. Soooooo . . . good enough in the sharpen ability department. :thumbup:
While sharpening a non stainless plane blade on water stones it would rust up as I rinsed it under hot running water and dried it. The A-2 would show no perceivable rust under the same regime but over time it could be made to show some oxidation.
This planing session was just to do some minor flattening and put on a "smooth planed" surface in preparation for finish. The blades did much much more rough planing work in previous sessions. See last photo. The wood is bubinga and is particularly hard to plane and some times fairly abrasive due to minerals in the wood. To do the same work with a lesser steel would have been more difficult or nearly impossible due to the hardness of the wood / wear on the cutting edges. Many would have resorted to a big O belt sander rather than plane it all by hand.
So yah . . . A-2 is good stuff.
By the way there is no stain or dye applied . . . that is the normal color of bubinga with a clear finish (in this case French polished shellac over Malloof finish). No sandpaper was used at all.
PS: A-2 is so tough that it just polishes a normal Hard Arkansas stone and won't be sharpen by it (no metal coming off into the pores of the stone. The whole surface of that stone was shiny like that I just couldn't capture it in the photo). Really good, man made, water stones are a must to sharpen it.
