bendy cap irons

[David C]

Well ED--,

We used to make a lot of full sized benches, using Afzelia for the tops.

This timber is full of mineral deposits, has high density and interlocked grain. We noticed and confirmed a huge improvement of blade life and performance by switching to thicker A2 blades. I'm sure Ray Iles D2 blades would have the same benefit.

Believe who you will.

And how about a name please?

David Charlesworth

 

[Trafalgar]

Krenov was a fan of Doussie (Afzelia). Not sure if he had access to A2 cutters though.

 

[D_W]

That issue is exactly what I was addressing when I made the statement that if your blade life is too short, the shaving is probably too thin.

I certainly can't deny that the harder alloy steel blades will hold a thin-shaving type edge longer (that is, if all you're doing is taking a thousandth or possibly two and not using the cap iron properly, a harder iron or one with a bunch of non-iron carbides in it will do that for longer).

But when you turn the shaving up a notch to double that, the gap narrows.

Years ago, I was making several infill planes and at the time I got frustrated with the inability of the lie nielsen A2 irons' ability to stay keen in cocobolo that had a bunch of silica in it (silica that you could see - sparkling). I thought I'd hit the jackpot when I bought a couple of continental style mujingfang planes with high speed steel irons in them, they stood up to that much better than lie nielsen's A2 irons (which are about as good as A2 irons get - though there's not really that much variation from maker to maker, lie nielsen's are still the best I've used).

A year and a half ago, I made two more planes out of cocobolo and resolved to set the cap iron for most of the work, sharpen only with a washita, and use only a stanley 4 with a stock iron. I also made a conscious effort to take a thicker shaving. Aside from bandsawing the blank after squaring, everything was done with a stanley 4. Each plane required no resharpening. I reserved thin shavings only for a few passes to remove any tearout, the rest were probably double or triple finish shaving thickness.

I would pose this as a question if 62 hardness irons are such a great thing - why didn't anyone care to have them on earlier planes? It's not as if the steel in stanley, or sargent or anyone else's planes couldn't handle that hardness. It certainly could, but the users were more educated in using planes for more than 2 thousandth shavings.

I still have some "premium" irons left in my shop, but the context of actually getting something done is:
* use a stock iron, sharpen it with a washita and a bare strop, sharpen in a minute and spend another minute taking the plane apart and putting it together and get back to work
* take a thicker shaving with the cap set if you are doing something more than taking a final shaving

I have one other instance of this to compare, I'd be ecstatic if someone would test it, that the advantage of a harder iron disappears when the shaving is increased in thickness some. I have a single premium bench plane - a lee valley plane with a V11 iron. I set out to get an idea of it in sizing a try plane blank of beech, something that I have done plenty of with an old butcher laminated iron that someone sold to me unused. I expected to see the V11 iron outlast a try plane iron like that (water hardening steel, probably something in the neighborhood of 58 hardness) by a factor of two or three. I got less far with the V11 iron than I did the try plane. Part of that is because the try plane is a much better plane for coarse work than a 15 inch metal plane, but I was shocked.

If I took both of those planes and compared them in a contest of which could plane the most feet of 1 thousandth shavings, I'm sure that the V11 iron would win easily. Backed out to real world use, and it's not as clear.

And the butcher iron can be sharpened on a single washita stone and it responds well to a bare leather strop. This method of sharpening can't be appreciated by someone until they have worked a fair amount in context and gotten out of the idea of paint by numbers woodworking and sharpening.

But, I get it if someone struggles to sharpen and has to get out a bunch of gadgetry, and wants to prolong the interval between as long as possible. History shows preference otherwise, though, and for good reason. The "hard iron" fascination came along as a crutch to amatuers.

If you'd like to get an idea (I know you don't care) why people like me and some others who get further into planing prefer carbon steel knocked down a click in hardness, all you have to do is look at brent beach's pictures of edges after he's planed with them. The alloy steel irons look like garbage. The slightly softer and finer carbon steel irons will plane until their clearance runs out without leaving any marks on anything.

But they won't pass the amateur's pointless test of the most 1 thousandth shavings in a row. It takes a little bit of skill and practicality in planing to get past such nonsense.

Eskilstuna carbon (look at the edge):
http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/EKtest.html

Lie Nielsen A2:
http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/LNA2test.html

D2:
http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpe ... %20D2.html

(You can see the edges of the latter two, and they leave evidence on a finish planed surface. Brent didn't print the results of turn of the century american stanley irons, but they're just slighty softer than eskilstuna irons and fail in the same way - uniform fine wear).

 

[MIGNAL]

Those Muji HSS are good. Take a lot to get sharp but stay sharp long. Good for certain woods but not my stock blade, even though I have a few of them. Anyway, I didn't think we were discussing edge retaining abilities but bendy cap irons and their performance in relation to thicker cap irons and thicker blades.
Mignal. Who's rather tired from planing a load of Ebony fretboards with his 70's Stanley 5.5 plane (thin Acorn blade, standard chipbreaker).

 

[D_W]

Those Muji HSS are good. Take a lot to get sharp but stay sharp long. Good for certain woods but not my stock blade, even though I have a few of them. Anyway, I didn't think we were discussing edge retaining abilities but bendy cap irons and their performance in relation to thicker cap irons and thicker blades.
Mignal. Who's rather tired from planing a load of Ebony fretboards with his 70's Stanley 5.5 plane (thin Acorn blade, standard chipbreaker).

I'd like to know what those irons are (what type of western HSS they're close to), they will take an edge off of a washita and a jasper, though you'd never grind anything off of them with a washita and they gummed up shaptons when I used to use those to sharpen. Same irons sharpen fairly well on okudo suita, which is really unusual for a high speed steel. So do woodwell/muji's chisels - same steel in the HSS types.

For what it's worth with their cap irons (muji), I'm not a fan. IN the scheme of things, they copied the ulmia's wedged-plane cap iron and they're a bit bulky and not well behaved on tightening. They'd have been better off to copy an older continental smoother with a less bulky cap.

 

[D_W]

Those Muji HSS are good. Take a lot to get sharp but stay sharp long. Good for certain woods but not my stock blade, even though I have a few of them. Anyway, I didn't think we were discussing edge retaining abilities but bendy cap irons and their performance in relation to thicker cap irons and thicker blades.
Mignal. Who's rather tired from planing a load of Ebony fretboards with his 70's Stanley 5.5 plane (thin Acorn blade, standard chipbreaker).

Do you have a page where I can see your work?

 

[nabs]

hello all, it is the OP here again - thanks for the posts I have learned a lot more from what you have said. Here is a summary of what I understood:

chatter can generally be avoided by good technique, but where it does tend to occur there are a couple of things that can help on the hardware side:
1. a thicker blade
2. increasing stiffness of the blade via the capiron design

item 1 seems uncontentious - as was pointed out earlier, Bailey concedes the same in the patent that prompted the original post. Cheshirechappie provides the engineering explanation:
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/#p1041391
It does seem to be a matter of personal preference whether people choose thick irons over thin although, with the exception of the Stanley 1970s (and beyond?) irons which were apparently woeful, it is generally agreed the thin ones will do the job.

for item 2 things are more complex: in our not very scientific survey the majority of observations for 20th century bailey design planes show that - despite the auxiliary bend in the cap iron - it does not make contact close to the fulcrum created by the edge of the frog/mouth as was intended by Bailey's patent.

However, it seems that the auxiliary bend in the actually implemented version of the cap iron must still direct some additional pressure between the heel of the frog and the mouth than would otherwise be the case and that has the effect of reducing the distance over which the blade can flex.

There is a good explanation of the chatter effect here https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/#p1041321 that also explains why the Record stay-set design is probably a better solution, at least in this regard.
This post also makes it clear why other adjustments will also have an impact on the blades ability to bend/chatter, including the tightness of the cap-iron screw and lever cap, depth of cut and position of the cap-iron in relation to the cutting edge.

There were a couple of other interesting side notes:
1. chatter is not always caused by poor technique or because the blade vibrates - it can also be caused by friction on the sole of the plane (c.f Paul Sellers post reference above)
2. at least one modern plane maker apparently deliberately creates a slightly concave face on the frog - it is not explained why, but one theory might be that this reduces the friction between the blade and frog so the blade adjustment mechanism is not overly stiff. I am guessing that, if this is a problem at all, then it is a greater problem for planes designed for thicker irons, since these irons are less likely to flex under pressure of the lever cap and will therefore make more contact with the frog. As ever, there are trade-offs to be made for each design decision.

In a feeble attempt to turn this interesting theoretical discussion back to something more tangible, I did try and get my bench planes to chatter with my limited wood supplies (pine and maple) and amateurish technique, but was not successful. However I was able to get spectacular squeaky and juddery results with a slightly blunt spokeshave when going against the grain. I am curious to see if the dampening idea mentioned by Paul Sellers makes a big difference, so will give that a go at the weekend.

So there you have it - who would have thought cap irons could be so entertaining

 

[Trafalgar]

Don't forget to put a little candle wax on the soles of your spokeshaves, too.

 

[D_W]

hello all, it is the OP here again - thanks for the posts I have learned a lot more from what you have said. Here is a summary of what I understood:

chatter can generally be avoided by good technique, but where it does tend to occur there are a couple of things that can help on the hardware side:
1. a thicker blade
2. increasing stiffness of the blade via the capiron design

item 1 seems uncontentious - as was pointed out earlier, Bailey concedes the same in the patent that prompted the original post. Cheshirechappie provides the engineering explanation:
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/#p1041391
It does seem to be a matter of personal preference whether people choose thick irons over thin although, with the exception of the Stanley 1970s (and beyond?) irons which were apparently woeful, it is generally agreed the thin ones will do the job.

for item 2 things are more complex: in our not very scientific survey the majority of observations for 20th century bailey design planes show that - despite the auxiliary bend in the cap iron - it does not make contact close to the fulcrum created by the edge of the frog/mouth as was intended by Bailey's patent.

However, it seems that the auxiliary bend in the actually implemented version of the cap iron must still direct some additional pressure between the heel of the frog and the mouth than would otherwise be the case and that has the effect of reducing the distance over which the blade can flex.

There is a good explanation of the chatter effect here https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/#p1041321 that also explains why the Record stay-set design is probably a better solution, at least in this regard.
This post also makes it clear why other adjustments will also have an impact on the blades ability to bend/chatter, including the tightness of the cap-iron screw and lever cap, depth of cut and position of the cap-iron in relation to the cutting edge.

There were a couple of other interesting side notes:
1. chatter is not always caused by poor technique or because the blade vibrates - it can also be caused by friction on the sole of the plane (c.f Paul Sellers post reference above)
2. at least one modern plane maker apparently deliberately creates a slightly concave face on the frog - it is not explained why, but one theory might be that this reduces the friction between the blade and frog so the blade adjustment mechanism is not overly stiff. I am guessing that, if this is a problem at all, then it is a greater problem for planes designed for thicker irons, since these irons are less likely to flex under pressure of the lever cap and will therefore make more contact with the frog. As ever, there are trade-offs to be made for each design decision.

In a feeble attempt to turn this interesting theoretical discussion back to something more tangible, I did try and get my bench planes to chatter with my limited wood supplies (pine and maple) and amateurish technique, but was not successful. However I was able to get spectacular squeaky and juddery results with a slightly blunt spokeshave when going against the grain. I am curious to see if the dampening idea mentioned by Paul Sellers makes a big difference, so will give that a go at the weekend.

So there you have it - who would have thought cap irons could be so entertaining

Hi Nabs - for your #2 there (at the bottom), it's lee valley who biases the bed of their planes. They do that so that the iron contacts the plane casting/frog (the bevel ups are where this discussion came from) at the mouth and then at the other end of the frog where the pressure from the cap holds the iron down. LV knows their craft well.

Old wooden planes are the same way, except since the blacksmiths didn't want to be charged with making a perfectly flat iron, they smithed the irons hollow so that the irons touched at the top and the bottom of the plane, and on some planes, the corners of the bed at the top are relieved so that the iron contacts only in the middle of the bed at the top.

Those are what I call biases in favor of the maker and the user - even if there is a bit of error in the modern sense (the bed isn't perfectly cut in all areas, etc), it'll be less than the bias, and everything will work well. These biases exist in most planes, including moulding planes, so that the planes work well both initially and as time goes on and the planes move a little bit.

Karl holtey uses brass pins on the bed of his planes to do the same thing, and Ron Brese was the other person I had the discussion with early on as I'm making planes entirely by hand (including the infills) and perfectly flat isn't something I want to achieve.

 

[Corneel]

Here's an example of a plane bed with quite a bit of bias, moulding plane made in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in the 19th century.

 

[D_W]

Here's an example of a plane bed with quite a bit of bias, moulding plane made in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in the 19th century.

that's significant! It's less than that by a lot on western moulding planes - just a slight bias, but the iron in that plane is thick and would handle it fine.

 

[MIGNAL]

Those Muji HSS are good. Take a lot to get sharp but stay sharp long. Good for certain woods but not my stock blade, even though I have a few of them. Anyway, I didn't think we were discussing edge retaining abilities but bendy cap irons and their performance in relation to thicker cap irons and thicker blades.
Mignal. Who's rather tired from planing a load of Ebony fretboards with his 70's Stanley 5.5 plane (thin Acorn blade, standard chipbreaker).

Do you have a page where I can see your work?

The world isn't quite ready for me yet. It will be one day. Don't forget my mate Van Gogh only ever sold one painting in his entire life.
Criminal. :wink:

 

[Corneel]

Yes, this moldingplane is extreme. Other Dutch molding planes I have are about half of that. But they all feature a hollow bedding. English ones too I believe. And when you have a hollow, the amount doesn't matter a whole lot anymore.

 

[ED65]

We used to make a lot of full sized benches, using Afzelia for the tops.

This timber is full of mineral deposits, has high density and interlocked grain. We noticed and confirmed a huge improvement of blade life and performance by switching to thicker A2 blades. I'm sure Ray Iles D2 blades would have the same benefit.

It's the definition of "performance" that is what I was referring to.

Sharpening interval is a separate issue, obviously that's one of the key advantages of a harder/tougher/more durable steel within reason; many of the same people who say they don't notice a difference in plane performance will acknowledge they have to sharpen less frequently. It's the other things that swap-in irons supposedly do that are moot. Topping that list must be eliminating chatter, it's a bit of a nonsense really since chatter is essentially a non-issue if the plane is in proper order and set correctly.

Believe who you will.

I prefer not to think of it as choosing who to believe. Although obviously we all do that to some degree weighing evidence is more of a numbers game.

It's likely that there were millions of Bailey-type planes produced in 100+ years and used by hundreds of thousands of professionals all over the world during that time, I simply refuse to believe these planes with their thin stock irons were guilty of the numerous failings they're often accused of in modern times.

 

[D_W]

It's likely that there were millions of Bailey-type planes produced in 100+ years and used by hundreds of thousands of professionals all over the world during that time, I simply refuse to believe these planes with their thin stock irons were guilty of the numerous failings they're often accused of in modern times.

A very reasonable conclusion.

Proving them out is easy for us - though it's not always easy to figure out how to get the best out of them when the current crop of instructors (and publications) doesn't seem to use them for anything other than smoothing.

A very good track to take to really try to learn what people knew 100-200 years ago is to look at it as they probably knew something we don't, and it's worth our time to try to figure it out rather than write it off.

I'd love to convince more people to sharpen with either a coarse stone and a washita or a grinder and a washita. the notion that such a method can't get tools sharp is hocum. The notion that the current crop of instructors may not have a clue how to use them probably is not.

 

[memzey]

I've found this thread really interesting (probably a bit of a sad admission that actually) but thought it was lacking some visuals. So I popped in to the shed and took some photos of a pair of No. 4s I have for comparative purposes:

The plane to the left is a British made ~1960's model. To the right is an American made type 6 so probably from the 1880's.
Here you can see them with the iron assemblies and lever caps removed:

On closer inspection the most obvious differences I could see was the size of the hump on the caps and their lengths. The hump on the later cap iron being markedly larger but the older iron being a bit longer:

In terms of thickness of metal they are about the same - perhaps the older one is marginally thinner (the iron itself certainly is):

In terms of feel when tightening the cap iron screw the newer one had more spring to it but the older one felt softer. Not sure if that proves anything but I thought it might help nonetheless!

 

[D_W]

Definitely helpful. Neither of those planes will have the problem mentioned in the patent (the springing issue).

I'm not sure what types would actually have the gap between the casting and the frog, but neither of those do, and I'm sure they are or will be good stable users.

I went out to ebay the last couple of days and noticed that some of the other brands of planes (notably sargent) also have the gap that bailey describes. Stanley eliminated it, apparently pretty early on if that's a type 6. I never paid much attention to types, though, so I don't know when.

My favorite stanley irons (though I like any of them before they became the more highly alloyed type) are the older laminated irons. They're great irons.

 

[memzey]

They are both good users although the type 6 is better in every department to the later, British made variant (which I am thinking of converting into a scrub).

I too much prefer the older irons. The one in this plane is original (I can't tell if it's laminated or not) and works like a dream. In another thread about chisel steel I stated that in my limited experience I had found that older, British cast steel chisels, particularly W&Ps, had the best balance between taking an edge (ease of sharpening), quality of edge (how sharp they get) and holding that edge (time between honings). Thinking about it now that's probably true for these older Stanley irons as well, although I should state that as I have never had a problem with them I have never sought out to use the modern, thicker alternatives.

 

[D_W]

100% agree about the comments re: the steel. There are all kinds of compromises to be made either way, I guess, but there's no functional improvement in the modern steel unless you're not finish planing with it and it takes you forever to sharpen.

Same goes for the chisel. There's a user on another forum who jumps at the chance to tell every beginner who says their vintage chisels don't satisfy that they just aren't capable of using them properly yet. He's 100% correct in that, too.

I'm not sure if anyone is making anything comparable to the tang-style ward bevel edge chisels these days. There are a lot of socket and socket/tang style chisels, and some with ferrules that just have a slab of cut bar stock shoved in the handle with no bolster. I guess it's a lack of available skill, but those chisels are absolutely the finest to use day to day.

 

[memzey]

I'm not sure if anyone is making anything comparable to the tang-style ward bevel edge chisels these days. There are a lot of socket and socket/tang style chisels, and some with ferrules that just have a slab of cut bar stock shoved in the handle with no bolster. I guess it's a lack of available skill, but those chisels are absolutely the finest to use day to day.

I couldn't agree more. Bit off topic as this post was about cap irons but if I showed you the chisels I have acquired over the past year or so you would note that they pretty much all fit this description. In particular I find the thinner blades and fine lands make them easier to use for paring and more precise work. Having said that I do also have an old 1" Stanley 750 which is a very nice chisel too. The socket types do look a little bulky and clumsy in comparison to those with tangs though.