Thread: Smoothing plane set-up

All I do is take my LN la smother, make sure the blade is sharp as buggery, adjust the mouth to its smallest opening and , shhhhnick. A floater drops to the floor.

It's a good feeling.

All I do is take my LN la smother, make sure the blade is sharp as buggery, adjust the mouth to its smallest opening and , shhhhnick. A floater drops to the floor.

Craig, I took out my Marcou smoother, made sure thae blade was as sharp as buggery, adjusted the mouth to its smallest opening, and shhhhhnick ....... the shavings are still hanging in the air ..

I'm wondering what set-up others use for smoothing planes (i.e. chip breaker, mouth settings, etc.)?

Ian, the answer is "it depends". Can't get more precise than that, can you?!

With a #4, it depends on the blade being used. If it is a thin Stanley then the chipbreaker makes a difference up to a point. The research shows that it is only the last .5mm that has a significant effect. If you go outside this range, then 1mm or 2mm is all the same. I tend to use thicker aftermarket blades, and these are less responsive to the position of the chipbreaker - which is really to stiffen the blade rather than break the chips.

The size of the mouth is also less critical as the cutting angle gets higher. It is almost irrelevant at 65 degrees when cutting face grain. It is irrelevant cutting end grain. It is more pertinent cutting interlinked face grain and especially with cutting angles from York (50 degrees) downward.

Just some observations.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek,
Obviously you would love those Japanese competitions where the goal is to have the thinnest shaving.
I assume I have learned the name of a very exotic and expensive smoothing plane, namely Marcou. Tell us more. I get by and am happy with a pair of old Stanleys, 4 and 41/2, for smoothing. Still prefer thesmell of the shavings over what the Makita planer spits out.

When you refer to the different blades, thick and thin, when does one use which?

SD

Here is a link to my review of the Marcou BU smoother:

http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/d...cou1/index.asp

Regarding thick vs thin blades, it is no contest, the A2 aftermarket blades by LN (look up "Stanley Replacement blades" on the LN website for the correct thickness - the standard LN blades are too thick for standard Stanley planes), Veritas, Hock, amongst others, all rule. They should translate into less chatter and greater longevity. A good Stanley blade (the Pre-WWII ones) can get very sharp, but they just do not hold an edge for long enough, especially when planing abrasive, hard Aussie woods.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Sorry I missed this thread (especially since I was the one complaining )

Distance of chipbreaker from blade and mouth opening is subjective stuff alright. So subjective I think, you have to shrug your shoulders at it sometimes.

I can relate to your experience with planing pine Ian......ie. bringing the chipbreaker back making it work..... interesting.

Often I get the impression the chipbreakers has little influence in timbers like pine. Can do without them, because (and its just a feeling) pine shavings seem to have a strong flexible bond to them.....have you noticed ?

So, the impression is, the pine shavings arn't really being broken by the chipbreaker, which explains the crinkly shaving and increased effort required to push the plane when the chipbreakers too far forward.

Some shavings come out completely differently.....bits and pieces everywhere like straight from a thicknesser.....and the planes easy to push as well, because there's little resistance at the chipbreaker.......some hardwoods are like that, which feels strange because one often relates planing hardwood as 'hard' work uno.

Have you ever tried planing finger jointed pine ? ....uno, that cheap re-jointing of offcuts...... thats an exercise in reading the grain !. .....If one wants to learn how to read the grain, tell them to clamp up some of that and pencil mark the places they think will tear, and then plane it up and test your prediction.....(uno, grain reversals tend to start at the joints)

Thanks everyone for the replys.


Apricot,

I think you're right about chipbreakers having little influence on timbers like pine and maybe it relates to Derek's point that the chipbreaker is really to stiffen the blade rather than break chips. Pine is so soft that it doesn't push the blade to its limits and therefore the stiffening effect of the chipbreaker doesn't come into play.

I haven't tried planing that finger jointed stuff but I can see how it would be challenging. I almost bought some of it to make the shelves for my workshop that I mentioned at the start of this thread but I went with standard pine instead.

Originally Posted by Mirboo

I think you're right about chipbreakers having little influence on timbers like pine and maybe it relates to Derek's point that the chipbreaker is really to stiffen the blade rather than break chips. Pine is so soft that it doesn't push the blade to its limits and therefore the stiffening effect of the chipbreaker doesn't come into play.

Mirboo - there's no question the "chipbreaker" is nothing more than a blade pre-tensioner. They got by without them for hundreds of years in the old woodies by using great chunky blades. Cap-irons (to give them their older and far more descriptive name) came in with the thin blades fitted to the early metal planes. There's some argument as to whether Mr. bailey or someone earlier came up with the idea, but it appeared with his 1867 patent of the frog design we know so well.

You can certainly get by in soft woods like pine, with little pre-tension on your thin blades, but you will notice whenever you hit a knot. The thicker blades mentioned by Derek will help a lot in making an ordinary plane good, however, there are a lot of other details to attend to to make one 'super', as attested in the many threads on plane tuning that pop up on all the woodie BBs almost daily.

In my view (stated strongly on previous occasions!) this story about cap-irons being 'chip-breakers' is absolute tosh. When I first started reading about it many years ago, I experimented with cap-irons a lot - carefully squaring and honing the edges so they made water-tight contact with the blade backs. I quickly found that setting them too close to the cutting edge had a most un-beneficial effect, and a little consideration of the geometry convinced me you don't want the thing touching your shavings! My rough 'experiments' came up with just about exactly what Derek said above - anything closer than about .5mm is detrimental to performance. A 'fat 32nd' as an old cabinetmaker friend put it, seems to be a good average setting. If you are hogging into soft woods and wanting to rip out major slices, a little more gap doesn't hurt.

And finally (I was away when this thread first ran, and missed it) I would like to add Lee Valley A2 blades to Derek's list of recommended after-markets. They are excellent blades, thick enough to get the best out of your average old Stanley/Record, but not too thick to prevent the adjuster yoke from engaging, and don't bust your wallet. The only negative I've found is the slot for the lateral adjuster is cut to fit the newer, smaller wheels on the adjuster arm. LV advise filing your adjuster wheel, (which is soft enough) but I've found a less awkward and simple solution is a quick pass either side of the slot with an angle-grinder. This soon makes the necessary alterations!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Mirboo - there's no question the "chipbreaker" is nothing more than a blade pre-tensioner. They got by without them for hundreds of years in the old woodies by using great chunky blades. ,

.... the old woodies I have are bound up with a chipbreaker...uno, with the wedge coming in on top of the lot......or is there an old name for them ? ..... are you saying that eariler than that they didn't have these chipbreakers ...ie. just a blade and a wedge. Or have I got my wires crossed somewhere.

Originally Posted by apricotripper

.... the old woodies I have are bound up with a chipbreaker...uno, with the wedge coming in on top of the lot......or is there an old name for them ? ..... are you saying that eariler than that they didn't have these chipbreakers ...ie. just a blade and a wedge.

Yes.

Apricot - The later ones used cap irons - I think in the dying days of woodies, they just used what was commonly available. The thinner blades became fashionable (they take a lot less grinding than fat ones!), and the old style wedge-shaped blades started to fade off the scene. I don't know my history of planes well enough, but I'm pretty sure cap irons only came into being after 1860. If anyone out there knows for sure, please chime in.

I have used a couple of old woodies with no cap iron, and they worked well enough. The shavings came out just like the shavings from any well-tuned metal plane complete with cap-iron.

Cheers,
IW

Hi all

An article of interest, from the Clark & Williams website (makers of reproduction 18 century handplanes):

Single Irons vs. Double Irons
by Bill Clark & Larry Williams


Historically, the first reported double irons appear in a 1767 advertisement by Philadelphia plane maker Samuel Caruthers. There's strong evidence these were imported irons from England. The history of double irons undoubtedly predates the Caruthers ad.

One of the most obvious characteristics of early irons is that they are very thin. One of the working characteristics of thin irons is that they are prone to chatter. One requirement for eliminating harmonic resonance or chatter in planes with thin irons is the labor intensive mating of the bed, iron and wedge. Remember, these were hand forged irons rather than the precisely machined irons you would find today. Fitting the wooden plane body and wedge to the irregular surfaces of these irons takes time and skill.

A thicker iron reduces the chance for harmonic resonance from incomplete support. Thick irons simply don't require as much support. But in the 1700's tool steel was expensive and labor was less so. Then someone came up with the ideal of double irons and was able, we think, to double the effective thickness of the irons without adding additional high carbon steel.

18th Century planes with typical hand-forged irregular surfaced thin irons.

Not only was there the cost of the thick irons as a deterrent, there was also maintenance. Thick irons required a parallel increase in other technologies. Abrasives would be one area to look at. As most woodworkers can attest, maintaining thick irons takes more time. 18th Century woodworkers didn't have grinders, carborundum, silicon carbide and other sharpening mediums available today so sharpening time would have increased greatly with an increase in iron thickness. Yet these woodworkers were professionals and, like the plane makers of the day, were paid by piece work. Time and labor savings were important to both trades. The double iron, we think, offered and increase in the effective thickness of the iron without the negative increase in sharpening time.

At some point someone noticed that a torn splinter during planing would could be broken by causing an additional steeper turn after it passed the cutting edge. So yes, a cap iron can help reduce tear out.

Our question would be what value does this really offer in practice? Before anyone writes and accuses us of re-inventing the wheel, we'd like them to include the mouth opening of their favorite smoother and how far back its cap iron is set from the edge.

Think about the thickness of any shaving that contains tear out. The spot containing any tear out will be substantially thicker than the rest of the shaving. If you are using a mouth opening tight enough to help control tear out, somewhere around .005" or a little more, we believe that your plane will stop the offending tear out before it can reach a chip breaker set at an uncommonly close 1/32". A 1/32" setting would be more than five times greater than the shaving aperture.

Even if you managed to shove that chip through the mouth, a chip breaker set at 1/32" will allow more tear out than you can remove in a couple passes with a plane. How are you going to plane the same area several times with out getting more tear out? It would require several passes to remove a divot who's depth was even a third its length. If planing wasn’t successful on the first pass, why would it be better on several with the same plane?

There are several good ways to control tear out during FINAL SMOOTHING by our thinking:

Keep your iron very sharp

Take light shavings of about .001" to .002". A fine shaving won't have the beam strength to lift wood ahead of the iron.

Use an appropriate angle of attack. The bed angle of the iron should match the characteristics of the wood being planed. Hardwoods that scrape well should be planed with a steeper bed angle. This actually uses the additional turning of the shaving you get from a cap iron but takes place at the edge rather than further up the iron. Some woods don't have the surface structural strength to resist the additional cutting resistance that results from a steep bed angle. Softwoods can require a bed angle of 45 to 55 degrees.

Use a plane with a tight mouth. The tight mouth actually holds the wood being planed in place and does this immediately ahead of the irons edge. This additional support will go a long ways to reducing tear out.

A thick iron is less likely to chatter causing irregular cutting and tear out. Proper bedding of the iron, even with thick irons, helps greatly in this.

Use the plane at a skew. The shearing cut of skewing the plane can help at times.

All the above will also work with heavier roughing cuts, though not as well. Our experience is that single irons are, at a minimum, as effective as double irons.

We believe mass production plane makers benefited more from the idea that double irons stop tear out far more than woodworkers. Expecting double irons to control tear out, perhaps the least effective method, allowed manufacturers to make planes to lower tolerances.

Double irons also offer a couple drawbacks. There’s the extra tuning required to keep errant shavings from getting under or catching on the cap iron. The biggest problem is that they limit the escarpment size at the most critical point. When you turn a fine shaving, with little beam strength, back on itself it will collapse. No longer will it slide out the escarpment instead it will fold up on itself and become packed in the between the wear (vertical part at the front of the mouth for metal planes) and choke the plane. The only way to clear this on these planes is to remove the iron and go through the process of setting the plane again. A single iron plane, however, will nearly always clear itself on the next pass in the much more rare event of choking.

We’re simply not all that impressed with the supposed "improvement" of double irons. We feel that it’s one of those oft-repeated things that is blindly accepted and repeated without regard for its accuracy.

© 2000 Bill Clark & Larry Williams

There website is http://www.planemaker.com/

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Historically, the first reported double irons appear in a 1767 advertisement by Philadelphia plane maker Samuel Caruthers. There's strong evidence these were imported irons from England. The history of double irons undoubtedly predates the Caruthers ad.

Well there you go - I was only a hundred years out! If you consider that planes have been around for at least 2,000 years before that, it's only a small error!

Avagoodnight,

Ta for that Derek. 1767 .... the smallest of errors IanW ! ... doesn't matter....I was just curious anyhow.

Where he was talking of skewing the plane to improve the cut..... I think its important that one scrutinizes the grain to identify exactly where that'll help before trying it though......and also skewing the right direction as well..... the direction one chooses should be to slice an against grain cut. NOT bring the nose directly into the grain.

:confused: Hard one to visualise. Definetly have to close the eyes and cover your ears to picture it.

Its not easy and not altogether practical. Better off keeping the thing straight and keep that effective pitch high I'd say.

Thanks for the replies Apricot, Derek and Ian.

I liked the Clark & Williams article you posted Derek. Interesting read.

This is strange!

My email says the following message was posted in this thread, but it ain't here!

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Ian - how did you go with the crinkly shavings? I'm asking because I've just come in from sharpening my Pope Falcon 9 inch plane (with original blade), and I was having exactly the same problem; wrinkly, almost bubbly shavings.

On the weekend I was planing pine with beautiful curley shavings. I took the plane apart tonight to sharpen it with 1200/4000 waterstones and when I put it back together, it was behaving like a completely different tool. It didn't feel like chatter, though was a little harder to push through the pine.

At the time I too suspected the chip breaker, because it was closer to the cutting edge than I would like it to be. Looking at the posts above, I'm probably wrong there, but I'm sure its a setup/tuning issue. I was hoping to find the way to diagnose the problem.

:confused:

Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Cheers,

Bulli
**********************************

Dunno what you did, Bulli, but I hope it isn't catching, or the BB is in trouble.

Anyway, to answer your question.
I would strongly suspect that the cap-iron IS the culprit. Either it moved as you tightened the screw down, or you set it much closer than you realised, or it's not mating properly with the top of the blade, or some shavings/chips have got between it and the blade.
For a well-tuned smoother, set to take fine shavings, no closer than a 'fat 32nd' to the cutting edge seems to be a good rule of thumb. For soft woods like pine, you can set a bit further back, and it won't appreciably alter performance (usually). Since it was working well prior to re-sharpening, logic tells me the change is because of the reassembly geometry - you didn't touch anything else. So re-check that cap iron, making sure it is biting down on the back of the blade cleanly along the entire length of the leading edge.

Cheers,