Thread: Opinionated = Good

In the refurb he begins with a quite flat sole, slightly concave and rubs it a few times and hey presto it is flat because the lines have gone. Lapping might be OK for a plane in that state, but I defy him to rectify the convex monsters that I've come across. I've tested the effects of tension on frog and lever cap on quite a few planes using spotting on my surface plate and the the frog screw tension has a large impact on sole distortion, the lever cap tension - nil. By all means leave the blade assembly in and tensioned while you make a mess of the plane by lapping it but it won't make the difference he suggests. Just sayin' (as the young people these days say) (Is that opinionated enough?)

Originally Posted by pmcgee

The "Poor-man's router" ...

But a bloody good idea.

How's this for simple? ...

Marking gauge for depth - box hinges ...

ps hinge1.jpg ps hinge1a.jpg

Originally Posted by pmcgee

How's this for simple? ...

Marking gauge for depth - box hinges ...

Paul, that's a golden oldie, and useful if you are repeatedly setting lots of hinges of the same thickness, but I think it's a lot quicker & easier to set an ordinary marking gauge, don't you?

However, you can apply the same principle to making a beading tool, which is very handy for making small beads if you don't wish to use a router, or you want to run a bead that is smaller than available bits. You file a rounded edge under the screw head, & hold it so the sharp edges of the slot contact the workpiece -see pic - the screw is wound out a bit so you can see how it's filed. It actually works very well, particularly for very small beads, and as you can see, it doesn't involve a lot of time or skill to manufacture.....

Cheers,

There are a lot of things that people from the US & the UK espouse.

But when you start dealing with HARD woods, its a bit different.
The poms are always banging on about "Oak" and the yanks bang on about "Cherry", and talk as if they are hard and heavy .......sorry chaps chew on some of the Australian or African timbers.

How soft the northern hemisphere timbers are is indicated by how soft the biggest selling US nd UK chisels are......take ya record and marpels chissels and use them beside the Australian Titan chissels that where developed to deal with the Australian woods.

Yeh of course you can bang mortices into pine and all sorts of other relativly soft woods with a bevel edged chissel.....In fact try and buy anything else BUT, a bevel edged chisel these days and you will have to know your suppliers........but when ya set to work on some wood that will actually give some resistance you need that Firmer chissel or that pig sticker mortice chisel.



As for the "fettling" of planes.

I've done a few, I probably not as fussy as MicD, but I can get em to go pretty damn well......most of the second hand planes I have worked on have been pretty flat already and did not require much work.
Like the plane in the video

But the #7 I got from new, took me hours of work and meter upon meter of 60 gritt paper before it was anything like flat....it was concave like a banana.........so saying that 120 gritt is as coarse as you need to go is a bit...um..optimistic.

I think his working on a pissy little short piece of paper, may be fine for small planes that are almost flat already....but if ya talking about a longer plane or you have work to do..as long as you can is better.
I clamp arround a meter of paper to the bed of my table saw and that is a good length to work with.

As for bending the plane bu holding it by the handles and pushing hard......don't make me laugh.

like every thing, you have to take it with a grain of salt.

As for the poor man's router........that is ozito and it will cost you less than a good chisel.

cheers

Fair points ... and I love my old english mortice chisels ... but it's good to have as many experienced voices out there as possible I'd say.

Apprentices these days aren't learning in an all/mostly hand-tool environment for years, so let's hear as much as possible from those who did while they are still around.

Also - there's not too many people out there saying how little equipment you might need to get woodworking.
(although ... "and buy my dvds")

Cheers,
Paul

I'm no expert, but the plane-sole-flattening thing seems silly to me.

As for the mortise chisels, I don't think that "proper" mortise chisels were ever really used in Australia - just the heavy-duty registered firmers. Everybody seemed fine with that, despite the fact that we have the sort of hard woods that would make most British cabinet makers cry. I don't recall seeing a pig-sticker mortising chisel in the Titan catalogues, and they were the biggest producer of chisels here.

Honestly, I cannot imagine a heavy-duty Titan with a high angle bevel failing from mortising, even in hardwood. Like with pig-stickers, the handle will go long before the steel does. And the only other advantage that mortise chisels offer is that the sides are relieved - achieving a sort of trapezoidal shape - that avoids binding in the mortise. I've never really found binding to be a problem, but that does sound handy to me. I suppose one other possible advantage of mortise chisels is that they're thick enough to lever out waste without bending the edge, but I still can't see a registered firmer having any issues here.

He mentions that he finds mortise chisels too heavy. I don't understand why. I've you're using a big hammer (like a deadblow hammer) the weight of the chisel doesn't strike me as being at all important. If anything, I guess that a heavier chisel would tend to transfer force more efficiently, being also thicker and less likely to flex very slightly.

Still, has anyone ever had the steel of a chisel fail while mortising, rather than the handle?

The big danger in using lighter chisels is that they can break when levering out waste.
A few opinionated points:
Recent record/marples/irwin are crap and can't be considered with the older marples chisels.
The hardness of marples and titan was similar: titan 59-61, marples 60-62. (going on their advertising)
Furniture and other wooden items was made from Australian timbers well before Titan came out in the early 1940s.
Australian hardwoods were and are imported into the UK. The UK was such a large market that timber came from all over the world, hardwoods as well as softwoods. Also ships' carpenters would use what they could find - no point in looking for a timber yard if you're on a two year voyage. In legend and perhaps fact, the first use of mahogany by the british was as a rudder by Francis Drake. Well by his ship's carpenter anyway.
I did say opinionated didn't I?
Cheers,
Jim

Originally Posted by snafuspyramid

.........just the heavy-duty registered firmers. Everybody seemed fine with that, despite the fact that we have the sort of hard woods that would make most British cabinet makers cry. I don't recall seeing a pig-sticker mortising chisel in the Titan catalogues, and they were the biggest producer of chisels here.

Eddie, I think you have bundled a bunch of issues here, so maybe we can tease it out a bit. For starters, the biggest users of firmer chisels of any breed back then would have been carpenters, and the hardwoods they worked with were semi-green- there weren't no kiln drying of framing timbers back then. So although the woods they used are now rock-hard, it was MUCH easier to chisel out the mortises for studs when the houses were built. Try working semi-green Ironbark and you'll be amazed how much easier it is to saw & chisel (but it'll bust your gut carrying it around! )

For cabinetmaking, there was a wide choice of far less recalcitrant woods to work with - almost nobody used the sorts of woods people are happily slugging into nowadays. Carbide-tipped saw teeth & router bits have made it possible to contemplate using woods that our forefathers would have avoided like the plague!

Pigsticker mortise chisels weren't so common, though there is no doubt they were around, because a steady trickle shows up. But they weren't all that common anywhere, I think, as I only came acoss them occasionally in North America - just like now,some people loved 'em & some hated them, I reckon. I don't get on with them, and am much hapier with the 'standard' style of mortise chisel, and I doubt I'm unique.

Originally Posted by snafuspyramid

........ the weight of the chisel doesn't strike me as being at all important. If anything, I guess that a heavier chisel would tend to transfer force more efficiently, being also thicker and less likely to flex very slightly.

True, but if you want to consider the physics, a lighter chisel accelarates more when the same force is applied, so it's a trade-off.

Originally Posted by snafuspyramid

........ Still, has anyone ever had the steel of a chisel fail while mortising, rather than the handle?

Depends what you mean by 'fail' - I've certainly damaged a few chisels in my time, I'm forced to admit. One was a rather under-engineered 1/8" example of a well-known brand that will remain un-named (it had a blue plastic handle ) which turned into a banana with very little provocation on my part. The other chisels I wrecked were of doubtful pedigree, and I was younger and more impatient, back then.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

One was a rather under-engineered 1/8" example of a well-known brand that will remain un-named (it had a blue plastic handle ) which turned into a banana with very little provocation on my part. The other chisels I wrecked were of doubtful pedigree, and I was younger and more impatient, back then.....

Cheers,

Shows you how important colour is Ian

Cheers,
Jim

I've followed Peter Sellers' blog for some time, even corresponded with him. I have only admiration for his work and my comments are not criticism but observations.

Seller's seems to be on a quest to de-focus tools and re-focus technique. His de-mystifying sharpening is one example (e.g. rounded bevels). The aim is to simplify woodwork and get more people into woodworking. Of course it doesn't hurt if you sign up to do one of his woodworking courses. The fact is that he is a tool head as much as any. While he talks up basic Stanley #4s, he also happily uses Norris infills and owns a large number of Veritas planes and chisels. He has blogged about his tool chest and also his visit to the Lee Valley factory.

The chisels he used/preferred in the video are not "bevel edge". They are firmer chisels. I have no doubt that he would have experienced significant difficulty with bevel edged chisels that had narrow lands. These would have twisted a great deal in the mortice. Indeed, even the firmers he used twisted (he commented on that), and it is a testimony to his skill that he was able to control them.

Now the important point about all this is actually not the BE chisels, but the technique with which he used them: how he used the bevel, and how he chopped deeply without needing to lever out the waste (which was only done when the forces required were minimal).

This was just one example of excellent technique. Unfortunately, since he frequently draws attention to tools, readers only see the tools and not the technique.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Talk about technique ... !

I blame him (Paul Sellers) in part ... and Frank Krausz ... for my delusion that practising dovetails shouldn't be ... you know ... all that hard really ...

I've had two goes at it so far - the second time just making finger joints to simplify it - and I think there is about 73 things going on here - invisible to the uneducated eye (and I have two of them!)

Paul



ditto for: Paul Sellers makes a dovetail box (part 1 of 4) - the dovetails - YouTube

How chisels are discribed and the variability in their construction can muddy the waters considerably.

I've pretty fair collection of chisels..I learned to trade on Ebay speculating in chisels.

Most of the chisles we can buy new these days are bevel edged, but they are also thick edged and a sort of two bob each way chisel being both bevel edged and firmer.....the fact that the handles are harder than the blades suits the practice striking of chisels with claw hammers so they are hardly a fine tool item.

Compare those to the bevel edged Spear and Jacksons my father scrounged in the fifties and there is a huge difference.....these almost come to a point at the edged and are thinner in the blade....great steel but at least one of those is bent.

If we get onto the Titans, I've a far few of those around in various condition......and there is some variance...some have tapered tangs others have heavy paralell tangs and there is some variance in the weight of the blades......get up into the bigger sizes and heavier examples they are almost as thick as pig stickers, most have paralell blades, but again some of the heavier examples have tapered blades.....maybe not as tapered as the pig stickers, but tapered all the same....maybe they made a heavy version.

Its occured to me that the pig sticker may be a marketing aboration.

Like so many products these days, the pig sticker design may not be founded in good technique or sound egineering, but to appeal to a certain desire of certain people in the market.

Bodger Bob (ficticious..we don't have a Bodger Bob do we?), is a big boy, big on stength, but not so big on technique and always in a hurry. Bob's got a habit of bending and breaking chisels.
"Here ya go bob, we call it a pig sticker, give this a go"

cheers

Soundman, you learn something new every day. I never knew that S&J made chisels until you mentioned it.
Cheers,
Jim