Shapton pro series or ohishi waterstones?

[D.W.]

What I'm saying is that if you don't set up the planes correctly (both the premium and non-premium) the plane with the most weight in it is going to seem more resistant to chatter. that would be the LN version.

If you set them both up correctly, you literally can't push a stanley plane with an iron anywhere near straight across hard enough to do anything else than stop in your tracks - it will not chatter - you physically will go the other direction as the resistance to pushing a heavy chip is more than you can manage.

If you have a grossly cambered iron, you can generate a little bit of chatter (but you'll get it with both planes) and with a scrub set plane, chatter isn't really a problem. Anything else, with shaving thickness full width and a hundredth or so or less (any more than that on a wide iron is too much to push in a hardwood), and the plane absolutely will not chatter.

So, I believe LN came to the conclusion that their planes chatter less than stanley because they didn't know how to set up the stanley. Both should chatter zero.

[section1]

Ok that makes sense, your views are very similar to Paul Sellers.

[derekcohen]

So, I believe LN came to the conclusion that their planes chatter less than stanley because they didn't know how to set up the stanley. Both should chatter zero.

David, while I agree with you in spirit, the flaw in your argument is that the "correct method" for settting up a Stanley is with the chipbreaker up close. The fact is that (probably) most current users have never done this, and future users may find the learning curve too difficult and so never try.

Under those conditions, with the appropriate wood, we see a thick blade outperforming a thin blade - Rob Cosman demonstrates this all the time.

This is a major reason why the chipbreaker gained the position of supporting the (thin) blades against chatter and was referred to as a cap iron.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[D.W.]

David, while I agree with you in spirit, the flaw in your argument is that the "correct method" for settting up a Stanley is with the chipbreaker up close. The fact is that (probably) most current users have never done this, and future users may find the learning curve too difficult and so never try.

Under those conditions, with the appropriate wood, we see a thick blade outperforming a thin blade - Rob Cosman demonstrates this all the time.

This is a major reason why the chipbreaker gained the position of supporting the (thin) blades against chatter and was referred to as a cap iron.

Regards from Perth

Derek

well, it's not hard to use it correctly, it's just not well publicized. The first thing that fell casualty when I learned to set the planes correctly was an infill that I have with a 1/4th inch thick iron. The reason for that being that it's not as convenient to grind (I didn't have a CBN wheel).

If the information is out there for someone to set a plane properly but they don't, anyway, i'm not inclined to agree that something that is overall less convenient if used properly is a better thing. Same as the LN cap, it's not as good of a design unless you use it incorrectly.

[planemaker]

Interestingly. Leonard Bailey patented the cap iron design back in 1858, he described it as a device for adjusting plane irons. The term chipbreaker was never used.

http://www.datamp.org/patents/search...n.php?id=11766

I did come across this article which supports the case that the cap iron does serve a role in controlling reverse grain tear-out.

http://thewoodworkersjournal.com/hand-planes/

Stewie;

[derekcohen]

Hi Stewie

This was the source of much debate a few years ago. Some argue that Bailey did not originally intend the cap iron to do more than support a thin blade, which was designed for ease of sharpening. Some argue that he "intended" the cap iron to be break/bend chips/shavings all along. I think that it is difficult to argue with the information in a patent, which states the former and not the latter. Somewhere along the line it became apparent that the "double iron" could aid in preventing tearout. There is evidence that it was already in use in woodies many years before Bailey's patent (which is why he may not have mentioned it). I am sure that David may be interested to throw more light on this. (We discussed the research at length a few years ago). In any event, some continue using the term "cap iron". I prefer "chip breaker" because there is an observable effect is on the chip/shaving (straightening it).

Regards from Perth

Derek

[D.W.]

I'm not sure what bailey intended, either. I don't know what he was going for when he put the patent together and what he thought was essential for the patent and what wasn't.

The cap iron in a bailey plane does both, though, and I don't think it's by chance that it comes stock in what is the most ideal form to break chips of any plane that I've seen. It needs only a very quick hone, no geometry correction or anything, etc.

By the time Bailey's patent came around, it appears that using the cap iron to break chips was common knowledge, if by nothing else, by the fact that double irons had pretty much made any quality single iron planes an endangered species. At least here and in England.

[D.W.]

Did we ever find out if people like ohishi stones better than shaptons? It is one of the very few instances where I haven't tried both.

[planemaker]

Derek and David

Early documentation by Stanley Rule and Level Co from 1872 may provide some answers.

http://oldtoolheaven.com/reprints/re...ml#stanley1872

[D.W.]

Is that just a listing of reprints? it looks like a lot of those things are price lists from given years, and they may be a bit thin on detail.

I guess what I was saying specifically is that it appears among the cabinetmaker types, the fact that the second iron could mitigate tearout was common knowledge. It had already been put in print several times in what was otherwise a trade that didn't leave a whole lot of print evidence (at a local level, etc, certainly the roubos and nicholson types made texts - admittedly I've never read any of them). If that is the case, it would be like describing rip saw teeth in a saw patent, something not likely to happen. That part is not patentable or necessarily notable in the patent itself even if it's common knowledge.

Stanley may have been more concerned with specifying that the iron was held stable by the cap iron when set properly because the iron itself is so thin, and not many decades before (well, maybe 6) there were probably very vintage single iron planes with thin irons circulating that would have chattered - that much is the case, even when those planes are well bedded, there will be chatter in a heavy cut. Not so with the stanley, even though the irons are thinner yet, but it's not the thickness of the cap iron, obviously, it's the spring combined with the pressure of the lever cap focusing pressure right at the edge of probably the thinnest iron anyone had seen.

A fantastically marvelous idea if nobody had made anything similar before. The double iron in a wooden plane does the same thing, but the cap iron has to be thicker because the influencing fingers from the wedge are coming from further away than some of the contact points.

That is the bit that would've been worth mention in a patent, the rest (chipbreaking, etc) has been done before.

The big kicker in all of this is that if you set the cap iron so far away so as to get it "out of the way" completely and without doubt, the plane is less stable. Some due probably to an interrupted cut, and some because the cap iron is close enough. if you set the cap iron properly on anything but the most rank cambered plane, the plane will not chatter at all - the user will come to a standstill first.

[planemaker]

When discussing Leonard Bailey's decision to include a thinner plane iron within his design of the double iron, their are some notable facts that need to be considered.

A precedence on the use of double irons within wooden bench planes can be traced back to around the 1700s. Well before Baileys patent release in 1858.

The blade thickness on these double irons used on wooden bench planes were much thicker than that chosen by Bailey.

Wooden bodied planes have a greater capacity to absorb vibration compared to steel bodied planes.

All the above raising some obvious questions as to why Bailey chose to ignore the historical precedence, and at least matched the thickness of blade used on woodies, compounded by the fact that he was also facing the greater challenge of inherent vibration from his choice of using a steel bodied plane.

Was Bailey a gifted intellectual. I have no doubts he was. Was his decision to use a much thinner blade the correct one. Possibly not.

Stewie;

[D.W.]

It's hard to question bailey's decision here in the US because he pretty much wiped out his competition (or stanley did with his design), and that competition that did offer a thicker blade never had any traction (notably ohio tool and some of their relabeled hardware store offerings).

And many of the users would have been going from a thick blade to a thin one and found that a good idea, anyway.

We have a belt and suspenders hobbyist market now, they need assurance before they do anything. I was part of it for a long time, too, and many never get away from that. 10 years ago i could've been convinced that the thin iron was a matter of thrift or corner cutting, but after using them almost exclusively for several years now, and experiencing no difference in the cut, but much faster honing and grinding, I wouldn't trade them for a thick one.

I don't like the super thick irons that sometimes appear in wood planes, either. Most are in the realm of 1/8th to a thin 3/16th at the business end, but every once in a while a vintage one can be found that is almost a quarter of an inch thick. I had one in a long jointer by a planemaker named Lamb, and I can't remember the maker of the iron, but it was a full 16th thicker than any other iron I have, and it was a pain in the butt to reshape it because of that. I had it only enough only to need one regrind after that, but even that was a pain. I'd imagine that a shop using hand tools and having only a couple of stones would've really not found favor in it at all.

[planemaker]

When discussing the merits of Stanley bench planes its rightful to keep in mind that early craftsman managed quite well before Stanley tools arrived in force. To deal with all types of wood grain they had at their disposal single and double irons; wooden hand planes at low pitch, common pitch, york pitch, middle pitch, half pitch; and toothing planes, and card scrapers.

[D.W.]

They did those things, but those planes did them less well than a single common pitch plane.

As in, the edge lasted less long in the plane, the tearout protection was less, the ability to take a heavy cut was less, and the planes themselves stayed in the cut less well as the required force to push the plane down as the edge wore was greater.

There's a need for a thicker iron to avoid chatter (which is never really totally avoided in a single iron plane), which leads to longer honing times, and less of an ability to avoid tearout without maintaining a significant level of sharpness (and even that is no remedy sometimes) and mouth size (which from making infills, true tearout avoidance in its entirety requires a tiny mouth).

At the risk of sounding like warren, a double iron plane is just markedly superior once the user knows how to use it. And it requires only a single plane, that while maybe costing 1 1/2 times as much originally as a single iron plane, it replaced more than 1 1/2 planes.

AS the natural progression has steered me (and I do a lot of non smoother work with planes, I realize many don't) toward double iron (after being a single iron fanatic), I would assume so it did historically. the ability to do more and faster work is undeniable, and at the same or better level of surface quality. It's an economic issue even for someone already competent with single iron planes.

As far as the overall level of lack of tearout goes, I think it's really hard to guess what the average finish was on most middle of the road furniture. George has described several places in williamsburg where the original woodwork has terrible surface quality, probably because the economics of the job just didn't mind. That could be avoided with a double iron, but the work is probably too old to have been done by one.

[D.W.]

This stuff matters more when you're dimensioning wood by hand. I doubt it matters much when anyone is smoothing wood.

And when did that stop being common? (to dimension or even finish wood with planes?) I don't know.

In the early 1900s in the US, it became common to see mail order catalogs of millwork, windows and doors, all the way down to all of the trim parts in a house. My mother gave me a catalog from the 1920s not long ago that was from a millwork company in indiana, and I can't remember the name of it (I think I may have eventually tossed it), but even by the standards of the day, the prices were cheap. A guy with a daily labor cost of $5 couldn't have competed making trim on site.

I'm sure at the time the lumber yards supporting local carpenters carried some of that stuff, too. I doubt there was much planing going on.

Most of the furniture by then was also made in factories, even if they weren't large factories. One of my washita stones was grooved from carving tools, and it had a note in it that it had been the sole sharpening stone that a professional carver used in a factory in indiana - in 1908. A trade carver, so much for the notion that you can't carve without a very specific setup of various fine signature stones and a bunch of compounds.

What I'm saying is that what we're discussing probably didn't even have that much practical application except for very small shops by the mid or late 1800s. I'm not a huge reader of (or much at all) historical stuff, though, I only care what the tools do at the bench.

the garish dimensioning times given by CW's cabinet shop of over an hour a board foot just don't match up with what I see out of double iron tools. They are hamstrung using single iron only, not because the people using the tools have made that decisions, the curators forbid them from using double iron tools. the footage of them that I've seen doing dimensioning and finishing work looks like fiddling, though they do work at the highest level. Maybe dimensioning time isn't that important to them because most of their work is subsidized, I don't know, but it would drive me batty to spec a 50 board foot project to have 75 hours of time to dimension and finish plane the wood.