Dimensioning by hand

[D_W]

...is 'in the past'a key phrase here? Timber used to be cut/dimensioned by hand frequntly as often little else was available in small operations. Folk had the skills to do it. But could I suggest that the wood was better, & more carefully seasoned, & this made converting large lumps of wood into what was needed rather easier than it is now.

I think there are two answers to this question:
1) if you want to source lumber in a size that you need and a quality that's very good, and more stable than air dried wood would've been, you can do that pretty easily
2) It is true that if you just find job lots of lumber, or cubic meters of a pair of sizes and what you need is between the two, you'll have the experience of additional exercise.

The effort saved by leaving the sawing to the miller as much as possible would've been an economic thing, but it's not really an issue as a hobbyist as the rough work to some extent will improve the fine work without actually doing the fine work as much.

And if you do source common lumber instead of the better of what's listed as FAS in the states (are the terms the same in the UK?), especially if in a type of wood that works well by machine but is kind of a nuisance from rough (hard maple comes to mind, whereas something like beech is almost as hard and favors hand tools a lot more), then that could be pretty hobby-limiting. I learned that the hard way being wooed by a load of relatively wide cherry boards #1 common for $2 a board foot. It was OK to learn a lesson on 500 board feet of it, but I wouldn't want to work with it indefinitely when the equivalent FAS lumber here with straighter grain and fewer defects is generally $5 locally.

My impression is that the real reason nobody is doing much dimensioning by hand is:
1) you don't have to, and that provides a disincentive to get past the first couple of hundred board feet where you're kind of training neurons, both in your head and peripheral
2) that a lot of people who say they just don't have time waste 20 hours a week or more on a bunch of stuff they may not enjoy, but they can't get over the hump. E.g, it's not a priority to get in the shop.

#2 is a dead end with power tools, too, but somehow it seems like there's more potential for the power tools to spring to life and make you good at things in a hurry.

There's a tool dealer in the US who firmly believes that the cap iron came about to cope with declining lumber quality in the late 1700s and early 1800s. I have no clue if that's true - it greatly reduces labor on the best of ribboned mahogany or quartersawn or figured anything. The tools that dominated from 1800-1900 are perfectly capable of dealing with our lumber, though, even the junk. The junk comes down to whether or not you will tolerate planing wood that has runout in several directions on a face and that is twice as slow and twice as physically brutal to dimension.

 

[G S Haydon]

"FAS" is used for imported hardwoods.

"Unsorted" for redwood which is anything from 1 to 4. You then get 5ths redwood, you normally find that as pre moulded or planed all round at builders merchants.

Euro oak is normally Prime, with a whole sub genres of marketing names for the stuff that falls below this. Buying the cheaper grades will often yield more quarter sawn.

That's my experience anyways.

 

[D_W]

"FAS" is used for imported hardwoods.

"Unsorted" for redwood which is anything from 1 to 4. You then get 5ths redwood, you normally find that as pre moulded or planed all round at builders merchants.

Euro oak is normally Prime, with a whole sub genres of marketing names for the stuff that falls below this. Buying the cheaper grades will often yield more quarter sawn.

That's my experience anyways.

cheaper mixed lots often also yield more quartered here, too - I'm guessing they are mill run through and through and that has given way to either specific dimensions to sell at yards that cater to trim carpenters, or the simple marketability of a rotating cant and all flatsawn boards eliminates anything but flatsawn and pith.

There are english oak "esacapees" here and there - trees that have been planted or perhaps the result of birds dropping seeds from others, but I've only had one piece of smooth english oak here that a friend dropped off. It came out of a big industrial pallet from England and was 10/4 or so in size and planed like butter.

I've never encountered anything like it at retail, but the sloppiness of the red vs. white oak offerings here (several different types of trees can be marketed especially at white oak), there's always a chance.

English oak sold at retail here at higher end retailers is marked up strongly, like in the neighborhood of good walnut or honduran mahogany.

FAS cherry from a local miller where you can get good color match and wider boards without being had in terms of price is more like $5-6 a board foot. Air dried ungraded can be really cheap, but comment above applies. You can end up with boards that are half this:


From a #1 common lot that was $2 a board foot. That was in the worst 20% of it, but the guy retailing it was a professional miller who I also buy my "stash" from (core pile of cherry to pick out of). I should've known looking at the pictures that he wasn't going to just throw 400 bf of FAS lumber in with 10-20% defects.

A piece made of wood like that would be interesting, but dimensioning starts with the jointer instead of the jack, cap iron set, and with something like that particular piece, the runout is cup shaped around the knot covering several board feet. It is just physically difficult to dimension because it's like planing end grain cutting boards. It's not technically difficult, the cap iron takes care of that.

point of all of this is that starting with power tools and then making a quick transition without a pretty drastic mindset change with hand tools leads to a false impression of hand tool work. Lining up the details, suddenly it can literally be two or three times as enjoyable. Face jointing and thicknessing boards with a metal jointer and seemingly no long grain is not enjoyable.

 

[Jacob]

.......

the real reason nobody is doing much dimensioning by hand .......

....is that it's easier by machine, though many will roughly "dimension" sawn stuff with a hand saw, to the cutting list, before planing, whether by hand or machine.
What crops up regularly is beginners who imagine that sawn stock should be planed like timber yard PAR, before cutting to size. This is a very big mistake!

 

[Jacob]

/

There's a tool dealer in the US who firmly believes that the cap iron came about to cope with declining lumber quality in the late 1700s and early 1800s. I have no clue if that's true ......

It's not true.
The main function of the cap iron is to transfer the wedge pressure as close as possible to the cutting edge to make it more solid. Not sure if it helps "break chips" as per its other name. Seems unlikely.
Then with the thin bladed Staley/Bailey design it becomes essential as part of the blade unit, which is as effective as the older heavy blades but much easier to sharpen, set, etc.

 

[D_W]

....is that it's easier by machine, though many will "dimension" sawn stuff by hand, to the cutting list, before planing, whether by hand or machine.
What crops up regularly is beginners who imagine that sawn stock should be planed like timber yard PAR, before cutting to size. This is a very big mistake!

I phrased that poorly. I am just going by feel, because I started with almost all power tools and gradually "went backwards". I would anticipate that some large portion of the woodworking community will spend almost all of their time turning, and most of the rest will do a bunch of flat work with machines and at best, maybe a few percent would enjoy working entirely by hand, or trying to where it's practical (e.g., it's not that practical to try to make every single part of an electric guitar by hand unless you take some design liberty).

If my guess of 2 or 3 percent of woodworkers is correct -the same types who walk in golf, the odds of them finding someone who could clue them in on what's entirely different working by hand is pretty low. And much of it is feel and personal problem solving, sort of how a lot of carvers describe carving after a very short initial exposure ("can only really be learned at the bench").

Hopefully people who think they'll make something nice learn the first time when they buy bowed plywood thinking it'll be straightened by assembly, and thinking that pre-thicknessed wood means flat, so all that's needed is putting it together and sanding.

I found trying to make nice things with mid level consumer/semi pro tools pretty challenging and it felt like nothing but endless arranging and correcting. I'm sure I could build case sides and shelves a lot faster with what I ditched, but I was in the shop a lot less using it.

If someone finds they really don't like dimensioning by hand and they really gave it a whirl (which means getting away from the sellers and other folks who have never really done it - he seems to have a strong tractor beam keeping beginners at beginner level), then it's simple - use the machines. It's not a religion. If someone really thinks they have no interest in using hand tools and wants to use machines....that seems a simple case, too.

 

[D_W]

I just realized I lied. I thought I used what you call par one time early on, but I used it two. I just remembered.



when I made my bench, the cheapest wood I could find was what you call PAR 8/4 ash. It wasn't actually usable as delivered, but I had zero interest in making a bench, only in having one. And I skimmed both sides of it with a portable thickness planer and slapped it all together like a big crude garden fixture.

That was nice because I didn't need flat boards, and it would've been a chore to dimension long not-straight par wood by hand.

So that's my * for what's sold as s3s or s4s here. It's OK for laminating.

 

[D_W]

It's not true.
The main function of the cap iron is to transfer the wedge pressure as close as possible to the cutting edge to make it more solid. Not sure if it helps "break chips" as per its other name. Seems unlikely.
Then with the thin bladed Staley/Bailey design it becomes essential as part of the blade unit, which is as effective as the older heavy blades but much easier to sharpen, set, etc.

that's false. It doesn't break chips, it holds them down so that they don't break and it influences them due to pressure, shortening the shaving that comes out because it's been worked. It doesn't break.

Here's why it's false - it replaced single iron planes that were laminated and if the irons needed more stability, it would've been cheaper by far to just make a thicker single iron with soft wrought and a thin laminated section.

That and every old text referencing how it works mentions its ability to improve a surface, from nicholson to holtzappfel.

It's meaningful for dimensioning x 2 and it dominated single irons due to the economic value of it, not the woo value. People were willing to pay much more for a plane with a double iron than one with a thick single iron.

to actually dimension from rough to finished wood with single iron planes after long straight boards became less the rule (pith on center and everything else) is dippy. It's one of the reasons people think that it's hard or unpredictable.

Someone in the states who talks as if they're some kind of force in furniture making constantly brings up how risky it is to plane a surface and potentially ruin a nearly completed piece of furniture. Texts like holtzappfel's never opine on something so dippy.

In something like FAS cherry in the states, all of the steps after jack work happen about twice as fast with a cap iron. wood like the thing I pictured above becomes routine (there is a fair bit of physical resistance, but you cannot get a single iron plane through it with anything other than the thinnest smoother shavings). It's uncanny how well it works, and it fits in among things like sharpening rip saws *very* often - it seems to particular until you experience it in actual work.

 

[Jacob]

......

Here's why it's false - it replaced single iron planes that were laminated and if the irons needed more stability, it would've been cheaper by far to just make a thicker single iron with soft wrought and a thin laminated section.

It wasn't about "stability" it was about pressure in the right place i.e. near the edge.

People were willing to pay much more for a plane with a double iron than one with a thick single iron.

Because a double iron is more cost effective. Also a thicker iron takes longer to sharpen.

 

[D_W]

It wasn't about "stability" it was about pressure in the right place i.e. near the edge.

Because a double iron is more cost effective. Also a thicker iron takes longer to sharpen.

the double iron showed up and the cost of the plane went up with it. The idea that in the days of blacksmithing, creating a second iron that had to be fitted to the first, slotting the first, creating a screw and threading it (in the 1700s) was less expensive than putting more wrought iron in a single iron is false.

There are plenty of texts that arrived before "old chippies" were folks working mostly with power tools that described the use of the cap iron.

economic value obsoletes whatever came before it. The cap iron prevents tearout or limits it, depending on what you want to do, and extends the volume of wood that can be planed by several multiples. It eliminated single iron planes for anything but crude work or very fine finish work because everything in between is where the economic value is.

Anything from jack work, if needed to all but the finest smoother shavings (like below 2 thousandths of an inch).

one would sort of expect this kind of reasoning from a new hobbyist, but to advocate as a heavy user of hand tools from start to finish and not understand the function of the cap iron is way out there.

 

[D_W]

page 480 - holtzapffel comments about the plane working smoother but harder. it does. There is a smooth feel of resistance from bending the shaving, but the volume of work done with one stroke due to not having a shaving break up makes up for it several times over ...

....unless you have near perfect down grain wood.

https://www.google.com/books/editio...iron+second+iron&pg=PA679&printsec=frontcover
It was actually a blacksmith that made an argument that I couldn't really get past when I thought the cap iron was just some kid of archaic fixture and outdated. The argument was the cost of making one and how difficult they are to blacksmith in combination with slotting the iron vs. a single iron plane.

And too on that in the early 1800s when thicker irons were found in single iron lower cost planes, why someone at that time would pay more for a plane that wasn't better. The cost of a double iron plane was significantly higher due to the labor involved in what would later be done by industrial process. Exposure to really old double irons will show much more manual labor involved in making them, even in factory versions.

Even with FAS wood now, the effect is so stark that if someone claims they spent some fair amount of a hobby or lifetime working entirely by hand and never got flummoxed and went after solving the problem of risk and poor results - I don't believe that they ever did much hand work.

The problem now is that people who have spent 10% of their time cleaning up after machines with hand tools, or striking a couple of mouldings or scraping a bunch of stuff think they have the context to make a decision about this. And they're emboldened by people like paul sellers, who was a craft fair maker, not a cabinetmaker, and trained as a joiner in the era of power tools

It's senseless to try to guess at the function of planes based on advice from people who never had to squeeze economy out of them to do cabinet type work.

 

[G S Haydon]

I couldn't be bothered to try and plane this from rough boards. I used the machines at work. It's the most difficult thing I've had to smooth. Hard olive ash, ripples, interlocking and the defect that I wanted to retain had a bloody nasty ledge that wanted to snap.
Not saying it couldn't be done, I just didn't want to but I desperately wanted to use the wood!
Picking clean boards is a huge step to having an easier time at the bench.

 

[D_W]

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I couldn't be bothered to try and plane this from rough boards. I used the machines at work. It's the most difficult thing I've had to smooth. Hard olive ash, ripples, interlocking and the defect that I wanted to retain had a bloody nasty ledge that wanted to snap.
Not saying it couldn't be done, I just didn't want to but I desperately wanted to use the wood!
Picking clean boards is a huge step to having an easier time at the bench.

I find wood for guitars, or whatever else, highly entertaining to plane. to make something bigger like cabinets or whatever, or doors that need to stay flat, nice clear straight wood that saws without surprises and that stays straight and planes smoothly (even if still needing the cap iron) is nice.

I love freehand grinding chisels, thicknessing bits for guitar parts by hand, etc, but have to admit if it was tuesday and I did it for 3300 workdays before and I had 14 more things on the commission list where there was already a deposit, I'd prefer to have a machine that did things predictably.

I've relayed this story several times - when I first started, a friend and I got highly figured hard maple that I found difficult to plane and got all manners of nonsense - large scraper plane, small scraper plane, 63 degree mujingfang smoother and in the end, we took the 10 panels for just the same as those shown in an old FWW article "a blanket chest with legs" to a guy an hour away, that guy having hoarded old equipment. One of the machines was a 52 inch beach three spindle oscillating drum (spindle?) sander with progressive grits on it. The panels are something like 16" wide, and the guy accidentally set the machine heavy on the first pass- it sanded of 1/8th inch of thickness in one pass. I would bet the machine was from the 1940s or 1950s. It's probably not cheap to use in terms of sandpaper, but I doubt we spent more than 20 minutes thicknessing those ten panels.

the last not so happy part about it was that they at in my shop and cupped. I'm looking at them as I set in my basement office - they're still propped against a wall - 14 years later because I never finished making the chest. I eventually scraped them and applied a heavy dose of shellac and they really need to just be scraped and to be honest, I'd rather harvest the wood out of the long panels to laminate into guitar necks.

What I'm getting at is I totally get it. It's possible to plane what you're showing without any risk. The width of it (and what that implies for taking finish shavings through the length) would make your back ache, though. Holtzapffel's text refers to some very unruly wood being stylish and needing a maker to resort to using a "special glass scraper".

I'm fairly sure I scraped the board I showed above after planing but it was still a bit hairy feeling - it's end grain. It's also just a junk shelf, and it's only about 2 feet x 14 inches, so the fact that it was unpleasant sticks in my head.

I can't deny watching dana bourgeois or someone else thicknessing guitar tops on a drum sander or specialty belt sander to get them to a certain stiffness. ...boy, if it's a business, it's different than this is to me as a hobby.

I did plane my ash bench top with a type 20 stanley 4 in just over one sharpening (after roughing it close to flat with a jointer) at the time that I made the bench just to prove a point about what the cap iron does for productivity. Those round top irons aren't so great in hardwoods, the boards were glued together without any regard to orientation and using one of those halfway-to-saw-temper irons without a cap iron would be tough.

Difference between your wood and mine - yours is a nice piece of timber! Mine's junk with a big squishy knot.

 

[D_W]

I wonder how many people on here think a cap iron doesn't do anything and then go and set a tersa head on a machine as per the instructions.

I think even my hobbyist friend's DC580 planer has back knives, but he's already replaced the knives with a spiral head as I doubt he ever read anything about setting the back knives.

And one last thought - more than once, I've heard a pro remark about how much better a portable (almost said disposable) planer does at finish surfacing wood with figure vs. a crudely set large planer. I always thought that was interesting, too, given how there's little to adjust on them....

...the retaining bar on the portable planers- if they're any good - is set close enough to work as a chipbreaker in a heavy cut and prevent lift.

 

[Ttrees]

I can't deny watching dana bourgeois or someone else thicknessing guitar tops on a drum sander or specialty belt sander to get them to a certain stiffness. ...boy, if it's a business, it's different than this is to me as a hobby.

Sacrilege

 

[thetyreman]

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I couldn't be bothered to try and plane this from rough boards. I used the machines at work. It's the most difficult thing I've had to smooth. Hard olive ash, ripples, interlocking and the defect that I wanted to retain had a bloody nasty ledge that wanted to snap.
Not saying it couldn't be done, I just didn't want to but I desperately wanted to use the wood!
Picking clean boards is a huge step to having an easier time at the bench.

I actually love the defect, without it, the piece would almost look too clinical like a museum piece, that is a really stunning piece of furniture! out of interest what finish did you use?

 

[thetyreman]

The problem now is that people who have spent 10% of their time cleaning up after machines with hand tools, or striking a couple of mouldings or scraping a bunch of stuff think they have the context to make a decision about this. And they're emboldened by people like paul sellers, who was a craft fair maker, not a cabinetmaker, and trained as a joiner in the era of power tools

that's not entirely true about sellers, he was a full-time furniture and cabinet maker, and also designs furniture, according to his blogs he still sells pieces for exclusive clients, it's unfair to label him as a simpleton joiner, also the simple things are the most important and most of it comes from joinery, chippendale started off as a joiner and became a master craftsman and furniture maker for the elite.

 

[D_W]

that's not entirely true about sellers, he was a full-time furniture and cabinet maker, and also designs furniture, according to his blogs he still sells pieces for exclusive clients, it's unfair to label him as a simpleton joiner, also the simple things are the most important and most of it comes from joinery, chippendale started off as a joiner and became a master craftsman and furniture maker for the elite.

Some time ago, I read an account from him that he moved to the states and did the craft circuit when he was talking about making it.

He was the one who gave that account. It didn't involve calling himself a full time furniture maker and cabinetmaker - i wonder if his story has been embellished a little. I also wonder if frank strazza was the one who did most of the work on the white house piece he likes to show.

If you watch the guys at colonial williamsburg work with hand tools and then you watch paul, the difference is enormous. The work quality gap is also really large, but they are fine makers, so one would expect that.

His true talent is letting out bits and pieces and keeping customers, but I've never run into anyone who pops up like james krenov did (coming out of a model making shop or something in sweden?) and say "I learned from paul". or Rob cosman for that matter.

They are experts at curating their real clients - not furniture buyers, but people willing to pay for online access.

 

[D_W]

not dogging joiners or the craft scene or work that people like to do that's not fine work but they enjoy, by the way. My mother made a great side income off of the craft scene for 40 years. Some of the folks in it felt like they were fine workers, but the vibe is way different.

I'm just a little skeptical about the story being changed from "do whatever you need to make it, I had to earn my stripes making craft items and selling them each week and living on a shoestring" to the cabinetmaker story for paul. I don't know which is which.

I see some of the work G. S. does, including the built in - and I personally prefer good built in work over furniture for practical purposes as you can get a lot of use out of $15k of custom work built into a house, but who really gets much utility out of a mediocre $15k highboy that's not much or any better than one that's $2k used.

it's a matter of calling the balls and strikes right, not whether or not only the home runs count as runs.

 

[G S Haydon]

I actually love the defect, without it, the piece would almost look too clinical like a museum piece, that is a really stunning piece of furniture! out of interest what finish did you use?

Same here! I'd had the wood for many a year. I wanted the defect offset to the side to bring some interest. It allowed just enough to allow the grain to wrap. It needed dramatic timber, to lift the restrained design.
The photo makes it look more yellow than it is. I used a water based hardware oil as I didn't want the ash to turn urine yellow and to retain the contrast with the brown oak doors