Fashion and the Art of Hand Planing.

[Cheshirechappie]

Over the last few weeks, I've been going through some old paperwork, as you do when it finally overflows the space it should fit in. Part of that 'review' (using a slightly posher word than the activity really warrants!) has involved some old copies of F&C from the early 2000's. One article that caught the eye was a comparison of two infill smoothers with a 'modern' bedrock smoother. The writer (who might recall the incident!) slightly preferred the bedrock plane, though not by much. This brought forth a stinging rebuke by letter a couple of issues later, from and old craftsman who insisted that he and his mates were in total agreement that nothing could touch the traditional English infill planes for finishing cabinet woods.

It rather made me chuckle. Partly because the writer was a very accomplished cabinetmaker himself, and well acquainted with the finishing of cabinet woods. Partly because it reflected the changes in woodworking fashion.

Back in the day (first half of the 20th century, say) the infill plane seemed to hold sway as the 'ultimate' cabinetmaker's plane. There was a rather nasty period post WW2 when not much of quality was available, then in the latter part of the 20th century, the fine tool revival started, and the plane of choice became the bedrock with a thick iron. Sometime in the early 21st century, this morphed into the bevel-up period, when such planes were the answer to everything. Now, it seems that you can do anything to any wood with a bog-standard Ebay Bailey plane with about 20 minutes of basic fettling. Maybe Paul Sellers started this fashion, or maybe it's just that the internet experts have 'seen the light' as it were.

Forgive me a quiet chuckle, if you will; I can't help thinking that the bandwagon of fashion will move on in due course. I mean - what were those old-timers doing paying a fortnight's wages for an infill when a basic Stanley would have done it all? I can't help feeling a little sorry for the newcomer of a few years ago looking at his line-up of shiny bevel-up planes and thinking, "Why didn't those *@&*holes on the internet tell me I could do it all with a couple of rusty car-boot finds?"

Wonder what the next fashion will be? High-pitch single-iron woodies, perhaps?

 

[No skills]

I have a pair of folded steel draper planes that I might consider letting go for £250 before they become fashionable and the price shoots up, obviously as a favour for ukw members.

 

[David C]

If I am right about those articles, the first was by me.....

And it did make me very unpopular with some.

David Charlesworth

 

[D_W]

Over the last few weeks, I've been going through some old paperwork, as you do when it finally overflows the space it should fit in. Part of that 'review' (using a slightly posher word than the activity really warrants!) has involved some old copies of F&C from the early 2000's. One article that caught the eye was a comparison of two infill smoothers with a 'modern' bedrock smoother. The writer (who might recall the incident!) slightly preferred the bedrock plane, though not by much. This brought forth a stinging rebuke by letter a couple of issues later, from and old craftsman who insisted that he and his mates were in total agreement that nothing could touch the traditional English infill planes for finishing cabinet woods.

It rather made me chuckle. Partly because the writer was a very accomplished cabinetmaker himself, and well acquainted with the finishing of cabinet woods. Partly because it reflected the changes in woodworking fashion.

Back in the day (first half of the 20th century, say) the infill plane seemed to hold sway as the 'ultimate' cabinetmaker's plane. There was a rather nasty period post WW2 when not much of quality was available, then in the latter part of the 20th century, the fine tool revival started, and the plane of choice became the bedrock with a thick iron. Sometime in the early 21st century, this morphed into the bevel-up period, when such planes were the answer to everything. Now, it seems that you can do anything to any wood with a bog-standard Ebay Bailey plane with about 20 minutes of basic fettling. Maybe Paul Sellers started this fashion, or maybe it's just that the internet experts have 'seen the light' as it were.

Forgive me a quiet chuckle, if you will; I can't help thinking that the bandwagon of fashion will move on in due course. I mean - what were those old-timers doing paying a fortnight's wages for an infill when a basic Stanley would have done it all? I can't help feeling a little sorry for the newcomer of a few years ago looking at his line-up of shiny bevel-up planes and thinking, "Why didn't those *@&*holes on the internet tell me I could do it all with a couple of rusty car-boot finds?"

Wonder what the next fashion will be? High-pitch single-iron woodies, perhaps?

Joel Moskowitz had written a while ago that there was social pressure in England to purchase infill planes back when they became widespread. You could speculate, but I'd bet if it's true, it would have something to do with supporting English and Scottish craftsmen rather than giving money to stanley.

Sellers talks about the stanley 4 a lot, but his gimmick is to tell you that you don't have to spend that much money. He has said things several times that suggest that he doesn't use the cap iron to control tearout. I wouldn't put him in the same category as someone like George Wilson, that's for sure (but George used single iron planes because the museum in the states where he worked would not allow double iron planes due to contention about whether or not they were common enough during the era it portrays (late 18th century). As far as sellers goes, no doubt he's done his share of woodworking, but I can't help but think when watching him that he doesn't portray dimensioning rough wood that well. Not like he does at other things like mortising, etc.

I don't see much internet history other than Warren Mickley talking about the virtues of planing everything with double iron planes at common pitch, and even less in anyone instructing someone else to do it other than Warren. And that was in the states, mostly during the time bevel up planes were becoming popular with beginners. Warren doesn't post on here, but he works in a shop with no electrical tools, and has been doing so for a living for something close to 40 years. In his terms, people bring him jobs that are cheaper for him to do than could be done in a larger industrial shop.

At any rate, the bevel up era probably coincides with tool needs being catered to beginners, who would have no clue. There's been an explosion in the various promise-it-all steels to market to them, too, as well as scads of promise-it-all sharpening guides and abrasives. Same is done with chisels with the notion that old english chisels are too soft and don't hold an edge long enough.

I'm sure there will be more put out in terms of "innovation" that helps beginners, but maybe the internet woodworking community won't go for all of it hook, line and sinker any longer.

There's not gobs of people who do everything by hand, but there are more people now than I can remember (brian holcombe's blog is a good example, i'm sure there are others where the blogger isn't selling "lifestyle woodworking" or trying to sell a book with every project they make, but rather just describing the satisfaction of planing and sawing the wood from rough. Those are the types of people who get a much better concept of tool design and why things were the way they are, and just how good the tools that were used by professionals are. The folks who consider a hand plane to be a tool used between a machine planer and obligatory progression of sandpaper...well, we can't really expect that they'll know much about tools.

I don't think the stanley planes or the old wooden double iron planes are going to go out of style again any time soon.

 

[Corneel]

The infill certainly was a typical English fashion for a relatively short period, end 19th, first half 20th century. On the continent the wooden plane was still king and in America the Stanleys took over the market, not so much the bedrocks, but the bog standard Bailey.

 

[Trafalgar]

There was not an insignificant slice of time when all the boards in the US were smitten with Clark and Williams single-iron high pitched smoothers. All sorts of species were being planed tear out free for the first time in the user's experience. Direction of planing didn't matter. These were flat out a revelation. The 'old guys' were right. But we hear this story about every type of plane from Holtey, the aforementioned historical single-iron reproductions, the lowly Stanley, etc. etc. Meet the new, old guys, same as the old, old guys. It's not hard finding an old guy you think had it right. It's because they were all right.

Seems time to trot this 'ole boy's antique shop out again. Avert your eyes if you think a Shaker chest of drawers represents technical accomplishment.

http://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.com/desks

Somehow it got done and by firms building breathtakingly difficult furniture in commercially feasible timeframes with not an electron used not even for lights. I suspect that at no time were the better firms ever flummoxed by the planing of wood regardless of what sort of planes they used. If they were, the work certainly doesn't show it.

 

[D_W]

Charlie, the difference is in time spent. The double iron is faster, and thus I'd guess became preferred due to economic need.

Single irons are easier for beginners, and they certainly do fine at jacking and fine smoothing. Just more physical effort per volume of wood.

 

[Trafalgar]

An improvement David, but realistically at the margin. Not a sea-change. That would come later with the complete mechanization of the processing lumber to dimensions required for a project.

One only has to contemplate the 17th to early 18th century piece smothered in flawless marquetry or parquetry of the most difficult species to plane and finish to understand, again, it got done and to extraordinarily high standards.

I find this encouraging though I'll never be able to execute the kind of work I'm talking about.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

The folks who consider a hand plane to be a tool used between a machine planer and obligatory progression of sandpaper...well, we can't really expect that they'll know much about tools.

Isn't that how most people - including some very accomplished and experienced professionals - go about their woodworking, though? Using machines for the grunt work, and hand planes only for fine fitting and finishing? Isn't it maybe a little arrogant to suggest that they don't know much about tools?

 

[D_W]

I find this encouraging though I'll never be able to execute the kind of work I'm talking about.

Neither can I.

Certainly the double iron doesn't thickness like a thickness planing machine tied to a lineshaft. It probably would've cut 20% of dimensioning time off for an apprentice (depending on what's being planed), and as many like to point out, let the apprentice be less skilled in doing it.

I don't see a real functional improvement with infills, but they are nice. I don't know if Joel's explanation of them being something purchased often under social pressure is correct, but it sounds good and fits. Maybe it wasn't popular for craftsmen to be buying american planes after using something made in England or Scotland before that - especially if you could literally see the planemaker who was now not making your planes.

Who knows?

Almost none of this matters at all unless someone new is contemplating dimensioning by hand, and I'd bet the number of those people doesn't increase by a large amount ever. I'd also be willing to bet that most of Larry's planes were set up as long, medium and short smoothers - the same way metal planes are sold now.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

If I am right about those articles, the first was by me.....

And it did make me very unpopular with some.

David Charlesworth

You are quite right, David, the article was one of yours.

Just for those without a copy of that issue of F&C, David compared two infill smoothers (one by Ray Iles, one a Shepherd kit) with two LN bedrock planes, a number 4 1/2 with a 50 degree frog, and a 5 1/2 with a common pitch frog. He couldn't separate them on performance (planing a piece of Ovangkol against the grain), but slightly preferred the bedrocks on grounds of ease and reliability of adjustment. He also mentioned the problem that some infill planes suffer, namely shrinkage of the wood infill, tending to alter the bedding of the iron as the steel near the mouth stays put and the wood above shrinks. Nothing very contentious, and expressed in a very moderate tone, but it clearly upset some.

One thing that did make me smile a touch wryly was David's description of how he set the planes up for the test. Each of the four irons was freshly sharpened using the same method and bevel angles, and the cap-iron was set very close. It seems that Mr Charlesworth was using the close-set cap-iron before it was 'rediscovered'! So much for 'not knowing how to set a plane up'!

 

[D_W]

The folks who consider a hand plane to be a tool used between a machine planer and obligatory progression of sandpaper...well, we can't really expect that they'll know much about tools.

Isn't that how most people - including some very accomplished and experienced professionals - go about their woodworking, though? Using machines for the grunt work, and hand planes only for fine fitting and finishing? Isn't it maybe a little arrogant to suggest that they don't know much about tools?

That's how the bulk of people do things. They won't get a complete understanding of plane design by doing that, though.

That was my point in a previous thread. You can't really make various lengths of smoothing planes and then assert that you know everything well enough to dismiss designs made when planes were used for a lot more.

The reality is that dimensioning a few things (and learning to do it competently and briskly) will save time even if you forgo it. The same as learning to use things like a spokeshave and a drawknife will. I doubt many people use a drawknife, which (in combination with a hatchet) may be the reason that there wasn't a "scrub plane" 250 years ago when people think such a thing would've actually been useful.

Scrub planes are also popular with people who sand furniture and use power planers, because conceptually they seem to make sense like they'd be useful. Dimension 150 board feet of decent quality lumber, though, and you come up empty with things where something else doesn't work better.

(I don't sell planes, but even so, I've had just as many people send me PMs trying to get me to make them a scrub plane as anything else, and they're puzzled when I say that you don't really use any such thing when you work by hand. Add shoulder planes to that - I don't know when the last time was that I used a shoulder plane, but I've used a rabbet plane and chisels a lot).

 

[D_W]

One thing that did make me smile a touch wryly was David's description of how he set the planes up for the test. Each of the four irons was freshly sharpened using the same method and bevel angles, and the cap-iron was set very close. It seems that Mr Charlesworth was using the close-set cap-iron before it was 'rediscovered'! So much for 'not knowing how to set a plane up'!

I wouldn't automatically equate that to using a cap iron like has been discussed in the last several years, or David never would've made a video advocating back beveling an iron to 70 degrees effective - nor closing the mouth tightly on bench planes. Let me show you one of David's quotes on another forum from December of 2012:

"This chipbreaker information is quite the most exciting thing I have learned in a forty year career. I am quite clear that it was not common knowledge in England and I don't recall seeing it in the whole of Fine Woodworking.

My advice and practice was to set the C/B close for gnarly timbers but not that close!

Learning new stuff is very invigorating."

Call me suspicious, but it doesn't sound like he was setting the cap iron close and controlling tearout with it in your magazine article. Also, recent questions about setting a plane up with an 80 degree front bevel show a lack of on-the-ground experience with different setups. One comparing an 80 degree cap iron bevel to 50 will soon learn that 80 is undesirable in comparison. This stuff is important only because the entirety about how capable a stanley plane feels (presuming the rest is undamaged and not defective) is based 100% on the ability to use the cap iron effectively.

I've found the same thing true about infill planes, though (as David's article says). I set mine aside when I found that a stanley bailey with a cap iron at common pitch has a bit more ability to control tearout than a 55 degree infill with a thick single iron and mouth between 3 and 4 thousandths (a mouth at a hundredth is useless in preventing tearout to a finish surface level when compared to a cap iron, something also learned in practice). Of course, I made both of the planes I'm talking about (the infills - one from scratch and one from a kit), and the cost of the materials for the two was about 10 times what a stanley 4 and stanley 6 cost me.

A rank beginner would probably do better with my infill smoother than they would with a stanley for quite a while, though.

With regard to the wood (infills), they definitely move some. The key in using them is to be smart enough to select very old wood (not 4 years old, but more like 50) and make them of a design where the fitting needs to be good but not perfect. Just like guitars, it's a mistake to assume that the wood will not move over the decades.

I could do that article one further and show that a lie nielsen plane does nothing in experienced hands that a stanley can't do - though the lie nielsen doesn't lend itself to being sharpened with a washita quite so well, which a stanley does fine (and a washita sharpened iron will still take a shaving down to half a thousandth and cleanly plane end grain on hardwoods). It wouldn't be very popular, either. Most people would not like to settle with there actually being a reason that stanley's early 1900s irons were in a specific hardness range, despite silicon carbide and aluminum oxide bench stones being readily available for the same price as washita stones. The aluminum oxide finish bench stones that were out (which looked like large barber hones, and were quite cheap) were a lot closer to the current "Ceramic" stones than most of the stuff that was sold as a "new thing" in the 1980s and 1990s, but nobody seemed to want them. You could reintroduce them now and sell them to gobs of beginners if you could get a blogger to talk about how much of an improvement they are.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

.............. Forgive me a quiet chuckle, if you will; I can't help thinking that the bandwagon of fashion will move on in due course. I mean - what were those old-timers doing paying a fortnight's wages for an infill when a basic Stanley would have done it all? I can't help feeling a little sorry for the newcomer of a few years ago looking at his line-up of shiny bevel-up planes and thinking, "Why didn't those *@&*holes on the internet tell me I could do it all with a couple of rusty car-boot finds?"

Wonder what the next fashion will be? High-pitch single-iron woodies, perhaps?

There will always be fashion among adolescent woodworkers who seek to emulate those whom they raise on pedestals. I have visited many woodworking forums, and most "handtool" discussions are about which tool to buy next, and not about technique or furniture design and construction.

David W will tell you that he once lived and breathed infills. Now he lives and breathes chipbreakers. Others aspired to woodies by Old Street. There are Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley fanboys, and then there are the intense "discussions" about sharpening that break out every week or so. There too, are the preferences of those who are simply echoing the words they read on forums.

I used BU planes for a long time. They were not planes for "beginners", as David W stated, but high angle planes that worked on the hard and interlocked woods I build with. I also used high angle BD planes, such as HNT Gordon. And I continue to use these planes - just because I mainly use Bailey pattern planes now, does not invalidate planes that work. Why did I switch to Bailey pattern (Stanley, LN and LV)? Simply because they can be made to work better when the chipbreaker is involved. I learned to use this in 2012.

There will always be those that seek to furnish a workshop, and those who use their planes/tools to further their creativity. There will always be new tools that will end up being used by both groups. One man's meat is another man's fashion.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[bugbear]

One man's meat is another man's fashion.
Derek

Surely it's a "Yes Minister" irregular verb?

• I choose my tools according to the best information
• You have recently bought a new tool
• He blindly follows fashion in tools

:lol:

BugBear

 

[D_W]

Certainly someone who is not a beginner can use any plane that they like. I use the term planes for beginners to mean that someone who is not so inclined will be a lot closer to terminal performance in a very short period of time.

what's not true is what was "common wisdom" on the forums that:

* stanley planes are a good cheap place to start, but that if you get difficult wood, you need to....
* purchase a bevel down plane or an infill to do difficult wood. Or a #112 scraper or something similar.

Stanley planes have a bit more of a learning curve to get the most out of them, but it's certainly something that could be shown to a beginner if they were lucky enough to get hands on instruction.

The virtue of the stanley, of course, is that one setup covers everything. it can be left under the bench and used for everything as needed instead of three of its type being left under the bench. No spare irons stored, etc, that kind of stuff. And the setup that's effective on difficult wood doesn't rely on the iron being freshly sharpened, so it works all the way through the sharpening cycle leaving a good surface.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

One man's meat is another man's fashion.
Derek

Surely it's a "Yes Minister" irregular verb?

• I choose my tools according to the best information
• You have recently bought a new tool
• He blindly follows fashion in tools

:lol:

BugBear

That pretty much sums it all up. Except for the newbie looking for some honest guidance, and trying to separate knowledge and experience from opinion, fashion and .... well, just noise.

But that, I suppose, is just life....

 

[D_W]

One man's meat is another man's fashion.
Derek

Surely it's a "Yes Minister" irregular verb?

• I choose my tools according to the best information
• You have recently bought a new tool
• He blindly follows fashion in tools

:lol:

BugBear

That pretty much sums it all up. Except for the newbie looking for some honest guidance, and trying to separate knowledge and experience from opinion, fashion and .... well, just noise.

But that, I suppose, is just life....

And you separate knowledge and experience from opinion how?

Be curious to know who you think is "just noise" without knowledge and experience.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

Derek, you've said it very well!

T.

 

[Trafalgar]

Probably well to remember that molding planes never featured cap irons. And running moldings represented a pretty critical bit of planing. Certainly a higher pitch and a tight mouth were the order of the day but if it worked, it worked.

The reality of the rest of planing, basically removing wood to a set of marked lines, is simple work and in the heyday of hand tool woodworking in a decent sized firm was relegated to the lower rungs of the ladder. We're debating the work a thirteen year old boy would have been expected to perform, and did perform, practically flawlessly.

Well, maybe they didn't turn the adolescents loose on this piece from the 1750s:

http://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.com/T ... oryid=1363

How does one reconcile this 250+ year old tour-de-force (do scroll down) to all the Chicken Littles running around today talking about tear-out and such?

And here:

http://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.com/G ... oryid=1363

The description of this piece is a must-read.