Thread: HNT Gordon video - bevel angles

Originally Posted by Norleb

What I found interesting is to see that more than a thousand people went to read the study on my blog but no one said that they did a test to see by themselves if my conclusion was worth anything. We've spend so much times discussing all kind of details about it when, in no times, someone can sharpen at 28° and 35° (as an example) and test to see if one prefers this or that angle.

Normand,

I did miss where you you amended your conclusion. My bad and I'm glad we agree on that.

Regarding the paragraph above, I think that most people have done that test, more or less. We try different angles and we observe the results, as Dave said. We don't have to count strokes and make a formal experiment for it to be useful.

What I find interesting is where you say

I've tried to modify my own technique in order to get closer to 28° and...it's not easy. The closest I can get is 30° sometimes 32°.

Maybe you can elaborate on why you can't get to 28…I'm not sure I understand. But in any case, it seems a perfect illustration of my main point. An out-of-context, artificial test may show that 28 is ideal, but it doesn't really matter if it's not practical to sharpen at that angle, or if the edge doesn't hold up in real-world planing situations.

Your website gave me some hints as to how to achieve that as well as choosing wood types, etc. I checked in my area but couldn't find any 3" thick beech...Any suggestion for the second best wood to use or should I laminate one?

You should check out DW's (Dave Weaver's) youtube videos to learn how to make planes. For wood, beech is ideal…you can get blanks from Red Rose Reproductions or Horizon. I posted the links on SMC a couple months ago.

If you can't get beech, use something else. Especially when you are starting out, the making is way more important than the wood. Can you get the yellow birch in the right thickness and grain orientation? The colonial American planemakers actually preferred yellow birch, until they depleted it locally and had to turn to beech. Maple also makes a fine plane.

Originally Posted by D.W.

So I've learned to sharpen around 33 degrees (freehand, not because I calculated to 33 degrees, but because that's where habit took me in avoiding chipping irons, because it's faster to avoid irons that don't chip no matter what a test that doesn't involve work cycles might say).

Dave,

I think it depends on the iron…FWIW, I grind at 25 and hone at 30°, plus or minus about a degree, and with the understanding that as the bevel gets fatter I probably lift a bit more and the angle starts to creep into the low 30s until I start the cycle again. The O1 irons I use seem to hold up fine and I don't experience chipping. Maybe vintage cast steel needs a couple more degrees, I don't really know (and who cares anyway!).

So, anyway, the strange thing is that normand insisted that he saw no defect in a planed surface at 28 degrees

I don't mean to keep picking on Normand's study, but I do think it's worth discussing where and how some of these studies diverge from reality. In a number of Normand's tests, the Stanley or other HCS irons "failed" at 80 to 100 shavings. Now if you or I are trying a 26" board, that's probably 3-5 minutes of planing. And obviously, no iron is going to fail that fast; it's a product of how he's defining failure. So, the reason he didn't see surface defects is probably that his definition of failure is much stricter than it would be in real life. What he's really testing is how long the blade retains an almost hair-splitting level of sharpness. And that's simply not a useful or interesting question, because if we want to get anything done, we need to plane long past that point. The useful question is "how long does the edge last before surface quality becomes unacceptable" but that's an almost impossible thing to test for in a quantifiable "scientific" way because there are too many variables and to much need for subjective judgement. But it's an easy thing to observe if you're just working a the bench and informally observing, as you (DW) and I have said a few times now. So, sorry to all for beating that point into the ground, and I'll stop now, but I think it was a point worth making in light of all the claims for the supposed superiority of formal experimentation and "data."

Steve,

Maybe you can elaborate on why you can't get to 28…I'm not sure I understand. But in any case, it seems a perfect illustration of my main point. An out-of-context, artificial test may show that 28 is ideal, but it doesn't really matter if it's not practical to sharpen at that angle, or if the edge doesn't hold up in real-world planing situations.

The problem is how I wrapped the blade with both of my hands. If I try to go to a lower angle, I end up with some of my fingers rubbing the stone. Many people do use a sharpening guide or do it free hand following a hollow grind. It should not be a problem for all of those.

Thanks for the info on wood supplier and I'll have a look at DW videos.

It's very interesting to see how people react when given new information. In my area (Québec), nobody told me that they have a problem sharpening at 28 or 30° but the same people are getting aggressive when I talked about the "capiron effect". Some senior fellows (like you or DW) don't know about it and it's for them, end of the story. On the other end, it seems that many people in France were using this "capiron effect" for as long as they remember (before Tindall and Elliot).

In the end, you may think that my study is useless, but I firmly disagree. Like you say "I'll stop now".

Salutations,
Normand

Originally Posted by Norleb

In the end, you may think that my study is useless, but I firmly disagree. Like you say "I'll stop now".

Salutations,
Normand

That may be to Steve. But, I think it's a starting point. It's good to revisit these things once you've got more time under your belt. And, of course you can make a good plane. I've seen the chest you made for your daughter, that is much more technically complicated. It's difficult to make a perfect plane, but pretty easy to make a very good one.

I'd love to hear more about people getting on you about the cap iron effect I hear it's not well appreciated in Canada

I took a little bit of grief early on. I still regularly get crap from Charlie Stanford about it (but it's just because I'm the source and we don't favor each other too much).

I did do some testing of irons a little more than a half dozen years ago, including stroke counting (what a pain), but as time goes on, I just want something that is part of a productive context for work. I pushed on the double iron before the K&K stuff came out because I was dissatisfied with dimensioning wood with a single iron, and I knew the only person I knew of actually doing a lot of dimensioning was always talking obscure things about it.

AT any rate, you may come to the same conclusion down the road, that 28 is ideal, and it may be the case that I could go a little longer on my coarse planes where surface condition isn't as important. I have, at times, kept the clearance higher on moving fillisters, but I just don't know if I can tell any difference when the whole cycle is considered.

I appreciate that you're hanging around despite the arguments, it's my opinion that if we can argue a little bit and still persist, we learn a lot more than we would if we were all just trying to agree with each other and be passive aggressive when we didn't.

Agree on the continental euros and others using cap irons, by the way. Once you start using one, then it's a lot easier to spot other people doing the same thing. The strange thing is that the area that was probably using it the most (continental europe) has the worst cap irons in their planes as far as modern ones go.

re: others using them before, the only other western world reference I could find after the fact as far as the cap iron goes (well, besides warren mickley) was two guys from scandinavia who said something about it on the UK forum, and when they mentioned it, they said "it works for me, I'm not going to argue about it". I guess they had been beat up before by new age adherents. The same people who want to show you an engineering booklet when you tell them that highly alloyed steel really doesn't get you much in terms of work produced, or that submicron sharpness really doesn't provide a practical benefit for nearly all of woodworking.

Normand,

I definitely don't think your study is useless. In any case, the value of the study to you is far more important than whatever think of it.

Good luck with your planemaking.

Steve; as for your study, it represented a well thought out historic review into the development of cap iron. kudos.

Stewie;

It seems that there are a few people that cannot or will not behave like decent forum members, even to the extent of taking their petty fights to other forums.

I will be closing this thread and deleting some of the more juvenile posts from those culprits, as well as from other forum members rightly objecting to this juvenile behaviour.

Any further behaviour like this will not be tolerated and WILL result in the removal, either temporary or permanent, forum privileges.

You are warned, no further warnings will be issued.