Thread: Scraping a No 5 0n youtube

Originally Posted by mic-d

Rob, I don't know what the flatness measure is, maybe a typo. My granite plate from Mc Jing was flat to 1.1uM. It is only a 400mm x 300mm plate so if your plate was 3.253uM/m that would be about right and more than enough for scraping. If you're thinking about doing it I can help with tool recommendations.

I'm curious about it. That video has pricked my interest. Id just love to know what the planes I've been using for years are at. Specially the #7 and #8 . And to be able to see if I can feel or see a difference as well with one made dead flat. Plus with making a plane or two it'd be good. Paying almost 1G to have a play around though. And the big H&F Granite one weighs 100KG .
I could make my own Tungsten scrapers I think . I have a box of old TC cutters that I braze onto steel when I need it. I made good band saw blade guides like that.

There is just the surface plate , the scraper the roller and the blue needed for a plane sole?
That quality straight edge he uses, the parallel blocks and dial indicator would be good but are more for building and setting out stuff as well aren't they?
Any thing else needed?

Rob

You can go old-school and make a scraper from a blunt file. Grind all the teeth off, linish a gradual taper on the last two inches and put a gentle camber on the end. Flatten the tapered part on a series of stones until it is fully flat and polished; then do the same with the end by holding the scraper vertically and rubbing the camber on the stone in a pendulum motion. The tapered end is to allow the scraper to be held at a low angle to the work whilst the actual business end is almost parallel to it.

I use Stuarts Micrometer Blue, although Permatex Prussian Blue may be cheaper or more easily obtainable. You only use the thinnest smear so it lasts for years unless you allow to dry out.

For a surface plate you can use a granite benchtop offcut; ok it won’t be guaranteed to be flat to within the dimple on a pimple on a flea’s left knee but you’d be surprised at how damned close it will be. And as most granite places have piles of offcuts that they have to pay to dispose of it’ll be cheap; if not free. Pick a thick piece, hold it at an angle and look at a reflection; it’ll be distortion free. Pick two and get them scrupulously clean, cover one with blue and rub them together; that’ll tell you how flat they are.

Originally Posted by auscab

I'm curious about it. That video has pricked my interest. Id just love to know what the planes I've been using for years are at. Specially the #7 and #8 . And to be able to see if I can feel or see a difference as well with one made dead flat. Plus with making a plane or two it'd be good. Paying almost 1G to have a play around though. And the big H&F Granite one weighs 100KG .
I could make my own Tungsten scrapers I think . I have a box of old TC cutters that I braze onto steel when I need it. I made good band saw blade guides like that.

There is just the surface plate , the scraper the roller and the blue needed for a plane sole?
That quality straight edge he uses, the parallel blocks and dial indicator would be good but are more for building and setting out stuff as well aren't they?
Any thing else needed?

Rob

Here is my simple kit. I have a dial indicator too but I never use it for this, I just assume that once my spotting covers a good area of the sole to the edges that it is flat. I also have a Paul Williams straight edge which is useful in revealing how many hours I have ahead of me before I begin. If the plane is quite bad I will use a Bahco 8" square file (bastard or second cut) to bring down high sections quickly. You use the area of the file right where it tapers, in this way you can spot file areas. Bank on one file per plane in my experience. Some castings, particularly 60's on, English ones seem to be case hardened, or at least have some very hard areas in the casting which is brutal on files. Actually, this is another advantage of scraping over lapping that I had forgotten. The variable wear you can get with different hardness within the casting when lapping will tend to shape the sole. A member on here GregoryQ, offered me a lot of advice when I started and I recall he (I think!) would apply the selective use of an angle grinder to really bad soles. I never worked up the courage for that but I would reckon you'd want a light hand and some time for the casting to reach thermal equilibrium before re-spotting.
Before my surface plate arrived I tried what I thought was some very flat float glass for spotting. It was a disaster and an exercise in futility. I had also recently installed a granite kitchen benchtop and had a look at the sink off cut, as Chief mentions, but my reflection was optically very wobbly so I didn't even try that.

The scraper I have is a Sandvik 620-20 and the spare inserts are 620-2520. You need a method of honing the insert and I chose a lapidary cast iron lap on which I use #3000 and then #50000 diamond powder, which gives a mirror finish to the edge. I hone it in a pendulum motion on the drill press to give two useable edges with a slightly obtuse angle (92-95º) from memory, as seen in the photo. I hold the plane in an engineers vice lined with leather. You want it tight enough that it won't fall out! A little pressure doesn't matter here, you're using the blue as a guide to what to remove, it doesn't matter if there might be a little bit of distortion, but you want the pressure up close to the sole not down on the cheeks so keep the plane deep in the vice. You'll work it out! You also need a good rubber brayer and blue. All this talk is making me excited to rebirth another plane, Scraping is very Zen.

IMG_0371.jpgIMG_0372.jpgIMG_0373.jpgIMG_0374.jpg

This thread is very bad, I’ve practically read the whole thread.
An then I looked at my collection of planes today, an I swear they looked nervous.

Immm an worst part is I have some Prussian Blue a small surface plate an a box of old files.

I could just plong the old Headphones on cranks up some Ozzy an have my Zen moment.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by mic-d

Hi,
Let me see if I can convince you otherwise. There is really no link between wood movement and what tolerance of sole flatness you're willing to accept. Yes wood moves. Most people who would go to the trouble of scraping a plane sole are not naive to the fact. One could also argue by your logic ( and it is a common misapprehension) the machines that are used to manufacture something metal, say an internal combustion engine that undergoes thermal expansion don't need particularly high tolerances because some of those parts are going to move by 0.5mm day in day out.

Let's separate out wood movement. You make something to a particular tolerance on the particular day you assemble it (so it goes together) and you use your knowledge of wood movement to design it in a way that it can be accommodated without blowing the structure apart. Leave it at that.

Now what does a plane sole do? Apart from supporting the wood right in front of the cut, the main role is to register the blade to a desired depth within the wood. When a plane sole is flat, the toe registers the blade to a depth and as the cut proceeds and the heel comes into contact, it keeps the registration of the blade exactly the same. The shaving removed is a consistent thickness once the marks have been removed.
If any length plane's sole is concave it makes the plane useless. The blade is lifted off the wood as the cut proceeds so a smoother can't work, and the jointer will plane the ends and in towards the centre as the ends are cut down and eventually you will have planed a convex curve which is useless for a matched glue joint.

A smoother's sole can be a little bit convex and still work. There is an argument that it's an advantage to have a bit of convexity on a smoother since it allows localised areas to be worked on a little more specifically than a flat smoother which will want to travel on higher ground further afield.

The role of a jointer is to plane edges straight so that matched glue joints can, well... match; so there is no/minimal gaps or a small gap towards the middle for a sprung joint. Now a plane, any plane, that has a flat sole will still plane a concave curve that is entirely due to the blade projection. The more the blade projection the tighter the curve and the worse the concavity will be. *So as a side note, the sharper the blade the thinner the shaving and the smaller the blade projection can be, which is a good thing*. Years ago I did all the circle maths to determine what happens with blade projection and convex soles. It's boring and arcane so let me sum up:
For a #7 jointer with a flat sole and a blade projection of 0.05mm the worst the plane can do is create a curve on the edge of 2.4m boards so that the matched joint has a gap of 2mm. Acceptable. If the blade projection was 0.1mm the gap could be no more than 4mm, a 0.2mm projection - 8mm - you get the idea. Now if the sole is convex, it simply resolves into an effective increase in the blade projection. So if the #7 has a 0.05mm blade extension but is convex by just 0.15mm then the matched joints you planed would have a gap of 8mm without you doing some partial passes leaving out the middle. People do this, it's part of the art of planing apparently, but it is fudgy and fussy. I myself prefer to plane in full passes with a sharp plane and flat sole and accept the 2mm gap with a #7. By the way, if you had a flat #4 with a sharp blade and a blade extension of 0.1mm and jointed the two boards the gap in the matched joint would be 24mm! Which is why you want to joint with the longest plane you have if doing it entirely by hand work. *However if you're just taking machine marks off after using a jointer, even a #4 with a flat sole and a small blade projection is acceptable for one or two passes.

Now scraping does not really aim to bring all the sole to a geometric plane, just the toe, around the mouth and at the heel. Have a look at my first photo and you will see it is not all scraped level. Indeed scraping is the only way you can selectively relieve inconsequential areas of the sole if you think it is an advantage, as some do. The texture of the scraped surface is also more slippery than a lapped sole. And lapping can so easily lead to convex soles as many have discovered.
Sorry for the long post!

I'll just leave it with this thought, you can get into the minutia of all that isn't important... But to put it simply: The best furniture made was for the most part made in the 17 and 1800s... I can guarantee none of it was made with planes/tools that were remotely to such spec. The planes themselves moved with the seasons!! It simply isn't nearly as important. But to explain why would take tens of thousands of words. Having a kick a55 blade and a solid understanding of your tools and of the wood's characteristics, strengths and weaknesses is far more important than a perfectly flat sole. I.e. You could plane a couple boards today 100% flat and square - not even a photon will pass between them. Come back tomorrow or next week when the clouds have rolled in, the temp has risen, humidity skyrocketed and the joint ain't so tight anymore. Wood never stops moving.

But as per usual YMMV.

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

I'll just leave it with this thought, you can get into the minutia of all that isn't important... But to put it simply: The best furniture made was for the most part made in the 17 and 1800s... I can guarantee none of it was made with planes/tools that were remotely to such spec. The planes themselves moved with the seasons!! It simply isn't nearly as important. But to explain why would take tens of thousands of words. Having a kick a55 blade and a solid understanding of your tools and of the wood's characteristics, strengths and weaknesses is far more important than a perfectly flat sole. I.e. You could plane a couple boards today 100% flat and square - not even a photon will pass between them. Come back tomorrow or next week when the clouds have rolled in, the temp has risen, humidity skyrocketed and the joint ain't so tight anymore. Wood never stops moving.

But as per usual YMMV.

Yeah that's true.
But.
We can now afford to play with all the types of tools from the past and get a feeling for the way they work. We can get an understanding of what it was like to make a living from a moment in time is the way I like to view it. And now by tuning a sole super flat I could compare something that cant be bought. Why not try it I say. Not that Ive convinced myself yet to go down that path because of $ and time and getting all the gear. Id love it if there were a service where you could send a plane off and have it come back with a perfect sole for a couple of hundred $. I'd definitely send my #7 Bedrock jointer off to be done. I joint long boards every month and go from buzzer to bench. I get the joints as good as any experienced cabinet maker does. And I find myself talking to that bl##dy plane sometimes wondering if its Me or It. Of course its Me, but could it be that sole as well? There's a way to find out.

What is YMMV ?



I just found out I couldn't use the acronym for "What The Fruit" at the end there.

Originally Posted by auscab

What is YMMV ?

Your Mileage May Vary

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

I'll just leave it with this thought, you can get into the minutia of all that isn't important... But to put it simply: The best furniture made was for the most part made in the 17 and 1800s... I can guarantee none of it was made with planes/tools that were remotely to such spec. The planes themselves moved with the seasons!! It simply isn't nearly as important. But to explain why would take tens of thousands of words. Having a kick a55 blade and a solid understanding of your tools and of the wood's characteristics, strengths and weaknesses is far more important than a perfectly flat sole. I.e. You could plane a couple boards today 100% flat and square - not even a photon will pass between them. Come back tomorrow or next week when the clouds have rolled in, the temp has risen, humidity skyrocketed and the joint ain't so tight anymore. Wood never stops moving.

But as per usual YMMV.

Parts of this are true - the planes can move seasonally, though most of them don't move inappropriately if wood is chosen and sawn properly.

Truing soles and getting rub joints with no gap end to end was pretty common to eliminate the need for slowing down. What we see in a coffin smoother that's 100 years neglected doesn't really bear much resemblance to the condition the truing and smoothing tools would've been kept in day to day.

not so much effort would be needed to take several thousandths of error out of a wooden jointer sole, but if it was concavity, several thousandths would not have been tolerated because a rub joint wouldn't have been possible. Striking joints (or shooting) on long edges on a striking board was more popular then -it's little discussed now. The old references don't talk much about shooting ends, and the miter planes are set up at 60 degrees (based on descriptions of how to use them) rather than low angles - to limit tearout. though I doubt the average cabinetmaker had an iron miter plane - they were a high angle tool for nasty grain and a high angle tool for striking a clean edge.

It would not have needed explaining back then, in terms of what flat is. Function and result would've been the driver. Long plane (flat) for long joints on a striking board is also mentioned.

the method of working is a lot different - mack headley talks about the scarcity of clamping and workholding in the 18th century when he's demonstrating cutting joints without securing much of anything in a good video that williamsburg had made. Accurate work off of the tools (cutting tenons briskly right at the line and expecting a fit off of the saw more or less and then adjusting what doesn't fit) and then fitting as needed saves time.

I also don't think there was much separation at that time between being an "expert on the tools" and working with them. I think the workers understood the tool function a whole lot better because it wasn't an ancillary step added on after most of the work volume was done.

I just re-browsed nicholson. It's not something I read earlier on but when switching to all hand tools, i became really intolerant of planes with any convexity and any that have too much concavity (mouth projecting from the sole plane mean more than toe and heel).

but nicholson's discussion on joint is interesting - as is the lack of mention of clamps. I think precision was assumed in the edges - well, it is mentioned, that the joint should basically be rub joint quality from end to end with a very thin layer of glue only (obviously, if no clamps, you don't want to have to squeeze out the glue) with the joint rubbed until the hide glue begins to tack and then left in place.

I think as a hand tooler, you get to the point that you don't care much for sprung joints, and certainly have no tolerance for edges where the edges fall off and there are gaps at ends. to get an edge that fits with rub pressure without any gaps or really even visible glue thickness doesn't take any longer after a point - it's just a product of routine planing.

It's humorous - hide glue context - that on long joints, the book says the wood should be left somewhere to warm if it is going to be glued in long successive joints (or perhaps in a panel with several boards), and if needed, an additional one or two men should be had, in the longest joints allowing the maker to focus on the center while rubbing to sticky and then allowing to set - while the two assisting craftsmen would do the fitting at the ends so the whole joint is well fitted end to end without wasting time or expense with clamps.

This is interesting to read. My shop is only half heated and in the summer is half underground, so it is never really ideal for hide glue and I kind of resent that fact. I plane to zero joint and then glue and clamp, but I always hate dealing with clamps. the sprung joint thing made sense to me early on but it soon just seemed like extra effort - if it was taught before the current amateur woodworking uprising, I'd imagine it would've been done to give a bias for power jointers to not leave open ends.

Originally Posted by D.W.

... but when switching to all hand tools, i became really intolerant of planes with any convexity and any that have too much concavity (mouth projecting from the sole plane mean more than toe and heel).

Thanks for your posts DW. Just a note to readers of this thread re your quote I edited out. You're using the terms convexity and concavity around the opposite way that I do. For me convexity is mouth projecting from the sole plane mean more than the toe and heel. Because the sole is convex. I'm not sure if you made a slip or you're defining it based on the result at the wood.

I use "convex" & "concave" wrt plane soles the same way Michael does. As long as you define which way you mean it (as DW did - taking your cue from hollows & rounds??), it avoids confusion & doesn't matter too much, I guess.

But it does matter which way the sole is rounded, very much! A smoother with a slightly convex sole (i.e. mouth area projecting above the plane of the sole more than toe & heel), can work just fine, & in fact, imo is actually preferable to a dead flat sole in many situations such as cleaning up a small area in the middle of a table top, for e.g. But not at all desirable on a jointer.

A concave sole on any plane is a disaster, unless you are making wheels or rounding the edges of large tables....

I suggest there is a certain amount of truth in what Spin Doctor says - skilled hands can do amazing things with "inferior" tools. The tools used to make the best of Georgian furniture may not have had the micro-accuracy of a Lie-Nielsen, they didn't need to, but they would have been fettled enough to perform the work required efficiently & accurately. The modern trend to have everything perfect is at least partly to compensate for lack of that sort of deeply-ingrained skill accrued by serving 7 year apprenticeships & working 60 hour weeks. Nobody wants to go there any more, so it's understandable that folks look for any way they can to compensate for lack of those endless hours of repetitive practice.

As hobbyists, we are allowed to have our little fetishes, and while I don't think the absolute accuracy of a scraped sole is necessary on most planes myself, I see no problem whatever in someone mucking about to see just how flat you can make a sole. If it keeps you happy in the shed and does no harm to anyone or anything, that alone is a good thing imo....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by D.W.

....I think as a hand tooler, you get to the point that you don't care much for sprung joints, ....

I still do! I live in a climate with wide RH swings, in an outdoor shed, & with wood that has usually been stored under our house in less than ideal conditions. You can be certain of one thing, it will have a different MC when I'm working on it than it will adopt when indoors in a somewhat more stable environment.

When glued into a table top, the boards respond to RH shifts most rapidly at the ends (unless the whole thing is coated with a totally impermeable finish), so it makes sense in my context to have a bit of pre-loading on those ends to cope with the initial likely drop in MC and the following seasonal changes. Granted, it's a bit of guessing game to estimate how much preload is needed, and in any case, it should not be much - obviously, the closer you think the wood is to eventual average MC in the finished article, the less you need.

Wood is a mildly elastic material, so as long as the forces generated by the seasonal expansion/contraction (fairly marked here), are within the capacity of the wood & the glue-bond strength, your joints should remain sound. Just don't over-do it or the stress you create in the centre of the joint may be enough to break the bond there. I only ever create enough spring that can easily be pulled tight in the centre with light clamping pressure & unless it's a very thick or wide board, hand pressure should be enough to eliminate any gap.

It's a pretty inexact science, relying as it does on experience & good guesswork, but I do think light 'springing' has benefits in my situation. If you use lumber that has been dried & stored so that the MC will not change more than a fraction of a % when the piece goes into service, unsprung joints are fine & easier to match...
Cheers,

Originally Posted by mic-d

Thanks for your posts DW. Just a note to readers of this thread re your quote I edited out. You're using the terms convexity and concavity around the opposite way that I do. For me convexity is mouth projecting from the sole plane mean more than the toe and heel. Because the sole is convex. I'm not sure if you made a slip or you're defining it based on the result at the wood.

You are right. I got the words backwards in the quote above. A tiny bit of convexity is nice. A tiny bit of concavity is yuck.

Originally Posted by IanW

... The tools used to make the best of Georgian furniture may not have had the micro-accuracy of a Lie-Nielsen, they didn't need to, but they would have been fettled enough to perform the work required efficiently & accurately. The modern trend to have everything perfect is at least partly to compensate for lack of that sort of deeply-ingrained skill accrued by serving 7 year apprenticeships & working 60 hour weeks. Nobody wants to go there any more, so it's understandable that folks look for any way they can to compensate for lack of those endless hours of repetitive practice.

As hobbyists, we are allowed to have our little fetishes, and while I don't think the absolute accuracy of a scraped sole is necessary on most planes myself, I see no problem whatever in someone mucking about to see just how flat you can make a sole. If it keeps you happy in the shed and does no harm to anyone or anything, that alone is a good thing imo....

Cheers,

This gets pretty close to the heart of the matter Ian. The linking of wood movement to the derision of people who would want to flatten plane soles is a strawman argument and is tiresome, and some people just do not/will not comprehend an explanation. You (not YOU) think it is breaking some holy Georgian era subrosa knowledge of hand tool use - fine - MYOB and move on...

This is mainly to do with jointers. I am not certain that wooden jointers from the era were not kept in tune pretty flat, it would be an easy job, I have done it with my own wooden jointer, and when I put a good straight edge on it there is no light. If I say it that way it sounds reasonable, if I were to say it was flat to 5uM then people would lose their minds. So OK, I'm looking to make my iron jointers flat so that a good straight edge against the sole shows no light. And I find from years of working with scraped planes it makes a difference. Do the critics have that experience?

My reasoning for suggesting that wooden jointers were tuned pretty flat I have no evidence for but if you look at Japanese craftsmanship with their centuries of unbroken tradition, you will see plenty of videos of very traditional wooden planes being used to take incredibly thin shavings (which is not an end in itself in the process of woodworking but I argue it is a 'symptom' of a plane that is very flat, it can't be done with an inferior tool and wobble managed by dab hands to that degree). Traditional tools can be tuned very fine, is it just a modern thing in Japan too or part of their long tradition?