Thread: Insufficient bench planes ;)

Originally Posted by planemaker

What a load of bollocks. Try working with a blunt cutting edge on most of our Australian hardwoods. You would likely blow a head gasket through sheer exhaustion.

I just made a plane out of purpleheart. what I consider not that sharp, perhaps someone without any sharpening skill would still consider sharp.

That said, I planed the purpleheart with washita sharpness, and all but the final strokes were done with a very soft sorby plane iron - quite well, actually. I did thickness the wedge stock with a regular jack plane with a freres iron (also a very soft iron). I didn't sharpen the plane, and the last time it was sharpened was years ago.

Now, if I had turned around and tried to plane it the way you demonstrated just did, I'd still be taking strokes.

You need reasonable uniformity of the edge (to get a decent result), a cap iron set where it should be to hold the chip in place, and clearance. The cross section of the edge can't be too thick. However, I can plane the hard side of cocobolo (3100 hardness) or the side grain on purpleheart (anywhere between 1700 and 3900 - I'd bet mine is closer to the top than the bottom) and a plane bed that was hand sawn (which means partially end grain) without leaving the territory of O1 steel or moderate sharpness (washita or suita, depending on the day of the week).

Stewie, I get the sense that you make a bunch of planes, but you make little with them outside of more planes. I find it fascinating that you aren't more interested in what those planes can do other than taking recreational shavings. I'm not surprised that most of the rest of the forum folks stick to the old wive's tale of finding success with taking a million thin shavings and searching for ever more sharpness. But, rest assured, you haven't planed anything harder than I have. I don't do it on purpose except with planes, but when I make them, I don't have the equipment to do anything but saw and size all of those billets by hand.

Originally Posted by planemaker

The following shows the results after taking a 3x heavier depth of cut. (gauged by eye and feel as I don't use a vernier to measure shaving thickness). For final smoothing work, a much lighter depth of shaving would be considered normal practice.

Still smoother shavings. Like I said, you have no context in this discussion or you'd post something where the shavings had significant thickness. There's more to planing than smoothing. If you ever ventured to learn it, it would make you better at smoothing, too. Not narrow test pieces, but panels, etc.

DW; for the benefit of other forum users I wont be responding to your last 2 posts.

Stewie;

Well, I know it's only a short evening of playing, but I'm totally convinced of the efficacy of the close-set chip-breaker. Whilst I had set up the chip-breaker and had been using it closely-set to the edge of the blade, I had never tried a back-to-back with the chip-breaker set close vs backed-off. I freshly sharpened my #4 blade up to a mirror polish (up to 13000 grit sigma power and strop). I then tried the plane (with 50deg frog) with the chip-breaker backed-off, on some tear-out prone blackwood. Even on lighter cuts I had really bad tearout; I mean really bad. I then set the chip-breaker as close as possible with 20-20 vision (and as close as I had been setting it) and tried it on the same piece - zero tearout and a beautiful finish, except from some "matte" but still smooth finish, and no visible tear-out, in a particularly bad area with reversing and vertical grain (base of a branch) - an area where the 50deg blade without chip-breaker set close was literally ripping chunks out even with a relatively fine shaving. I even planed the piece against the grain with zero tear-out (and actually better finish on the reversing and vertical grain area).

Whilst I never really questioned (to my memory) the efficacy of the chip-breaker, I am now 100% convinced. So the only thing I'm still not 100% sure of, because I have no personal experience, is the difference between close-set chip-breaker and 45, 50, 55 etc degree frog combinations. Though I am now more inclined to trust Derek, Luke and others that 45 could indeed be the better choice (particularly in areas of vertical grain).

Cheers,

Dom

Dom, you may not be done yet.

Are you using the bog standard LN chipbreaker (and I assume that this is the modern, flat version, not the Stanley style)? If so, this comes with a 25 degree leading edge. This is too low to work to its potential. Add a 50 degree microbevel, and then you will be. Ths should also made the chipbreaker a little less fussy to set up.

I should qualify the angle I have given you. Roughly 50 degrees for the leading edge is good for a 45 degree frog. 45 degrees may be an equal fit for a 50 degree frog. Probably not a lot in it. David write the definitive article on the chipbreaker. This here. Have a read.

I have an article here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolRev...omPlanes4.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Apologies to all for getting a bit hot headed. I'm way deep into this (because of the planemaking thing combined with doing a lot of hand tool only work). And I'm really lazy, so I tend to differentiate effort a lot and try to examine why things were they way they were when these planes were being used for a lot of hand work.

There just are not very many people doing much hand work beyond knocking a high corner off of a board to speed up machine work, as well as rebate and shooting, etc.

Dom - I am glad that you picked this up and ran with it. The bit of fuzz is unavoidable, and there are certain woods where attempting to create a mirror in totality is difficult - there will always be a spot with a bit of texture, but because the grain is running right up to the board, or an area is significantly different hardness or density. You can burnish those spots with shavings or scrape them. In more pedestrian wood, they'll be no problem.

The beauty of the cap iron gimmick at first is that you realize you can plane without any significant tearout without spending anything, going to a platform that has a short edge life or relying on very short interval sharpening. Then, you'll start finding out that you can do less tearout with a thicker shaving, which will lead to more accurate work (the fewer strokes you make for a given volume, the more accurate your work will be - if you ever choose to work that way instead of machine planing - perhaps you already do).

Laziness will guide you to getting better and better with it, without really having too much thought. Less sharpening without sacrificing surface quality, more uniform surface as a matter of routine rather than needling away at small details, less time spent planing and more predictable results. All the way down to less fiddling with adjusting shaving thickness all the time (which turns out to be a nice thing - smoothing something that needs a bit of work yet is pretty much cap set where it works, a few relatively heavy smoother shavings - varying depending on the wood - and then back the depth off once and take a couple of finish passes).

there is one other strange phenomenon with the cap iron. if you've set a plane so that the cap is dead on for a 3 thousandth shaving, you may find the surface better at that than a third of that (certainly, the plane will do 10 times the volume of wood before resharpening). Little tiny nicks that plague a very thin shaving or cause said shaving to split (which is an indicator that there will be a line left on the work) don't have as much of an effect with the thicker type shaving. Which means you can keep working. The volume increase is two parts:
* you're taking thicker shavings, three times thicker with the nominal numbers mentioned here
* if the iron is of good quality and wears instead of letting go of any large bits and pieces at the edge, you will be able to keep a plane with a three thousandth shaving in the cut much further into the dullness cycle than you could at 1. No sacrifice of surface quality, either.

The only woods that I really don't enjoy dimensioning are the woods that are both hard and extremely interlocked. They're just resistant to anything, but they're also not even nice to smooth - let alone dimension. Even on them, the cap makes things tolerable, but jack work and hand sawing is punishing.

That article is a fantastic read, thanks Derek. Really cleared up some things for me.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Dom, you may not be done yet.

Are you using the bog standard LN chipbreaker (and I assume that this is the modern, flat version, not the Stanley style)? If so, this comes with a 25 degree leading edge. This is too low to work to its potential. Add a 50 degree microbevel, and then you will be. Ths should also made the chipbreaker a little less fussy to set up.

I should qualify the angle I have given you. Roughly 50 degrees for the leading edge is good for a 45 degree frog. 45 degrees may be an equal fit for a 50 degree frog. Probably not a lot in it. David write the definitive article on the chipbreaker. This here. Have a read.

I have an article here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolRev...omPlanes4.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi Derek,

Thanks for that, but I'd already honed (to 13000 grit) a 45 deg angle and undercut the chipbreaker just after I originally got the #4.

Nice article, thankyou. Again though, I'd already read it quite recently

Cheers, Dom

Dom; if you think that the recommendations are going to stop with a closely set cap iron your sadly mistaken. It wont belong before your being told that Veritas A2 is far superior to LN A2 iron, and that Veritas planes can be compared to driving a Ferrari vs LN which are no better than driving a 4 wheel drive. I also noted your smart ..... comment on the trust factor. Later on when you gain the confidence to start experimenting with cambered irons, let alone continually prevent those shavings getting caught under that closely set cap iron, post a comment on how you were able to overcome both those issues. I mightn't be the only one that's going to give you the cold shoulder on future advise.

Stewie;

Originally Posted by planemaker

Dom; if you think that the recommendations are going to stop with a closely set cap iron your sadly mistaken. It wont belong before your being told that Veritas A2 is far superior to LN A2 iron, and that Veritas planes can be compared to driving a Ferrari vs LN which are no better driving a 4 wheel drive. I also noted your smart ..... comment on the trust factor. Later on when you gain the confidence to start experimenting with cambered irons, let alone continually prevent those shavings getting caught under that closely set cap iron, post a comment on how you were able to overcome both those issues. I mightn't be the only one that's going to give you the cold shoulder on future advise.

Stewie;

Thanks Stewie,

Sorry if I've offended you or anyone else. I do value your advice and it was certainly not my intention to seem dismissive of your suggestions, though I can now see how it could be taken that way. Like I said, I think I need to try out all the various advice for myself to figure out what works best for me and how I work. Agreeing that the cap iron works doesn't mean I don't believe there is a place for steeper angle planes - I'm just not sure if 50deg is enough for difficult timber and no idea if 55 will be as I haven't tried.

I am really confused about why you think my comment was "a smart ... commemt" ?? I must be missing something: again no intention whatsoever to offend anyone.

Cheers, Dom

Originally Posted by DomAU

Thanks Stewie,

Sorry if I've offended you or anyone else. I do value your advice and it was certainly not my intention to seem dismissive of your suggestions, though I can now see how it could be taken that way. Like I said, I think I need to try out all the various advice for myself to figure out what works best for me and how I work. Agreeing that the cap iron works doesn't mean I don't believe there is a place for steeper angle planes - I'm just not sure if 50deg is enough for difficult timber and no idea if 55 will be as I haven't tried.

I am really confused about why you think my comment was "a smart ... commemt" ?? I must be missing something: again no intention whatsoever to offend anyone.

Cheers, Dom

No worries, Dom. That's a shot at Derek, and perhaps probably partially at me (though derek covers all of the bases in it - aside from the fact that I've never seen anyone claim that the LV A2 is better than LN's).

I think Stewie phrased his earlier post wrong, about not responding. What he appears to have intended was running back to a pillbox so he could take a few shots from there.

It's not really a big deal.

Originally Posted by DomAU

I am really confused about why you think my comment was "a smart ... commemt" ?? I must be missing something: again no intention whatsoever to offend anyone.

Don't worry, you haven't. He just hates Derek so much that he's willing to lash out at anyone who even is willing to take Derek's advice. All that ranting about Veritas vs Lie Nielsen is, again, just a sad shot at Derek about the fact that Derek has some kind of testing and reviewing deal with Lee Valley.

It's really a sad situation and I'm honestly equally as confused about why he's still allowed to post as you are about why he's digging into your for absolutely nothing.

Your posts are valued and (usually) lead to equally as valuable commentary.

Keep em coming.

Cheers,
Luke

Stewie, I am wearied by the constant sniping. Both of us. This has been going on for quite a while on a few forums, and I would like to believe that you, like I, would rather enjoy a cordial relationship. I posted a similar message on Saw Mill Creek. So, what do you say ... we start afresh, shake hands?

Regards from Perth

Derek