Blade upgrade

A quick one. 

The end result:

 As you can see the edge is a bit slanted. I didn't want to grind too much of the steel since still need to make the ura nice and flat I rather have some room to spare.

The small contraption for thicknessing filing. Tape helps to keep the bastard in place. On the background is another handle model, just wax and oil tho, larger than the previous but still a tad too small for that monstrous file. The best was to draw file it to get a nice even texture on teh back:

There you can see the slant. And the lamination, and the wrought iron.

Before you scream for me butchering a japanese blade into fitting a lie nielsen, let me show you the mirror side. (Still need to work a bit on it, but will be done in subsequent sharpenings.)

I had to grind pretty much 5mm on each side of the blade, it was left on the body and rust ate all the hagane where it was making contact with the wood, and on other places, still didn't manage to take away all the pit. The good thing of working with a japanese blade is that you can grind only the hagane holding the blade at 45 degrees from the stone and then simply file or saw the wrought iron, making for a faster job. 

I still need to make the groove where the adjuster fits, but I'm thinking that maybe that's a job for a milling machine. At the moment I just retreat the adjuster and push the blade if I need to. This is plane that mostly works in one setting only though.

That's it. 5 usd rusty blade turned into state of the art upgrade for western planes. (You may wonder why I own a brass plane? Well, small japanese planes are a tad too light for my taste, so in contrast to bench planes, here I do want metal in the body.)