Thread: Scraping tool for flattening

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi Clinton. I have had plenty of success with coarse sandpaper and a flat platen (glass/steel/tile). Any reason you want to scrape?

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its just an unlearn skill and some rust tools are coming my way

Originally Posted by IanW

Relax Matt, that's a scraper, not a plane (look at the blade angle). I don't do scrapers.....

What Rob said about not bothering to check his smoother soles strikes a chord in me. It's more or less what I said above, that a plane only needs to be as good as you need it to be. I never cease to be amazed at what practised hands can do with tools that many of us would consider "inferior" and incapable of precise work, yet in the right hands they can do wonders. Heck, my old pot could shape a dowel with an axe more precisely than I can with a spokeshave!

I'm not advocating we all chuck away our nice tools (I notice from the pics Rob puts up every now & then that he has a bit of a weak spot for brass & rosewood, and admit to a bit of weakness there myself ), just keep your eye on the main goal which is to make stuff to the best of your ability. Take the tools you have, fettle them as best you can and go at it 'til the job's done to your satisfaction.

And keep an eye out for any nice tools you come across at a sensible price.....

Cheers,

PS. Out of curiosity, I would dearly love to know how Norris & Spiers flattened their soles & what they accepted as "flat"

The dovetailed planes were very flat. but they were also put into practice mostly after the bulk of work was done with machines and scraping and sanding would've been standard thanks to industry making sandpaper.

and in the US, the bulk of furniture making had gone to veneer. Not sure when it took over there.

I would imagine anyone wanting to get a good plane now without flattening anything would potentially need to use a few and keep the one that works best.

To contrast with the norris and others' dovetailed smoothers, the two A5s that I had were not remotely close to flat- but it wasn't that they were some manner of twist or cup - they were undulating. Both of them. I have no idea how they managed to make them like that.

If someone wants to work mostly by hand or finish plane, then it's worth flattening soles. If the objective is to use planes sparingly and scrape and sand a lot, then maybe not. On top of that, the bulk of the metal planes I've bought have had a favor toward the toe and heel for those to touch first. They will not match plane a joint and probably have some to do with the rumor that you can't plane a board for long without planing the ends off. David Charlesworth believed that. I showed him a video planing two separate edges hollow with through strokes and he said he'd never seen it before.

I think of all of the talk we see, fairly few people alive since 1900 have done a lot of things like match planing and edge jointing and a lot more have jointed with machines and maybe fiddled with hand planes and forced joints closed with pressure if needed. I think in a hand tool shop pre-industry, a rub joint would've been more common and a lot fewer clamps, and accurate planes and planing would've been routine and labor saving.

by the way, I would file and lap a plane to flat rather than scrape. Draw file or turn a mill file up slightly so you can remove metal with the curved section of the file inside the perimeter of the sole if the plane is convex.

Scraping would probably take a lot longer than needed. A lot of smoothing planes are improved greatly by a simple lap on a long flat run and PSA paper roll - in 10 minutes or less.

Jointers can take considerably longer -they could be 10 minutes or an hour and a half, but you only have to do them once. if either plane is used regularly and not just put on a rack with 50 other planes, the efficiency gain will more than pay for the effort, and the work quality will be better.

I mentioned something to George Wilson who would make infills from time to time and he scraped them decoratively (scraped and flaked?) - he was also skilled in restoring machine tools and had buyers for almost everything he made, including infills. Not average web browser type buyers but well funded collectors offering figures closer to holtey prices. I mention George because he is the only person I can remember who scraped plane soles to flatness, and it probably had more to do with having the skill from restoring machine tools.

In the US, every time finish planing is brought up, one or two self-appointed tycoons who have tried to build furniture professionally (one is an accountant, I don't know what the others do, but they never seem to have a portfolio to show) suggest no customer ever cares if a surface is planed, and their discussion of surface prep sounds circa 1950 at the revival of something other than factory furniture. I believe them that customers generally don't care, but also have never learned anything about planing from any of them. I think planing as a matter of crispness and productivity was probably dead here in the states before 1900. Crispness is not exclusive of any follow-on work as even nicholson's text (probably having a narrative written around 1820) mentions scraping and sanding fine work after planing. The last discussion that I've seen about not sanding the life off of or out of work was hasluck's text on carving.

Between 1895 and 1916 here (two dates of catalogues that I have), hand tools switched from looking to be half at the bench and half for building/joiners/housewright work to almost entirely marketed toward site work. So for us to know what was important to someone working by hand is probably not possible.

Todd Hughes, a part-time blacksmith and part-time auction flipper who said he knew of several woodworkers who used planes day to day, also said that his acquaintances laughed at the idea of flattening a plane sole, but once again, I don't know what these people were actually doing as none of their work was shown. Todd was one of the few people who said there must be something to the double iron (but he didn't know its function in use as far as I know). his viewpoint was from that of a blacksmith - that when the double iron came into popularity, the cost to add it to a plane was so high that nobody would've added it for no reason or just to "let the planemaker make a less accurate plane" as larry williams would often say. it took many times more in cost to make it than to make a single iron plane a little bit more accurate. The addition of a hand made screw to the early ones and a threaded cap iron must've been equivalent to going from a corded wall phone to an iphone now.

One last comment about flattening when it would've mattered. Soles of wooden planes have to be trued. if they're used for certain repetitive tasks (like jointing edges), they take uneven wear pretty quickly and need to be corrected. There'd have been little issue with flattening metal planes at the time that most of the work was done by hand because relatively few metal planes were in use.

I've mulled this over after typing about it this morning:
* am I insisting people learn to flatten planes? - no
* am i insisting that someone who will use planes a lot for actual woodworking will get a big net benefit from doing it if a plane needs it - yes
* how does one know if a plane needs it. - harder question to answer. I used to have a bunch of LN planes. One of those was a 4 1/2. I've mentioned before that out of 8 or 10 bench planes from LN, I had two that were detrimentally hollow in length. The rest were fine with no issues. I liked the 4 1/2 at the time because it was flat and my stanley smoothers were less flat. I didn't like the iron, the friction or the weight
* Same story for jointers - I had a LN 8 (one of the two defectively hollow - sold it because I was too chicken to correct it at the time) and a LN 7 - dead flat. Great to use, didn't love the iron and cap iron and lots of friction. Discarded once I was able to properly flatten a plane

In my story above, the typical woodworker notices the LN planes work better, probably assumes the trouble with the 8 is some kind of magic (you couldn't match plane a three foot joint with it - the ends would have a gap), and put it aside, and then just uses those LN planes. If they can afford them.

A woodworker who finds vintage planes perhaps finds some that work better than others and keeps the ones that work sweetly

Where we fall flat on this discussion giving people advice is someone who buys one old plane (under the assumption that an old timer - which I'm fast becoming, I guess - uses a plane they didn't correct and it is the first one they bought because no information is given otherwise) and comes up short using the plane


The circular part of this is some planes will need to be flattened to work finely. Some won't. The way to tell if there is a performance issue is to use the plane, but an even better way is to use a very sweet plane in actual work half and half with another plane and see if it makes a difference.

how do we get someone who is relatively new to woodworking to know whether or not there is something that can be improved with plane in hand at the moment, or if anything even needs to be improved. Here's the real problem - i could go through a whole bunch of comparative tests for someone asking specific questions, but that's a real waste of time. I'd rather prove the point by telling said person to send me two similar planes, pick the one that works better, and I will prepare the other one and count time so they can see that the situation drastically flip flops.

and most of the time, the plane in question would go on a shelf, anyway.

Originally Posted by D.W.

....I think of all of the talk we see, fairly few people alive since 1900 have done a lot of things like match planing and edge jointing and a lot more have jointed with machines and maybe fiddled with hand planes and forced joints closed with pressure if needed. I think in a hand tool shop pre-industry, a rub joint would've been more common and a lot fewer clamps, and accurate planes and planing would've been routine and labor saving.....

Not sure that's entirely true, D.W. The number of 'how tos' concerning edge-jointing boards one sees in magazines & forums indicate to me there is still a fair bit of interest in the techniques amongst woodies, and the paucity of wide boards nowadays means plenty of edge-jointing for anyone making solid wood furniture. Machines can do a fair job, but I think you'd be the first to agree that hand-planed joints are usually superior if done well.

You don't have to make much furniture with jointed boards to learn the value of careful edge-jointing. Sure, you can clamp up a big gap with enough clamps, but modern 'plastic' glues tolerate tension a good deal less happily than hide glue (provided the latter is handled correctly, of course), so your nice gap-free table top may not stay that way for long. But it's possible to joint an edge accurately with an indifferent, shortish plane; for years all I had was a #5 and I managed (eventually), to joint 4 foot boards accurately with it - not efficiently, that's for sure, but it's certainly do-able, and easier to lightly 'spring' the edges than with a #7.

Your point about demonstrating how to keep a board flat emphasises my point that the user has a lot to do with what any tool does. You can bias the cut of a plane in several ways to achieve the required results and I maintain that an indifferent plane in skilled hands could easily outperform a perfectly-fettled LN in unskilled ones....

Cheers,

Didn't see your post #20 until I posted my reply to #18, but I think we're saying much the same thing.

How does one know what a plane needs to work well? The only way I know is to use the things, lots, and putting as much thought into how & what it does as you can. Tools don't think, you have to supply that part, as well as some physical effort, in balance, all one or all the other won't get you far!

There are a few lucky people who are born with "the knack" and are able to do things amazingly well first go, but most of us take time and practice to become really skilled, even at a simple task. I'm your average bear so it has taken me a long time to reach a level of skill I'm reasonably happy with, but I'm still learning about planes after using them for 60 plus years and I'm pretty sure that will go on 'til the day I pick one up for the last time....

Cheers,
Ian

Originally Posted by IanW

There are a few lucky people who are born with "the knack" and are able to do things amazingly well first go,
Cheers,
Ian

Definitely not me, but persistence does create sort of a learning tool kit where you pick up new things faster and evaluate them more easily. I think this toolkit probably gets optimized around the same time we lose physical ability or start to lose our minds!

yes on the tutorials for edge jointing - there's a lot of interest. I wanted to see if nicholson said anything about plane flatness, but he did not - the narratives are too brief. There's so much topic covered in a lot of books of that sort that one assumes exposure of the reader so that they can take 1 page of information and fill in the other 9 not there.

It's easier, too, to mandate plane flatness when the sole is just wood and the users can correct issues fast - maybe it was assumed.

The joining of long edges is humorous, though - the assumption is that all work is accurate enough for a rub joint and if the board is long, then add men to do the rubbing until tack starts and then let the joint be set.

when I first started, I learned of the sprung joint. My shop is not high enough to do a rub joint without chancing a cold weld, so I have never done it. I fascinated myself with being able to make the sprung joint and then demanded that planes must be at least flat enough to do it and migrated over time to wanting the joints to be dead on so that glue would fill any inaccuracy (figure less than a thousandth) and clamp pressure was really a matter of glue squeezing and not closing a spring. Ultimately, it's easier.

and so I was not too surprised to find that nicholson suggests joints being rub joints.

however, i was more surprised this year when I finally read those sections and found match planing takes a back seat to actually shooting edges. So I don't know when we'll see the revival of all woodworkers shooting all long joints and finally tossing out the idea that shooting is more often end grain.

I think that will not catch on because it takes a substantial bench.

(I shoot for the flat gapless joint match planing rather than with separate edge joints shot on a long grain shooting fixture)

I also still think that as much as there is written about hand work, it's mostly tried and abandoned and the point of the publications and instructional materials is to show what could be, because that really sells.

Someone pointed me to a tool sale listing this morning of a small smoother made by clark and williams. It's priced to the moon, 20 years old, and looks to be unused. this is really common here - those planes were written about at great length, and Larry has always had a clear message - that they are the best planes made since the 1700s and that the gap between is sort of subpar. I think that's humorous, but it worked. People buy those planes in droves. I've never seen anyone use one enough to darken the wood on them other than williamsburg where they decided they'll no longer use anything but new tools and the toolmakers don't have the time to make planes for everyone - and the blacksmiths seem disinterested in making a really good iron (I got a hold of one of the CW planes and the iron isn't very good- the blacksmiths at the time were more interested in locks and more intricate work from what i understand).

Its not all about flatness.

Something I think of a lot about the forum when it comes to planing the finished timber before polish .

"everyone seems to think hand planes are for getting things flat" That has gone thorough my mind many times around here.

Well they are, but for most of the time before 1780 roughly they just smoothed a surface good enough for a polish job. And left the most amazing story of hand work behind to ponder for ever.

Until sometimes some some uneducated restorer stripped and sanded the character away and made it all flat like a sanded finish that was a thing from a much later period.

Walnut ci 1700. England.
a.JPG IMG_5069a.jpg

Oak ci 1740 roughly. France.
Ive seen side rails on tables like that smoothed with spoke shave. The board follows the dried rough sawn state except its smoothed and the tenons are in line at each end.
IMG_8477.jpg IMG_8482.jpg


There was plenty of stuff made that showed off the plane marks and setting out marks and its much more interesting than later stuff when machines and sand paper were used to get everything supposedly better or finer.

Wealthy enough people understand that and pay to have it finished that way even today.

That way of finishing wood doesn't apply to the veneered stuff from the same period or things like later polished Mahogany furniture.

With the introduction of machinery many / most manufacturers used it to the limit of fastest construction possible. There were small shops / makers who still hand finished with plane and cabinet scraper after converting wood to size by machine though. Through time .

I read about London made 1880s copy's being made of French 1780s furniture that was impossible to tell apart from the original because of the hand finished method of the more expensive re producers. Compared to the more machine made re produced stuff made at the same time.

Jointing boards and we want as flat as possible. And hand planed jointed boards beat machine because its very hard to keep a Buzzer as fine tuned as it needs to be to joint better than a hand plane. No matter how well I tune my buzzer and slowly I pass a board edge across it, the hand plane will always show up the buzzer marks left on its first skim.
I actually think a better machine for edge jointing would be a machine like a buzzer with forward and rear adjustable tables and a good fence. And a spinning flat disk of sand paper or possibly blades set to skim like a record player turntable. And probably power feed for the board. The jointing plane is faster and easier than thinking for too long about all that though.


Rob

Originally Posted by auscab

Its not all about flatness.

Something I think of a lot about the forum when it comes to planing the finished timber before polish .

"everyone seems to think hand planes are for getting things flat" That has gone thorough my mind many times around here.

Well they are, but for most of the time before 1780 roughly they just smoothed a surface good enough for a polish job. And left the most amazing story of hand work behind to ponder for ever.

Until sometimes some some uneducated restorer stripped and sanded the character away and made it all flat like a sanded finish that was a thing from a much later period.

Walnut ci 1700. England.
a.JPG IMG_5069a.jpg

Oak ci 1740 roughly. France.
Ive seen side rails on tables like that smoothed with spoke shave. The board follows the dried rough sawn state except its smoothed and the tenons are in line at each end.
IMG_8477.jpg IMG_8482.jpg


There was plenty of stuff made that showed off the plane marks and setting out marks and its much more interesting than later stuff when machines and sand paper were used to get everything supposedly better or finer.

Wealthy enough people understand that and pay to have it finished that way even today.

That way of finishing wood doesn't apply to the veneered stuff from the same period or things like later polished Mahogany furniture.

With the introduction of machinery many / most manufacturers used it to the limit of fastest construction possible. There were small shops / makers who still hand finished with plane and cabinet scraper after converting wood to size by machine though. Through time .

I read about London made 1880s copy's being made of French 1780s furniture that was impossible to tell apart from the original because of the hand finished method of the more expensive re producers. Compared to the more machine made re produced stuff.

Jointing boards and we want as flat as possible. And hand planed jointed boards beat machine because its very hard to keep a Buzzer as fine tuned as it needs to be to joint better than a hand plane. No matter how well I tune my buzzer and slowly I pass a board edge across it, the hand plane will always show up the buzzer marks left on its first skim.
I actually think a better machine for edge jointing would be a machine like a buzzer with forward and rear adjustable tables and a good fence. And a spinning flat disk of sand paper or possibly blades set to skim like a record player turntable. And probably power feed for the board. The jointing plane is faster and easier than thinking for too long about all that though.


Rob

I agree with the comments about rusticity in the old works. Same for replica stuff. When I built my Windsor chair I left the Jack plane marks on the bottom of the seat and of course all the spoke shave marks on the spindles, just so someone will understand it's not factory made.

When I was taught to make matched joints using the jointer, we always ran two passes of the handplane over the edge, the first pass went brriiiiiiit as it took off the knife marks, the second was clear. Now I've changed my jointer to a helical TCT cutter, no machine marks! The possibly controversial thing I will say is if I joint an edge on the jointer it is straight right... since all my planes are flat I don't actually need to use my longest plane to tidy the edge (allowing that the blade edge flat - which most of mine are except for relieved corners) flat on flat, I can even use my #3, which is especially useful for me as a notorious lazy sharpener!

Originally Posted by mic-d

I agree with the comments about rusticity in the old works. Same for replica stuff. When I built my Windsor chair I left the Jack plane marks on the bottom of the seat and of course all the spoke shave marks on the spindles, just so someone will understand it's not factory made.

When I was taught to make matched joints using the jointer, we always ran two passes of the handplane over the edge, the first pass went brriiiiiiit as it took off the knife marks, the second was clear. Now I've changed my jointer to a helical TCT cutter, no machine marks! The possibly controversial thing I will say is if I joint an edge on the jointer it is straight right... since all my planes are flat I don't actually need to use my longest plane to tidy the edge (allowing that the blade edge flat - which most of mine are except for relieved corners) flat on flat, I can even use my #3, which is especially useful for me as a notorious lazy sharpener!

Nothing wrong with that. Friend here has a huge delta industrial (like real industrial, not one with a sticker that says it's "industrial" and a stamped steel base). He never read the book and thus never grasped the concept of adjusting the back knife to reduce tearout. That sent him toward a spiral insert head and if it were jointing a flat surface, there would be the very tiniest of cups on the surface, but like visual light kind of thing - not enough to even be a glue joint thickness.

if it doesn't need extra work, then there's no need for extra work with a hand plane.

I think it's a fairly important skill with power tool work to be able to follow accurate power tool work with a plane, and not spoil an accuracy the power tool would have.

Originally Posted by auscab

Its not all about flatness.

Something I think of a lot about the forum when it comes to planing the finished timber before polish .

"everyone seems to think hand planes are for getting things flat" That has gone thorough my mind many times around here.

Well they are, but for most of the time before 1780 roughly they just smoothed a surface good enough for a polish job. And left the most amazing story of hand work behind to ponder for ever.

Until sometimes some some uneducated restorer stripped and sanded the character away and made it all flat like a sanded finish that was a thing from a much later period.

Walnut ci 1700. England.
a.JPG IMG_5069a.jpg

Oak ci 1740 roughly. France.
Ive seen side rails on tables like that smoothed with spoke shave. The board follows the dried rough sawn state except its smoothed and the tenons are in line at each end.
IMG_8477.jpg IMG_8482.jpg


There was plenty of stuff made that showed off the plane marks and setting out marks and its much more interesting than later stuff when machines and sand paper were used to get everything supposedly better or finer.

Wealthy enough people understand that and pay to have it finished that way even today.

That way of finishing wood doesn't apply to the veneered stuff from the same period or things like later polished Mahogany furniture.

With the introduction of machinery many / most manufacturers used it to the limit of fastest construction possible. There were small shops / makers who still hand finished with plane and cabinet scraper after converting wood to size by machine though. Through time .

I read about London made 1880s copy's being made of French 1780s furniture that was impossible to tell apart from the original because of the hand finished method of the more expensive re producers. Compared to the more machine made re produced stuff made at the same time.

Jointing boards and we want as flat as possible. And hand planed jointed boards beat machine because its very hard to keep a Buzzer as fine tuned as it needs to be to joint better than a hand plane. No matter how well I tune my buzzer and slowly I pass a board edge across it, the hand plane will always show up the buzzer marks left on its first skim.
I actually think a better machine for edge jointing would be a machine like a buzzer with forward and rear adjustable tables and a good fence. And a spinning flat disk of sand paper or possibly blades set to skim like a record player turntable. And probably power feed for the board. The jointing plane is faster and easier than thinking for too long about all that though.


Rob

This would make a very interesting second discussion. I was thinking of planes more along the lines of something like pennsylvania furniture or something else with a case and moulding where the crispness of work is there, but even with that work, it's not as if someone was taking a starrett edge back then and seeing if they could find a place where a 2 thousandth feeler would fit under it.

it's a visual thing - you can see short distance undulations and things like planing tracks and those can be eliminated. the rest of the flatness is a matter of what's seen visually and what hinders building something.

It's my personal view that furniture that's worked by hand and even if sanded, sparingly, has a sharper visual look without resorting to being simple looking, and when paired with something like varnish instead of a hard wax oil or something with flatteners, there is a lot of personality in even very plain things.

Even French polish, which will flatten a little bit if it's not refreshed or waxed is far more visually interesting than something like a country furniture store table that's been sanded, glazed and then sprayed with conversion varnish.

The hasluck book's mention of it in regard to carving probably made it into the early 1900s mostly because carving work would've still be perhaps less commoditized.

I guess to be more clear about "sanded the life out of it" work that I'm thinking of, it's not so much a flatness thing, but more of a lack of contrast between facets or areas of work. the color desires add to that then along with finish. Sanded heavily with stain that obscures the wood but is very even in color and then a finish with flatteners added rather than something like a french polish that could be finished with a rub that's not fully polished and you get a result that is pretty dull.

My parents have collected a good bit of pre-1900 work and some much older as just general household stuff and the oldest wardrobes and such make no attempt to look perfect. the backs of the raised panels inside of the cabinet are pretty rough and may have been draw knifed. Unfortunately, those have been stripped, stained dark so they look like "walnut" to a modern antique buyer and whatever the original surfaces were like on the outside is lost. Antique walnut furniture made a revival where I live in the 1980s and 1990s, and everyone wanted it to look like a dark chocolate bar indefinitely, which is more of an early 1900s factory millwork look.