Philip Marcou.

[Trafalgar]

Somebody mentioned Philip Marcou in the infill thread.

Derek Cohen reviewed Marcou smoothers several years ago, and besides concluding that the Marcou planes are remarkable in every way (as top shelf infills tend to be) there were a few other interesting tidbits about other planes that were part of the process.

http://marcouplanes.com/Marcou_Planes_2 ... planes.php

This review was well before the so-called 'chipbreaker revolution' and I did find it interesting that in the review the Stanley used for comparison was tearing out Maple ( "...when planed with a common Stanley #4 and freshly honed iron, the soft areas tore out repeatedly...") while the other bevel down plane (a L-N I believe) apparently handled all the species in the test(s) without any tear out. I wonder why this was? Must have been for reasons other than the chip breaker. Conclusions?

Karl Holtey per the review:

Another recent and significant deviation from the bevel down path is the Holtey #98 smoother. Karl Holtey conceived the design for this plane in 1998 (hence its name) by integrating his A11 improved pattern mitre plane with a 20 deg bed and an A2 blade. Karl’s motivation to follow this construction is summed up in his own words:

“By presenting the blade in this format the need for a chipbreaker has been eliminated (I do not believe in the use of chipbreakers anyway). The blade is supported very close to the cutting edge by virtue of its being inverted. Using mitre planes of the same format I found that they worked better as smoothing planes than smoothers and I was therefore determined to design this blade configuration into a smoothing plane”.

Cats were skinned in this article in practically every way imaginable. As perhaps they should be.

 

[D_W]

Somebody mentioned Philip Marcou.

Derek Cohen reviewed Marcou smoothers several years ago. Derek, do you still use this plane -- I think a bevel-up smoother?

http://marcouplanes.com/Marcou_Planes_2 ... planes.php

This review was well before the so-called 'chipbreaker revolution' and I did find it interesting that in your review the Stanley used for comparison was tearing out Maple ( "...when planed with a common Stanley #4 and freshly honed iron, the soft areas tore out repeatedly...") while the other bevel down plane (a L-N I believe) apparently handled all the species in the test(s) without any tear out. I wonder why this was? Must have been for reasons other than the chip breaker. Conclusions?

Karl Holtey per your review:

Another recent and significant deviation from the bevel down path is the Holtey #98 smoother. Karl Holtey conceived the design for this plane in 1998 (hence its name) by integrating his A11 improved pattern mitre plane with a 20 deg bed and an A2 blade. Karl’s motivation to follow this construction is summed up in his own words:

“By presenting the blade in this format the need for a chipbreaker has been eliminated (I do not believe in the use of chipbreakers anyway). The blade is supported very close to the cutting edge by virtue of its being inverted. Using mitre planes of the same format I found that they worked better as smoothing planes than smoothers and I was therefore determined to design this blade configuration into a smoothing plane”.

Cats were skinned in this article in practically every way imaginable. As perhaps they should be. Good work.

Why solve the problem for $25 or $40 when you can spend hundreds or thousands and have to store lots of extra stuff, right?

 

[Trafalgar]

Not really a matter of thousands of dollars with my question:

I hope to hear theories about why the Lie-Nielsen bevel down smoother didn't produce tear out but the Stanley did. Maybe the LN had the high angle frog?

Edit: The chart in the article shows the bedding angle of the L-N at 45* Mystery deepens...???

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Oh fer Gawd's sake ..... this thread is about 'Infill plane makers of modern times'. If people want to have a spat about cap-irons, or have a dig at other posters, would they please confine themselves to a more appropriate thread? Or start a thread of their own?

Mod Thread Edit:- Agreed, this thread split from "Infill plane makers of modern times." as being none relevant to the Collection of Plane Maker references

 

[AndyT]

^^^^^Quite so.

I know that sometimes wandering off topic leads to some interesting digressions but this one has been replayed too many times now.

 

[Trafalgar]

Begin quote:

Performance

All the planes were capable of producing superior finishes on the woods used. This included the LN #4 ½ with the Clifton iron. Note that the LN was not ready for use at the time I was joined by my colleagues, and all comparison pictures were taken at a later date.

The assessment process involved planing the chosen boards both with and against the grain. The latter was done to increase the level of difficulty, and to simulate planing the most difficult of surfaces with reversing grain. Each team member recorded their experiences with the Marcou and the BUS, at 45° and 60°, the feel of each plane, and their perceived results. It was intended that these subjective results reflect the experience of a user.

Wood

There were three main test boards, Rock Maple, Tasmanian Blackwood, and Jarrah.

The Rock Maple was not a terribly hard piece but it contained striations of hard and soft strips, with the softer areas tending to reverse their grain. When planed with a common Stanley #4 and freshly honed iron, the soft areas tore out repeatedly.

The Tasmanian Blackwood is just a stunning example of the beauty of chatoyance in wood. When planed it glimmered like Tiger’s Eye. A hard wood, this one a moderately hard sample, it had a lot of interesting figure. It is the type of wood that you approach with care owing to its unpredictability.

The Jarrah was an old enemy, a board I had used in previous reviews – perhaps one of the harder samples I have come across in recent years, and with a knot of reversing grain at one end. Most planes either just skate across the surface or dig in and create tear out.

End quote.

Good to know the L-N worked well against such a formidable foe as the Jarrah board mentioned - apparently without any particular tweaks to the chipbreaker too. One suspects that Mr. Lie-Nielsen knew this sort of thing all along. My guess is that Derek had the mouth stopped down very tight on the L-N and it planed beautifully so configured. I imagine the extra mass helped a little too -- which brings us back around to infills to some degree.

I assume that the Stanley, unable to cope with even the Maple, was not tried on the Blackwood or Jarrah. Fast forward some years and now Stanleys can plane all comers and Lie-Nielsen planes have/had defective chip breakers. My, oh, my how to reconcile it all?

 

[D_W]

If you want to use a less capable and more expensive setup, by all means, do it.

 

[Trafalgar]

I get along fine. This is more about hyperbole, how pendulums swing, tent revivals, and shoes, ships, and sealing wax when you get down to it.

It's also bound to be encouraging to those users of Lie-Nielsen planes who've not paid an overabundance of attention to their chipbreakers (they apparently have a friend in Karl Holtey) to know that the good results they've been getting all these years have not been a figment of their imagination, lighter wallets notwithstanding of course.

 

[Trafalgar]

If you want to use a less capable and more expensive setup, by all means, do it.

"Less capable" is an interesting choice of words given the performance Derek noted in his review. The Lie-Nielsen plane worked beautifully and most likely without a super-close cap iron setting and on the tough species noted in the review. The Stanley, likely with a similar cap iron setting as Derek's L-N, not so well.

 

[D_W]

If you want to use a less capable and more expensive setup, by all means, do it.

"Less capable" is an interesting choice of words given the performance Derek noted in his review. The Lie-Nielsen plane worked beautifully and most likely without a super-close cap iron setting and on the tough species noted in the review. The Stanley, likely with a similar cap iron setting as Derek's L-N, not so well.

If we're talking about taking 1 thousandth smoother shavings, everything works. As soon as you want more out of a given plane, the other styles are less capable than common pitch planes with double irons. Either they are more work (high angle vs. common pitch) or incapable of taking a thicker shaving and preventing tearout.

I can't really convince people who use planing machines of much, they can pick whatever style they want as long as they plane their wood before it has as chance to move. Anyone, like Custard has pointed out, who has a need for penultimate work will find out that the cap iron is substantially superior to other methods.

It's really not that hard to understand if you actually use it instead of arguing about it.

 

[Trafalgar]

Your relatively heavy smoother pass theory is interesting. I *usually* find myself trying not to remove measureable thickness or certainly very little with the smoother, well of course it can be measured but not with any sort of instrument I would bring to bear on a woodworking project. Maybe I keep long planes on the components too long.

It still begs the question why the Stanley wasn't working if the LN was only working because it was taking uber-fine shavings. One assumes that if through nothing but force of habit Derek would have had them set up to remove about the same thickness shaving. Under your theory, both should have worked just fine if the shaving was light enough. Type/brand of plane wouldn't really matter.

You might recall the Jeff Gorman site I linked to a while back, which you poo-poo'd, Gorman basically said the same thing about shaving thickness -- if whispy enough they lack the 'beam strength' to cause tear out. This does put a premium on sole flatness though (it would seem).

 

[D_W]

Your relatively heavy smoother pass theory is interesting. I usually find myself trying not to remove measureable thickness with the smoother, well of course it can be measured but not with any sort of instrument I would bring to bear on a woodworking project. Maybe I keep long planes on the components too long.

It still begs the question why the Stanley wasn't working. One assumes that if nothing but force of habit Derek would have had them set up to remove about the same thickness shaving. Under your theory, both should have worked just fine if the shaving was light enough. Type/brand of plane wouldn't really matter.

You might recall the Jeff Gorman site I linked to a while back, which you poo-poo'd, Gorman basically said the same thing about shaving thickness -- if whispy enough they lack the 'beam strength' to cause tear out.

Try, jointer generally for the pre-smoothing heavy work. A heavy smoother shaving is nice if the try plane leaves any tearout, but not always required.

I poo pooed the gorman site because the guy doesn't know what he's talking about with cap irons and he proposed something that takes a long time to complete. Compare that to this:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread. ... ing-planes

You can do it the hard way, or you can do it the easy way. Look at the shaving coming out of Brian's smoother. Not thin. I'm sure the last passes were.

Or you can argue against it for reasons that I can't gather at all given you do a lot of work with hand planes. You only have all of history to argue against (except you can side with recent history where nobody's that competent with planes from rough to finish, save a very small group of people).

What Brian didn't show (and he mentions it in this thread) is that the penultimate step is where he got out most of the tearout (with the try plane). The thick smoother shaving just expedites the minor tearout left by it.

A modern hobby woodworker (say an MD or a DDS) with a wide belt sander or a spiral cut planer and wide bed jointer wouldn't think about any of this stuff above.

I'll bet it took Brian a tiny fraction of the time to go from jack planed surface to finished vs. the link you showed, but then again, Brian knows how to use the double iron properly, rather than arguing about why it doesn't work.

All that said, if a guy really wants to take extra time doing something, then by all means. We are (some of us) doing most of the work by hand to begin with, and making things we don't need to make at all. That's extra time, too. But the same person shouldn't really be advising on what's fastest or most effective if they have no clue.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Charles, as I recall, the Stanley #4 was not my plane, but brought along by one of the testers in the review. I did not sharpen the blade, as I had done with the other planes that were part of the review. For all we know, the blade was as sharp as he could get it but not as sharp as the blades in the other planes. The performance of the #4 was only commented about by the owner after running it over one of the test boards (and found its performance well behind the test planes). No one else used the #4. It was not part of the testing.

The Marcou review was an era of the high cutting angle as the most effective tearout control method for handplanes that I was aware of at the time. It remains a superb plane performance wise. It planes into grain with ease. Nothing alters the fact that it is a special plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

I believe that you vastly overstate your case with regard to speed, as well as the species and situations in which you've replicated the results.

If the wood is cooperative, board relatively flat, everybody dials in a deeper shaving -- for sure with the longer planes, somewhat likely with the short planes too. This isn't new news, is it?

But, yes, I freely admit that when planing some fractious piece I'm going to slow it down a little. In the scheme of an entire project, the time 'wasted' doesn't rise to a drop in the bucket.

 

[Trafalgar]

Charles, as I recall, the Stanley #4 was not my plane, but brought along by one of the testers in the review. I did not sharpen the blade, as I had done with the other planes that were part of the review. For all we know, the blade was as sharp as he could get it but not as sharp as the blades in the other planes. The performance of the #4 was only commented about by the owner after running it over one of the test boards (and found its performance well behind the test planes). No one else used the #4. It was not part of the testing.

The Marcou review was an era of the high cutting angle as the most effective tearout control method for handplanes that I was aware of at the time. It remains a superb plane performance wise. It planes into grain with ease. Nothing alters the fact that it is a special plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Got it. Thanks. Hopefully your colleagues stuck around for a honing lesson while they were there.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

I had a look at the review. Been a long time.

Yes, I did write that. I do not recall the conditions. It was a comment that was about my experience of the Maple test board made as a precursor to the testing.

The tester I recall was Colin Webb. He wrote:

"Amongst other boards, we planed a piece of Maple. One side of it exhibited a couple of areas of furry grain where tear-out would clearly be an issue. I thought I could see this on the band-sawn reverse of this particular board so I turned it over and took a few passes with one of my Stanley #4½s. Sure enough – tear-out and the dreaded furriness. There was a thin band of reverse grain running through part of the board and a patch where the grain stood up like tightly-spaced bristles.

Both the Marcou and the LV smoothers cleaned up the maple beautifully. No tear-out at all. No furriness. Just a clean, shiny surface, free of any defects. Very impressive!"

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

One of the guys mentioned a 4 1/2 Stanley I think in his comments in his portion of the review. I'm confused.

 

[D_W]

One of the guys mentioned a 4 1/2 Stanley I think in his comments in his portion of the review. I'm confused.

I didn't see that part. I saw the review say that an LN was not available at the time of the original test.

It would be curious if a bevel up apparatus planed cleanly at 45 degrees with a thin shaving, but a lie nielsen 4 1/2 did not.

That said, the LV and other BU planes are stable platforms, without question, and work well as smoothers and endgrain - just not ideal for roughing. They are unquestionably easier for a beginner to get the hang of, too.

 

[Trafalgar]

The L-N planed all species in both directions flawlessly per the review.

 

[D_W]

The L-N planed all species in both directions flawlessly per the review.

I definitely didn't see a stanley mention, then. Just the LN one (though I only skimmed the article).

If a stanley isn't set right, certainly it can chatter and give the user an idea that the problem is the plane and not the set. If it's set right, you can't push it hard enough to get it to chatter (or chatter and tear or ripple a surface).