Rob cosman beautiful shavings

[Paul Chapman]

I use soft bees wax on the soles of my planes - I find it less "sticky" than candle wax. Never had any problems with it affecting finishes.

Cheers :ho2

Paul

 

[jimi43]

I use soft bees wax on the soles of my planes - I find it less "sticky" than candle wax. Never had any problems with it affecting finishes.

Cheers :ho2

Paul

That's very interesting Paul...I will now have to do a test piece and try to finish it in nitrocellulose...in the Spring of course!

Cheers for that insight...

Jim

 

[studders]

I use soft bees wax on the soles of my planes - I find it less "sticky" than candle wax. Never had any problems with it affecting finishes.

Cheers :ho2

Paul

Where do you get the Soft Bees from Paul?



PS also use wax on my sole if the plane is 'sticky' , not had any problems with it as far as I can remember.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Where do you get the Soft Bees from Paul?

All the bees around these parts are softies :lol:

The stuff I use is a mixture of bees wax and turpentine. I find that candle wax picks up wood dust and creates a lot of gunge on the sole of the plane which has to be scraped off. I started using the bees wax/turpentine mixture after seeing Garrett Hack using it at Westonbirt - it seemed very effective and it is

Cheers :ho2

Paul

 

[Jacob]

... I find that candle wax picks up wood dust and creates a lot of gunge on the sole of the plane which has to be scraped off. .....

Really? Sounds like too much wax.
I just do a quick squiggle, like writing my signature with a crayon. Hardly any sticks and it all disappears after just a few plane passes.

 

[stoatyboy]

many's the time i've thought my plane was blunt - quick squiggle of candle and it's sharp again!

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Okay, kiddies, for my amusement and education, could we have a show of hands from people who've scribbled wax on their plane sole and subsequently had a problem? I predisposed to think this is a load of worry about nowt, but am willing to learn otherwise.

My hand is firmly down Alf, and I've been scribbling the sole of my plane with a candle wax stub since about 1970, or thereabouts. However, that's perhaps not a long enough period to experiment and explore the theory that the practice has a detrimental effect on subsequent polish adhesion. I'll keep experimenting with the technique, and If I notice a problem sometime in the next ten or twenty years I'll report back, ha, ha. Slainte.

 

[mtr1]

Okay, kiddies, for my amusement and education, could we have a show of hands from people who've scribbled wax on their plane sole and subsequently had a problem? I predisposed to think this is a load of worry about nowt, but am willing to learn otherwise.

I have scribbled candle wax on my sole's for twenty years, but of late I have been using hard beeswax from my own bees. I have never experienced a problem using either, I see Rob's point, but I will continue to do so.

 

[matthewwh]

There's a bigger can of worms to whip open here so why not get the zyliss out and set them free.

If you consider the sole of a plane to be flat, the projection of the blade produces a step in the timber the same size as the shaving thickness. We lean on the front of the plane at the beginning of a cut and therefore the back end shouldn't touch the timber. As we progress we transfer weight to the tail of the plane and so at the end of the cut the weight is balanced between the the cutting edge and the tail.

At what point in this process is the sole between the mouth and the tail in contact with the wood?

Put another way, would a plane with a completely hollow sole between the blade aperture and the tail still be as accurate as a dead flat one?

I put it to you that this is why the nose, front of the mouth, and tail need to be coplanar and everything else is irrelevant unless it has a bump in it that inerferes with proceedings.

Therefore it doesn't matter whether you wax the sole behind the mouth as it never touches the workpiece anyway.

 

[SVB]

A very interesting post Matt. I think we are getting to academic possbility here but to continue the discussion you explaination would only be true for an incompressable timber. In reality, timber is very compressable and therefore an allowance should be made for compression and 'springback'. If this springback is small compared to the shaving then you are correct, however, for a piece of soft pine for example and a very fine shaving perhaps this is less so???

Not sure but a very interesting discussion.

BRgds
S

 

[Jacob]

There's a bigger can of worms to whip open here so why not get the zyliss out and set them free.

If you consider the sole of a plane to be flat, the projection of the blade produces a step in the timber the same size as the shaving thickness. We lean on the front of the plane at the beginning of a cut and therefore the back end shouldn't touch the timber. As we progress we transfer weight to the tail of the plane and so at the end of the cut the weight is balanced between the the cutting edge and the tail.

At what point in this process is the sole between the mouth and the tail in contact with the wood?

Put another way, would a plane with a completely hollow sole between the blade aperture and the tail still be as accurate as a dead flat one?

I put it to you that this is why the nose, front of the mouth, and tail need to be coplanar and everything else is irrelevant unless it has a bump in it that inerferes with proceedings.

Therefore it doesn't matter whether you wax the sole behind the mouth as it never touches the workpiece anyway.

If the surface you are planing is at all convex then the front of the sole won't touch either. Might as well just angle grind the redundant sole off. I wonder if that's how the spokeshave was discovered? :shock:

 

[Paul Chapman]

Therefore it doesn't matter whether you wax the sole behind the mouth as it never touches the workpiece anyway.

So how is it that if you wax the sole behind the mouth, the wax gets wiped off as you plane - at least it does when I plane :?

Cheers :ho2

Paul

 

[matthewwh]

If the surface you are planing is at all convex then the front of the sole won't touch either. Might as well just angle grind the redundant sole off. I wonder if that's how the spokeshave was discovered? :shock:

It could be the reasoning behind those infill chisel planes that appear ont'ebay from time to time?

Paul, I believe you may be confusing theory with practice.

 

[woodbloke]

Paul, I believe you may be confusing theory with practice.

Smoke and mirrors Matthew :wink: :lol: :lol: - Rob

 

[Alf]

Paul, I believe you may be confusing theory with practice.

There seems to be a lot of that going about just now. :wink:

Well so far no hands raised, although Richard is apparently still assuming beginner's luck after a mere 30 years and is hedging his bets. Wise man.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Richard is apparently still assuming beginner's luck after a mere 30 years...

Closer to 40 years actually Alf. I started messing around turning lumps of wood into something closely resembling furniture (but were a bit of a bodge I realise now on looking back) in the 1960s at school. Woodwork, Art and English were my favourite subjects then. We even had a proper workshop, and (cover your eyes) we were even allowed to use what are today considered things far too dangerous for today's tender ickle dahlings (sic), ie, saws, chisels, planes, lathes, bench saws, planers, morticers, etc. Sadly, the teacher and technician wouldn't let us fire up the spindle moulder with it's French head and Olde Worlde square cutterblocks, which was a bit of a shame as those square cutterblocks made a lovely banshee like wail when they really got going, ha, ha. Slainte.

 

[bugbear]

If the surface you are planing is at all convex then the front of the sole won't touch either. Might as well just angle grind the redundant sole off. I wonder if that's how the spokeshave was discovered? :shock:

As the surface becomes more and more convex, the length of the plane in contact gets shorter and shorter. But it's up to the operator what the proportion of before-blade-sole to after-blade-sole is in the contact.

As people keep telling me, wood is flexible, and tools aren't accurate to sub thou tolerance, so it's no use applying trivial school geometry to nasty complex situations...

In the particular case of the spokeshave, early spokeshaves (used for centuries) are VERY different to planes. It's only in the modern era that a spokeshave can be viewed as a short soled plane.

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

There's a bigger can of worms to whip open here so why not get the zyliss out and set them free.

If you consider the sole of a plane to be flat, the projection of the blade produces a step in the timber the same size as the shaving thickness. We lean on the front of the plane at the beginning of a cut and therefore the back end shouldn't touch the timber. As we progress we transfer weight to the tail of the plane and so at the end of the cut the weight is balanced between the the cutting edge and the tail.

At what point in this process is the sole between the mouth and the tail in contact with the wood?

If you draw a diagram of this situation, you will rapidly (and erroneously) deduce that only the rear of the toe (just in front of the blade) and the end of the heel touch the wood.

And yet...

If you mark the sole of a plane with a pen, and take a few strokes, the ink is removed over rather a large area.

What's more, people with experience of precision sole-flattening can attest that planes wear A LOT in a rather large half moon at the rear of the toe.

Conclusion - planing, whist simple to perform, is far more complex than one might initially guess at.

BugBear

 

[Handrubbed]

Very impressive job by Rob Cosman. Problem is, I have bever seen anyone else perform these theatrics with his setup. I have seen more astonishing tricks with hyper-expensive infill planes ( no hands on the plane at all...just the plane being pulled along by a string). If it sells a few blades and videos and feeds his sizeable brood, more power to him. As others have said, highly irrelevant in the shop though. I really hate to see Rob, the huckster, overshadow Rob, the teacher. A waste of considerable talent, I say.

 

[Benchwayze]

I've said it dozens of times...planing a piece of wood like like that is just pointless, but it's impressive at shows to people who don't know how to sharpen and set a plane. It's not just RC but plenty of others (Mr C and Konrad S included) who attempt to impress with this sort of trick...if that plane and blade could do the same thing on something really nasty and interlocked then I would be impressed, but it never seems to happen. Sorry RC (and others)...nil points
I might add that candle wax should only be added to the sole ahead of the cutter, using it all along the sole will still leave a trace after the last shaving has been taken. A smear ahead of the cutter works just as well but all the wax is removed at each stroke...makes sense when you think about it - Rob

:ho2

My thoughts exactly.
Love watching shavings come from a plane myself, but only when I am doing a 'job'. Which means I don't have time to do anything but listen to the 'Swiiiiiiiiiiiish'!

Happy Christmas folks.