David C":2l923pr2 said:
The experiment I described works with endless repeatability, on timber edges from 6 to 22 inches long, when done with a number 5 1/2.
I think that a longish straightedge is helpful for long work such as bench tops.
Best Wishes,
David
Your method is no more repeatable than mine. This is useful for anything that you can plane, also. I don't think I'm getting it across here that this is a thing of craftsman's subtlety, and I'm no craftsman at all. There is an 8x8 indian rosewood blank in the background that I flattened. I didn't stop shave it and then through shave it. I flattened it all at once with only through shavings. It's flat end to end and corner to corner and side to side, however you want to describe it. It would be agonizing with stop shavings. It takes less than ten minutes to do with some sense and experience, and that includes the rough work and sharpening.
As far as that straight edge goes - it's not something I use on a daily basis (i had to clean some rust off of it to use it here). It's too heavy, and it's too expensive. On a three foot board, I could find out what I need to know with a 2 foot straight edge, no problem, but for a video like this, I want proof, so I dug out the straight edge, and pulled the feelers out of my planemaker's box. They have never touched wood before.
Let me reiterate - your method works. It doesn't mean that other methods don't. It doesn't mean yours is the best or that you need to continue to imply that other people have some sort of shortcoming with what they're doing when they're getting the same results (my method is actually faster, I started with yours - it's good to understand the minute hollow concept and that allows someone to achieve it pretty quickly, supposing they don't make their edges out of square).
I could make a ten minute video tonight doing the face of a short board and a long one, and the edges, too, and you could tell me if you want them to be flat or concave and I could do it either way. What would you do? I made a video with 10 strokes through where you said 5 would cause a problem, and what is your response - to imply that what I did won't work on small pieces and it's inconsistent? Put yourself on the other side of this - let's say you've never used stop shavings but planed for a decade without having a flatness issue - would you then turn around and say that someone using stop shavings is doing it the wrong way? I wouldn't, but that is what you're doing. The concavity is the important point, how you get there isn't important. thus I have no need to tell people that they should do it my way instead of using stop shavings. They can do it however they want, the only real threat to the OP in the beginning of this post is if his plane is actually concave.
I get such pleasure talking to people like George Wilson because he wouldn't get fixated on technique - he'd tell you something like, "you need to develop the skill to be able to make the board flat or concave or however you want....i don't know...who cares how you do it?". He's fixated on results, and because he spent his life at work and then on the side at night making, he's wonderfully quick making anything to a level that I will never achieve. If I tried to talk about something like this on the phone with him, he'd make a joke to change the subject.
I like to knock the ends off of my board with a smoother when match planing a long joint, it's easy - do I care if someone else does it that way? Why would I? If I figure out something faster and as reliable, then I'll do that.
This doesn't just have to do with me, it has to do with your desire to pop onto the thread and throw shade on everything everyone said (even though most of the comments here pretty much said the same thing as you did, 99% the same, or however you'd like to put it). You may not be able to do something others said they do (despite the fact that their method could be perfectly relevant), so you assert the methods are no good and no good for anyone, and you base your conclusion on a captive audience of beginners (I think your beginners would learn a whole lot about planing if they hand-dimensioned their first half dozen pieces, but I doubt you could get them to pay you to tell them that). You quote a lot directly from Robert Wearing (in fact you have made entire quarter hour video segments of single items from his books), but Robert's ways are not the only good ways, and quite a lot of them are arduous in terms of time if you don't have to revert to them. If they work, and you're satisfied, then keep on with them. If they are too slow, it's time to move on from some of them.
Please be a little bit more considerate to other posters. In this case, you're advocating a paint by number method that works, and I am showing you another method that works. I don't care what people do, but I do know one thing - if you and I had a pile of boards to face, you'd be a quarter of the way through them when I was finished, and the results would be the same. I learned from your videos when I was a beginner, but it has taken me some time to unwind some of the things that are asserted in them that just aren't as certain as you suggest they are.
