Craftsmanship in Wood

This blade is made from rare tamahagane by Tsunesaburo: Wako, 70 mm

Those kanji, 和鋼, would be read wakō, meaning Japanese steel. Are you sure the reading is supposed to be kon? If so it is a non-standard reading.

Are you able to give some appraisal of this edge steel yet?

No smid I have approached has been willing to touch tamahagane even for a simple knife. I'll talk to Bernard in France about it in April.

Hi Chris, I think you are right with your reading of the kanjis.
Ernest, you have a interesting second name for this forum! It was very hard to find a tamahagane-blade. Therefore I wrote to Iida-san some years ago. After a long time he told me that he had found a piece of good quality. So Tsunesaburo made this blade for me. The blade is easy to sharpen and works very well. You can use it for soft and hard wood - even for Wengé. Only a HSS-blade is more tough and much more budget-priced.

Werner, your collection of planes is impressive. I showed pictures of them to my planes before I beat them with sticks and ordered them to perform better!! I would love to see pictures or videos of your planes ( or anyone else from the forum as well) in action. I am currently using my planes on some Padauk. The grains changes so much I have to go both directions to get the best cut.

Paul, it seems you are in that phase, everybody was, who is using Japanese planes. Sometimes it is very hard and frustrating, but in the end you will love them. It took me round about 7 years to learn how to use a Kanna and I am learning every day when I use it. Such a simple construction can be so difficult. But with no other plane you can get these results.
To your problem with the Padauk: The most deciding thing is, making very, very thin shavings (not more than 20 Microns). Therefore you need a super sharp blade and the sole of the dai must be absolute plane. The photo with the microscope shows the structure of a thin shaving. All other factors are not so important when your shavings are super thin.

Werner, the first and the second name go together even better to form a summary of my feelings.

I'm missing an inside joke here...

Well it might help to say I take my wood in all earnestness.
The photo of what I am guessing is a shaving produced by the tamahagane-blade of Werner showing very well the patten of a cross section of the composition of the wood, the empty spaces are the severed cavities of the wood's cells once having contained the moisture component of the wood, the connecting grid the sliced through remnants of the cell walls. I would say it is wood from a conifer.

Your diagnose is great Monsieur "Du Bois": douglas fir.