bendy cap irons

[Cheshirechappie]

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.

Ashley Iles. 01 steel, multiple-strike forged under a Pattinson spring hammer, hand ground and finished. Very fine side bevels, very slight hollow in length to the flat face. Superb cabinetmaker's bench chisel.

Bristol Design tried in the 1990s to replicate the cast steel chisels of old, offering a range of bevel-edged and paring chisels made from straight carbon steel they sourced in Germany, and had forged and ground in France (I suspect in the Forge de Saint Jury, famous for the Auriou brand). They offered an extensive range of carving chisels, too. I bought (still have) a few b/e chisels, and can confirm that they took a superb edge. There were a couple of problems; many people reported having a lot of work to do to get the flat face flat, and I found that was a problem with some of mine. Also, the side bevels were not that fine. I suspect the problem was that the forge found that the chisels distorted after grinding, as the stresses locked in by the fast water quench were partially released. That said, they were a brave attempt to offer something better than the bog-standard Marples Blue Chips when there wasn't anything else of genuine quality around.

 

[D_W]

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.

Ashley Iles. 01 steel, multiple-strike forged under a Pattinson spring hammer, hand ground and finished. Very fine side bevels, very slight hollow in length to the flat face. Superb cabinetmaker's bench chisel.

Bristol Design tried in the 1990s to replicate the cast steel chisels of old, offering a range of bevel-edged and paring chisels made from straight carbon steel they sourced in Germany, and had forged and ground in France (I suspect in the Forge de Saint Jury, famous for the Auriou brand). They offered an extensive range of carving chisels, too. I bought (still have) a few b/e chisels, and can confirm that they took a superb edge. There were a couple of problems; many people reported having a lot of work to do to get the flat face flat, and I found that was a problem with some of mine. Also, the side bevels were not that fine. I suspect the problem was that the forge found that the chisels distorted after grinding, as the stresses locked in by the fast water quench were partially released. That said, they were a brave attempt to offer something better than the bog-standard Marples Blue Chips when there wasn't anything else of genuine quality around.

As far as ashley iles, these right?

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... shley_Iles

I had a set of these with boxwood handles (which it appears are no longer offered) and they were decent. Edge holding was a little funny for 61 hardness they claim, but it's not like you couldn't do work with them and they are a good price compared to the bevy of $60-80 chisels we have over here touted by the gurus.

Note quite up to par with the old forged bolster wards, though - but a decent modern chisel that you can hold on the handle and not have a heavy fat construction style blade.

Stanley 750s are popular over here as collectors things, and then the LN repros pushed by the gurus (same promise of "almost ready to go" as the other white collar retiree tools). They're not very handy for someone who grips chisels by the handle, though.

I wouldn't have been bothered by the less than flat issues with the french carbon steel chisels, you only have to rectify that once, but fat bevels are not attractive given that they're in every $8 hardware store chisel. Suspect if that type of tool is going to be made again, you almost have to clear it with the blog gurus to get a push or everyone will just buy what the gurus suggest (who also advertise in magazines where the gurus reside or have buddies). It'd probably need to be made by a carving tool maker, too, as I don't know who else would have the skill on hand to make a tang chisel with a forged bolster.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I think the boxwood-handled ones were the old mark 1 chisels. As far as I'm aware, the mark 2's the link shows have always had Bubinga carver-type handles, and have only been available for about five years or so. They're quite popular, too; the Ashley Iles website listed them as out of stock until the new year just before Christmas - they sell them as fast as they can make them. Being the happy owner of several, I can understand why.

 

[D_W]

I think the boxwood-handled ones were the old mark 1 chisels. As far as I'm aware, the mark 2's the link shows have always had Bubinga carver-type handles, and have only been available for about five years or so. They're quite popular, too; the Ashley Iles website listed them as out of stock until the new year just before Christmas - they sell them as fast as they can make them. Being the happy owner of several, I can understand why.

They were sold over here as "london pattern", but had longer blades that looked something like these (a shallow grind, but not quite as chubby as these at the edge):

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... shley_Iles

The grinding wasn't the most tidy, but for the price, it was plenty tidy enough.

There has been some recent static about the chisels coming over here and presumably the handles shrink and some ferrule work is necessary or something. That kind of thing should be no big deal, but it seems most customers in the US think a tool should come in the box ready to work and never ever need any of their attention, no matter how hard they use it, and no matter what the price is.

I can't imagine that AI could make the chisels for any less and still stay afloat. They're half what lie nielsen charges, and I'd rather have AI's pattern than a stanley 750 copy or some of the other things that are sold here for twice or triple the price. LN finishes their chisels to a level that probably requires that price, but A2 suffers the same issue that it does in plane irons - it makes sense for someone who has trouble sharpening in a short period of time, but not much else.

 

[D_W]

An update to my curiosity - I'm curious enough about the later types of stanley planes (and what happens if you actually use them properly - i.e., with the cap iron) that I ordered two planes newer than I would normally get.

One is a late type post-war american plane and one much newer than that with light brown beech handles and a blue bed (and my not-so favorite - some kind of air hardening chrome vandium-ish type of iron).

With all of the talk about how long it takes to prepare planes, I'll prepare each of the two for no more than 15 minutes and see how they are. I think the stuff that's peddled about these planes taking so long to fettle is because the people fettling them have no clue what they're doing and end up doing all kinds of stuff that isn't necessary to do even the finest work with them. Call me suspicious.

 

[nabs]

hello D_W - I hope you will start a thread to tell us what you discover - I would be very interesting in reading it. In terms of set up time, I think you are probaly right

Having acquired a few old Record planes now, the first one took me half a day to finish and the last one (admittedly a tiddly type 3) took just under an hour. They were all of similar condition, and actually, in the case of the number 3, I suspect that if I had simply sharpened it then it would have been fine (in practice I cleaned it, flattened the sole, derusted etc)

 

[D_W]

That's a nice looking record plane.

I'll video the two planes that I set up. A decade ago when i started, I went on a binge buying rusty planes, and non rusty planes, and stripping castings, etc, spending a lot of time cleaning up planes. I try now to make sure that the odds are in my favor for getting a clean iron and cap with little or no rust, and castings, the same - as little rust as possible.

This one could have enough rust at the end of the iron that my 15 minute ideal may not hold up:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/351673487804?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Stanley ... true&rt=nc

This one should be less of a gamble.

The market is definitely stronger for these now, I'd never have had to have paid $30 and $40 for these, respectively, until recently. $40 would've been the price for a nice plane with good rosewood that someone had done a fair bit of cleanup on already.

I bid on a plane between the ages of the two i linked the other day with fairly ugly beech wood on it and it went for $53 + shipping. I could hardly believe it.

Millers falls planes used to be a steal here, too, but same, they're not now. It was easy until just a couple of years ago to get a #4 sized plane in a desirable type for $10. Now they're as much as stanley planes.

 

[Corneel]

Wow, expensive stuff! You should buy overhere. The shipping might be a bit much though.

http://www.marktplaats.nl/a/antiek-...285449651fa109c354bbabe740c1b&previousPage=lr

 

[D_W]

Kees, I can't see the price on that, it just says "reserved". Nonetheless, there are deals to be had on the ground here, they are just sparse and one has to be the type of person looking just to buy tools rather than looking to buy a specific tool.

There are a couple of antique shops and dealers around here who always have an inventory of planes, but you're likely to find a lot of $40 marked defiance and handyman planes, and not so much a clean #4 with no issues.

 

[MIGNAL]

I bought this Record for £15 (iirc) including the postage. I just waited for a BIN listing to come up.



Doesn't look much but it had a pretty much full length square cut blade. I've cleaned it up since and varnished the handles. In terms of performance it was a quick job. Blade flattened very quickly, as did the sole. I didn't touch the frog or the chipbreaker. Most of the work was cosmetic. I've dated it to mid 50's. That's in stark contrast to my Stanley No.4, which I pretty much did a crazy restoration.



Fitted with a thick Sorby iron, yolk modified. Later on I changed it for the Ray Iles blade and a two piece Clifton chip breaker. The Stanley has a thick casting.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

Kees, I can't see the price on that, it just says "reserved". Nonetheless, there are deals to be had on the ground here, they are just sparse and one has to be the type of person looking just to buy tools rather than looking to buy a specific tool.

There are a couple of antique shops and dealers around here who always have an inventory of planes, but you're likely to find a lot of $40 marked defiance and handyman planes, and not so much a clean #4 with no issues.

Quite a few cheaper than $40 (and nice) Bailey's at today's PATINA gathering. Many 4's, fewer 5's, lot's of Bedrocks, mthough it wasn't planes I was after. Many handaws dirt cheap. What was missing? Did not see a single natural stone! David, you're going to have to make the trip to Damascus one of these days! Saw more than a few guys from the Pittsburgh area.

 

[Corneel]

Kees, I can't see the price on that, it just says "reserved". Nonetheless, there are deals to be had on the ground here, they are just sparse and one has to be the type of person looking just to buy tools rather than looking to buy a specific tool.

There are a couple of antique shops and dealers around here who always have an inventory of planes, but you're likely to find a lot of $40 marked defiance and handyman planes, and not so much a clean #4 with no issues.

Ok, then someone scooped it up pretty quickly! It was 15 euro. To be honest, it was by far the best deal I could find so quickly. Most were in the 30 euro region, comparable to the price you paid.

 

[D_W]

Kees, I can't see the price on that, it just says "reserved". Nonetheless, there are deals to be had on the ground here, they are just sparse and one has to be the type of person looking just to buy tools rather than looking to buy a specific tool.

There are a couple of antique shops and dealers around here who always have an inventory of planes, but you're likely to find a lot of $40 marked defiance and handyman planes, and not so much a clean #4 with no issues.

Quite a few cheaper than $40 (and nice) Bailey's at today's PATINA gathering. Many 4's, fewer 5's, lot's of Bedrocks, mthough it wasn't planes I was after. Many handaws dirt cheap. What was missing? Did not see a single natural stone! David, you're going to have to make the trip to Damascus one of these days! Saw more than a few guys from the Pittsburgh area.

I used to be studying for professional exams around the time of the patina show each year, but I no longer have an excuse not to go as I got through all of them. One of these years, I might go. I'm afraid of what I might get, though, as I'm trying to get rid of my excess stuff so as to create a smaller and neater shop area as the power tools slowly disappear.

Bummer that there were no stones there, not even washitas?

 

[D_W]

I bought this Record for £15 (iirc) including the postage. I just waited for a BIN listing to come up.



Doesn't look much but it had a pretty much full length square cut blade. I've cleaned it up since and varnished the handles. In terms of performance it was a quick job. Blade flattened very quickly, as did the sole. I didn't touch the frog or the chipbreaker. Most of the work was cosmetic. I've dated it to mid 50's. That's in stark contrast to my Stanley No.4, which I pretty much did a crazy restoration.



Fitted with a thick Sorby iron, yolk modified. Later on I changed it for the Ray Iles blade and a two piece Clifton chip breaker. The Stanley has a thick casting.

That setup with the Sorby is interesting! What have you decided in terms of how well it works vs. a stock blade? I'm assuming that those older sorby irons and the stock record stuff are fairly similar in hardness (something that would sharpen well on a washita). I' not sure that I have a cap iron screw that's large enough to span an iron that thick, but I have the irons and planes. Such an experiment would be interesting with a very cheap handyman plane here (Which has a fixed frog and often a large mouth),

Did you have to do anything to get the back of the iron to mate well to the stanley frog (like lap it?).

 

[D_W]

hello D_W - I hope you will start a thread to tell us what you discover - I would be very interesting in reading it.

So, of the two planes I got, I set up the better of the two last night in about 20 minutes (it had some rust on it and needed a fair amount of lapping). What I didn't do that would've been smart was check the piece of wood I was planing to test it to make sure it was flat first, so the video's not fit to publish as there's a mid-section in it where I'm screwing around with the scrap I picked up to flatten it in the first place.

I have a second plane that is much worse off, it will make for a better video. Hard to make a decent video sometimes if you don't plan well!!

The first Lie Nielsen plane I ever got only needed to have the iron set up, which at the time took me 45 minutes. I'm sure this second plane will take well less than that, despite also being rusty and needing some of the iron to be ground off due to the characteristic rust where the cap iron was contacting it.

 

[MIGNAL]

Not sure how it compared to the stock blade. Someone gave me the plane and the iron that was with it was the thinnest I've ever come across. It had 1946 stamped on it, which I presumed was the date. The edge wasn't far off the keyhole so I decided to renovate the plane and put in a different blade. Once I had started there was no stopping. Out went the painted handles and in went some bubinga handles that I made. I sprayed the plane with some black engine paint. The frog was flattened, the blade, the seating, the sides made square, the sole as flat as I could make it, the chipbreaker and yolk modified and polished up. Sometime later I fell for the 'superior' blades and the Clifton 2 piece. Out went the Sorby, in came the Ray Iles.
It was all a complete waste of time. The Record I bought performs just as well, although it is a 50's one with a decent blade. It took me 20 minutes to get it working well. I then did a quick cosmetic job on it, which probably took a further 60 minutes. My Stanley 5.5 might just be even better. Strange but I think it's a late 60's early 70's. I swapped the blade for an old square cut Acorn, superb blade. It has some bad pitting which is slowly drawing nearer each time it gets sharpened. Don't know why the Stanley or the Acorn work so well but they do. I guess the stars are all aligned.

 

[ED65]

With all of the talk about how long it takes to prepare planes, I'll prepare each of the two for no more than 15 minutes and see how they are. I think the stuff that's peddled about these planes taking so long to fettle is because the people fettling them have no clue what they're doing and end up doing all kinds of stuff that isn't necessary to do even the finest work with them. Call me suspicious.

I think you're right to be suspicious as I believe that much of the fettle to within an inch of its life advice that I've read in recent years on a few of the woodworking forums is complete overkill. That's in most cases. Obviously, as touched on in one or two recent threads, there is an element of luck with what you buy in terms of how flat the sole is.

I do think a 15-minute setup time is ambitious, but achievable. If you're lucky, as I've been, then you'd have time to spare from your quarter of an hour.

I currently have two no. 4s, which charitably are of the "cheap and cheerful" variety. They should be complete rubbish straight from the factory, and certainly neither one was ready to take shavings as-bought. But any user with experience and an effective sharpening regimen could have gotten each one ready to rock and roll in well under 10 minutes because they wouldn't have had to do one jot of work on the soles.

 

[D_W]

Not sure how it compared to the stock blade. Someone gave me the plane and the iron that was with it was the thinnest I've ever come across. It had 1946 stamped on it, which I presumed was the date. The edge wasn't far off the keyhole so I decided to renovate the plane and put in a different blade. Once I had started there was no stopping. Out went the painted handles and in went some bubinga handles that I made. I sprayed the plane with some black engine paint. The frog was flattened, the blade, the seating, the sides made square, the sole as flat as I could make it, the chipbreaker and yolk modified and polished up. Sometime later I fell for the 'superior' blades and the Clifton 2 piece. Out went the Sorby, in came the Ray Iles.
It was all a complete waste of time. The Record I bought performs just as well, although it is a 50's one with a decent blade. It took me 20 minutes to get it working well. I then did a quick cosmetic job on it, which probably took a further 60 minutes. My Stanley 5.5 might just be even better. Strange but I think it's a late 60's early 70's. I swapped the blade for an old square cut Acorn, superb blade. It has some bad pitting which is slowly drawing nearer each time it gets sharpened. Don't know why the Stanley or the Acorn work so well but they do. I guess the stars are all aligned.

Thanks for that summary. The second stanley that I have is fairly recent, but not so recent as to have the 12-xxx model numbers. The first one that I cleaned up last night isn't exactly a pearl in the cosmetics department, or even some fittiment things (with a squarely ground iron, the lateral adjuster is over fairly far for an even cut, but that's a pointless thing to be concerned about as it's never going to be adjusted further to the right or run out of travel given the need to keep the iron ground in line with the cap iron.

I don't know what age the first one was, but I'd guess 1950s.

Thinnest irons I've used are very early stanley's and the tsunesaburo laminated iron, that I think they list as 5/64ths or something. I was into the whole thick iron thing when I ordered that and I was thinking "why would someone make such a nice iron so thin, and it's not even hardened for its full thickness". It taught me a lesson. It was maybe technically the best smoother iron I've ever used, held an edge like A2 does, but didn't fail leaving little lines all over the place like A2 does. Brent Beach's pictures show exactly why.

But it's not hard enough to sharpen for me to really have that much preference for the edge holding over a stanley iron, and the way stanley's irons roll up a nice wire edge and then release it sharpening only on a broken in washita is hard to beat for true functional use.

This next plane up has what I'd call rubber-steel, the late chrome vanadium type stuff that stanley put in planes. We'll see how it works. I'm sure it'll be fine. I built a couple of cabinets earlier this year using an iron that I got at home depot for $2, labeled as "buck brothers" over here and made in the USA for that amount. A bit soft, but it actually works well and if anything, it will teach a user to be a bit more skilled with a smoother and not waste time taking only very thin shavings.

We don't have acorn branded stuff over here in general, I'll have to go look it up. eskilstuna is more or less regarded as the top of the line carbon steel stuff here if one is looking for tidy even wear and still more edge retention (the latter, I just haven't seen any iron that works at all that edge retention has been much of an issue. I've improperly hardened a couple and found out what happens when an iron isn't even fit to be functional at all, though - even those were fine after a second go at hardening them).

If someone was going to do a service to beginner, it would be to tell them to learn to use their hands and eyes (unless they were unfortunate enough to have sight not good enough to do it) and learn to sharpen quickly, and without a bunch of gadgetry. All of this goofiness about irons that don't hold an edge long enough would probably disappear, then.

 

[D_W]

With all of the talk about how long it takes to prepare planes, I'll prepare each of the two for no more than 15 minutes and see how they are. I think the stuff that's peddled about these planes taking so long to fettle is because the people fettling them have no clue what they're doing and end up doing all kinds of stuff that isn't necessary to do even the finest work with them. Call me suspicious.

I think you're right to be suspicious as I believe that much of the fettle to within an inch of its life advice that I've read in recent years on a few of the woodworking forums is complete overkill. That's in most cases. Obviously, as touched on in one or two recent threads, there is an element of luck with what you buy in terms of how flat the sole is.

I do think a 15-minute setup time is ambitious, but achievable. If you're lucky, as I've been, then you'd have time to spare from your quarter of an hour.

I currently have two no. 4s, which charitably are of the "cheap and cheerful" variety. They should be complete rubbish straight from the factory, and certainly neither one was ready to take shavings as-bought. But any user with experience and an effective sharpening regimen could have gotten each one ready to rock and roll in well under 10 minutes because they wouldn't have had to do one jot of work on the soles.

The following are what I did in 20 minutes last night.

* Lap very minor rust off of the back of an iron (I have a long run of 80 grit PSA paper on a lap to do that initial work, it's quick), then work through the back on two finer whetstones and then a washita.
* grind a nasty sharpening job off of the end of the iron (it wasn't cambered, and it wasn't straight, hard to explain what happened to it)
* hone the bevel onto the washita with a little bit of camber
* take the handle off of the plane and grind some length off of the handle rod - the handle had dried and the rod was too long to tighten it
* clean up the cap iron profile and bring it up to washita polish level (where mine has settled, that's probably 3-4k equivalent japanese stone grit, but a different edge quality - one that shaves hair cleanly)
* lap the bottom of the plane on the 80 grit lap, lap the sides of the plane (not for accuracy, just to remove rust), touch them up with finer paper to knock off the nubs (poor choice of terms, the jagged edges left by the 80 grit abrasive), brush it off and apply some paraffin

The next plane is not in such good condition, I think it'll take another 10 minutes more, but I will have a jump on filming it this time because I won't be fiddling to plane the test piece flat first.

 

[MIGNAL]

I wouldn't be too concerned over Acorn. They weren't the best made. I still have the plane but the blade surprised me on how good it was, which is why I swapped it to the Stanley 5.5. Maybe it was one of those that surpassed their usual output. Maybe they sourced their blades from a specialist. I think it's from the 30's.