G S Haydon
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Found him!
He also has some nicely done work on the channel.
He also has some nicely done work on the channel.
Please teach me about planes
- Thread starter stuckinthemud
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mudman
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Still sounds like a right faff. I have a square shooting board, square plane sides and a straight edge, all I need to do is make sure it's sharp, hold the piece on the board, make a few swipes and it is also square. No faffing with the adjuster beyond making sure the blade is square.
G S Haydon
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Double iron better.
Infill plane, fun and good looking but less functional than a Bailey.
Wooden better if you don't want to use a planer or thicknesser.
Size of mouth is overly discussed. A double iron plane doesn't need it. Slide the frog back level with the casting and finish.
I got into hand tools as something to contrast against the way joinery is made in our workshop and a keen historical interest.
Just have a go! Trying things and making things is most important. Come back with a question that arises during the process
Infill plane, fun and good looking but less functional than a Bailey.
Wooden better if you don't want to use a planer or thicknesser.
Size of mouth is overly discussed. A double iron plane doesn't need it. Slide the frog back level with the casting and finish.
I got into hand tools as something to contrast against the way joinery is made in our workshop and a keen historical interest.
Just have a go! Trying things and making things is most important. Come back with a question that arises during the process
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Jacob
New Luddism. Wake up and resist.
er.. that's all I'm saying! Faff with the adjuster to make the blade square with the workpiece. That's what it's for.
mudman
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Didn't sound like it. The way you describe it it sounded like constant adjustments to ensure a square result and then some blathering about scallops and scooping. Don't need any of that with a square blade. What I am saying is a single setting of the blade and away you go. It's quite simple if you think about it. Maybe you should give it a go.
Check the list of planes I mentioned - wooden jack, metal jointer, wooden try plane, stanley style smoother (3, 4, 4 1/2, it doesn't really matter too much).
All double iron.
Single irons generally existed in planes that either did rough work or light work where it wouldn't have been economically worth it to change to double iron. Though even some of those can be found in double iron- if they weren't historically, they probably don't need to be (rabbet planes, for example - ulmia made one with a double iron and it's useful of the rebate will be a show surface and you don't want to produce it with 300 light shavings.
Infill planes are something that have a lot of woo. I have a bunch and have made a few but they pretty much match a stanley's capability but don't better it anywhere once you understand how the double iron works and cap iron controls tearout, and in some cases, they can be less good in actual work. That's for smoothing. for work more coarse than smoothing, it's hard to find a real case for them- they'll tire you.
If you have the need for better wooden planes, they are very inexpensive where you are. They're so inexpensive for good ones that most of my better wooden planes (that I haven't made) are from England and I paid the fairly stiff cost to have them shipped here. And they're still better than what I can find here.
A good 22-24" double iron try plane that's clean and where everything looks undamaged and tight can be 50 pounds there, and it's a lifetime plane that nothing modern matches for middle work (fore plane, to pre jointer, etc). I can give you instruction if needed on what it takes to get a wooden plane refitted and working well.
A good 22-24" double iron try plane that's clean and where everything looks undamaged and tight can be 50 pounds there, and it's a lifetime plane that nothing modern matches for middle work (fore plane, to pre jointer, etc). I can give you instruction if needed on what it takes to get a wooden plane refitted and working well.
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Once these threads go off and the boys are out to prove a point the flesh will be flogged off the horse until it is gone and the bones are broken to dust. Trying to get the thread back and asking more questions only renews the rut among the stags. I suggest researching about some of the things that have been said then start a new thread in a few days asking one question. When that one derails do the same again. It may take longer to learn but it is a little more peaceful journey.
Pete
stuckinthemud
Established Member
So, how does the double iron work? And, how does the cap iron control tear -out? Literally I found my planes in garage clear outs of deceased relatives. Cleaned them up and they work nicely but I feel like I have little idea of what the bits and pieces do beyond holding the iron in place and adjusting its position
The cap iron allows the iron to enter the cut at its normal pitch, but it creates a barrier.
Think of a board made of layers of toothpicks weakly glued together. If you tried to plane them, some of them would break loose from the glue and come up leaving a sliver of missing wood where the pried-out toothpick left.
If you could put something on the plane to allow planing the toothpicks down without allowing a long sliver (or a whole toothpick) to come up, then you could continue to plane. The idea is that what you have just up from the cutting iron is a barrier that will bend the toothpick a little bit and work it (bend it permanently or break it as it hits the barrier) so that no long sliver of wood can build and lift out.
Except the cap iron can do that with a whole shaving, hold it in place and prevent it from lifting before the iron reaches the point where the lifting would occur. If the iron reaches the point before it lifts, the idea is simple - you can cut the wood.
It has implications for feeding of wooden planes, too - a double iron plane will clog less with the cap set than a single iron plane.
https://www.woodcentral.com/articles/page/articles_935.shtml
I wrote this article not long after I figured out how to use the cap iron. It is still pretty good, but it is biased for smoothing, where it does work.
the pieces of mahogany were planed by Ellis Wallentine, who owns the site and is an article. He literally got the improvement shown on his first try while editing the article. I have taken a lot of heat over the small amount of tearout in the second picture under the assumption that I planed it. I shoot for zero tearout, I think everyone should. If it absolutely can't be had, then scraping or scraping and sanding can follow, but you'll have to do a whole lot less of it.
I didn't have a way to take "professional pictures" which I didn't really fathom and also didn't feel like having a clean workspace to do it, so ellis and Steve elliot provided pictures.
As you may have seen elsewhere on this forum, I have a million pictures now.
Where the cap iron comes into its own is two things:
1) obviously you can eliminate tearout in most wood and almost eliminate it on the worst of woods
2) you can work on "good stuff" without being overly cautious, and all of the middle work after the jack plane is far faster (and you can use it on the jack plane, too).
There are a lot of ways to control tearout, it's just that none of them have the same effort reduction benefit, and you can work faster through more wood with the cap iron than with anything else short of something else with a plug and a drum. It becomes pretty clear that the cap iron was put on planes at a substantial additional cost because of the economic benefit of it.
Even answering your question, the whole "holding the shaving down" never made that much sense to me, because it would seem that it would push the plane up off of the cut, but holding it down and turning/bending it so it can't lift out as a flat sliver is what it does.
Your first challenge to get the hang of a cap iron is see if you can set a stanley plane similar to the one picture that steve elliot took in my article, and plane until the shaving comes straight up out of the plane or at least isn't a tight little curl. That is an indication that the cap iron is holding the shaving down and distorting it as it flows over the cap iron.
I just noticed that Ellis edited (as in, he's the editor) my article to say that it's based on a paper provided by Japanese researchers.
That's false. I figured all of this stuff out on my own and posted about it on a forum it see if others would try it (it was not discussed more than once every several years before that, and nobody responded to anything about it) and Bill Tindall was in the process of fishing the video and rights to reproduce it, along with Steve Elliot, and sent me an email before it was public more or less saying "you may be interested in seeing this".
I was badgering people about it before that, though, and Warren Mickley - the only professional woodworker who i ever saw talking about using it at length, was telling us all that it was for improving surfaces, but he could never communicate how to set it to us.
I've never noticed that comment about the article being based on other peoples' research - we don't need videos and coincidences to learn something like this, it just takes wanting to figure out how they work, but the video and later paper (not sure if the hand tool setting instructions were ever introduced) got more traction because people like things they can see, even if they don't understand what they're for (the videos were research for a machine now called a super surfacer).
Before this video came out, I got derided for saying that the cap iron was useful "nobody other than warren has ever found it useful, it just overcomplicates the plane and should be excluded".
If you followed the same path as I did for as long (trying for quite a long time, maybe a year, trying to figure out how to dimension more efficiently without having perfect wood), you'd end solving the same thing. I didn't find the video's suggested settings to be very good for planes once it came out and could spot people who watched the video and wanted to be an expert based on what they claimed you should do with planes "hone the cap iron to 80 degrees". That's a no go. Stanley's profile is just about perfect for starters.
That's false. I figured all of this stuff out on my own and posted about it on a forum it see if others would try it (it was not discussed more than once every several years before that, and nobody responded to anything about it) and Bill Tindall was in the process of fishing the video and rights to reproduce it, along with Steve Elliot, and sent me an email before it was public more or less saying "you may be interested in seeing this".
I was badgering people about it before that, though, and Warren Mickley - the only professional woodworker who i ever saw talking about using it at length, was telling us all that it was for improving surfaces, but he could never communicate how to set it to us.
I've never noticed that comment about the article being based on other peoples' research - we don't need videos and coincidences to learn something like this, it just takes wanting to figure out how they work, but the video and later paper (not sure if the hand tool setting instructions were ever introduced) got more traction because people like things they can see, even if they don't understand what they're for (the videos were research for a machine now called a super surfacer).
Before this video came out, I got derided for saying that the cap iron was useful "nobody other than warren has ever found it useful, it just overcomplicates the plane and should be excluded".
If you followed the same path as I did for as long (trying for quite a long time, maybe a year, trying to figure out how to dimension more efficiently without having perfect wood), you'd end solving the same thing. I didn't find the video's suggested settings to be very good for planes once it came out and could spot people who watched the video and wanted to be an expert based on what they claimed you should do with planes "hone the cap iron to 80 degrees". That's a no go. Stanley's profile is just about perfect for starters.
profchris
Established Member
Here are my answers from practical experience. Bear in mind that I'm only moderately good with a plane on my best day
All these are what I find, at my skill level.1. Single iron planes are for rough work, except my bevel up block plane. I get a lot of tearout with a single iron bevel down plane.
2. Cap irons work best for finer stuff, setting the cap pretty close to the edge to reduce tearout. They work for thick shavings if you move the cap back, which I forget and then it's like hitting a wall with the plane!
3. Wooden planes are light and a pleasure to use, but setting them up well is harder. Wood plane bodies distort over time, and wedges wear and warp. If it doesn't all fit properly, the plane doesn't work that well. One day I'll spend time and learn how to fix this.
4. No experience of infills. They fell out of use once the metal double iron plane arrived, which suggests it covered much of what they were good for.
5. A narrow mouth is a way to reduce tearout with a single iron. The double iron can do the same with a wider mouth.
6. Thick shavings are hard work unless I use my wooden plane with a heavily cambered blade (maybe up to 0.5mm shavings). That produces lots of tearout. So I hack it close with that plane, then move to finer shavings. Nothing thicker than a piece of printer paper, usually far less. No doubt better planers than me can take thicker shavings.
Jacob
New Luddism. Wake up and resist.
Sounds about right!Here are my answers from practical experience. Bear in mind that I'm only moderately good with a plane on my best day
1. Single iron planes are for rough work, except my bevel up block plane. I get a lot of tearout with a single iron bevel down plane.
2. Cap irons work best for finer stuff, setting the cap pretty close to the edge to reduce tearout. They work for thick shavings if you move the cap back, which I forget and then it's like hitting a wall with the plane!
3. Wooden planes are light and a pleasure to use, but setting them up well is harder. Wood plane bodies distort over time, and wedges wear and warp. If it doesn't all fit properly, the plane doesn't work that well. One day I'll spend time and learn how to fix this.
4. No experience of infills. They fell out of use once the metal double iron plane arrived, which suggests it covered much of what they were good for.
5. A narrow mouth is a way to reduce tearout with a single iron. The double iron can do the same with a wider mouth.
6. Thick shavings are hard work unless I use my wooden plane with a heavily cambered blade (maybe up to 0.5mm shavings). That produces lots of tearout. So I hack it close with that plane, then move to finer shavings. Nothing thicker than a piece of printer paper, usually far less. No doubt better planers than me can take thicker shavings.
Function of cap iron is to transfer the wedge or lever cap pressure as close to the edge as possible. Apparently there had been earlier experiments with this - putting packing under the wedge etc - the cap iron must have been seen as an inspired solution!
What Bailey realised was that double iron added to a metal frog made possible a thinner blade working just as effectively as the old thick ones, but with all the advantages of the Bailey design - ease of sharpening, setting, adjusting etc.
Cap has to be seated tight and backed off to allow shavings to pass over and not jammed against/underneath, which everybody soon finds out if it's not done properly.
The tear out thing is a bit theoretical but works with small samples. The bigger the workpiece the less the value as the chance of changing grain direction increases - tear out on a small piece may be no prob and quickly corrected, but a disaster in the middle of an otherwise perfect table top! I think most users would compromise and have the iron a bit closer on hardwood and a bit further back on softwood and leave it at that. There were designs with screw adjustable cap irons but didn't catch on. Either way a sharp edge and a camber are much more important - with a camber a finer cut becomes a narrower cut automatically.
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GerryT
Established Member
David, seriously ?
Like I mentioned before you’re obviously a very knowledgeable guy and have good things to say and pass on, but all this nonsense that amounts to no one before you came along had any idea how to plane correctly , or none of us, before you enlightened us, knew how to use a cap iron or what it was even for is a joke, surely ?
It’s hard to take you seriously when you come out with such nonsense.
Blowing your own trumpet is one thing but you’re using the whole horn section.
Saying that Paul Sellers (and others by default) has no idea how to Plane is like saying that Rory McIlroy has know idea how to swing a golf club, that is until you showed him the correct way.
Come on David you’re better than that surely .
I wonder how all those woodworkers of yesteryear got along without you ?
Maybe Leonard Bailey would have ask you for advise on how to use a cap iron or indeed what it was for .
In the end I know you‘re entitled to have an opinion and that’s fine, we all have, but let the horn section play it’s own part in the orchestra, it doesn’t need you taking it over and telling them their out of tune.
with respect
Gerry
Like I mentioned before you’re obviously a very knowledgeable guy and have good things to say and pass on, but all this nonsense that amounts to no one before you came along had any idea how to plane correctly , or none of us, before you enlightened us, knew how to use a cap iron or what it was even for is a joke, surely ?
It’s hard to take you seriously when you come out with such nonsense.
Blowing your own trumpet is one thing but you’re using the whole horn section.
Saying that Paul Sellers (and others by default) has no idea how to Plane is like saying that Rory McIlroy has know idea how to swing a golf club, that is until you showed him the correct way.
Come on David you’re better than that surely .
I wonder how all those woodworkers of yesteryear got along without you ?
Maybe Leonard Bailey would have ask you for advise on how to use a cap iron or indeed what it was for .
In the end I know you‘re entitled to have an opinion and that’s fine, we all have, but let the horn section play it’s own part in the orchestra, it doesn’t need you taking it over and telling them their out of tune.
with respect
Gerry
Ttrees
Iroko loco!
But yet you won't find a video somewhere that's any good to compare?
I've likely seen near everything what you can see on youtube, and see a lot of bad practice and other strange things.
Charlesworth's principals regarding flat surfaces, and the importance of not blasting off the perimeter seems to go unnoticed, with frequent suggestions of using a scrub plane or rough set jack to plane crossgrain and even beveling the far edge ala Schwarz, I don't care how old or reputable those books are, the demonstration I seen
didn't make sense, as the book was either flawed or misinterpreted, both before and after print. (i.e a planing method for vertical work?)
Try and fight flat like that on the bench and your in for a whole load of effort which won't amount to much.
i.e tediously trying to find high spots on a board, and advancing the cutter until it does
which might not do one any favours.
Things become a bit more interesting when it involves getting rid of deflection,
with many using dogs, holdfasts, does feet and whatnot,
equaling lots of effort, the plane not cutting as it should, and not keeping the same depth of cut, which is important for learning how to smooth without scraping.
And another thing
It took me a while to notice the cleat on he end is far superior than a wide planing stop, which is simply adding more work,
and like the long reach angle poise lamp doesn't seem to be present in many videos.
The easily movable (two finger operation) lamp is very important to me, or should I say for one looking to get the maximum efficiency should they not have a machine for the job.
Not sure if the OP has one, or can get one, but if not able to find one of these
on the bay then there's ones in Ikea for a tenner called "territal" lamps
which are likely somewhat smaller, but maybe not?
Tom
Ttrees
Iroko loco!
That's all well and good, I wouldn't want to do this for many reasons
Even for small stuff difficult to film even, I'd sooner cut to the chase rather than film
the rest.
We can't all be like George, be interesting to know what he would say would be the most challenging aspect of the craft, though this is likely for another topic.
Tom
Jacob
New Luddism. Wake up and resist.
Try and get into the habit of checking for straight/flat by looking along the thing direct. Hold loose to avoid the deflection you mention. Add winding sticks if you think you need to. They also show any hollow across the width.
I always plane faces of boards with them sitting loose on the bench with one end against a stop. Once it's flat I can do the edges holding it in the vice
Another useful indicator is to rub the edge of a combi rule across a board - it marks the highs and shows the lows. If too shiny rub pencil lead on the rule.
Charlesworth has done the classic thing of "overthinking" the job. It's very much his trade mark!
Ttrees
Iroko loco!
Should be a video of that somewhere from rough prep to ready, which doesn't have too many bad habits that is a short watch?
Jacob
New Luddism. Wake up and resist.
I agree. Most vids seem to be someone's "good idea" of how to do things differently.
