# Shall I continue lapping this sole ?



## 1275gt (2 Sep 2021)

Hello,
Picked up this plane and its in really good nick bar the sole.
It was hit and miss getting a shaving to start thinly and in the middle however placing the plane on the edges of the board I was able to do this. (Lateral adjust made no difference, blade is also sharp with an ever so slight camber.)
So i turned my attention to the sole, It was rubbed with some fine abrasive on float glass just so I could see the high spots. 
It seems it's slightly convex and starting touch at the edges I can't get a 3 thou feeler gauge to penetrate the sides when it's on the glass.

Shall I continue to lap the regular way till marker is removed at the key areas (toe and around the mouth) as it seems like it's touching on the sides and not rocking or attack the middle of the sole and create a concavity then proceed to lap.

Thank you in advance.


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## Blackswanwood (2 Sep 2021)

I would keep going until all of the marker lines are gone. If it were taking ages I would drop down to a lower grit of abrasive and then finish off with a high grit.


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## IWW (2 Sep 2021)

Is that a #7 or a 6? In any case, it's a big'un and you are up for a bit lot of work getting it flat, by the looks of where it's at now - a lot is going to have to come off the rear section to get the toe co-planar. It's probably only a couple of thou high, but that can take a lot of work to remove on a large sole. Someone over here coined the "90-10 rule" (it takes 90% of the effort to get the last 10% flat). I have confirmed the accuracy of that 'rule' many times! 
To speed things up, you could use a large file, but if you are not reasonably experienced at draw-filing, or filing in general, it's all too easy to make things worse rather than better. Lapping is safer, as long as it's done carefully & the abrasive surface is truly flat. As suggested above, start with a coarse grit (~80), get it flat, then finish with finer grits. I don't bother going past 240 as the scratches a plane acquires in use on our woods are often larger than the scratches 240 leaves.

Take it steady & check progress often - it's far too easy to make things worse....
Cheers,
Ian


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## D_W (2 Sep 2021)

I'd use it as it is. For it to contact in the middle, but almost be perfect is a good compromise - continued lapping may just make more of the same shape.


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## D_W (2 Sep 2021)

I made an almost insane video describing spot removal on something like this, by the way. It was insane because I'm halfway there already but was tired and recovering from a headache, but it shows the process well if you can wade through it. 

You can find it on youtube - you're in for kind of a nasty treat lapping large planes unless they happen to have a slightly high toe and heel or a tiny hollow ring around the outside, and to get something really flat, you have to have something really flat to check and then (what I did in the video was fail to do a thorough check, notice something less than perfect in performance and then have to come back and finish the job later). 

The point of all of this is that as ian says, draw filing is something you can do (but cast is kind of dry - you're better off draw filing steel), a good alternative is making a small block so that the contact area of coarse paper is small and can get good bite. Lapping large planes leads to paper feeling like it's instantly dull. 

The title of the video is this:
*"Flattening Large Hand Planes Accurately and Cheaply*"

I don't edit ads or turn on videos - so one is in turn for the other (but youtube automatically puts ads on my videos now, they just keep the money when they do it - I use an adblocker). 

If you have a flat lap to use as a reference, though, you should probably use the block method if you really want to continue forward with that - block the high spot out of the middle of that until it looks good on the lap, and then just a brief session of lapping. It's far easier than just lapping a big plane and the result can be way below LN's spec in less than an hour or in an hour or so.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

(jeez, end of the day -should've said "I don't edit videos or turn on ads")


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## baldkev (3 Sep 2021)




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## 1275gt (3 Sep 2021)

Thank you for the replies.
I'm not confident draw filing however I watched your video David and it was very informative (unedited is great because it gave a great representation of how long these things take). I'll definitely try spot removal with coarse paper.

Thank you.


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## Adam W. (3 Sep 2021)

I'd just get on and use it, as there's no such thing as flat or straight anyway.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I'd just get on and use it, as there's no such thing as flat or straight anyway.



There is such a thing as close enough to get an invisible glue joint just planing an edge with through strokes, though. Same with a face. Kind of a nice thing to have if it only takes an hour of time and costs almost nothing.


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## Limey Lurker (3 Sep 2021)

During my apprenticeship, I learned to hand-scrape iron and steel blocks and plates for use in the main works as surface plates, so when I find a surface that needs some metal to be removed, that is the technique I first think of using. In fact, I used both scrapers for metal (made from files) and carpenters' scrapers, to true a 124-year-old beech jack plane, which is now my go-to jack!


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## Adam W. (3 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> There is such a thing as close enough to get an invisible glue joint just planing an edge with through strokes, though. Same with a face. Kind of a nice thing to have if it only takes an hour of time and costs almost nothing.



I think most of us know that.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I think most of us know that.



Planes often come unable to do that. The advice to "just use everything" is fine if everything works. That standard isn't even met by all of the boutique planes in their own spec (most of those meet it, 8 of 10 in my sample).


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

1275gt said:


> Hello,
> Picked up this plane and its in really good nick bar the sole.
> It was hit and miss getting a shaving to start thinly and in the middle however placing the plane on the edges of the board I was able to do this. (Lateral adjust made no difference, blade is also sharp with an ever so slight camber.)
> So i turned my attention to the sole, It was rubbed with some fine abrasive on float glass just so I could see the high spots.
> ...


It looks pretty flat to me and slightly convex is better than hollow. I'd leave it alone.
Worst thing you could do is lap "the regular way" - it's another obsession of the sharpening enthusiasts and can waste hours of time and even spoil planes.
If you must lap it, easiest and fastest is with thin paper backed wet n dry paper, say 100 grit, very wet laid in a pool on a flat surface. I use white spirit and my planer bed. Work the plane up and down against a bit of board as a straight edge so that the lines are all straight and parallel. Keep it well flooded wet.
That's all you need to do.
It will cut straight and the sharpness of the ridges will wear off in a very short time. A very quick pass with a finer grit would speed this up, but not essential.
Don't bother with feeler gauges - if you look too closely for faults you will find them - don't waste your time.
PS - if it's a long plane just put two sheets of wet n dry down end to end. The wetness keeps them stuck down enough.
PPS I wouldn't put a plane in a vice the way you have shown - it'll distort the bed anyway and if over tightened could do damage


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

I regularly get messages or comments on youtube from people who can't get loose wet paper to work. I wonder if they're reading your advice.

One thing is for sure - if a plane is fine and you're not going to do something tidy to it and chance making it worse (like sliding it around on loose paper or wasting naptha or mineral spirits), then it's better to leave it alone and just find one that's already flat. 

I started with that method, by the way. Couldn't find silicon carbide paper coarse enough to stand up (it doesn't - it's designed for high carbide hardened steels). 

A great deal of the problem for folks trying to find out how to make planes flat is two-fold:
1) bad advice with low standards for results
2) the opposite end: "you have to send it to a job shop so they can run it on a surface grinder"

The method I showed is better than both (nothing wrong with a surface grinder, but it's a waste of time and money and will take almost as long to pack, drop off and get the plane as it would just to flatten it). 

OP suggested trouble getting a good smooth shaving. The bottom looks to me like it's not in the length down the center causing the problem, but you can't plane with a plane that's not able to start a shaving easily unless you're chunking pine doorways.


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> I regularly get messages or comments on youtube from people who can't get loose wet paper to work. I wonder if they're reading your advice.
> .....


Obviously not. It works very well.
People seem to have forgotten what wet n dry is for.
Thin paper-backed lies flat when wet - better if it starts flat and kept between boards, but will flatten down quite quickly if not. Has to be very wet - laid into a puddle on your flat surface. It sticks down and isn't very loose at all, though you can peel it off quite easily.
It's also flatter than anything stuck on a board with glue and much faster than doing it dry.
PS you need an_ impervious_ flat surface or you won't get the wetted down effect. I use my machine steel bed. Glass would be good, maybe MFC or ply faced with something shiny.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

I used a glass shelf - completely clean. I used all of that before settling into aluminum oxide machine roll with adhesive. The difference is that the adhesive and the hard al-ox particle that's not friable makes for a much better go. 

Silicon carbide paper was probably developed for hardened steel sanding and graded paper for sanding finishes wet. 

I doubt anyone made it thinking it would be great on a cast lap in paper form. Loose grit intended to cut coarse and then fine if not refreshed is a far different story. 

It's certainly possible to improve a plane with your method, but if the plane is off in some directions, the odds are against you.


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> ....
> 
> It's certainly possible to improve a plane with your method, but if the plane is off in some directions, the odds are against you.


Wrong again. It's easier my way, the odds are with me.
PS I first found out about wet n dry wet grinding about 60 years ago when we were flattening the cylinder head faces on a BSA Bantam. Difficult to find a flat impervious surface in those days - no steel machine surfaces in our house, toughened glass not been invented, wasn't allowed to do it on the Formica kitchen table, ended up on the terrazzo floor, with water , not white spirit..
Modern sharpeners just want everything to be mysterious and difficult - see recent thread involving knife sharpening with a steel - they say in all seriousness that you can't "sharpen" with a steel. They are wrong but it's a matter of faith and dogma!


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

I have no idea who you're talking about. You lap something convex. I showed a method that uses less material, takes less time and results in all surfaces being within a fraction of a thousandth. Cost of about a dollar a plane. 

I'm assuming you had gaskets on your BSA (which isn't what I'd hold up as a standard of quality in the first place). 

The difference between you and I is you've done a couple of these. I've made about 150 planes and chisels - they don't start like a used stanley and you have to be able to work faster. 

I started with your method, all the way down to 60 grit silicon carbide paper, and also tried the expensive belts (which I do now use on the belt grinder - at close to a mile of belt a minute with the particles shedding off, they make sense there). 

Perhaps you've done a couple of smoothers - this often comes up with long planes. It's true that you can lap a smoother on almost anything, but it leaves you standing still for a long plane. It's also true that the smoother won't be that flat (but it won't matter if you're doing house work or almost anything). If you're making a nice tool or shooting for actual flat in less time on a long plane, you won't lap the sole. The fact that you think this would work tells me you haven't done it or done it well. 

It's not great for you to mislead beginners. I think the 6 that I did up in the video took about 50 minutes - by the time it was done, it was in a spec that makes it easy to use for neat work (for all work) without having the grip that a boutique plane does. 

Last table saw that I had wore a hollow of about 8 thousandths front to back - 27" deep or something (delta hybrid saw with cast tops). I'm not sure you would've noticed.


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> I have no idea who you're talking about. You lap something convex. I showed a method that uses less material, takes less time and results in all surfaces being within a fraction of a thousandth. Cost of about a dollar a plane.
> 
> I'm assuming you had gaskets on your BSA (which isn't what I'd hold up as a standard of quality in the first place).
> 
> ...


I had a 5 minute flip through your 1h12min vid!
You could really save yourself a lot of time and effort if you tried the wet wet n dry method. 
You need a big flat surface - your little board with sand paper stuck on is just not wide, flat or long enough. 
You wouldn't need blue stuff, straight edge or feeler gauges you can see where the high points are from the grind marks. 
If in doubt use a coarser grit so you can see where you've been.
Hope that helps.


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## Cabinetman (3 Sep 2021)

Without it being actually stuck down onto a hard surface there is a chance the paper will rise up into the mouth and defeat one of the main objects of the exercise, Stanley in the 70s used linashers which did exactly that, when I arrived at college all us young students planes were sent back to Stanley for surface grinding – doubt that would happen now ha ha


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> Without it being actually stuck down onto a hard surface there is a chance the paper will rise up into the mouth .....


Stays well stuck down by surface tension or whatever, if you get it all wet enough. Thin paper backed paper seems designed for the job, not thicker fabric backed.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

Let's try reading again - that's what I did first. Glass plate, wet and dry paper with water. It did scuff a plane. It also resulted in paper needing to be replaced fairly often (any amount of swarf starts to float the paper and then an edge tears somewhere). 

It's far substandard to my method, but I also have a second motive - to make a plane sole better than you're going to. 

You also seem to have missed my post above - 60 grit silicon carbide is what I got down to before deciding it was pointless. PSA roll leaves it in the dust. Spot method eliminates issues with the paper cutting slow or making the toe and heel high. 

I don't expect you to grasp all of this, but at least some folks will want to do it once and get really good results and have the option to do it as well. 

I would guess about 50 minutes of the video was working the sole of the plane. On a small plane doable entirely by lapping, it may be 5 minutes. 

You haven't done a 6-8 with your method in less than an hour. I've been there. If you haven't done many long planes, you may not have a concept of why 5 minutes of lapping is about the same as an hour or hour and a half of spot work on a jointer. if you want to compare lapping, you can trade a #7 or #8 lapping in hours to minutes with a 4 - you don't have enough weight to lap one. I don't, and you probably don't weigh as much as I do (and that's not by any means boasting about weight - I should be 3/4ths of my weight, or close to 155 pounds than 205).


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> Without it being actually stuck down onto a hard surface there is a chance the paper will rise up into the mouth and defeat one of the main objects of the exercise, Stanley in the 70s used linashers which did exactly that, when I arrived at college all us young students planes were sent back to Stanley for surface grinding – doubt that would happen now ha ha



Wet and dry paper will move or become damaged at the edges if it's not adhered, and then you'll have the soft tearing edges to deal with. It's fine as jacob uses it (coarse work to make a plane to be used for coarse work - let's be honest jacob has never posted fine work or a well flattened plane sole, but he has posted a couple that were roughly scuffed up). The PSA roll eliminates the problem and eliminates the liquid needed as a lubricant - you just vacuum the dust off.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

Hopefully the OP in this thread doesn't follow your advice, Jacob, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.


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## Ttrees (3 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> You wouldn't need blue stuff, straight edge or feeler gauges you can see where the high points are from the grind marks.
> If in doubt use a coarser grit so you can see where you've been.
> Hope that helps.


That's the problem you see Jacob, you cannot trust the wear marks as abrasion always favours the ends.
The toe and heel will always be partial to more removal if done on a large lap, and if done like so for long enough,
i.e having to remove a twist, hollow strip in center, or belly in the middle...
(more notably on say a no.5 plane, and worse as you get longer)
then one stands a very good chance of making a banana.

The only way you can trust your eyes and not use feeler gauges is by knowing what flat looks like.
To do so, one must understand the last bit above and use it to ones advantage.

Flat starts with targeted area of removal first, as I don't have an expensive straight edge
I use a lap and markers (couldn't find suitable glass) 
Tip for the frugal, if Prussian blue is not deemed essential to me, it gets nice and runny when the plane warms up a few degrees whilst working.

Once the ink can be removed from the toe and heel only, on a large area lap,
with no more than two or three swipes, then you can do what you like after that.
If there's contact somewhere else, then you have to target areas.

Pic below is ink still remaining on the edges of the plane
i.e a slightly hollow, which will disappear with a single rub on the test section (larger area)

I destroyed planes in the past, by doing what you say, as it gets important is there's little meat to play with, adjustable mouth for example,
and there's plenty of job lots on the bay or wherever, that have been treated as such..
I had one of those
That's why one should always seek a plane that can be seen front and back, or as close to it as you can.

Tom


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

Ttrees said:


> That's the problem you see Jacob, you cannot trust the wear marks as abrasion always favours the ends.
> ......


The blue stuff would favour the ends too.
In the real world these finer details have very little bearing on the woodwork itself unless the thing is really bad. I had a new Stanley 7 which was unusable as it was distinctly concave but other than that most stuff is OK ish.
I'll do some snaps of the wet wet process.


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## Ttrees (3 Sep 2021)

I made my no.8 so bad, that I had to try scraping it flat, which wasn't a good idea.
Could write a list of all the times that thinking has gotten me into trouble.
Few planes went to the scrap parts bin, but managed to salvage my no.8 in the end.
some other non essential things still in the workshop to remind me when I knew less.

Most folks who don't believe this and use a big lap, probably have used an angle grinder and flap disc which done most of the work for them, so not noticed this happening.


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## Jacob (3 Sep 2021)

Ttrees said:


> I made my no.8 so bad, that I had to try scraping it flat, which wasn't a good idea.


What, made it worse?


> Could write a list of all the times that thinking has gotten me into trouble.
> .....


It's not thinking: over-thinking is the problem! You've put your finger on it.


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## D_W (3 Sep 2021)

If you get anything that can scrape cast near a plane mouth, the results is usually a chipped mouth. Just cosmetic, but ugly. 

In terms of whether or not "it's all just minutiae", I'd say two planes benefit (for the benefit of the user, not just entertainment) by being dead flat - jointer, smoother. Everything else can be just OK. 

Going for less just makes more labor with the woodworking unless you want to make up for it with glue and checking a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be checked. If a joint is match planed, it should be ready with through shavings off of the plane - done. No straight edges, no nothing. If the plane isn't up to doing that, then you'll be faffing with that stuff. A joint line on something like a guitar body made of quartered wood is also completely unacceptable - you can faff to fit all of that stuff and boast about it, but it's not for me.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Sep 2021)

I must admit I don't use Jacob's methodology with wet and dry paper for this task. My preference is to use aluminium oxide loaded abrasive rolls which you can get from almost anywhere, e.g., B&Q. They're about 100 mm wide by 5m long, and I start with 80 grit. I tear off a long strip, maybe a metre or so and tape it down with plenty of tape at either end on to a flat surface such as a surface planer table. I pull the paper as tight as possible to reduce the tendency to wrinkle and push up in waves ahead of the moving end of the plane - backwards or forwards. Then I go at it and just a few strokes is usually more than enough to identify the high spots and gives a clue as to how much work is required to get the sole acceptably flat.

I've found this method adequate for all plane sole flattening from smoothing planes to longer try planes. I suppose it could be argued that this type of abrasive, simply taped as it is to a flat surface isn't likely to produce perfect results because of the paper's tendency to lift and wrinkle as it's used. However, so far, in over forty years of using this rather basic technique I've found it pretty reliable. I suspect the end result is that plane soles sometimes, or perhaps often ends up ever so slightly convex, but if that's the case I can't say I've ever really been able to detect convexity, but I only use rules and straight edges to check for flatness, and I'd hardly call those tools the sort of things capable of precise engineering measurement. On the other hand, a slightly convex soled bench plane will work well for just about any task, perhaps even better than a perfectly flat soled plane (no proof for that on my part, just a guess), but a concave soled plane is pretty much useless.

However, the end results work, and I can't recall ever spending more than about fifteen minutes even on a longer try plane (about 22") to get the sole acceptably flat enough, even if it is coarsely striated at that 80 grit. By acceptably flat enough, I mean that at minimum coarse striations are apparent all around the perimeter of the plane's sole and that similar striations surround the plane's mouth; in other words a figure of eight pattern of coarse striations. Of course, a bit more work will increase the area of the coarse striations and gradually fill the holes in the figure of eight pattern, but it's my experience that this isn't strictly necessary to get a plane to work well.

If this sole flattening is a quick and dirty job, basic flattening with 80 grit a-lox to at least the figure of eight pattern already described I've found is adequate. Those sharp edged ridges left by the 80 grit smooth over pretty quickly with use, and it's always possible to get rid of the figure of eight pattern entirely with the 80 grit if desired, and to follow up by working through finer grits to get a more polished appearance if that's important to the plane's owner or user. I'm not one to bother much with ultimate smoothness and shininess in plane soles, although having said that most of my plane soles seem to have either come with or have developed quite a smooth and a dulled shine appearance over time with use. Slainte.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

A slight convexity to lapping is definitely a favorable bias if one is going to shoot for something reliable without having an expensive starrett rule and feelers. I can't say I've ever had a non-twisted convex plane that was a problem, but 2 thousandths of hollow is a royal pain, and it leads to all kinds of internet cognitive traps ("I can suspend the plane between two blocks and bend it more than that!!" ...sure, you can. Where do you put the blocks when the plane is going off of the end of a board? They always plane the ends off an obnoxious small amount - if a plane is a bit too convex and you joint a board slightly hollow, there's nothing but the tips to knock down a little). 

I also never found a great reason to go finer than 80 grit as far as flatness or finish goes. The premium planes with more finely machined soles have a lot of grip, and that's not a good thing. 220 held loose or on something with cushion is fine to remove some of the snag from the 80 grit for the impatient. 

I flatten wooden plane soles (new and old) the same way - just on the lap. I've been told that people with skill wouldn't do that, but would rather get winding sticks out and plane the sole to flatness...I get a chuckle out of that). It's only the large metal planes that really demand spot removal (I suppose if someone was 450 pounds, they could get enough over a long metal plane to lap quickly). One of the treats of the woodies is that with some fresh paper and a little bit of wax, the sole is trued in minutes. 

The Al-ox lap is also excellent for initial flattening of ratty irons or chisels. Far better than stones (and absolutely filthy, as you say). A zillion other uses to lap and make other little bits if someone is working metal or even small wooden parts.


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## Jacob (4 Sep 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> I must admit I don't use Jacob's methodology with wet and dry paper for this task. My preference is to use aluminium oxide loaded abrasive rolls which you can get from almost anywhere, e.g., B&Q. They're about 100 mm wide by 5m long, and I start with 80 grit. I tear off a long strip, maybe a metre or so and tape it down with plenty of tape at either end on to a flat surface such as a surface planer table. I pull the paper as tight as possible to reduce the tendency to wrinkle and push up in waves ahead of the moving end of the plane - backwards or forwards. Then I go at it and just a few strokes is usually more than enough to identify the high spots and gives a clue as to how much work is required to get the sole acceptably flat.
> 
> I've found this method adequate for all plane sole flattening from smoothing planes to longer try planes. I suppose it could be argued that this type of abrasive, simply taped as it is to a flat surface isn't likely to produce perfect results because of the paper's tendency to lift and wrinkle as it's used. However, so far, in over forty years of using this rather basic technique I've found it pretty reliable. I suspect the end result is that plane soles sometimes, or perhaps often ends up ever so slightly convex, but if that's the case I can't say I've ever really been able to detect convexity, but I only use rules and straight edges to check for flatness, and I'd hardly call those tools the sort of things capable of precise engineering measurement. On the other hand, a slightly convex soled bench plane will work well for just about any task, perhaps even better than a perfectly flat soled plane (no proof for that on my part, just a guess), but a concave soled plane is pretty much useless.
> 
> ...


Much the same really. The key essential is a flat surface, also smooth and impermeable if doing it the wet way.
IMHO the wet method has the edge as it lies flatter, paper is thinner cheap and easily available, swarf is washed off, faster, and the paper lasts longer. 2 sheets end to end will do a no.8. If it's concave the sheets can be separate and just work the ends
I don't do a figure of eight - just to and fro but moving along to use the whole area of the paper, with a straight edge scrap of board as a fence to keep the grinding parallel - not essential just looks neater!
80 grit is faster, haven't tried 40 might have a go.
Come to think I haven't needed to flatten one for years but do it as a demo occasionally, or just to tidy up a sole.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

Sounds like you're positing a lot of 'coulda.

Do a pair of 8s to actual flatness and get back to us. I can tell you haven't because I started with what you're saying and it was no good. Literally two Stanley 8s made it clear that lapping wouldn't work for anything but the lightest correction. I suspect you've rubbed a few 4s and 5s and you think because they're easy to lap, you can just conceptualize the idea larger. 

There's no give to adhesive roll on glass, it's not hook and loop.


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## Adam W. (4 Sep 2021)

Blimey, do you lot ever get any woodwork done?

All this waffle over a nearly flat and good enough plane.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> I flatten wooden plane soles (new and old) the same way - just on the lap. I've been told that people with skill wouldn't do that, but would rather get winding sticks out and plane the sole to flatness...


It's interesting you mention that about wooden planes. In another forum I said to you that I might dig out my old beech try plane, tickle it up and use it for the first time in perhaps twenty years. I can't remember what the subject was in the other forum. Anyway, I did dig out that old try plane. It was manky looking, covered in dust and the iron was a bit rusticated though lack of attention, love and care on my part. Anyway, about 30 minutes of light sanding of the wood, application of some linseed oil made it pretty again (sort of), and fifteen to twenty minutes cleaning up the iron, sharpening it, and tiddling with the cap iron got that fitting nice and tight. Got all set up and went at a lump of rough oak, and it wouldn't work worth a spit.

So a bit of examining the plane's sole using those highly unsophisticated rules I mentioned earlier indicated the sole was concave. To correct it I used my no 7 Stanley and a few strokes took the high spot off at either end. This was followed by a few strokes with a sanding block and a bit 180 grit and a dollop of wax well rubbed in, and the old beech job worked a treat. I think I ought to give that old beech thing a bit more love and attention in the future now that I've resurrected it, ha, ha. Slainte.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> I don't do a figure of eight - just to and fro but moving along to use the whole area of the paper ...


I didn't say I use a figure of eight motion on the paper; like you I just work the plane backwards and forwards. The figure of eight pattern I described related specifically to an at minimum desirable pattern of striations created on the plane's sole after some flattening. Slainte.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Blimey, do you lot ever get any woodwork done?
> All this waffle ...


Ha, ha. I'd actually been wondering the same thing about you. After all, you've only been contributing here for just over four months, and you're nearly up to half the post count I've managed in my near seventeen years of verbal flatulence in these hallowed surroundings. (It's a joke and no snippiness intended.) Slainte.


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## Ttrees (4 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Blimey, do you lot ever get any woodwork done?
> 
> All this waffle over a nearly flat and good enough plane.


Just as long as folks understand that the bigger lap will do nothing but copy the existing profile 
of the plane, if the OP decides to keep at it.
Better to know what to look out for, instead of being convinced the opposite.


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## Adam W. (4 Sep 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> Ha, ha. I'd actually been wondering the same thing about you. After all, you've only been contributing here for just over four months, and you're nearly up to half the post count I've managed in my near seventeen years of verbal flatulence in these hallowed surroundings. (It's a joke and no snippiness intended.) Slainte.


I know, but I've been bored and I thought that people might be interested in something different. More than happy to stop if you want.

I do ask on a regular basis if people think I'm going on too much, so there is at least some self awareness there.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I thought that people might be interested in something different. More than happy to stop if you want.


No need to stop. What you've discussed and illustrated in the projects you've worked on is very far from the work I've done and do. All that carving and historical architectural stuff is actually a breathe of fresh air to me because it's so different to my woodworking background, but relatable, and therefore fascinating to study, if only in a detached and passive way. Slainte.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> It's interesting you mention that about wooden planes. In another forum I said to you that I might dig out my old beech try plane, tickle it up and use it for the first time in perhaps twenty years. I can't remember what the subject was in the other forum. Anyway, I did dig out that old try plane. It was manky looking, covered in dust and the iron was a bit rusticated though lack of attention, love and care on my part. Anyway, about 30 minutes of light sanding of the wood, application of some linseed oil made it pretty again (sort of), and fifteen to twenty minutes cleaning up the iron, sharpening it, and tiddling with the cap iron got that fitting nice and tight. Got all set up and went at a lump of rough oak, and it wouldn't work worth a spit.
> 
> So a bit of examining the plane's sole using those highly unsophisticated rules I mentioned earlier indicated the sole was concave. To correct it I used my no 7 Stanley and a few strokes took the high spot off at either end. This was followed by a few strokes with a sanding block and a bit 180 grit and a dollop of wax well rubbed in, and the old beech job worked a treat. I think I ought to give that old beech thing a bit more love and attention in the future now that I've resurrected it, ha, ha. Slainte.



The real "air out of the balloon" moment is if you use the wooden plane and a metal plane of the same type over a time period and measure the volume of work done. It's stark, and the feel is different. Increase the bulk of work done on each stroke and the metal plane starts to feel like it has brakes on the bottom. 

I guess the inability to get them to fit well makes them unpopular there these days - too bad, as they're dirt cheap there and you guys still had good ones late 1800s. We didn't.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I do ask on a regular basis if people think I'm going on too much, so there is at least some self awareness there.



What would we do without your leadership?


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## Adam W. (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> What would we do without your leadership?


You, laughing at your own jokes says it all really.


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## Jacob (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> The real "air out of the balloon" moment is if you use the wooden plane and a metal plane of the same type over a time period and measure the volume of work done. ......


Up to a point (perhaps) and only if you have somebody else doing the sharpening and adjusting.
What makes the steel plane so much more productive is the ease with which the blade can be flipped out, sharpened and put back, in much the same setting as it was to start with. The thin blade speeds up the sharpening (unless you are into modern sharpening of course where everything becomes problematic) and the ease and precision of adjustment is also a major feature.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

It takes about the same amount of time to get a try plane set again. A very fine smoother might be a different story, but I don't think a fine smoother has ever been made that betters a stanley 4. 

Jack plane, even less. The grinder takes the work out of honing and everything is about a minute. The effort lost with a metal jointer in heavier work vs. wood is more than 10 minutes with each sharpening cycle.


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## Jacob (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> It takes about the same amount of time to get a try plane set again. A very fine smoother might be a different story, but I don't think a fine smoother has ever been made that betters a stanley 4.
> 
> Jack plane, even less. The grinder takes the work out of honing and everything is about a minute. The effort lost with a metal jointer in heavier work vs. wood is more than 10 minutes with each sharpening cycle.


Yes but we all know that's not true and we all know why woodies are no longer made (60 years or so?) and have been entirely abandoned in favour of the steel plane, except as in interesting delve into old tool fiddling - there's a lot of that about!
The one exception I've found is the wooden ECE scrub, which needs a thick single blade, is very easy to sharpen and doesn't need fine adjustment. A Bailey version wouldn't have any advantage. Wooden rebate planes are good too.
PS 3 exceptions! I'd add a 26" wooden jointer which I've found really useful for one or two very long jobs, newel posts in fact.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

Woodies aren't made because nobody does rough work with planes other than hobbyists. 

If you run a power jointer and power planer, then you're unlikely to follow what I'm talking about. 

In the US, apparently site workers liked metal planes because they had an adjuster that was easy to master, and they could be left in a tool box without getting out of tune. By the civil war, machine planing was the way here and the industry of planemakers was mostly junk. By my 1895 M-W catalog, only ohio tool planes were included and those are low quality (sometimes the wood is quite lovely, but it's hard to make beech bad if you saw it in the right direction).

I'm guessing that more hand dimensioning was done in the UK until later on (just as craft survived much longer in continental europe than the US) as the industry supporting that type of work remained - it died in the US much earlier. 

The wooden planes made 60 years ago aren't related to the ones made 175 years ago - everything in them was poorer quality. 

At any rate, anyone who suggests you can dimension or do penultimate work at the same rate with a metal plane over any span of time hasn't done much of it.


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## JobandKnock (4 Sep 2021)

My house is 1870s and the original skirtings (baseboards in USA) are rough sawn on the back but machine planed on the fronts, soi even at that stage we were going the same way as you in terms of machinery doing a lot of the work.

Here we actually started the process of mechanised woodworking somewhat earlier than in the USA (e.g. RN dockyards automatic sheave block making, c.1805), but due to other factors mechanisation across the industry took longer; we didn't suffer the labour shortages which the growing USA did. But mechanisation was still fast enough for a lot of wood plane makers here to have gone under before WWI. There also was somewhat less pressure here to convert to metal planes in site work because the predominant construction type here is masonry shell with timber floors, roofs and fittings - so a lot less carpentry than you get in an American-style timber framed house.

Pretty much the only adjustable metal planewein the UK up until WWI were importeftorom the USA (and presumably expensive as a result). Perhaps because this is because Stanley, Sargent, etc had patented most of what was worth patenting in planes (a bit like IBM was with computers), who knows? AFAIK immediately after WWI the only firm to dip their toe in the water with adjustable planes was Edward Preston, but they didn't make much of a dent. Not surprising, seeing as how they were up against the likes of Stanley and Sargent and later on Millers-Falls. In fact it took trade protectionism after the Wall Street Crash for Record, Marples, Mathieson, Sorby, Chapman, etc to start making Bailey type planes in bulk, and for the prices to become affordable. By that time even medium sized joinery shops had been machine dimensioning for maube 30 to 50 years

But that doesn't mean to say that wven as early WWI anyone in a joiners shop was daft enough to prepare timber by hand, because they weren't. And if all you are doing on site is small works, like shooting in doors, it makes little difference if you use a wooden jack or a metal one. Once it is set up you are good to go. But dimensioning by hand really hasn't been viable for joiners in the UK for more than a century - cabiinetmaking, where the margins are perhaps a bit more generous, may be a different kettle of fish


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## Jacob (4 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> My house is 1870s and the original skirtings (baseboards in USA) are rough sawn on the back but machine planed on the fronts, soi even at that stage we were going the same way as you in terms of machinery doing a lot of the work.
> 
> Here we actually started the process of mechanised woodworking somewhat earlier than in the USA (e.g. RN dockyards automatic sheave block making, c.1805), but due to other factors mechanisation across the industry took longer; we didn't suffer the labour shortages which the growing USA did. But mechanisation was still fast enough for a lot of wood plane makers here to have gone under before WWI. There also was somewhat less pressure here to convert to metal planes in site work because the predominant construction type here is masonry shell with timber floors, roofs and fittings - so a lot less carpentry than you get in an American-style timber framed house.
> 
> ...


We were trained to do it all by hand, dimensioning, rebates, mouldings, mortices, tenons, dovetails, doors, windows, stairs, the works (C&G Tops Course 1982) but there wasn't a woody in the whole establishment as far as I know.
Still an essential skill at various points - e.g. lots of fitting, finishing etc. Also long stuff - two faces by hand the other two through the thicknesser.
Our building (ex chapel) 1874 lots of hand work evident, adze or saw pit marks on some beams but also others big band sawn (saw mill). Doors windows very hand made, all panelling hand planed etc. Even a few floor boards hand planed on top but rough adze marks underneath, but most later replaced (I assume) with machined.


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## Jacob (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> ...
> 
> At any rate, anyone who suggests you can dimension or do penultimate work at the same rate with a metal plane over any span of time hasn't done much of it.


I've done a lot and a metal plane is much faster and easier. Or can you suggest another reason why they were given up by everybody? Was it just fashion?


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## Phil Pascoe (4 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> The grinder takes the work out of honing and everything is about a minute.



Not if for some perverse reason you insist not grinding it and using an oilstone for the whole edge.


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## D_W (4 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> I've done a lot and a metal plane is much faster and easier. Or can you suggest another reason why they were given up by everybody? Was it just fashion?



I doubt what you're talking about parallels dimensioning wood for a project vs. using planes a little here and there on a work site or at a shop bench. Two entirely different things. Nobody who has a clue how to use two long planes would suggest a metal plane results in less work unless they're taking a smoother shaving, adjusting, and so on.

Dimensioning looks nothing like that. You set the jack, you set the try plane and you plane with them until they're dull. You set the cap iron on them so that you don't have to adjust depth more than once per sharpening rotation and so that you can stretch out the sharpening intervals. You're not familiar with any of this stuff.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> I doubt what you're talking about parallels dimensioning wood for a project vs. using planes a little here and there on a work site or at a shop bench. Two entirely different things. Nobody who has a clue how to use two long planes would suggest a metal plane results in less work unless they're taking a smoother shaving, adjusting, and so on.
> 
> Dimensioning looks nothing like that. You set the jack, you set the try plane and you plane with them until they're dull. You set the cap iron on them so that you don't have to adjust depth more than once per sharpening rotation and so that you can stretch out the sharpening intervals. You're not familiar with any of this stuff.


Sorry D_W you don't seem to know what you are talking about.
Are you making the common amateur mistake of thinking that stock has to be "dimensioned" by hand-planing (if hand planing) rather like timber-yard full length machined PAR?
You wouldn't be the first.
PS The penny drops! That explains your earlier posts when you talked about the many feet of planing you were doing! Got it!
Good for body building but a great waste of time, effort and wood.
PPS Explainer: "dimensioning" has two meanings. 
The first is the process of reducing felled timber to usable sizes, by riving, sawing (hand or machine), maybe trimmed with axe or adze, no planes involved. 
The second is the process of reducing it to finished component size for the job in hand: from the design drawing or rod; sawing again to length and width, planing to best face and edge, planing to finished thickness and width.


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## Sgian Dubh (5 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> The real "air out of the balloon" moment is if you use the wooden plane and a metal plane of the same type over a time period and measure the volume of work done.


I've got to admit that I'm highly unlikely to undertake extensive planing, e.g., board truing with any kind of hand plane, wooden, metal, transitional or infill. That sort of thing is just not my bag, although it's true that when I started woodworking back in the dark ages of the 1960s and 1970s I did have to do quite a lot of that kind of work.

Naturally, once I started working in the furniture industry the use of machines became the dominant equipment for working wood, although hand skills still played - and play, a significant part, e.g., cutting joints, wood prep with hand tools, and so on. Still, I take your point, although I'm unlikely to put the comparison you made to the test; when there's any serious wood dimensioning required on my part I'll always turn to the machines if possible. Still, it's kind of nice to have my old woody try plane in decent order again; I must try to not treat as a lost orphan like I did before and keep it in half decent working order. Slainte.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Not if for some perverse reason you insist not grinding it and using an oilstone for the whole edge.


Don't worry about it Phil! 
If you do site work you get used to not needing a grindstone, then you find you don't need one in the shop either, for routine sharpening thin Stanley/Bailey type blades at least. 
This was one of the big advantages of the thin blade - the design making it as effective as a heavy woody blade but 2 or 3 times easier to sharpen. Very easy to over-heat a thin blade on a grindstone anyway, so best avoided.


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

I hand plane all the time because I don't have or want a big, loud machine in my workshop. I still manage to build big things. Perhaps that's because I'm not retentive about flatness and can compensate for the lack of it in other ways. I'm not building Chippendale furniture though, but a lot of that is curved anyway.

Flat and finished on the front, is good enough for me. The other faces can just take their chances and are free to do what they want. 

At the art school they plane square edge everything and then carve it all off again. As they can only use the planer on Thursdays, there's a rush and a queue.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> This was one of the big advantages of the thin blade - the design making it as effective as a heavy woody blade but 2 or 3 times easier to sharpen.


And there is the *real* reason why wooden planes fell out of favour with carpenters and joiners. If you are working on a measure (on price), as many carpenters and joiners have done for generations, the time taken to resharpen a thick blade against how long it takes to sharpen a thin one makes the decision so obvious, bearing in mind that you may need to touch up a blade up a dozen times a day or more on stuff like oak. Nobody in trade in their right mind would want to waste an extra 20 to 30 minutes a day resharpeming a thick blade (especially if you have a nick out of it). This is the same reasoning why we often use power tools over hand tools - it's a matter of earning a living

BTW, Jacob, you weren't alone bring taught to hand prep. They no longer seem to teach apprentices how to do that, but with my apprentices I have always made a point of teaching that, plus hand saw usage, etc before they get anywhere near a power tool. At school in the 1960s they attempted to teach me how to plane with a wooden plane. I just didn't get it (and TBH I now know that neither did the craft teacher). I gave up and switched to metalwork. At home, though, I was already reasonably proficient with a Bailey plane, dad having taught me, and my proficiencywith wooden planes only changed after I started work and was taught properly how to use woodies, mainly moulding planes, though

Jacob is also right about stock preparation - if you are trying to make a living at it you aim to do the absolute minimum with timber in the minimum of time. That means having a rip saw and a planer in a joinery shop this was a given more than a century ago - that or you got the merchant to supply the timber PAR. Hand planing is a luxury nobody has been able to afford for a century and a half - hand finishing on the other hand is a necessity. Can't see a good reason for hand preparation unless you are determined to wear a hair shirt


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> And there is the *real* reason why wooden planes fell out of favour with carpenters and joiners. If you are working on a measure (on price), as many carpenters and joiners have done for generations, the time taken to resharpen a thick blade against how long it takes to sharpen a thin one makes the decision so obvious, bearing in mind that you may need to touch up a blade up a dozen times a day or more on stuff like oak. Nobody in trade in their right mind would want to waste an extra 20 to 30 minutes a day resharpeming a thick blade (especially if you have a nick out of it). This is the same reasoning why we often use power tools over hand tools - it's a matter of earning a living
> 
> BTW, Jacob, you weren't alone bring taught to hand prep. They no longer seem to teach apprentices how to do that, but with my apprentices I have always made a point of teaching that, plus hand saw usage, etc before they get anywhere near a power tool. At school in the 1960s they attempted to teach me how to plane with a wooden plane. I just didn't get it (and TBH I now know that neither did the craft teacher). I gave up and switched to metalwork. At home, though, I was already reasonably proficient with a Bailey plane, dad having taught me, and my proficiency only changed when I started work and was taught properly how to use woodies, mainly moulding planes, though


Just remembered - we did have a a woody on our course back then it was 3/8" beading plane for finishing off the top of the box we made for our oil stone about week 2 or 3. Did lots of fitting of skirtings and architraves etc all by hand but it was with machine made stock, we didn't do any other moulding beyond the one box.


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## Ttrees (5 Sep 2021)

A wooden plane looks handy to have for the odd occasion.
Might have a go at making one someday, no question it's faster from what I've seen.
It appears that it can cope with twice the thickness shaving, and should
one work difficult timbers, a short plane isn't very nice on the wrists if work like that needs doing.

Not a matter of how big of small the work is though, doing it more productively makes sense in the long run regardless what one does.
Interesting for the few who don't have a P/T.

Bench height may be another reason why we don't see too many of them nowadays, and from the little I've held one, it's not so nice on the back wrist on my bench height after a shaving.
You notice these things straight away if you have bone issues, and are wary of triggering off a flare up.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Ttrees said:


> A wooden plane looks handy to have for the odd occasion.
> .........
> It appears that it can cope with twice the thickness shaving, and should
> one work difficult timbers, a short plane isn't very nice on the wrists if work like that needs doing......


Don't think so on either count. Metal plane much better on difficult timber because of the very fine adjustment and the overall solidity.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Yes. You can wind a metal plane blade in and out quickly. All you can do with a wooden plane is tap the blade outwards - if you need to reduce the cut you need to remove the cutter and wedge and start again with the blade set flush to the sole. Then you tap out and the wedge is tapped in snug. There is no reverse!


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## Ttrees (5 Sep 2021)

Wonder why Follansbee uses them so, as he doesn't like to hang about.
Easy to see from David's videos, which applies more to me for the timbers I have, as the cap iron
is set around the same spot.
Not too many folks are working difficult timbers as efficiently on the tube.

Tom


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

There's always the matter of personal choice. In the 1920s to 1950s carpenters and joiners in the UK increasingly chose to buy metal planes over wooden ones, despite wooden ones being cheaper. Why?

Whatever else by the 1960s we have only 4 or 5 wooden plane makers left here in the UK (AFAIK Marples, Salmen, Emir and Griffiths but there may have been others). Of those two were mainly selling to training establishments or DIYers (Salmen and Emir) whilst Marples had a large trade in other tools, including metal planes. By 1970 they were all gone. If wooden planes had been seen as that wonderful by the majority of users, surely they would still be with us? After all, they are cheap

I find it noteworthy that in Germany, even their makers have diminished and survival has been down to adopting thin blades and adjusters (ECE Primus - same family that started Emir in the UK in the 1930s)


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Ttrees said:


> Wonder why Follansbee uses them so, as he doesn't like to hang about.
> Easy to see from David's videos, which applies more to me for the timbers I have, as the cap iron
> is set around the same spot.
> Not too many folks are working difficult timbers as efficiently on the tube.
> ...


Personal choice. 
I quite like having a go with a woody but the simple fact is metal planes are superior in every way, with one or two exceptions. Don't let that put you off having a go though, it's all harmless fun, unless you are trying to make a living!


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> Yes. You can wind a metal plane blade in and out quickly. All you can do with a wooden plane is tap the blade outwards - if you need to reduce the cut you need to remove the cutter and wedge and start again with the blade set flush to the sole. Then you tap out and the wedge is tapped in snug. There is no reverse!


hitting the toe, retracts the blade, no need to take it apart. ECE wooden planes have a handy adjuster, but I find it a drag to remove the blade, so mine collects dust under the bench for most of the time.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

I find that doesn't work with moulding planes (about the only wooden planes I use these days)


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

They need to have a smoothish tang for it to work, any rust'll stop it dead against the wedge.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> They need to have a smoothish tang for it to work, any rust'll stop it dead against the wedge.


And hit the heel. Moulding planes nearly all have a rounded heel for whacking with a mallet. Not exactly precise adjustment - the blade can simply drop out and fall to the floor!


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## JohnCee (5 Sep 2021)

Ray Iles does a lovely job for not much money.








The Old Tool Store


You can put your contact information here such as telephone and




www.oldtoolstore.co.uk


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> And hit the heel. Moulding planes nearly all have a rounded heel for whacking with a mallet. Not exactly precise adjustment - the blade can simply drop out and fall to the floor!




That's why you should turn it upside down and wack the toe on the bench. Iron no fall out that way.

But that requires a certain amount of plane savvy.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> That's why you should turn it upside down and wack the toe on the bench. Iron no fall out that way.


Smart thinking!


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

Plus you don't gash up the heel with a hammer and obliterate the number that way.

They deserve to be treated proper like, seeings they've made it this far.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Plus you don't gash up the heel with a hammer and obliterate the number that way.
> 
> They deserve to be treated proper like, seeings they've made it this far.


No you hit the rounded top edge of the heel and only with a wooden mallet. That's why it's rounded, on most of them anyway. Also comfier to the hand.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Smoothish tang? Not that common IMHO


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> Smoothish tang? Not that common IMHO



Just rub it over your oil stone, it'll make it smooth enough on the high points.


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> No you hit the rounded top edge of the heel and only with a wooden mallet. That's why it's rounded, on most of them anyway. Also comfier to the hand.



As if there's a hard rule. 

A steel convex faced hammer works far better, but you have to use them to know it. The bigger the plane, the better steel works. Convex face leaves burnishing and the odd mark straight on the back of a plane, but nothing else. It would pummel the roundover.


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> Personal choice.
> I quite like having a go with a woody but the simple fact is metal planes are superior in every way, with one or two exceptions. Don't let that put you off having a go though, it's all harmless fun, unless you are trying to make a living!



You're busy talking about constant adjusting, constant sharpening and little actual planing. I'm not sure you'd notice what it's like to use a plane doing actual dimensioning, and I'm not talking about softwoods and test pieces. 

It's excusable for folks who were trained in the 50s/60s/70s - the plane is a small economic part of the picture, but would've been much larger working by hand. 

JaK is correct that you always start with the closest sized timber if you can, but that's not necessarily practical for a hobbyist outside of whatever is available retail. One can buy and split or resaw large timber by hand, which is pleasant work, but it's not quick. 

The wooden planes disappear for the most part (at least in quality) when machine planing becomes popular. Hand saws disappear in quality around when the circular saw becomes popular and can be afforded. 

Richard is hitting on why nobody has seen what I'm talking about here - nobody does enough of it to know and there's no great reason to unless you like it (I like it). Volume of work done with wooden planes over several hours in anything other than smoothing will be close to double, though. BT, DT - from cherry to beech (beyond that, you pick straight figured woods, there's no issue. If you pick poorly sawn woods that are running out on the surface and would've been culled, but call that figure, that's generally something you'd rather plane off with machines. You can do it by hand, but you have to rely on the cap iron early in the process which means you aren't taking scallops out of a surface, but more like a heavy set jointer.....in wood that has no dominant grain direction. That's rough going. BTDT and learned a lesson about buying #1 common here instead of FAS - #1 common has a knot here and there, but the sawn direction of the rest of the board is a far bigger problem. For a power tooler, it will just leave questions of blotchy finishes). 

Jacob, it's almost comical how you state things that are definitive and simple, except they're not actually correct. I sometimes wonder if you're playing a part and never breaking kayfabe. 

re: the sharpening time - the wooden plane irons and a modern stanley iron should take about the same amount of time if one has a crystolon stone. The only case where there's a difference would be if you were constantly nicking irons and had to grind lots of damage out. 

If I sharpened a woody iron and a stanley iron from start to finish stones only, no grinder, it would be - at the very most - an extra 30 seconds. Perhaps 15. But a wooden plane set properly will plane more wood with a ward iron than a veritas custom plane will with V11, and the V11 abrades less than half as fast. The iron won't plane more feet, but the plane will plane more feet - I've done the two next to each other set at about 80% max depth - for whatever reason (probably metal friction and plane design), the beech try plane will take more off per swipe with the same effort. About 40% more in thickness, and far less sole friction. 

I suspect the only person on this thread who may have a concept of this difference is adam.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> They need to have a smoothish tang for it to work, any rust'll stop it dead against the wedge.


It isn't rust that's the issue - if you look at the tangs on many moulding planes you'll find they are fairly rough (i have some rounds and hollows, madevin the 1920s, I believe, which have rarely if ever been used bu the tangs show firge marks). TBH I can't say that I have seen many moulding planes where they weren't a bit rough, nor can I recall seeing any which looked as though they had been flattenedby the user in the way you suggest


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

I think most of the tangs have rusted and been cleaned over time (But most are just rusted if they're still rough - like gritty/grainy feeling).

I have two sets of planes with irons that have never seen appreciable rust, and they definitely were never finish ground and glazed above about 1" higher than the bit (as in, there's evidence of glazing an inch up from the blade, but then they appear to be generally as forged. Just not rough. More like lumpy. One would fit the planes so that the last bit of the iron isn't really determining much, anyway where it contacts the top of the plane body. The lower inch and a half or two is where the critical fit would be). 

Those are both older griffiths sets that I paid a princely sum for - actually, kind of surprised to see how wonky the irons are in the tang, but it's a skilled wonky - someone was able to forge them close to shape with little trimming and that was that. The bottom parts where it counts are finely done and well ground.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Precisely (or rather not). My half set of hollows and rounds are also by Griffiths and I'm sure a few had never been used before I acquired them (maybe because there isn't much call for #18 hollows). The #4 to #12 sizes are well used.

One of the things I am struggling to understand is the need to make a virtue out of hand planing. When I need to replace a large timber in, say, a king post truss roof it is at times necessary to resize timbers as they come from the merchant. This is partly because a lot of yards have lost the ability to resize larger section timbers in recent years, so if I need 10-1/2 x 3-3/4in I might have to start with something like 12 x 4in and take it down to size myself. These days that involves a large portable rip saw to make the deeping cuts, a hand rip saw to part out the waste and a large power planer to get me within a few millimetres of finished size. All these tools do is to replace the goose wing axes, adzes, draw knives and scrub planes of a previous era. Nothing more. Hand planing when you can do 95% of the work with less effort has never been a way to earn a living, now or in the 18th century


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

Well, this is a hobby (the woodworking). There's a small minority who would probably like to work entirely by hand, but information from folks like Jacob is going to leave them thinking it's harder than it is. When everything is set right, it's just exercise. 

In the states, we also get the same thing "there's no sense in woodworking entirely by hand, and anyone running a business wouldn't do it". Most of the commentary comes from people who have failed running a profitable business with power tools. The reality is that produced goods in the US aren't the territory of either. 

So, the virtue of planing well comes to it being for the sake of the hobby. Just like power tool woodworking. Where does it really pay off? Aside from the work being sort of the brisk walk variety, it gets away from the purchase of tools or fitting of work to machines when the reality is a lot of us want to do the hobby. it's a hobby that costs money, not one that makes money. I could make money making tools (I don't, and don't want a business), but I'm fairly sure that it would be difficult to find customers to buy much woodworking - there are a few joiners working here, but their work is spartan and I'm not interested in it. It's necessarily plain because that's what people will pay for. 

I call the whole "nobody would do it like that for a living" the tycoon mentality here in the US. The tycoons went to CNC factory controlled bits way back in the 1980s here and what's left for the small shop is really oddball stuff (it takes a spouse with an income to make "the business" work) or repair work. People who want to make furniture end up installing kitchens instead (someone else makes the cabinets - a factory), trussing roofs and doing trim carpentry work. 

The reason I have some disregard for jacob is he sees whatever he's talking about through recent customers and through having done fairly little with hand tools by his own admission (in terms of the work volume) in the last three decades. It sounds like there's more opportunity for site work there, too, but that's not a surprise. But I doubt there are any places in the first world where someone is doing much of what's being shown in woodworking magazines, etc. The writers are writing articles because they don't have day work -they need to attract students and get a writing fee. That's the "tycoon" type. 

I have sort of two lines for people - one is for folks who want to fit joints and finish plane. They can do whatever they want to do and will never notice any difference in effort, and the reality is that if they are having issues with finish prior to smoothing, they should get a drum sander or a spiral head. For the rare person who wants to work entirely by hand, I'll talk details because the rules will be different. The latter will end up probably preferring simpler steels in older tools and they'll do 5 times as much work between sharpening stops on chisels and planes, and sharpen quickly. The former, I don't know what - I guess they'll buy PM-V11 and be convinced that it's a time saver. The latter will ask about rip saws and sharpening them quickly and the former will probably be asking who can sharpen their joinery saws or buying disposable pullsaws, etc.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> .....
> 
> One of the things I am struggling to understand is the need to make a virtue out of hand planing. .....


It's a big question and part of the answer is the arts n crafts tradition - a quasi religious faith in "proper " woodworking and craftwork, probably started by William Morris. 
But then it's deeply fascinating about what they used to do with such basic tools, the ingenuity and the undoubted quality of often quite ordinary stuff. See "The Wheelwright's Shop" by George Sturt. Or visit Highlights
So if somebody wants to do the full monty, with primitive tools, wear the flat hat, grow the beard, play banjo music, that's fine!
I like hand planing myself but also like my combi woodwork machine. I'm into freehand dovetails and wouldn't be seen dead with a dovetail marking gauge, ditto honing gauge. 
But if it's down to making a bit of money then absolutely no effing about is allowed - I might even consider a pocket hole jig, though I haven't sunk that low yet.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Big fingers, small screen...


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

...


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> play banjo music,


power tool era...


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> There's a small minority who would probably like to work entirely by hand, but information from folks like Jacob is going to leave them thinking it's harder than it is. When everything is vset right, it's just exercise.


Excluding the fantasy woodworker element for a moment, what percentage of folk actually want to don the hair shirt and do it all by hand? And where do you stop? Do you buy in tree boles and set up a pit saw? (In which case who gets to be top dog?). Do you take it a stage further and go into the forest and chop the tree down yourself? If you look at medieval paintings of carpenters and joiners at work there are a lot of people preparing wood, often by sawing, adzing, axing, etc then by hand planing. Planing seems to have been regarded as a finishing process and was often undertaken by the lowest paid, the apprentices and improvers - olden days planer thicknessers?


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## Ttrees (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> One of the things I am struggling to understand is the need to make a virtue out of hand planing.


_"Everyone knows, real machines are three phase" _


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

Separately, one of my favorite guitar making companies is Collings. They're expensive. I'm not aware that they plane anything - but they do a lot of fitting deliberately with careful CNC and then at least some sanding to fit. When they drop a guitar neck into it's pocket, the air probably warms under it if they push down quickly. 

I could care less that they use CNC and sandpaper. I'm the buyer, and not the maker. Plus, they've managed to do some things I couldn't duplicate even on small principles (how to get guitar bodies - solid bodies - to sound the same from one guitar to the next, because you can't even just get wood from the same tree and density and do that. They just flatly tell you how they do it if you ask (I'd have never figured it out). Too much guitarry kind of detail to go into detail here, but impressive that a "company" would take the individual effort to voice solid guitar bodies and not affect their tonal balance. 

When I'm the maker, I care how I'm making things and I don't care if the customer cares how I'm making them. I had a guy tell me that he'd buy chisels if I used a commercial heat treat service - which is funny. I told him something like "Hi, I make chisels for the cost of materials, so I'm not really looking for customers, and if you're looking for a machined chisel that's heat treated in a vacuum oven, there are a whole lot of them out there at the end of a google search". 

If I were trying to sell 10 sets of chisels a day, I'd get real interested in how quickly they could be made, how big of a margin and I'd catalogue what people said they'd like vs. what they bought when I offered it (sometimes those things aren't the same).


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> Excluding the fantasy woodworker element for a moment, what percentage of folk actually want to don the hair shirt and do it all by hand? And where do you stop? Do you buy in tree boles and set up a pit saw? (In which case who gets to be top dog?). Do you take it a stage further and go into the forest and chop the tree down yourself? If you look at medieval paintings of carpenters and joiners at work there are a lot of people preparing wood, often by sawing, adzing, axing, etc then by hand planing. Planing seems to have been regarded as a finishing process and was often undertaken by the lowest paid, the apprentices and improvers - olden days planer thicknessers?



I buy wood from a guy who saws it locally - he saws it, sells it for market or slightly below and it's good quality. I thought about mentioning that above. There's a company here that plain saws trees and sells them as a boule. It costs the moon because the whole thing needs to be really good. I'm a toolmaker half the time and woodworker half the time, not a re-enactor. 

I dimension wood by hand because it feels good physically and mentally. I would hope that anyone else who wants to do it does it out of pleasure and not self-torture. I don't have a fascination with trying to make a living woodworking or make the argument for it being economically viable. That's for the *tycoon* woodworkers who are angry and head to the forums bitter about their inability to make as much as they want with their shop setup. Knots was full of that - people with failed businesses harassing white collar individuals who were just looking for a hobby, as well as a couple of white collar wannabe tycoons who never made anything that I saw wanting to tell everyone how they should work and what they should make to be a "real woodworker". 

If there's a dude who loves making things out of sheet goods on a slider, then that's what they should do. If there's someone who wants to work comfortably by hand, I can tell them what they should do. If I were to get a whole glom of really great power tools and start making volumes of things and spending all of my time doing joinery and sanding, the hobby wouldn't last long.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Maybe you have a different regimen in the USA. Here (and by that I mean the North of England) I don't know a single woodworker who earns a living with hand tools alone. The commercial pressures are just too great. In fact the only guy I ever knew was a French carver we had on a few jobs down in London, and even there he depended on us to do a lot of his prep for him (commercial pressure again).

As to hand tools, a lot of people were taught about wooden planes, including moulding planes, until the 1980s. Same gies for saw sharpening and setting. I can and still do that, but not much as power tools work faster for us so there's less of a need for sharpenable hand saws. They started to disappear when corded saws got cheaper and hard tip hand saws became cheap (1970s). In any case you wouldn't want to saw chipboard with a Disston, would you?

I don't see your point about old steel being better, either. Some modern plane irons are far superior to the hit and miss products turned out in Sheffield and elsewhere "back in the day". Maybe as an "old school" carpenter and joiner I have more in common with Jacob.


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## Ttrees (5 Sep 2021)

Regarding this thread though, I'm gonna bet the OP might be a person who is on the hobby side of things, however not discounting the possibility that plenty of folks might be in some transitional place where a business premises might be down the road a wee bit yet, so their still working in a workshop of their own, 
and depending where that might be, one might not opt for some noisy piece of plastic junk,
for a bucket full of reasons, so doing this work with a wooden plane has merit.


Yet to see a big ol cast iron P/T that can be run from a 13a plug like I can with my 12" tablesaw or 24" bandsaw.
Not saying there's folks not doing so, but I haven't seen it here, nor on the tube.
They're not cheap either, I'd possibly have one now if it weren't the case.

Though it's one of those tools that I see as an non essential, as I have both saws which can do 
a lot of work for me, resawing and rebating are two jobs where it's a lot of work,
which would be a lot more difficult compared to the planing.
I try and find the perfect piece which would require minimal work, if I can so a P/T is a bit OTT.

Just a matter of practicality personally.

Tom


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> ..
> 
> I dimension wood by hand because it feels good physically and mentally. ...


OK that's fine if hand planed PAR is your thing, but it's not very practical. A touch masochistic perhaps, and very unusual.


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## D_W (5 Sep 2021)

I don't think many people were taught to use planes or saws to dimension. If they were, nobody remembered much to give very good advice about it (other than the odd use here or there where something doesn't fit on power tools).

I have no idea why I keep saying that I work wood mostly or entirely by hand for pleasure, and the comparison of "I don't know anyone making a living that way" comes up. I don't, either. I don't actually personally know anyone who is making a living woodworking - period. I do know a couple of folks who have spent their wife's money setting up a semi-commercial operation that failed.

What I know here is trade cabinet setters, etc, who are specialty carpenters and who install things made in factories. This is what I referred to as the "tycoon woodworker" mentality because it seems like the 70s and 80s convinced some folks they could make furniture for a living, and it doesn't look to have flown. There are hundreds of nice shops in this city, I'd bet, and very few that produce any income.

I mentioned one joiner - I never met the guy, but a house in my neighborhood has a couple in it who had a small room and they wanted some kind of custom solution to have a lift up bed that wasn't exactly a murphy bed and some woodworking to tie it in. They did it as part of a renovation, so they probably rolled it into a loan, and maybe that guy got paid well. My wife badgered me to go look at the work. It was very plain, but neatly done. I didn't really need to see it.

If you're following what I'm saying, the hobby woodworker who thinks they're net close to making money because of their power tool setup vs. something I have is errant in two ways:
1) they would be trying to beat better men before them (but it's nice to dream)
2) I don't care - recreation has nothing to do with running a business. I want to work by hand. Your generation isn't able to make it productive - not enough is remembered about using planes for more than fitting and surface finishing

If it's considered dumb to hand saw or hand plane wood from rough, I don't really care. It's definitely not common here even in hobby, though there are often people who say they want to do it. In order for it even to make sense at a hobby level, you have to be good at it. Anyone who thinks a metal plane results in more volume worked in the same context isn't very good at it.

Once in a while, I'll say that I doubt there are many people on here who know as much about how planes function as I do. That's still true. And, I'm not talking about krenov planes and hollows and rounds. I'm talking about what you learn when you try to make good planes that you'd use above anything else you can find (I have made moulding planes, too, though, but they sit on a shelf because there's something I like about the look of the old ones). The bench planes, I go back and forth between mine and 1800s English planes (Except smoothing is almost exclusively a stanley 4).

I'm not engaging anyone in a discussion of steel and tie-in to what's actually in it, and what lasts and what maintenance is like - it all ties in with the tools, and someone told me early on that if I learned to use planes well, I'd probably not find any decent iron that I could play out before it played me out. That turns out to be true. I've made irons in at least half a dozen steels (including what's probably V11) and tested plane irons with actual measured use tests. V11/XHP lasts about twice as long as O1. But how it works in the context of a significant amount of work in different plane designs negates any real benefit from it. If someone takes four or seven minutes to sharpen and uses a guide, and they plane wood that's come out of a thickness planing machine and then sand it, it might offer them something.

My comment about old steel vs. V11 is basically a butcher iron (on the harder side for butcher) vs. V11 in two different planes. The design of the metal plane made it so that an iron (which would last far longer planing smoother shavings) didn't last longer dimensioning beech billets to make planes, and it was more physical work to wear out the plane and plane iron that didn't get as much done.

I'm not aware of any updated chisel steel that is better than more plain steels for chisels, either, and there's little that I haven't come across.

I have no questions about how you do your work or why, nor do I assume that any of it doesn't make sense in your context - you likely wouldn't be doing it here in the states at all unless you were really creative at wooing wealthy older ladies. I sure wouldn't try it at all either way here (by hand or with power tools), but I'd bet an enterprising guy could get near 6 figures hanging cabinets if he got the right client list. He just woudldn't be making them and wouldn't even be making the trim - just installing it.


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## Jacob (5 Sep 2021)

Ttrees said:


> Regarding this thread though, I'm gonna bet the OP might be a person who is on the hobby side of things, ...


Well yes in the real world nobody "laps" plane soles, at least not quite in the enthusiastic way we keep reading about! 
It's an amateur woodwork thing.
As far as I know "lapping" is an engineering process involving grinding two plates together with grinding paste in between, so they both end up flat. If you must lap say a no.5 the obvious thing would be to do two of them - rub one plane against the other.
Hope that helps!


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## Adam W. (5 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> It isn't rust that's the issue - if you look at the tangs on many moulding planes you'll find they are fairly rough (i have some rounds and hollows, madevin the 1920s, I believe, which have rarely if ever been used bu the tangs show firge marks). TBH I can't say that I have seen many moulding planes where they weren't a bit rough, nor can I recall seeing any which looked as though they had been flattenedby the user in the way you suggest


Well you don't have to do it if you don't want to.


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## Ttrees (5 Sep 2021)

Can do something similar with abrasives stuck to a surface plate.
Might as well use the whole tool since you've paid for it, or in other situations it may be actually 
be necessity to do it well, if one want's a well working plane.


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## JobandKnock (5 Sep 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Well you don't have to do it if you don't want to.


Don't worry - I won't.

I did try your technique earlier on a double iron complex moulding plane. Try as I might I can't get it to work, and if I invert the plane so I can "read" the cutter projections (how I've done it for a few years). one or other of the irons and wedges invariably falls out, so I don't see me changing what I do in a hurry


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## Jacob (6 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> ......
> 
> If it's considered dumb to hand saw or hand plane wood from rough, I don't really care. It's definitely not common here even in hobby, though there are often people who say they want to do it. .....


It's not common because nobody planes stock (long lengths) with a hand plane and nobody ever did.
In a typical woodwork shop, if hand planing, and usually when machine planing, it is always sawn to size for the job first.
On the other hand timber yards may supply stock PAR (planed all round) and PSE (planed square edge) but done by machine plane. It's made for DIY woodworkers and odd jobbers without machines and sometimes bought by builders and others if it suits a job.
But your typical woodworker would only ever buy sawn material for stock, with exceptions, manufactured boards, floor boards, match boards, some mouldings, depending on what they are doing. But non of this would ever have been made by hand for stock.
It crops up a lot as a topic because beginners encounter PAR and assume this is how it's done by everybody. Also there's a little saying "keep it as long as possible for as long as possible" which is good sense for stock control (use all your small stuff first) but only up to the point where you have cut to size for a project. Planing begins after that point!


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## Phil Pascoe (6 Sep 2021)

JobandKnock said:


> I don't see your point about old steel being better, either. Some modern plane irons are far superior to the hit and miss products turned out in Sheffield and elsewhere "back in the day".



Some.


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## Jacob (6 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> Well, this is a hobby (the woodworking). There's a small minority who would probably like to work entirely by hand, but information from folks like Jacob is going to leave them thinking it's harder than it is. .......


No it's easier if you cut to length first! 
Don't worry D_W you are not the first to make this mistake, but the first I've heard of trying to do it by hand!
Amongst other things you get better "yield" if you plane last. This is because you have to remove more stuff from a long piece to remove bends or twists, than you would if you had cut the same piece into shorter lengths. Also if you do it too soon it may have moved and need planing again. This is common with bought PAR - say 25mm sawn ends up PAR at 18mm, then you get it home and have to take more off to take out the twists.


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## D_W (6 Sep 2021)

I have no clue where you'd get the idea that I'm planing long wood unless the result is needed long at finish.


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## D_W (6 Sep 2021)

I though about this a little more. It's natural for someone only working with hand tools to work stock only at a certain size and not larger if needed. If I am making small drawers, then I'll size stock maybe large enough for a side and back if it's already close, but not usually something 5 feet long and not whole boards. One of the joys of working by hand is you can saw anything out of anything and the plane it to final working size. That means you can get something like a table slab 12/4 or 16/4 and saw quartered guitar necks out of it without having an overly complicated setup, but more pertinent is that you can saw a bunch of drawer fronts and other bits out of a board without thinking too hard because you don't get stuck over thinking how you'll get 40 pieces out of 4 boards at once, only to have one show a fault after going through power tools.

Mentally, it's much more pleasant. The long stick in another picture I posted here is moulding. Not a great idea to strike that in separate pieces and expect the corners to match.

Maybe some people like milling 200 by at once through their power tools, but I find it pretty unstimulating.


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## D_W (6 Sep 2021)

Separately, most of then 13/16 pre planed and edged stock here is a bear to work with as it's often cupped or twisted some after it lands at the woodworking store. Retail places catering to beginners also tend to put low quality stock in that.

I will use a power thicknesses sometimes when I'm building something I don't want to build, but that may be once a year.

Making chisel lately has limited my planing of much of anything, though.


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## Phill05 (6 Sep 2021)

Well I guess the OP is thinking "I only asked" come on guy's I guess you are all old enough to know When and How to plane a piece of wood without drawing it out for months or it feels that long.
Now why don't you agree to disagree on each of your points and nudge the OP to wake up and everyone else that nodded off.


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## JobandKnock (6 Sep 2021)

D_W said:


> One of the joys of working by hand is you can saw anything out of anything and the plane it to final working size.


You can do that with many tools, not just hand tools. I still use a handsaw for some cuts, but i find that for 80 to 90% of the cuts I make a cordless circular saw does as well and is quicker (remember, I am driven by project schedules and monetary constraints). To me, and a lot of other carpenters and joiners, the current generation of brushless cordless circular saws are brilliant. They are, in effect, a powered handsaw and can be used freehand to great effect. The hogging away of stock I'd still do with a power planer because I don't have a side axe or a froe in my tool kit any longer (reserved for cutting wedges on site). And like a lot of people I want to get on with actually making stuff, not doing donkey work



D_W said:


> Mentally, it's much more pleasant. The long stick in another picture I posted here is moulding. Not a great idea to strike that in separate pieces and expect the corners to match.


I'll give you that. As I think I have previously said, I maintain a modest kit of wooden moulders, but the complex moulders all have built-in fences, whilst for larger architectural mouldings, which need to be worked with hollows and rounds, your accuracy and whether or not mitres line up is down to the ground work you do in setting out and cutting the rebates and grooves you need to form the "fences" for your rounds and hollows. I will also tack temporary fences onto planes or work pieces if needs be. TBH this is only a small part of my work, necessary only when replacing smaller sections of lost or badly damaged mouldings such as cornices, etc and where having a run done on a spindle moulder would be prohibitively costly.


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## D_W (6 Sep 2021)

I guess the fascination when there's budget is fastest. I'm sure a cordless circular saw is faster, but I don't have or use one. For someone not selling their stuff, you can soon build your house full with only hand tools. 

I don't know why a hobbyist would bother worrying about the difference between 4 seconds and 8 for a cut, though. The whole point (I track my time in my day job) is to do stuff that's pleasant and not be burdened by anything that isn't a net positive. 

I do keep a lot of cordless tools, but the one that gets used in the shop is just a plain ryobi drill. The "low end" brushless stuff is so good now that I haven't gotten a corded drill out to do anything other than masonry work in the last, probably 5 years. The stuff for the rest of the house is great, though (hand held vacuums, cheap tire pumps that can go twice as fast as you can pump by hand and no burning arms or sore back, leaf blowers, string trimmers, ...).

(I do mow with a reel - or cylinder you guys call it, but it takes less time than the honda rotary that I have - still keep that for mulching). 

I don't know many people who take up hobbies and look to see what they should do based on whether or not it's profitable, though. 

There's a side benefit of dimensioning by hand - neural development. Everything is sort of done the same way, and you'll get good at cutting dovetails without actually cutting them from the other cutting.


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## JobandKnock (6 Sep 2021)

I suppose it's easy to forget that the hours of hand sawing you do as an apprentice gives you the "muscle memory" (what you call "neural development"?) that you'll end up using your whole life. What you tend to remember is the blisters and aching arm. Same goes for hand nailing, chopping out many dozens of mortises, hand sanding acres of wood, etc.

Most of the people I know personally who've taken up woodworking as a hobby (not a large group, I admit) have had a goal, such as building their own design of bed, or making a kitchen where mass market units won't fit, or renovating an old building. Learning joinery to them is just a means to an end where mechanised aids just speed the process up. They really don't want to endure the pain of acquiring muscle memory. I wonder just how many people do?


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## D_W (6 Sep 2021)

Somehow we're still stuck in the whole "I didn't enjoy it so you shouldn't either and I can convince you" thing. It's really odd. I don't recall any serious physical pain that was any different than any other exercise and there wasn't any hazing to learn - just pleasant work and the challenge to figure it out.


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## JobandKnock (6 Sep 2021)

It's because you just aren't doing enough! At 17 most people aren't that fit, so it can be hard. Even now when I'm off the tools for a while (I am a working foreman) and go back on them I do tend to feel it for a few days. AFAIK that is normal


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## D_W (7 Sep 2021)

Good lord. Muscle soreness from exercise is now considered pain.


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## JobandKnock (7 Sep 2021)

It's obvious you don't work that hard!


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## D_W (7 Sep 2021)

I don't consider muscle soreness a problem. It's gone in 15 or 20 minutes of work the next day. Joint aches and things of the like are a big problem, but a hobbyist woodworking 10 hours a week isn't going to have them. I think you're long on telling and short on asking. Accuracy isn't a result of that.


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## JobandKnock (7 Sep 2021)

Asking what, exactly?


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## D_W (7 Sep 2021)

How long do you typically use hand planes. Generally if working on something, about 2 hours in a day. Of course that makes for sore muscles, especially after a layoff. Sore muscles aren't "pain". The follow up comment "you don't work hard enough" is grade school level stuff. No thanks. 

I think you should hang out with Jacob. He often posts something that's factually inaccurate based on something that's literally shown in a post of mine on pictures still on the first page, but not thinking too hard about it or learning much beforehand does make it free and easy for him to comment. You guys could ride a tandem bike around town, it seems. 

I don't have anything to learn from you about hand tools. I don't have much of anything to learn from you at all, which is fine with me. I have no idea what you make or how you work (and have a great deal of indifference about it), and don't need to assert what you do or don't do.


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## 1275gt (7 Sep 2021)

Update.
I'm just continuing to use the plane. I tried spot removal it worked but was taking a lot longer than planned. I've sent a message to Ray Iles and hopefully I'll just send it off.
Thank you all for your help so far.


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## mikej460 (7 Sep 2021)

Pity, I was just about to open another bag of popcorn...


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## Jacob (12 Sep 2021)

Jacob said:


> It's not common because nobody planes stock (long lengths) with a hand plane and nobody ever did.
> In a typical woodwork shop, if hand planing, and usually when machine planing, it is always sawn to size for the job first.
> On the other hand timber yards may supply stock PAR (planed all round) and PSE (planed square edge) but done by machine plane. It's made for DIY woodworkers and odd jobbers without machines and sometimes bought by builders and others if it suits a job.
> But your typical woodworker would only ever buy sawn material for stock, with exceptions, manufactured boards, floor boards, match boards, some mouldings, depending on what they are doing. But non of this would ever have been made by hand for stock.
> It crops up a lot as a topic because beginners encounter PAR and assume this is how it's done by everybody. Also there's a little saying "keep it as long as possible for as long as possible" which is good sense for stock control (use all your small stuff first) but only up to the point where you have cut to size for a project. Planing begins after that point!


Forgot to say - there's another useful saying: "keep it as square as possible as long as possible" which means cut all you mortices and tenon cheeks first before doing any mouldings , bevels, rebates etc. Last of all cut tenon shoulders. It's just easier that way, whether you do it by hand or machine


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## D_W (13 Sep 2021)

1275gt said:


> Update.
> I'm just continuing to use the plane. I tried spot removal it worked but was taking a lot longer than planned. I've sent a message to Ray Iles and hopefully I'll just send it off.
> Thank you all for your help so far.



that's too bad - if you lived down the street, I could probably work it over over lunch, but it's definitely the case that even when you get the feel for really getting the paper or file to cut, it's heavy physical work if you have to take more than just a little off of a plane. 

But not nearly as much work (or as inaccurate) as trying just to lap long planes that are far away from flat.


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