# "I only sharpen to what's needed for the task"



## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

Some of you may be aware that I am a stone hound, a tool builder and sometimes I test things. I noticed that what I say tends to be least well received when I've actually tested it (recently caused some posts to be deleted). 

One of the things that comes around over and over and over is the boast from various folks that they will only sharpen the minimum needed to complete a task. This boast is sort of the "climbing the hill of nobility with both legs tied at the ankles" to let you know when you're reading it that the person making the claim is absolutely dedicated to results and they aren't wasting their time like you are. 

This discussion is going around again on another forum as it does sometimes here, and having tested actual results of this, I changed what I used to do because I realize that the amount of effort that I expend is largely dependent on sharpening. There are two questions to answer:
* what level leads to a positive return but is tolerable (as in, I can't tolerate stopping work for 5 minutes to sharpen, or even 4 or 3, let alone some of the long routines where folks will state that stop to start with a plane is 7 or 8 minutes)?
* why don't we notice the difference in effort day to day, and if you don't notice it does it count?

The simple answer to #1 is that you get almost the entire possible return for your efforts by following your sharpening process (whatever you've developed that's fastest) and taking a very fine stone and working the smallest amount of the edge that you can manage to work. This doesn't have to be an expensive stone. It can be a $9 vial of 1 micron diamonds that will last you a decade. I hate to say it, but using a single medium stone and replacing the strop with a very fine abrasive is a positive yield. I'm a big fan of strops, but results show otherwise (as in, don't skip the fine abrasive). My cycle time sharpening is 1:20 or so for a plane iron, and 2 minutes total if I have to take apart a completely dull double iron and reset it for actual double iron use. Less for chisels. 

Why don't we notice the difference? #2? Because we can compensate all kinds of ways. We can sharpen more often (more total time), lean on a plane, push the shaving thickness past where we want, etc, and then assure ourselves that we're making less effort. 

What did I find in testing? Something 5 micron size in abrasive lasts about 65% as long as something finishing at 1 micron (so if I sharpen with 5 microns and then strop, which has to be fairly brisk), I'll get 65% of the footage planed before sharpening is a necessity. If I replace the strop with a 1 micron abrasive, spend the same amount of time on the very iron tip and back quickly (as in - 10 or 15 seconds), I will get, for example, 1000 feet of planing instead of 650.

But looking closer at the results, you might think that the planing is the same, just fewer feet with the coarser abrasive. It isn't, in fact. The last 650 feet of planing with the fine abrasive are actually smoother and with less effort than the first 650 feet with the coarser abrasive, and the surface result is better. The first 350 feet with the fine abrasive aren't to be seen anywhere during the planing of the latter. 

I'm not the only person who has ever tested this and generated a data set. At least one other person has done a much more extensive study and found the same thing, but as a huge fan of natural stones, I thought I could find a way that they would buck this one way or another. They do not. I also wanted to find the laziest way possible to get the results so that I didn't end up with a 4 or 5 minute sharpening process, because in a typical session of shop work, I could sharpen 2 or 6 times, or something like that, depending on what I'm doing. 

This isn't a matter of buying expensive gear or adding a lot of time, it's just improving results. There actually isn't any expensive sharpening gear that improves results further beyond the cheap loose abrasives. 

What else is impacted?
* surface quality (uniformity and brightness)
* the occurrence of skips, etc, on pieces you're finish planing (or more specifically, the sharper a plane is, the easier it will start a cut, the fewer skips and humps you'll develop at the edges of work and then subsequently need to remove with abrasives, etc)
* the amount of effort you expend planing both downward and forward in general


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Sweet or salted? :roll: :roll: :roll: :lol:
Oh my... a DATA SET???????????


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## Trevanion (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":37ayypf5 said:


> Sweet or salted? :roll: :roll: :roll: :lol:



Caramel


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

What brings this to mind? Other than reading this discussion going on at another forum that I don't participate in, I have actual data gained in an unbiased test, and in the case of the results, they are the opposite of what I was hoping for. 

Also, I make planes, so I get planes from people to fix from time to time (soft irons, some kind of fit issue or "it just doesn't work"). I send the planes back sharp, but 1:20 second sharp, not circus sharp. When I get a comment after returning the plane, it's usually something long the lines of "it works really smoothly", but I resharpened and it's not working as well. I have no idea if anyone takes my advice on sharpening after that (their business and not mine). 

One of these has culminated in a request for me to give a session in a woodworking group in the states here that's comprised of advanced amateurs and some professional woodworkers. In my opinion, it's too far to travel to make it worth the effort (it would be a two day travel effort to talk about sharpening and planing for perhaps half an hour).

If you're suspicious of my results, you can test them yourself very easily by getting a test board and doing the following (it has to be a clean board without mineral deposits or silica):
* sharpen two irons - one coarse, and one as I mentioned above
* plane something like 150 or 200 feet at a time with both irons until they are dull. do your best to keep the shaving thickness even and separate the shaving piles so that you can weigh them to confirm that feet are proportional to volume planed. Do it on the edge of a wide board, but something less wide than your iron so that you're not dealing with lateral flatness issues
* record the results and then prepare the two irons opposite to so that you have one trial for each iron on each abrasive type

see what you find. You'll be surprised when you can use the two next to each other and you see the difference in results and feel the difference in effort and ease. Note the level of dullness when it becomes difficult to plane without concentrating much harder to eliminate defects and get a good clean start to the cut. 

It'll take about an hour to do this test if you're suspicious, but it'll save you far more than an hour in the future if you learn something from it.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

DATA?
sorry I can't help saying that again


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":z6ao74oj said:


> Sweet or salted? :roll: :roll: :roll: :lol:
> Oh my... a DATA SET???????????



I know it's WAY out of bounds to discuss a sharpening thread and ask people to consider a legitimate test. There's a risk that a specific result (which would sure kill the ability to argue endlessly in the future) might be seen by most or all. 

Results oriented discussions are illegal on the internet in 42 states here. (hammer)


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":qmt2xgqr said:


> DATA?
> sorry I can't help saying that again



Yeah, it sounds funny, eh? data. I guess that's what you call footage planed. Data.


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":2mvoeg2m said:


> .......... I noticed that what I say tends to be least well received when I've actually tested it (recently caused some posts to be deleted).........



That was because you were posting on your pet subject* in an inappropriate place*. In it's own thread it would have been fine, but you wrecked a thread started by a complete novice by dumping acres of utterly irrelevant stuff into it. It was absolutely nothing to do with it including test results.


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## Trevanion (26 Jan 2020)

I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

I would rather be a slug on the Bonnevile salt flats than associate data with sharpening tools. :twisted:


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1nzv07ez said:


> D_W":1nzv07ez said:
> 
> 
> > .......... I noticed that what I say tends to be least well received when I've actually tested it (recently caused some posts to be deleted).........
> ...



Well, hopefully it can live here. Not because we should argue about it, because it has real utility. Arguing is for things that people want to be true, this is a matter of something that just is.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

What though?


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":3cx9s4bf said:


> I would rather be a slug on the Bonnevile salt flats than associate data with sharpening tools. :twisted:



It's a bit of a buzzkill for some to take their romantic wants and expect results. Not results in an engineer and protractor and hour process way, but in a lazy "ghee, I'd like to not do more than I have to" kind of way. 

I'm sure there are artists who complain when they're beginners that learning about proportion and design is something that kills their creativity. And then, when they learn about them, they create better art.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2dqeesxk said:


> I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.



being not from the UK, I can only guess Jacob lives north? :lol:


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## thetyreman (26 Jan 2020)

I don't have time for testing blades, I just look at it and say to myself is it sharp? yes or no, if it's not sharp re-sharpen then get on with making, I'm only interested in the actual woodworking, joinery and end results, it doesn't matter how you get there.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":11z83rar said:


> That would work":11z83rar said:
> 
> 
> > I would rather be a slug on the Bonnevile salt flats than associate data with sharpening tools. :twisted:
> ...


OK, a snail then.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

you don't need to recreate results of the testing unless you want to disprove them. I had zero interest in doing any of the testing that I did, but a group of us thought that PM-V11's claims of edge durability were suspicious, and nobody else who does a lot of planing would step up. This was an offshoot of that test - I wasn't looking to examine footage planed based on sharpness, but learned something I wasn't looking to learn. 

The way these results came about was in an attempt to find a single step sharpening media that would be very close to the results of more than one step (like a washita stone, for example, or coarser loose abrasives) process. 

"I don't have time" and "I like to work with hand tools" are sort of strange comments. I don't want to is more accurate, and there are a lot of things I don't want to do. I wanted someone else to perform this test, too, as i probably spent as much time on it as I would typically spend to build a guitar.


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## Sideways (26 Jan 2020)

Ignoring all the baggage. I'll listen to someone who's open to trying a new idea that doesn't fit with their own preferences, and willing to change when the facts as they best understand them say they should.
I lobbed that same idea into one of the vacuum cleaner threads the other day so I'd be a hypocrite not to, as well as potentially missing out on something that will help me.
I'm an engineer so real, repeatable data beats subjective opinion every time...
Cheers


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## AndyT (26 Jan 2020)

Ok, here's a considered response from me.

If I was earning my keep as a full time woodworker, planing chiselling and sawing all day long, and efficiency was one of my goals, this discussion would matter to me. But I'm not. I'm someone who's happy to spend his time pottering in the workshop/playroom making things out of wood.

I even deliberately reduce efficiency by trying out different approaches - do I prefer using a wooden plane or its metal equivalent? Saw, plane or chisel a rebate? Tails first or pins? Gang cutting or singles? Rip by hand or by bandsaw? Radio 3, 4, or 6? Thing is, I can forget what the answer was before next time I need to know. Never mind!

In all of this, I sometimes try to do fine, careful work - such as my little walnut table - and then, I will be more careful about sharpening. I'll do it more often and I will also hone. 

But if I am doing something more undemanding - like planing a piece of wood so it's the right size to mend a hole in the shed - I adjust my standards - so a plane or chisel would just get a quick rub on a fine-ish stone and get on with it. You could call that "sharpening to what's needed for the task" if you like. To me it's more about common sense than any sort of claim to be a superior worker. 

I can easily spend more time making coffee or tea than I do sharpening, but I'm not going to stop doing either of those.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Damn it.... I can't think of any more salt hating creatures #-o


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":2pledqnb said:


> Damn it.... I can't think of any more salt hating creatures #-o



You have to make it more relatable. Like a recent heart attack survivor eating steaks soaked on the Bonneville salt flats.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

AndyT":3b6iwm4v said:


> Ok, here's a considered response from me.
> 
> If I was earning my keep as a full time woodworker, planing chiselling and sawing all day long, and efficiency was one of my goals, this discussion would matter to me. But I'm not. I'm someone who's happy to spend his time pottering in the workshop/playroom making things out of wood.
> 
> ...



I don't disagree with any of that. The point here being that there is no time or cost consequence to get the gain. 

If it was all about minimizing effort, we wouldn't be using hand planes for much of anything at all (we'd adjust what we're building to avoid them). 

I'm taking the lazy man's view of this - I want the woodworking and sharpening to be as pleasant as possible and not take any longer than the minimum required. It's lucky in this case that the result doesn't really take any additional effort.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

Sideways":28rwei5i said:


> Ignoring all the baggage. I'll listen to someone who's open to trying a new idea that doesn't fit with their own preferences, and willing to change when the facts as they best understand them say they should.



Fortunately or unfortunately, I ended up doing this test only after someone else insisted on it. They had seen steve elliot's results (steve did a very thorough and intensive job testing the same thing, but the other guy who requested this and I were too lazy to follow the methods he used to sharpen). The other guy involved in this case pushed and made the claim that he wasn't skilled enough to perform the test and be comfortable with the results (he's an excellent amateur furniture maker, but avoided planing more than he had to for 30 years because he considered it too risky). 

I still love the washita stone, and use it just before the brief fine edge finish, but having tested edges also for quality also found another one of my wants blown up. You often see people mention that synthetics make a fragile edge and the quality of the natural stone edge is better in terms of toughness. I didn't find it to be the case, and edge life and lack of defects with a 1 micron diamond finish were the same whether the wear removal was done with a washita or an eze lap before the polishing of the very tip of the iron. 

Truth hurts sometimes!! I only spent about 14 years believing that I was getting some kind of probably quantifiable benefit by using a natural stone instead of an ezelap for the initial sharpening.


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2ofruc1k said:


> I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.


I often pick up a plane or other tool and have a quick go on an offcut just for the pleasure of it but I don't do any tests as such, just go by feel. I'm basically lazy, so even if I've decided to do something all by hand only, I'm continually looking at how to get away with doing it the easiest way, which seems to be the opposite of what a lot people on here do. 
PS But is definitely what all and everybody trying to earn a living would do as a matter of course.
Doing stuff the lazy way means aiming for an acceptable degree of error, rather than perfection.

Hope that helps!
PPS I'm doing a little project at the mo with freehand dovetails in a variety of woods (assorted offcuts) and the critical thing here seems to be chopping out with a chisel in crumbly softwood. A very very sharp chisel should help so I might bring on my little used fine Arkansas stones and see if it makes any difference.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

I agree Jacob. In this case, the laziest way ends up being different than what I expected. 

The story changes entirely if you use dirty or damaged or contaminated wood. In that case, just plan to sharpen a lot. I didn't find any iron, bevel angle, etc, that would tolerate any level of contamination within the wood or from outside. 

I ran into this in practical application a couple of weeks ago planing limba for a guitar body. 

https://i.imgur.com/SSoXNqi.jpg

If you click to enlarge that picture, you can see all of the little tiny bits of silica in the pores. You can literally vacuum them out, but the next stroke will expose more. Doesn't matter what sharpening method you use, the board itself (despite being soft) will literally abrade and leave a wire edge on an iron. One stroke of the wood and the next stroke leaves little lines all over the surface. 

The same was true of this piece of rosewood - the pores were filled with silica. Hit or miss - the next blank may have none and work beautifully. I did the bulk of the material removal on this neck with a draw knife before a nicholson supershear, scraper and sanding. 

https://i.imgur.com/t3NvfAd.jpg

Edge retention is a lost cause with both.


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## Trevanion (26 Jan 2020)

Who are you and what have you done with the *real* Jacob?


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

I'm not interested in the results, particularly, but I'm interested in the tests. My first degree was a BSc, so the scientific method is a priority for me. At the very least I need to see a properly described method, a hypothesis, an objective set of measurements, falsifiable results/ claims, and repeatability. It would also help if the guy doing the test wasn't an advocate, or if he was, that the tests were at least blinded. The original "foot-planed" test didn't fulfill many of those criteria, particularly the "objective" part. When you can develop an objective test such that there is a measurable point at which the blade is blunt (ie all blades are tested to precisely the same degree of bluntness) then come back to us and let us know. Until then.............meh...........whatever.........


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":1w1qmifx said:


> I agree Jacob. In this case, the laziest way ends up being different than what I expected.
> 
> The story changes entirely if you use dirty or damaged or contaminated wood. In that case, just plan to sharpen a lot. ....


I'd use a scrub plane. This is exactly what it is for (there's a clue in the name!) 
It works by cutting down through the dirty layer and doing most of the work deeply gouging into the clean wood underneath.
Also about the easiest plane blade to sharpen - scoop and twist - nicks don't matter if you've hit a nail etc. And the least skill required to make it work - they were all having a go with one on a bit of old joist, when I did my demo.


Trevanion":1w1qmifx said:


> Who are you and what have you done with the *real* Jacob?


My sharpening is all about doing it the easiest, quickest and cheapest way - believe it or not!


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Just found an Arion vulgaris in my Zea mays... He's alive but looks a bit dull.


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## lurker (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":qwcx0bvt said:


> Trevanion":qwcx0bvt said:
> 
> 
> > I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.
> ...



He lives in the midlands, (actually the southerly quarter of the U.K.) which happens to be north of where most of the U.K.’s narcissists live.

For what it’s worth, I like your posts, and give consideration to what you say.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Mine veers towards Jacob’s but with the proviso that, I don’t give a damn if people don’t agree with me.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

You may want to buy a jump to conclusions mat. 

The first footage planed test absolutely satisfied those and was repeatable by everyone. It was controlled as follows:
* each iron used in the same plane (pictures taken at every step for every iron). One iron had to be used in a separate plane, but it wasn't really a subject of the test, it was provided by an individual curious about its performance. 
* each iron used in a rotation on the same board so that no plane encountered a more favorable section of the test board (rather than planing each iron to dullness and then switching). The range of rotations for each plane was 5 to 10, depending on their longevity. It could be stated that the longer-lasting irons may have encountered a more favorable board section since the early irons only planed the part of the board planed early on
* shavings were checked for thickness and weight for each (to ensure that the amount of work done by each was not biased)

The test board was checked for flatness periodically to ensure that it didn't become concave. Unskilled planers plane the ends off of boards. I will gradually plane them concave, as will most skilled hand tool users. 

The edge durability tests were ancillary to everything, so they didn't get the same rotation. Instead, they started with a separate board (planing only the sap area of quartersawn beech in the same board) and bookended the test with fine abrasives to make sure the last iteration yielded a result about the same as the first (that is, that the spot in the board after several inches of planing showed the same results as the edge of the board). 

I also took pictures with a microscope, but there was a motive for those. We assumed ahead of the test that the dulling would occur with more defects in the irons with coarser abrasives, but I didn't find that. The results of all of the tests were recorded both for surface quality/uniformity as well as longevity. Why? Because I am a proponent of uniformity from the standpoint that it's needed to finish a surface straight off of a plane. If a certain iron or method can't retain uniformity, then it requires resharpening to plane a finished surface. 

In clean wood, I didn't notice any issues with surface quality until irons were quite dull. 

I sharpened with a guide (which I almost never do) despite the fact that i hate it because each starting edge needed to have identical geometry. Each starting edge was viewed end to end under a microscope to make sure there were no starting defects. 

I found, as many will, that not all edges were as finished as I expected. That's of no consequence day to day if an edge is uniform - razors are actually maintained that way, but for this test, it was unacceptable. 

You may have missed in all of this (I wouldn't use the word concern - it's more polite than what you're really after, but lets assume that your issue with potential bias is a matter of concern), the conclusions in every test were different than I expected.

In durability by iron type, I assumed that the PM-V11 results on MDF would not be producible on wood, that carbon steel would have demonstrably better surface quality and uniformity through wear, and that other established more-difficult-to-sharpen irons would outlast the V11 (whereas Lee Valley's results showed it among those irons, despite being relatively easier to sharpen). 

The outcome was, instead, that LV's test results in MDF were reliable in clean wood. But, I also found that it's not a free lunch thing - LV's irons grind and coarse hone about half as fast as carbon steel. They finish sharpen easily because the steel doesn't hold a wire edge like high wear vanadium steels. It's (very) high carbon and high chromium. 

My favorite ( a hard tempered O1 iron ) fared about half as well as V11. To my surprise, surface brightness with the alloyed irons was generally brighter than high carbon steel, which probably has something to do with the sentiment that HCS yields better surface quality. The surface is slightly less bright, so very minor quality issues aren't as easy to see. 

I expected the planing resistance from high carbon steel to be less than the "dull feeling alloyed irons", but that also wasn't true, except steels with a lot of vanadium have a lot of resistance in wood. Chromium yields the opposite. I didn't expect that. 

I expected that I would be able to come up with some one step sharpening regime with a natural stone or a slightly coarse synthetic abrasive that would last as long as the micron sized synthetic abrasives. Again, the results were the opposite, instead demonstrating a much greater advantage to a small strip of microfine edge than I expected. 

The results of the entire test were not as I expected. 

I went to college for applied mathematics (and graduated) with a statistics intensive concentration and work mostly with hand tools when I do woodworking. Nobody is more suited for the test (well, i'm sure there is someone or hundreds of someone in the world, but a matter of will to do it is important). 

I was suspicious of prior results from other sources for the following reasons:
* they only tested initial wear (we use a plane until it needs to be sharpened most of the time, not just for initial wear)
* the tests were performed by someone with economic interest
* the tests were performed by unskilled users or a robotic machine, and in a material that wasn't wood to "accelerate results"

You can't assume that the wear in one material is the same as it will be in clean wood. 

You can't even assume that the wear will be similar in two boards from the same tree. In fact, one of my sapwood boards yielded over 4000 feet of planing with a test iron and another yielded 1700 with the same iron. Even minor changes in grain direction can cause a lot of distortion in results, so I had to use good wood (quartersawn beech, and only the sapwood) that was very uniform and that I had saved for plane handles. The differences in feet planed in for two different test boards with the same iron were shocking. The proportional relationship held (the board that yielded 1700 feet for V11 and slightly greater than 800 for O1 yielded 2000 feet planed for 01).


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1fr3sh7c said:


> I'm not interested in the results, particularly, but I'm interested in the tests. My first degree was a BSc, so the scientific method is a priority for me. At the very least I need to see a properly described method, a hypothesis, an objective set of measurements, falsifiable results/ claims, and repeatability. It would also help if the guy doing the test wasn't an advocate, or if he was, that the tests were at least blinded. The original "foot-planed" test didn't fulfill many of those criteria, particularly the "objective" part. When you can develop an objective test such that there is a measurable point at which the blade is blunt (ie all blades are tested to precisely the same degree of bluntness) then come back to us and let us know. Until then.............meh...........whatever.........



Separate and aside, I'm posting the results. I don't have much interest in persuading people who don't like what they are, or who alternate between "That's too much information" and if you don't post it "it's unreliable". 

My original footage planed test, as described above, satisfied every criteria you listed. I'm not an advocate really for anything other than cap iron use (that wasn't part of the test aside from the fact that the cap iron was set for everything other than endgrain in order to make the results more uniform (prevent tearout and keep the cut even with every iron, even as the irons were dulling). 

I didn't describe bluntness above - It's determined as the point where a plane struggles to stay in the cut for half of the board repeatably. That was a concern (to me) ahead of the test, but it occurs within a footage window of about 50 (from first failure to stay in the entire cut). It also has to occur with a hand on the plane rear handle only so that no addition downforce is applied. 

As I was posting results, someone who had an all-japanese paper from Kato and Kawai about downforce and wear was following up with the results from that paper. They were the same, except in the test of steels by the two japanese professors, they were using a planing machine that could continue to plane long after clearance was gone. We cannot do that with hand tools. Their test showed that downforce created by the plane iron decreases approximately linearly until it's zero and then goes in the other direction. I didn't know this fact at the time I was performing my tests and requested to not know anything of the K&K details until I was done. Loss of clearance and downforce doesn't actually feel linear. 

if a plane is pulling itself into a cut with four times the downforce needed, twice as much as needed feels the same. It's only as clearance issues near that one starts to notice the start of a cut isn't as easy, and the point of easy use vs. fighting the plane occurs very fast. I perceived the change in downforce different than the K&K results, but they had a machine and I'm sure they're right.


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## thetyreman (26 Jan 2020)

whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

thetyreman":uu6c39kn said:


> whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?


No, sod the client, but presumably you would care if you spent longer than you needed to, or bought kit which didn't pay for itself


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## thetyreman (26 Jan 2020)

Jacob":2bd7g2ki said:


> thetyreman":2bd7g2ki said:
> 
> 
> > whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?
> ...



actually I don't care about how long it takes, what I do care about is the quality of my work, if it takes me say 1 minute longer to sharpen up, that's not much extra time, it's industrial era thinking that time is money, it comes from factories and mass production which seems ridiculous to me when you're a small workshop say on a self employed basis, especially in the age we live in today, but I've never made a living from it doing it fulltime and don't really plan on doing that either.

p.s sorry to go off topic.


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## AndyT (26 Jan 2020)

I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense. 

In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:

1 - The new "PMV111" steel used by Veritas does keep an edge longer than the carbon steel used for the last 250 years.
2 - Sharpening to a very fine grit is worthwhile - the edge lasts longer and the finish is better.
3 - These differences are not often noticed because 
(a) most of us don't hand plane for long periods with frequent sharpenings and 
(b) some boards of the same species will blunt an edge much quicker than others. 

Is that a fair summary?


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

thetyreman":3e6p6nce said:


> whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?



I get the sense that you're not in favor of what is, but that's OK. When you're making something and you find a way that you like to do it, go ahead. 

I don't think most clients of any makers could identify a planed surface vs. sanded, and if they could, I don't think they could identify the difference if the sanded surface was burnished. 

This isn't about customers - it's about doing better work with no extra effort (actually less). 

Bias is important to me because there's no requirement for a marketer to release unbiased results. They can run 5 tests and show the results of the test that they've chosen. 

This test ended up costing me several hundred dollars (actually, I bought the base steel that V11 is made of and made my own irons after it, which i didn't expect to do), and I am sure that I will not make any money or ever recoup the costs. There was an offer to set up a patreon-like effort to complete it, but I refused for obvious (to me) reasons.


----------



## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

AndyT":357b1n41 said:


> I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.
> 
> In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:
> 
> ...



It is. I do a lot of handplaning, sometimes several hours a day (of planing, not several hours that involve some planing, but just planing) on weekends, and I didn't notice the difference in ease and wear because I settled into a routine. 

As you get better at woodworking, you also extend the amount of work you can do between sharpenings because you get more efficient. I confused how well I was getting along with carbon steel (due to getting shorter and shorter and more economical in sharpening, too) with it being just as good as anything else. 

I also confused how well I got along with just a washita stone as it being at least as good as anything else. 

I wouldn't advocate anyone go buy things (getting faster at sharpening and better at it is more important than what steel is used), but I might go so far as to say that folks using a fairly unrefined edge may appreciate a $9 or $10 vial of 1 micron diamonds used on their substrate of choice, replacing one effort (stropping) for another (just kissing the very edge and back of a tool in about the same amount of time). 

I hope none of this would ever be confused for advocating expensive micron and submicron stones. They are no better than loose abrasive, either in speed or results.


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## Woody2Shoes (26 Jan 2020)

AndyT":1ky3jhsj said:


> I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.
> 
> In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:
> 
> ...



What a relief for a man who only wants to 'read what's necessary for the task'!


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":29dew33l said:


> ........My original footage planed test, as described above, satisfied every criteria you listed........



You are joking, I assume.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

No, but at this point, I assume that's what you're left with. I made reasonable and complete efforts to control for variables from the standpoint of someone actually planing. My capabilities with planes are generally better than all but a few people who actually use planes all day professionally. 

Strangely enough, one of the other individuals chipping in opinions was a research chemist and enthusiastic furniture builder, now retired (a phD chemist, not lab staff). He had concerns that I wouldn't perform the test in such a way that he could rely on the results. He had none when we were done, and he was retrieving test results from other similar tests (and was the one holding the japanese documentation). 

He didn't have a personal issue, as you seem to (that doesn't really bother me, by the way, and I see it as nothing to solve or convince you out of), and by the end of the test had figured that I missed my calling and wasted my life not performing research. I thought that was a nice compliment, but part of the reason that I performed the test was because it was clear that nobody capable was willing to do it and I would end up doing it, anyway, if someone else got unreliable results. 

There were a few individuals who didn't like the results or who didn't like my precision in getting them and they also posted vague comments as you have. That's fine, as I'm always open to seeing someone else test the same thing to see if they get the same results, or at least similar. 

(one of the other forum users had built his own planing machine and found the same results with his machine as I did - he was testing material removed from metal and his results were proportional - almost exactly - to my footage results. The same as the other data groups in agreement, I wasn't aware of said test until after I was done. But it is nice to see that someone else uses another method and another measure and gets proportional results).


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":2wida4ye said:


> ......I made reasonable and complete efforts to control for variables from the standpoint of someone actually planing. My capabilities with planes are generally better than all but a few people who actually use planes all day professionally.



So, apart from the ego stroking, that is some sort of admittance that this process relies on skill, feel etc.



> .......He had concerns that I wouldn't perform the test in such a way that he could rely on the results. He had none when we were done.....



I have those same concerns.



> He didn't have a personal issue, as you seem to



No, I don't. I don't share your obsession, that's all, and I resent you dumping it into any thread on planing no matter what the initial question or the experience of the person asking the question.



> .......(one of the other forum users had built his own planing machine and found the same results with his machine as I did.....



There you go. That takes the skill & setting elements out of the equation and adds in repeatability in the planing. However, we'd still need a precise cut-off point for measuring when each blade was dull, and a repeatable method of ensuring the exact same level of sharpening. Then, instead of making claims on the basis of a handful of hand-done tests with no statistics applied we could actually have something meaningful to talk about. When you've repeated your tests 25 times per blade, blind, in a mechanical setting (not a handplane), and have done the statistics, then come back and talk. Until then, you've got nothing.


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## AndyT (26 Jan 2020)

David, before you rush off and build your planing machine... there's a possibility that if you do, and come back with your fresh results, someone will pipe up and say "but that's all theoretical - what about some real world planing, at the bench?"  

And so we'd have gone round in a big circle, with some of us getting agitated and some of us wondering what the fuss was about.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

I agree about the agitation part. The planing machine version of this was already done. Lee Valley did it, and so did Kees Heiden. Kato and Kawai did it in large parts. I am not well read as far as other peoples' tests, so fortunately I wasn't familiar with much other than the frustratingly vague results on the PM V11 page. 

I'm comfortable with my level of skill (which is required for planing in general) and its margin contributing almost nothing to variation as the results tie to other studies as well as repeating some of the tests during the process when feel yielded something that may not have been questioned by machine - for example 3V steel and powder M4 both had a great deal of planing resistance. I thought in the first test that I had somehow managed to sharpen the V11 better than everything else, so I repeated the test with just the steels that were drastically far apart in effort and the conclusion is that rather than it being an issue of sharpening, it literally is an issue of cutting resistance from different steels. 

The research chemist who went along for the ride and egged me on ended up tracking down a metallurgist to find out why we would see differing feel (actually, he tracked down two - the first didn't know enough about the subject to give us a relevant answer) , and especially why we would find that in wood, the very hard vanadium carbides wouldn't wear much longer than the chromium carbides in V11 (the chemist also had V11 XRFed so that we'd know what was in it, and he tested a chinese iron that I had that we suspected was probably M2 -which it almost was - it was ever so short in a few alloying elements). At any rate, the second metallurgist was not surprised by our findings -big carbides good for metal on metal contact, and small carbides (even chromium) would work just as well on softer materials. 

While I was already very comfortable in the results (especially after repeating them), getting more external points was also nice. 

There was already one for the topic of this thread. Steve Elliot had sharpened various irons on various abrasives and found the following:
* the more finely finished an edge, the longer it will wear (i stopped at 1 micron - steve had gone to a quarter, I believe - the focus of this is still to do something practical for a daily user and in my case, one where I don't spend any extra time or effort) -that kills the age old mantra that too fine of an edge is fragile - the opposite is actually true to some extent - the more finely finished the edge, the better it will wear from the start. It was subsequently communicated to me (probably in email) that the K&K studies of heavy wear on an iron find that the material loss on the cutting edge speeds up with additional dullness. I didn't test that, but it fits with the edge dullness leading to less footage planed
* the age old mantra that highly alloyed steels cannot attain the same sharpness was disproved - steve tested the sharpness with a mechanical setup and resistance to cut through a string. That's over the top for me, but I appreciate his efforts. I somehow thought I'd find that the alloyed steels wouldn't wear as evenly and it would result in unexpected results. They do not wear as evenly if they aren't powder metallurgical steels, but it didn't seem to make any difference in longevity itself - the little defects just aren't enough to affect anything (this is a nod to people who are going to sand anyway and who won't care about those defects). 

Most important in all of this is that I was prepared to take the results of the sharpness tests and use them. I was prepared to test all of the irons, and expected to go back to my house-made O1 irons - I tested on against a hock iron separately as a control to make sure it was at least as capable as a hock iron (it is). 

I planed something in the range of 40,000 linear feet in these tests (a little bit greater than that). I'm somewhat amused by Mikes posts, though  I'm not about to build a planing machine when it's already been done twice. 

Importantly for Steve, too, who mentioned to me that someone wouldn't like the results and thus they would question them, the same folks who did the questioning to Steve now have a second data point - his testing is accurate. Plus three more controlled tests. All of these tests were done on a much bigger budget than mine. 

I hope at least 5 people will take the result presented in this particular thread - work the very tip of your plane irons lightly, with a little bit of bias to make sure you're working them (don't hone a big wide flat area, just the tip on the bevel side and a little bit of back work) and you'll be rewarded with the already published benefits of a much finer edge.


----------



## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

Separately, I found that the steel that's used for V11 is very forgiving and can be treated in open atmosphere if it's heated very high and quenched quickly in oil (the data sheet for the stock that matches the XRF allows quench in air, water or oil - oil is probably the safest for the average shop user, but it takes a forge to get to the heating temperature quickly - 1900F, or very bright orange to dull yellow). Tempering can be done in the oven at the same temperatures one would use for O1, but it's far less sensitive to temperature variation (a 400 degree change (about 220C differential) in temper temperature results in tempered hardness variation of only 3C scale points).


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## AndyT (26 Jan 2020)

Whoa!! You're losing me and I suspect quite a lot of others. 
All this guff about metallurgy is a complete irrelevance to those of us who already have their tools and don't plan to replace them. Most of mine are Sheffield cast crucible steel, with a few bits of modern (ie mid twentieth century) tungsten steel here and there. 

I don't plan to replace them all.


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## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1jls5ojl said:


> So, apart from the ego stroking, that is some sort of admittance that this process relies on skill, feel etc.



We are, after all, testing how well we can do something in reality - planing. The robot planing machine tests are already performed and they are confirmed with practical planing. 

As far as ego? I only posted the method because you questioned it. I am comfortable with the results and while you've posted chapter 1 statistical type stuff, I don't think you're far enough along to understand data credibility and what low variance among test results suggests. 

I posted my methods in real time as well as the results originally, figuring someone else may add additional trials, but most quickly disappeared when i requested they turn their criticism efforts into trials. There's a very significant chance that you will, too. And, that's OK.


----------



## D_W (26 Jan 2020)

AndyT":1m1ep1y4 said:


> Whoa!! You're losing me and I suspect quite a lot of others.
> All this guff about metallurgy is a complete irrelevance to those of us who already have their tools and don't plan to replace them. Most of mine are Sheffield cast crucible steel, with a few bits of modern (ie mid twentieth century) tungsten steel here and there.
> 
> I don't plan to replace them all.



Most of the edge durability tests for clearance and sharpness levels were performed (by me) with O1 and Ward cast steel, so you're in luck. 

Steve elliot did his string test and durability tests on a wider range of steels, and the relationship holds across the board. 

No need to buy anything or wonder if it will work for Ward but not CPM M4, etc.


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## Trevanion (26 Jan 2020)

Have you made anything with the tools? That's what I'd be interested in seeing on the forum.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":308s5dfx said:


> Have you made anything with the tools? That's what I'd be interested in seeing on the forum.


Exactly.
I would like to to know what the real world benefits of all this b######'s.


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

Take no notice D_W, sharpening makes a lot of them very uneasy. Doesn't take much to set them off!
Keep up the good work - I am reading it and may even take some notice.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Jacob":16u4nqa9 said:


> Take no notice D_W, sharpening makes a lot of them very uneasy. Doesn't take much to set them off!
> Keep up the good work - I am reading it and may even take some notice.


Ye right.


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## AndyT (26 Jan 2020)

That would work":37zccv1d said:


> Trevanion":37zccv1d said:
> 
> 
> > Have you made anything with the tools? That's what I'd be interested in seeing on the forum.
> ...



Just using the search function...

post1286189.html#p1286189


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2s7im53g said:


> Have you made anything with the tools? That's what I'd be interested in seeing on the forum.



Bingo.


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## That would work (26 Jan 2020)

Norton India and strop on your palm.
End of. If it's blunt... repeat.


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## Dangermouse 2nd (26 Jan 2020)

Well, i do like to base things on facts, but really this is getting a bit pedantic. I use as i have for years, a medium carburundum, fine natural stone, finish on a very very fine natural stone, lubricated with turps and sewing machine oil mixture. In two minutes i can shave with the edge. Good enough for me. You can over analyse anything.....


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## MikeG. (26 Jan 2020)

D_W":kh0bkl05 said:


> MikeG.":kh0bkl05 said:
> 
> 
> > So, apart from the ego stroking, that is some sort of admittance that this process relies on skill, feel etc.
> ...



We all read the following, which is of course what I was referring to as "ego stroking". Have you heard the expression "blowing your own trumpet"?



D_W":kh0bkl05 said:


> .......My capabilities with planes are generally better than all but a few people who actually use planes all day professionally...........



Maybe this sort of thing is the norm in Trump's America, but over here, braggards are the social equivalent of pickpockets and people who don't buy their round.



> I don't think you're far enough along to understand data credibility and what low variance among test results suggests.



Tell me again, how many times did you repeat your tests?


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

AndyT":27m7diof said:


> That would work":27m7diof said:
> 
> 
> > Trevanion":27m7diof said:
> ...


Very nice guitar D_W I'm impressed. Have you built any sheds lately? :lol:
PS I might have a go at going one stone finer tomorrow - you've talked me into it.
I'v got black and white Arkansas - the black seems finer is that correct?


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## Trevanion (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":104o9phi said:


> Who are you and what have you done with the *real* Jacob?


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## Jacob (26 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":218h8nz6 said:


> "It is quite wrong to consider that only hand-workers are craftsmen, the only difference between the old craftsmen and the new is that the former used hand-tools and the modern craftsman uses mechanized tools."


Actually there is one enormous difference which is that the hand worker was also the motive power and the style of working would be much harder and very different from modern hand work. 
You can see it in those old films chair makers, clog makers etc - they were making ordinary stuff at speed, not the so-called fine woodwork favoured by the mags and the amateurs of today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGDkliy1DEU
You can see it in a lot of old furniture where every detail is a compromise between haste and speed resulting in a standard which is only _ just_ good enough


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## Phil Pascoe (26 Jan 2020)

Jacob":2sw38gst said:


> Take no notice D_W, sharpening makes a lot of them very uneasy. Doesn't take much to set them off!
> Keep up the good work - I am reading it and may even take some notice.



You could even plagiarise it for your next lecture.


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## Phil Pascoe (26 Jan 2020)

Dangermouse 2nd":1f7pbhoq said:


> Well, i do like to base things on facts, but really this is getting a bit pedantic. I use as i have for years, a medium carburundum, fine natural stone, finish on a very very fine natural stone, lubricated with turps and sewing machine oil mixture. In two minutes i can shave with the edge. Good enough for me. You can over analyse anything.....



Two minutes? Eons.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":3mxolvxn said:


> Actually there is one enormous difference which is that the hand worker was also the motive power and the style of working would be much harder and very different from modern hand work.
> You can see it in those old films chair makers, clog makers etc - they were making ordinary stuff at speed, not the so-called fine woodwork favoured by the mags and the amateurs of today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGDkliy1DEU
> You can see it in a lot of old furniture where every detail is a compromise between haste and speed resulting in a standard which is only _ just_ good enough



I don't see how my signature quote of Foyster's was a part of the conversation? :?

To be honest, I'm not even sure what relevance what you said had to it. It's more to do with the fact people always associate handwork as "craftsmanship" when there's equal measures of craftsmanship in doing the same job with machines.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":8zuq73ib said:


> Have you made anything with the tools? That's what I'd be interested in seeing on the forum.



That's funny. I spent 7 hours in the shop today. The only power tool I used is a spindle sander for guitar body work. 

I don't normally use power tools much, but electric guitars were designed in the era of electric tools and it doesn't make much sense to do certain things on the bodies with hand tools. But the necks can easily be made without them.

I can tell you why people don't post much work. Nobody responds. People say they like to see work, but they'd rather talk about sharpening.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

> Just using the search function...
> 
> post1286189.html#p1286189


Very nice guitar D_W I'm impressed. Have you built any sheds lately? :lol:
PS I might have a go at going one stone finer tomorrow - you've talked me into it.
I'v got black and white Arkansas - the black seems finer is that correct?[/quote]

Thanks, Jacob. I've got no interest in sheds, but since I don't know much about them, I'm definitely qualified to find a thread about them somewhere so that I can develop a grudge against the guy who seems to be the most knowledgable. 

In regard to the Arkansas stones, whichever one is more dense is the one that will cut more finely when its settled in. Different retailers have one or the other generally finer based on their mines.

For example, Dan's here in the states claims that their black mined stock is generally their most dense. What used to be halls stones had finer translucent than black stones.

Most older black and trans were quite fine, though (older being turn of the century). That said, if a trans stone passes light easily, it's a pretty safe bet. Black stones vary more than light passing trans stones.


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## Andy Kev. (27 Jan 2020)

AndyT":11aiozk3 said:


> I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.
> 
> In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:
> 
> ...


I'd got to more or less the same point of view by that stage in the thread: David's done a lot of work off his own bat and he's offered up his findings. He's not being dogmatic nor is he preaching. For instance, it's not as if he is demanding that we all ditch our old plane irons in favour of PMV11. What it essentially boils down to is providing the information that a final trim with the very finest grit is a useful thing to do and we can take or leave that as we see fit.

Everybody will have their own response to this data (there! I used the word) and FWIW mine is that I won't change from PMV11 on my LAJ but I'm quite happy with older steels on other planes which see use for shorter periods (the LAJ being my work horse) as I don't mind the very short time that it takes to touch up the edge of the older steels. The PMV11 is very slightly more tedious to sharpen but that has to be done less frequently, so it makes sense to me to have that on the dogsbody plane.

OTH my take on this is rightly only of minor interest to anyone else, which is the way it should be. We can choose not to let DW's data have any influence on us but surely we cannot deny it as a matter of fact. And for taking the time and effort to produce it, he has my thanks.


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## Andy Kev. (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":1z3w3ncf said:


> AndyT":1z3w3ncf said:
> 
> 
> > Just using the search function...
> ...



Eh? I don't think that even Pete Townshend could bash out decent chords on a shed. It'd look daft on stage, anyway. :mrgreen:


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## MikeG. (27 Jan 2020)

Andy Kev.":29uv5wh5 said:


> ........surely we cannot deny it as a matter of fact........



Nor can we yet accept it as a matter of fact. His tests are insubstantial and subjective. That doesn't mean that the results are wrong*, just that until the tests are done properly, many times over, and by other people, they are nothing more than a claim. They aren't helped by over-blown claims of expertise amounting to an argument from authority, one of the classic logical fallacies.

*You'll notice that at no stage have I ever suggested that what DW has come up with is wrong. My argument is that his tests are weak and so his claims are subjective.


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":2sw8ce7p said:


> ............... My argument is that his tests are weak and so his claims are subjective.


Which stronger tests with less subjective outcomes did you have in mind?


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## ED65 (27 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1mnjwloc said:


> They aren't helped by over-blown claims of expertise amounting to an argument from authority, one of the classic logical fallacies.


I don't want to get embroiled in this but Mike, to be equitable shouldn't you be equally critical of some of the logical fallacies used by others in their responses? I skimmed the thread last night and managed to spot three or four.


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## John Brown (27 Jan 2020)

Andy Kev.":392skhln said:


> Jacob":392skhln said:
> 
> 
> > AndyT":392skhln said:
> ...


Who's Pete Townshend?


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":1y3grprt said:


> Jacob":1y3grprt said:
> 
> 
> > Actually there is one enormous difference which is that the hand worker was also the motive power and the style of working would be much harder and very different from modern hand work.
> ...


Why would it not be?


> To be honest, I'm not even sure what relevance what you said had to it. It's more to do with the fact people always associate handwork as "craftsmanship" when there's equal measures of craftsmanship in doing the same job with machines.


It's just that the sheer hardwork of hand tool production gets forgotten. Take DTs - it's fashionable to fuss about slowly with gadgets, jigs, fret saws etc but back then one man would bashing them out 100s per day, head-down brain-off.
Morticing he would resemble more the hand mortice machine triumph-mortiser-restoration-t116867.html than modern bench top fiddlings we see on youtube etc. A human machine.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":xxnl7y5r said:


> It's just that the sheer hardwork of hand tool production gets forgotten. Take DTs - it's fashionable to fuss about slowly with gadgets, jigs, fret saws etc but back then one man would bashing them out 100s per day, head-down brain-off.
> Morticing he would resemble more the hand mortice machine triumph-mortiser-restoration-t116867.html than modern bench top fiddlings we see on youtube etc. A human machine.



I appreciate things were harder to do before the advent of machines but I’m not sure hard work automatically equals craftsmanship. Arguably I would say most joiners now work just as hard as any of the joiners of old, it’s just the tools used are different and quicker than handwork. To me, true craftsmanship is more about taking pride in quality of your work and not sacrificing quality for speed, if I can keep the quality so that it equals or surpasses the old craftsmen but can do it in half the time using machines what’s wrong with that?

The next logical leap is CNC machining, of course the old craftsmen will be throwing their arms about saying “there’s no craftsmanship with CNC!” but arguably there is still craftsmanship, it’s just a totally different skill set. And before somebody says “anyone can set up a CNC machine, there’s no skill in that!” I’d like to see you try, it would probably take the same amount of time as a standard apprenticeship would to actually get proficient with a _proper_ CNC.


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2q8l5tyc said:


> .......... if I can keep the quality so that it equals or surpasses the old craftsmen but can do it in half the time using machines what’s wrong with that?


Nothing wrong with that. 
It's just that I'm interested in how they did stuff so fast almost all by hand alone, and the way they optimised their effort with nothing done which wasn't necessary, as compared to Derek's perfect dovetail work here enrty-hall-table-for-a-niece-t119882.html which is a very different approach to how the old chaps would have done it.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Yes, but Derek’s work is in a totally different league to the boys who were making 100s of “utilitarian” dovetails per day, he’s making very high-quality heirloom furniture in some of the most difficult to work timbers on the planet whilst the old boys were just banging together drawers from pine for very utilitarian and inexpensive furniture where having a gap here or there didn’t really matter.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":jb5itsea said:


> Andy Kev.":jb5itsea said:
> 
> 
> > ........surely we cannot deny it as a matter of fact........
> ...



Very weak, Mike. The tests literally have been done by other people. Steve Elliott did edge duration tests by fineness and two different tests were done by planing robots to test wear.

The entire point of my test pushing the blades far longer is that the wear tests done elsewhere were used to measure a small amount of wear, but we don't know if the small measured wear bevels were always the same shape when measured by length. Nobody else wanted to test to dullness with v11. Elliott did, but without v11 because it didn't exist. 

Lv planed approximately 1.6 miles, and I planed 10 or so total. I had to toss two tests because they encountered mineral deposits in maple, so the total planed feet were about 50000, 9.5 miles.

There is literally no data from any other published test that differs much or materially any from mine. I don't think you know much about likelihood, either. You only have a textbook empirical sampling comment that you've probably never seen applied in practice. The reason that all of the sources are in relative agreement is that this just isn't that hard of a test or group of tests to perform accurately.


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2kiekq9w said:


> .......the old boys were just banging together drawers from pine for very utilitarian and inexpensive furniture where having a gap here or there didn’t really matter.


My point is that craftsmanship in the real world is about producing a good result in spite of banging stuff together at speed.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":1o0s4jrk said:


> My point is that craftsmanship in the real world is about producing a good result in spite of banging stuff together at speed.



The intention wasn’t to produce a good result, it was to built a piece of furniture as quickly and inexpensively as possible for the common man, if nails were cheaper than the labour they would’ve used them instead. It’s only recently that dovetails became an attractive and expensive joint rather than a quick, easy, solid and ultimately cheap joint (when you’re not aiming for absolute perfection) that didn’t require any glue or nails.

I’m not saying there’s no skill in doing hundreds of dovetails by hand in a day, it definitely takes great skill to do that but I think it’s debatable to call it craftsmanship, I might be wrong but I think they didn’t really care too much about the product so long as it didn’t fall apart. As you said, they were human machines that did their task without much thought of anything else. Its sort of like saying the guy using the nail gun to put together mass produced sofas in a factory is a craftsman.


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## MikeG. (27 Jan 2020)

D_W":1vt32x57 said:


> .......Very weak, Mike........



I have some wisdom for you D_W. How's your Spanish?


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

The skill discussion aside is interesting. I think working entirely by hand on fine work is probably an improvement, but it's not economically feasible for most things. I think a roughly made hand-done chair also has a chance of existing for the long term, while a machine made chair doesn't for two reasons:
* the machine made chair will probably have some compromises on the joints 
* the machine made chair will likely have aesthetic compromises that go beyond just being roughly made

As far as fine work, It isn't that machine making has to make a less fine result. In commodity dimensional stuff, it can certainly make accurate work over and over. I think it generally results in something less lively and interesting and the reason would have something to do with psychology. 

If we think of the finest things ever made, generally (which is subjective) we fall back into items made by hand. Especially fine production items like violins, early furniture (relatively early, like 250 years ago), carvings. 

I fall into the same trap - I do better work when I do all of it by hand. It can be frustrating on something like a large case, because I could spend a day in the shop on an 8 foot tall case and sort out and dimension all of the lumber that i'm going to use and then work from there. But taking three days time to do all of that work by hand instead, I will see and select things better, and I will spend more time fitting, and make fewer compromises in regard to aesthetics. 

I spent yesterday making a dovetail plane. I could probably find a way to make a router setup that would do the same thing, and if I had to make 50 cases, I'm sure I would. Making the dovetail plane on something one-off is easier - conceptually and the chance of ruining any stock is near zero when using it. I probably would've sunk the shelves in dados and made some compromises on case joinery. If I was using a router table, the doors, would probably be cope and stick, but they will be haunched mortise and tenon.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":3vdoybnw said:


> D_W":3vdoybnw said:
> 
> 
> > .......Very weak, Mike........
> ...



I think it's important that there is actual information being presented here. Someone who went to shed college and now practices who knows what, but the information being presented is tied into other studies, doesn't disagree with any of them, and it's being presented by someone who literally performs stochastic simulations as part of their job. I understand data and variability. I understand when further work needs to be done to feel like the result is likely correct. None needs to be done further, but I laid out how I gathered my data and anyone could. 

Please make some attempt to provide some value or utility in responses going forward or I will make a request that the moderators help you stay on topic.


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## MikeG. (27 Jan 2020)

D_W":2w4wtf6q said:


> ......... Someone who went to shed college....



Grow up.



D_W":2w4wtf6q said:


> ......now practices who knows what......



Architecture.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

Fine work:

Lynton MacKenzie

George Wilson

(george wilson was a member of one of the forums in the US after he retired. He's still around, just not on the forums. He does not do all of his work by hand, either, but his finest work seems to generally be done by hand. He'd be offended by the implication that some of the other work might not be as fine). 

Since george is a supremely skilled guitar builder (and die maker, and machine restorer, and toolmaker, and violin maker and harpsichord maker, and.....) I asked him about his arch top guitars as he mentioned he has a duplicarver. I would like to progress to the level of making arch top guitars and violins, so I call him sometimes to ask questions. He's never used his duplicarver - I don't know why, and he didn't say. I suppose he's got the desire to not do the same thing twice but his eye for fineness is as good as probably any that's ever existed. 

George Wilson Archtop

I kind of wonder if makers like lynton and george are on the outs due to lack of desire of paying customers. George made a pistol at one point (it may have been a pair) and showed pictures of it, and I asked him what happened to it. He said one of the du pont's kids purchased it (them?) but he had another one similar that used no purchased parts where he had made the entire lock set, all of the mechanisms and springs, etc, and that he was keeping that because it was his finest work. 

The rise of hobbyists doing work entirely by hand and doing good power work is probably far stronger than it's ever been, though. I knew a lot of people making things to sell (my mother was one of them - she made and sold primitive stuff for about 40 years and just stopped last year) where I grew up. Most of the work wasn't really that good, and most local folks who did high level work only found work back then doing restoration and repair. Nobody did good work for no reason that I'm aware of (in an area with a population of about 250,000). The explosion of information and documentation, hopefully, will lead to more and more people doing excellent work like we see on this subforum with the infill planes as we speak.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1c1rleoz said:


> D_W":1c1rleoz said:
> 
> 
> > ......now practices who knows what......
> ...



Please refrain from further confusion about the difference between likelihood and empirical data collection and analysis. You're not qualified. I wouldn't mind that you're not if it seemed like you had honest intentions, but you have a personal issue and are just trolling. In the time you've done that, you could've tested the same thing and reported your results. It's not useful to anyone.


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## Yojevol (27 Jan 2020)

D_W":3u7m5uf1 said:


> MikeG.":3u7m5uf1 said:
> 
> 
> > D_W":3u7m5uf1 said:
> ...


So there


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

A follow-up comment on George, because he's one of the few world-class makers who will just pick up the phone and talk to anyone who just wants to do better work. 

On another forum, someone asked him what he did to sharpen. He was loathe to talk about it, for obvious reasons. After much prying, he finally mentioned that at the museum where he worked, he used budget and time to test every sharpening stone he could find (this was in the 1970s) and settled on requesting the museum stock several (coticules - at the request of one of the cabinetmakers, frictionite ( now defunct) and his favorite was spyderco stones. the UF spyderco is very fine, but he followed it up further with chromium oxide on green leather. I asked him why, and he said he just prefers the level of sharpness. His job as instrument maker at williamsburg required him to build with hand tools only in front of the public full time. They created the position for him after meeting him and needing someone to make a harpsichord - he was a math and shop teacher - small school in the south where more than one subject may be covered by one teacher - prior to that but wanted to be a maker for a living). The violins that he made while working in front of the public were sold to professional players and are in use in professional symphonies in the US. 

I thought this was odd (the desire to have that kind of sharpness on everything) because most of the forum advice in the US was that nobody who actually does work:
* tests steels
* sharpens to extremely fine levels
* and nobody doing either of the above would work for a living by hand

George had done all of these, and his work has professional customers who like the results and who are repeat customers, but he does things that people on the forums say nobody does. And he worked bonkers amounts when he was still working - full time at the museum making things - and then practically full time on the side sometimes.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

Elliot's results on edge retention, but truncated. For whatever reason, at the time Steve was more interested in proving that sharpness is the same across steel types, so he didn't publish most of the edge retention by abrasive fineness. 

http://bladetest.infillplane.com/html/i ... pness.html

Steve says in these pages that he used 1 micron diamonds day to day (and he's another person who makes a living woodworking - i have no idea how he became so gifted for the type of analysis he does on his pages as most of his woodworking has moved away from hand tool use). 

But he ended up publishing most of his results in 0.25 micron diamond because he found the edge retention better than 1 micron, and far better than what we would normally consider fine (waterstones labeled 6 or 8k, and in his case, a translucent arkansas. He generated his results using a guide, which is a difficult way to use a translucent stone, so I'm not surprised that he couldn't manage good results with one). 

You can see a chart that he generated and then didn't publish full results on (this particular chart is holtey S53, which doesn't wear very well in wood - brent beach found the same). I'd expect if steve published all of his information about durabiliity vs. fineness, the difference wouldn't be quite as large. He asked if I would continue to test below 1 micron, but I told him that I was running out of wood having tested about 8 different media/fineness alternatives, and I didn't have much interest in setting up separate sharpening apparatus to go further into small abrasives because I was also aiming for something practical and quick. Using a guide and going through many steps isn't that. 

I prefer something closer to the jacob method - get it sharpened, get on with it.

Steve also found something that I did (I was pointed back to steve's page after I did my tests - seeing other results while you're testing something isn't a good thing - distracting at the very best). It's difficult to strop 1 micron diamond edges and improve them. (it's not difficult to strop less fine edges and improve them). One of the things that I struggled with was sharpening on a black dan's stone and not creating any edge defects under the microscope stropping on bare leather. I've never looked at this before, but it's evident that the stropping to remove any remnants from a black or trans ark stone should be done with a light touch. 

Here is an edge that was only lightly stropped. https://i.imgur.com/9VKYWdR.jpg

I wasn't able to strop an edge on bare leather and not create any defects at all. Does it matter for durability of an edge? I doubt it. It's cosmetic. 

Why do I think that? 

Here's a picture of the O1 iron used in the test (my make, equivalent to a hock iron - something I also tested - mine lasted ever so slightly longer and wore a little bit more evenly - I have been making tools for a while and didn't have a hock iron that fit my base test plane) - at any rate, this image is just as the iron as stopped keeping the plane in the cut without external influence. 

https://i.imgur.com/J2OMH4M.jpg

See the groove...something in the wood or as a defect in the metal at some point removed a groove from the edge. In good steel with good toughness, small defects tend to wear themselves off and the edge remains uniform. The little nits in the oilstone edge would disappear fairly quickly and not leave a visible line on work. The lines that they make (you can see and feel with a fingernail - that defect is about a thousandth) would only bother someone applying finish directly to a planed surface. 

This led to a question then about why when geometry is the same and an edge tends to be sort of self healing in clean wood, why such a difference in durability, and the research chemist mentioned here came through with the answer. The rounder an edge is, the faster metal wears off of it. That was demonstrated by Kato and Kawai, who used a planing machine, and while initial sharpness (staying in the cut without external force) may last something like 800-2000 feet for typical irons, they allowed their machine to continue to plane with (brute) significant downforce to 3 or 4 km with some of the steel they tested. The duller an iron is, the faster it loses metal from the edge.


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## That would work (27 Jan 2020)

This is possibly one of the greatest examples of process over useful outcome I have ever seen. 
Is it not time that this thread was shut down? 
I'm going to go and shave my arm.


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":1llta151 said:


> .......... Its sort of like saying the guy using the nail gun to put together mass produced sofas in a factory is a craftsman.


If you find yourself having to do a c rap job like that (I've done loads!) one thing that nearly everybody finds is that one of the perks of the job is in getting a bit of pleasure out of trying to do it as well as possible. Probably comes as surprise to many, you can get satisfaction out of some of the simplest tasks!
That's all craft skill is about; doing the best you can with whatever is to hand.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

This is one of the shaving piles from a test done later on (to find out if the base type used in V11 could be heat treated in a home shop). I made the iron used for this test, treated in open atmosphere. 

The relationship of V11 to O1 from a prior test was around 2 to 1. 

This particular board yielded over 4000 feet from my shop made iron. I thought that I was on to something oil quenching the powder stainless (XHP) quickly, but a follow up test to check the results showed the board to be favorable instead. O1 steel lasted slightly longer than 2000 feet in the same board. 

https://i.imgur.com/bjgFohA.jpg/

For those who want to see the test done by a robot, there are bigger variables - like just from board to board - these boards all came from the same delivery and the same drying treatment (and probably from the same tree). This is why I rotated irons in each individual test and used only one test board for each. Relative life becomes the important factor since you can't have an infinitely wide board (to run the same test on over and over, and in the case of beech, as you get from the transition of sap to heart, the numbers start to change - so none of the test results were generated through the transition from sap to heart or the converse in any boards - including the edge retention tests). 

But you can click through the image and get a close look at the shavings. Skill is important in this case because the test needs to be done with no interruptions in the shavings, weighing them for each test to make sure each iron does the same amount of work, etc. If a testing robot didn't use a cap iron and encountered varying levels of tearout, the results may not be valid.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

That would work":2zdwouly said:


> This is possibly one of the greatest examples of process over useful outcome I have ever seen.
> Is it not time that this thread was shut down?
> I'm going to go and shave my arm.



Can you imagine how this thread may have gone differently if the response was "I think I'll try that" rather than "your results aren't valid"?

Apparently, you and Mike are not in agreement about whether there is too much process or none. 

Useful outcome was in the first few posts and has been repeated several times. Use the finest practical abrasive on your last step of sharpening without adding any time to the sharpening process and you will get better results and sharpen less. 

It's strange that wouldn't be considered practical. The rest of the discussion of process isn't really that necessary except that the results are continuously questioned. 

As for wanting threads of useful information shut down because you don't like them, at what point did people lose the ability not to read threads they're not interested in?


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":wbumrg3d said:


> Trevanion":wbumrg3d said:
> 
> 
> > .......... Its sort of like saying the guy using the nail gun to put together mass produced sofas in a factory is a craftsman.
> ...



I suspect if most people grasped what you're saying, that you have discretion to make the job enjoyable, we'd see more discussion about doing actual work. It is exactly why I work by hand, even for something as rudimentary as dimensioning.


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## MikeG. (27 Jan 2020)

D_W":okpuox43 said:


> ......Please refrain from further confusion about the difference between likelihood and empirical data collection and analysis. You're not qualified........



You don't get to say who posts what in your thread. And I am qualified. I have a science degree, remember. I also have a decent qualification in statistics. 

I say again for the avoidance of doubt: your tests are interesting, but they are weak and subjective. Not all of your conclusions follow from your results (see below). The subject is trivial, and one in which I have no great interest, but I have a huge, overwhelming interest in confronting pseudo-science, and over-blown claims such as yours are just that. I don't care whether someone talks about the correct temperature for cooking souffles or the innate behaviours of 7 day old SE Asian jungle fowl, the claim is nowhere near as important as the quality of the testing and analysis. I won't let your half baked testing stand unchallenged as some kind of authoritative treatise on the subject because it is weak and subjective. For instance, here are some claims you have made:



D_W":okpuox43 said:


> .........* surface quality (uniformity and brightness)
> * the occurrence of skips, etc, on pieces you're finish planing (or more specifically, the sharper a plane is, the easier it will start a cut, the fewer skips and humps you'll develop at the edges of work and then subsequently need to remove with abrasives, etc)
> * the amount of effort you expend planing both downward and forward in general



Not a semblance of data to back those up. No method (how have you measured uniformity? Brightness? Effort?). Not one iota of science in that entire paragraph, just claims plucked out of the air. There are eight distinct claims in that paragraph, and each would require some serious testing to sustain. And again, for the avoidance of doubt: you may be right in your central claim about sharpening, but even if you are these tests don't demonstrate it properly. I have never suggested that you are right or wrong, but I'm telling anyone reading your stuff to be cautious of over-blown weakly supported claims. You consider such caution to be trolling, but scepticism is critical to the success of science and you should welcome it.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":aqg9lh27 said:


> If you find yourself having to do a c rap job like that (I've done loads!) one thing that nearly everybody finds is that one of the perks of the job is in getting a bit of pleasure out of trying to do it as well as possible. Probably comes as surprise to many, you can get satisfaction out of some of the simplest tasks!
> That's all craft skill is about; doing the best you can with whatever is to hand.



That's fine if you're being paid a set wage regardless of how many staples you put in that day, I imagine a lot of the old high-speed production dovetailers were being paid by the box so they really couldn't take the time to do it "as well as possible" otherwise they would be starving by the weeks end.

God created man, and then the Brookman dovetailer came along and made all men equal and over half of them redundant 8)


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## Jacob (27 Jan 2020)

Trevanion":2buaaga5 said:


> Jacob":2buaaga5 said:
> 
> 
> > If you find yourself having to do a c rap job like that (I've done loads!) one thing that nearly everybody finds is that one of the perks of the job is in getting a bit of pleasure out of trying to do it as well as possible. Probably comes as surprise to many, you can get satisfaction out of some of the simplest tasks!
> ...


They'd be under the pressure of piece work or the eagle eyes of a foreman, but either way it's normal to make the job as bearable as possible, one way or another. Even slaves sang chain gang songs!
And of course the chap who can do it to a just good enough standard quickly, is likely to be able to do it to a higher standard if called upon, but more slowly.


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## Trevanion (27 Jan 2020)

Jacob":1v9g0wou said:


> And of course the chap who can do it to a just good enough standard quickly, is likely to be able to do it to a higher standard if called upon, but more slowly.



But I wonder if they could do anything else other than dovetailing proficiently? Perhaps that's where the term "craftsman" lies, being able to work on something from start to end. So instead of just making the drawer boxes, a craftsman would (or could, perhaps as part of a team) make the entire chest of drawers from raw material to the finished article. There's great skill in every part of the process and of course, if you're only doing the one part of the process your whole life you would be immensely skilled at that particular task, but maybe the craftsman is the man who can combine all the skills from start to end, but perhaps not as efficiently as dedicated workers.

I had a similar conversation with another joiner the other day, joiners these days seem to have many more skills buttoned under their coat than their counterparts even 50 years ago. We do the raw material processing (Maybe not direct from the tree :lol: ), we do the actual joinery work, the painting, the glazing, and the fitting. The other joiner was a far older chap and he could remember as an apprentice that pretty much all they did back in his day was do the joinery work and perhaps give a single coat of zinc primer depending on how much they liked the guy it was going to, there then would be a totally separate fitter (a carpenter), another separate glazier and then another separate painter to finish off the paintwork once the joinery had been fitted and glazed.


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## D_W (27 Jan 2020)

Mike - you are again going off the mark, and I'm sure that you don't want the results to be valid or ignore the fact that you can prove them for yourself, and both of those are OK. 

For everyone else, all that's needed is applying them. 

For example, surface brightness is higher for PM V11 on the same wood using the same brightness, same plane and same shaving thickness and direction. This is very easy to see. I have additional edge pictures that give a clue as to why, but I have a metallurgical scope. I don't need an optical comparator to see something and a measure of light incidence because you can test it for yourself if it's important. It was also unexpected. 

You can test planing resistance, that was unexpected. You can feel it, all you need to do is control the remaining variables (sharpness, planing has to be in the same plane with the same set). 

None of these differences are subtle. Some of them are easy to see why on a microscope. One that would be easy to doubt is that the japanese iron surface brightness was unexpectedly low (I expected it to be the best) because there is always a claim about how good the surface quality is from japanese steel. This is the picture of it after 400 feet (all pictures looked like this, it started right away). What are the pinholes that area appearing? I think they're probably carbides leaving the steel matrix, but it's beyond the scope, which was just to report subjective surface brightness.

Japanese Edge

Here is O1 in the same test, same planed length:

O1 Edge

And here is V11, same test, same planed distance:

V11 Edge

Nobody can make a definitive statement about the pictures showing why one looks brighter to me (something you can easily prove for yourself - nobody is obligated to provide you with a machine and the results - even in that case, you have no idea whether or not the machine observes what you observe. But, you can observe that the surface that was significantly duller (the japanese iron) has a far less even edge, and though it's difficult to tell, the V11 edge is slightly more uniform (the very edge, not the wear) than O1. later wear pictures (which I'll spare people of) show a widening gap at 600 and then around 800 feet (which is where the O1 iron lost clearance and the surface planed became entirely dull - but still uniform). 

Why was surface brightness considered? It wasn't really - surface quality was. Why was that considered? Because part of the audience in another forum insists that only carbon steel can produce a surface suitable for direct finishing. That doesn't seem to be the case. 

The numerical data is on planed length and weight planed. It is not a two standard deviation observation with 95% confidence, it's data from the result of trials. You're having trouble grasping that because you went to college and you're an architect, and you're not able to understand the difference between a confidence interval and an estimate of likelihood based on data available. 

But the additional observations were by request and creating a false dilemma (there's no proof, it's not two standard deviations, it's not by machine and I have no way to observe any of this at my own bench, so it's tossed) instead of looking at them for yourself or backing out of the conversation is really unhelpful. It's foolish, too.

The opposite side of this *was* very difficult for a lot of people on the other forum to grasp. The notion in the japanese tool community is that nothing is longer lasting than a perfectly made carbon steel iron (white #1 or something specific). It's not an accurate statement. The same as true for a few professionals here in the states - nothing made since the early 1800s is an improvement, so the results of the test must be wrong. 

The research chemist in this case mentioned the following - the japanese researchers who made the cap iron video also tested wear rates for different steels. Their objective was literally to assist in creating a planing machine (the marunaka super surfacer), and the machine had a cap iron (because it would not plane a large surface well enough to finish without one). They tested yellow steel (which is similar to white #2) and found that in their machine, the edge quality was better than HSS (no powder metal blades at the time) but the life of the high speed steel blade was better.....wait for it, but about the same interval as I found in my tests. This information was provided to me after I posted my results. If PM was available, they would find that the edge wear results were unchanged from their original tests, but the surface quality issues that they found (the machine is more forceful) probably would've been eliminated by PM. The reason (something I didn't track down until after I got results) is that powder metallurgy doesn't improve abrasion resistance, but in same for same steel (M4 vs. powder M4), the powder version is much tougher in die and edge work. 

Not surprisingly, the edge of the non-powder HSS showed greater defects once well worn - another item that ties into research from elsewhere:

Chinese HSS Edge

Considerations in the professors' comments with their planing machine (that edge in my picture isn't really that bad) are important - they need to have a machine that can plane soft architectural beams to a bright surface with no defects because they are sometimes installed in japan with no finish. As in, their tolerance for edge defects are subjectively more stringent. I can measure the size of the defects, though by scaling a 7 thousandth bristle from a grill brush in the picture. 

Grill brush bristle

And showing along with it a picture of an edge with a defect that will actually send someone back to the stones:

PM V11 after a mineral streak in maple

I didn't feel the need to find 25 mineral pockets in maple so that i could repeat this 25 times. I made my comment about edge durability test results not being relevant if you can't plane clean wood.


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## G S Haydon (28 Jan 2020)

I'll try and keep my response quick!

I have followed David's online info for a while. Anyone who takes the time to post a whole series on making a jack plane, and further to that they are superb gets my attention. In addition he's made infills and tried out a whole bunch of stuff. He made a couple of planes for a chap called Brian Holcombe (a very fine furniture maker) for the fun of it. He's hard to keep up with though!

He has also stated that he didn't like modern steels very much. From what I can work out, he's saying that some of the modern steels he was not keen on, he is now on board with them. He's also seeing the benefit of honing to a higher level and wanting to pass that on. He just likes to do it with a lot of evidence!

I hope he keeps posting, even though it's pretty heavy going at times


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## Jacob (28 Jan 2020)

G S Haydon":7w3s6o61 said:


> I'll try and keep my response quick!
> 
> I have followed David's online info for a while. Anyone who takes the time to post a whole series on making a jack plane, and further to that they are superb gets my attention. In addition he's made infills and tried out a whole bunch of stuff. He made a couple of planes for a chap called Brian Holcombe (a very fine furniture maker) for the fun of it. He's hard to keep up with though!
> 
> ...


 :lol: 
He's persuaded me that I must try harder! I've been having a go with fine Arkansas stones for a change. They are very slow but OK on small chisels. They bring up a shine very quickly which proves that they work even though the tool seems to slide over without much feel of abrasion. This seems to sort sheep from goats - you can actually see better when an edge is going and some tools hold the edge better than others.


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## Phil Pascoe (28 Jan 2020)

I occasionally use a very hard fine Ark with IPA as a lube - just when I think it's doing nothing I notice the IPA is black ...

I haven't tried the latest one yet to find out whether I've wasted another quid.


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## Jacob (28 Jan 2020)

India Pale Ale? A bloody sight cheaper than Honerite magic fluid! Still a waste of ale though - i'd rather drink it.


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## Trevanion (28 Jan 2020)

Jacob":gixb7bqq said:


> Still a waste of ale though - i'd rather drink it.



Too bloody right! :lol: 

I've tried a few different things which I had to hand, 3 in 1, Singer Super Oil, Young's 303, Tellus 32... I think the best so far I've used is actually WD40, It seems excellent for stones and keeps them clean too, when you wipe the stone down there really isn't any residue left behind.


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## dannyr (29 Jan 2020)

Mike and D_W

maybe cool it?

Certainly not shut down any threads like this. Yes, some 'observations' seem a bit didactic, but, especially when someone has put a lot of careful work and effort into it, they have validity as such.

I also have a scientific background, with degrees, stats etc, but I'm quite prepared to listen to careful observation - I call Darwin's work science, and that's what he was doing. After all we're not talking about launching a manned space flight or a new drug. I'm retired, but I still on panels reviewing funded research projects - not many adhere exactly to the classic model - still a worthwhile part of science. Anyway this forum is not a scientific publication.

All (good-willed) views valid, I'd say.


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## MikeG. (29 Jan 2020)

dannyr":2pua4ipc said:


> Mike and D_W
> 
> maybe cool it?.........



Erm.......you'll notice that the last post from me was 2 days ago. And that DW & I are having a civil exchange in another thread. Your message is unnecessary.


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## dannyr (29 Jan 2020)

fine


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## D_W (29 Jan 2020)

MikeG.":1slbk28t said:


> dannyr":1slbk28t said:
> 
> 
> > Mike and D_W
> ...



I'm not offended by the way. I usually learn something from people who are willing to engage in stiff discussion. We know all kinds of things about each other now, and if I had an architecture question, I would head right to you for advice, even if you referred to me as twit yankee!


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## D_W (29 Jan 2020)

Jacob":338kuc21 said:


> :lol:
> He's persuaded me that I must try harder! I've been having a go with fine Arkansas stones for a change. They are very slow but OK on small chisels. They bring up a shine very quickly which proves that they work even though the tool seems to slide over without much feel of abrasion. This seems to sort sheep from goats - you can actually see better when an edge is going and some tools hold the edge better than others.



Slow, but perfect for the method that I described because the slowness allows you to work a tiny tip only, still get the benefits and not grind off a steep facet that is troublesome on the next go around. 

Fine ark stones cut slightly harder carbon steel finely and less hard steel less finely. A good tool for estimating the hardness of steels, and at the same time separate the fine work irons (like ward) from site irons that were specified to be fast to sharpen.

The relatively soft abrasive in them makes them cut off uniform scratches with sharp peaks, but then be not so effective at further flattening an area with large polished spots.


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## D_W (29 Jan 2020)

G S Haydon":397cl5ch said:


> I'll try and keep my response quick!
> 
> I have followed David's online info for a while. Anyone who takes the time to post a whole series on making a jack plane, and further to that they are superb gets my attention. In addition he's made infills and tried out a whole bunch of stuff. He made a couple of planes for a chap called Brian Holcombe (a very fine furniture maker) for the fun of it. He's hard to keep up with though!
> 
> ...



Much appreciated, Graham. 

You're correct that I had a severe bias toward carbon steel, and the big surprise was that v11 turns out to be true to the marketing hype. It's the only steel i can think of that provides benefits outweighing detriments for most users vs a carbon steel iron. It's still going to be a no for most without power grinders, though, as the grinding resistance is proportional to its longevity performance and it has twice as long in the wood to find unexpected damage.

And important to note separately, I don't think it's a "must buy" for anyone despite living up to its claims. I hate that kind of mentality and the assumption that goes along with it ("you should have my preferences")

As is typical for me, though, I didn't replace my own irons with more lv irons, I took advantage of the xrf results to find the steel type and then made my own and have given some away with a more classic aesthetic.


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## SammyQ (29 Jan 2020)

> The numerical data is on planed length and weight planed. It is not a two standard deviation observation with 95% confidence, *it's data from the result of trials*.



And therein lies the rub. 

David, I echo Graham Haydon. You have provided a great deal of information and pointed out how two empirical studies parallel your observations. I, for one, applaud your efforts and will benefit from your interpretations. I have a strong understanding of 95% C.L., two-tailed testing, ANOVA, residuals, n-axes orthogonal residuals, yada yada...they are not moot here, (but I can see MikeG's argument that they should be, albeit with a more intensive data set). You posted *observation*s (with some empirical data) in the same manner as the school of Darwin, William Cobbett, Konrad Lorenz et al, then drew attention to (scientific method) parallel studies allied to your work. I, for one, am happy that you have demythed some accepted canons of sharpening lore and clarified and made more straightforward a common chore. 

Thank you. 

Sam


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## Jacob (29 Jan 2020)

What has William Cobbett got to do with it Mr.P?
You forgot to mention Laurence Sterne, Voltaire and Rabelais, in spite of the obvious influence on your style! :lol:


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## SammyQ (30 Jan 2020)

Jacob, I dont know the last three authors you mention, sorry. My three were lumped together simply because they were notable for observing and recording - in some detail - the world around them. I reckoned David W had emulated them.
Sam


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## Jacob (30 Jan 2020)

They write _effusively_ like you do, and throw in lots of references, but for comic effect. :lol: 
Cobbett wasn't any sort of scientist but he was an observant commentator.


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## SammyQ (30 Jan 2020)

Yup. 'E were a rural vicar or curate, BUT...his natural history recorded notes were on a par with, say, Sir Peter Scott. For Cobett's time period, that is remarkable. 
I like *appropriate* words accurately used and in a minimalist context for clear transmission of information.
I'm also fond of word play, so maybe I'll give your recommendations a try. In return, please try Ngaio Marsh?

Sam


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## Jacob (30 Jan 2020)

Gilbert White! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_White
Not Cobbett - he was a radical and early Socialist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett

Further reading: Tristram Shandy, Candide, Gargantua and Pantagruel :lol:


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## SammyQ (30 Jan 2020)

Dohh!!  Thank you for the correction! 
Sam


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## D_W (30 Jan 2020)

SammyQ":i3vogr2e said:


> > The numerical data is on planed length and weight planed. It is not a two standard deviation observation with 95% confidence, *it's data from the result of trials*.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks, sam - it's a bit of a false assumption that a statistically complete (to the level of confidence you'd like) trial would be more useful than trials of this type, anyway. here's why:
* it can't even be assumed that my results in beech will be directly applicable to other woods
* it can't be assumed years later that irons from retailers will be identical
* it can't be assumed that my test of 2 1/2 to 3 thousandth targeted shavings implies the same thing for thick shavings or thinner (who knows?)

A real studied look at what's going on makes it so that you could only conclude that you could perform the same test and get the same result when we're just working wood, and it won't be identical to the test. We really want to know if we spend the extra $12, are we getting our money's worth out of V11 (probably), or if we spend the same and get A2 assuming that it's substantially superior (probably not - I think it's more favorable for the maker than the user). Or can we say that the highly alloyed irons don't do as good of a job (as uniform) - I don't think we can say that, but my experience even with a guide (for control in the study) is that I consistently came up short getting all of the damage out of the very tough irons and they were mostly sharpened under the scope, but not completely - i'd guess that most of the things people conclude about quality problems with decent irons have to do with improper sharpening. 

Before we run off and plane half a million feet in a single type of test (so that we can be all knowing and shout down any other observations), we have to understand the value of the data we're collecting and what it's useful for. These plane iron tests are useful for the observations gained in their context. If I were to publish all of this stuff, some groups of people would view them and say "I'm getting the V11 chisels, they last twice as long"

(despite the fact that I didn't test any chisels and other tests that show no real advantage in plane wear for high end japanese steel show the opposite for chisels - they're really hard to beat with modern process high alloy stuff).


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## Cheshirechappie (30 Jan 2020)

Well - you learn something every day! I never knew that Charles Darwin and William Cobbett had opinions on sharpening! 

But hey, why not? Almost everybody else does. :lol:


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## D_W (30 Jan 2020)

Cheshirechappie":39x5a3um said:


> Well - you learn something every day! I never knew that Charles Darwin and William Cobbett had opinions on sharpening!
> 
> But hey, why not? Almost everybody else does. :lol:



This isn't an opinion thread.


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## SammyQ (30 Jan 2020)

CC!! Slap your wrists right now!!  That's not wot I said! 

Sam


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## Cheshirechappie (30 Jan 2020)

D_W":2qnesn6k said:


> Cheshirechappie":2qnesn6k said:
> 
> 
> > Well - you learn something every day! I never knew that Charles Darwin and William Cobbett had opinions on sharpening!
> ...



That's only your opinion....


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## Cheshirechappie (30 Jan 2020)

SammyQ":ta0bj17b said:


> CC!! Slap your wrists right now!!  That's not wot I said!
> 
> Sam



Well, maybe so - but it's wot I said!


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## SammyQ (30 Jan 2020)

David, I fully "get' your points. I would add that, as wood is such a hetergeneous ( Down,Jacob!!) material, even within a species, one might even argue against the validity of applying statistical rigour to testing it. 
The metal of blade x or y is a different matter, as any one batch (pour) of steel must be inheritently identically composed; ergo, with sufficiently stringent process control, most batches of same would be close enough to be subject to apply empirical, repeatable testing?

I am loth to pursue this mathematical justification to the nth degree, 'swatting fruitflies with a steam hammer' seems a good metaphor ](*,) but the observed trends as you summarised them are still valid. [Yes, hair-splitters out there, not "valid" in a purely Gaussian test context]. 

Sam


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## D_W (30 Jan 2020)

Agreed...It's probably not possible to read through the whole thread, but the rotating of irons 5 to 8 times before they're even dull isn't to eliminate some of the same variability within the same batch of wood, but literally to eliminate the variability within each small unit of the same board (from inch to inch,etc). 

Even the blade issue is interesting. One would assume that the industrial process are more reliable than a guy like me heating an iron by color, dipping it in oil (ok, more than just dipping) and tempering in a kitchen oven with a thermometer, but I've found that I can be more consistent than some advertised ranges (I may not be able to if my process and familiarity was changed). The process, industrially, has potential to be more accurate than me, but in practice, things slip. 

The 3V iron that I tested was sent to me as an iron 61 hardness. This was requested vs. the typical 59 (that is given as mandatory for knife users). It was treated by either paul bos or someone else similar and sent back with its order details. If we fall asleep at the switch, we can just believe that number. I had put the chinese iron in this test because i knew they wore well and they're exceptionally cheap. it'd be a great whiz-bang kind of thing if they matched the most expensive irons we could find, but they didn't. Bill (the chemist) really wanted to know what they are (I said I suspected hard M2 based on how they feel on sharpening stones and how they wear, but one can never be too sure). I was also confused by the fact that they don't seem to hold on to a wire edge the way you'd expect M2 to, so I wasn't sure, but I've ground them to orange on a glazed grinding wheel in the past to see if they reharden in the air like HSS does (they do). 

The person who provided the 3V iron requested I send it to Bill to be tested with others (I didn't feel like doing the testing, I'm interested in the result - what can practically be used by someone who is looking at these irons and being told all kinds of conflicting information). Bill didn't want to test it, but gave in, and he tested one of the chinese irons (not my exact one, but they have similar feeling characteristics). The 3V tested as 59, and then bill recalled that they did have a batch (he was woven in when those irons were being made 10 years ago as a better alternative for the well heeled to A2, which is kind of like changing wet socks for a pair of newer wet socks) that they specified at 61, but the heat treater messed them up. 

So our 61 hardness iron with proof of treatment/order at 61 is actually 59. The 61 hardness chinese iron isn't quite M2 (which doesn't bother me, I can't tell the difference and I didn't think it was vital for this test) and its lack of desire to hold wire edges was easily identifed when finding out that it was 65 hardness on the business end and still above spec right next to the braze). 

I am an applied mathematician of sorts by profession. I got into this hobby thinking I had a leg up on understanding things any time data or specifications was available, and I got trapped in a lot of the same marketing things other beginners do (finer faster stones, etc), but learned over time I could gain more in the shop with observation and paying attention (to results and effort, and economy of effort) than I could trying to push things into specification and perfect control. Moving forward with what's likely and acquiring more skill, etc, is much faster and with a better payoff than trying to figure out how to make sure everything is absolutely definite in all senses (practically not possible). 

if I had planed the beech board that resulted in V11 going 1700 feet, the next one that resulted in V11 going 2200 feet and the sap of a third that resulted in CTS-XHP going over 4000 feet with different irons, and thought that i had relevant results just because I used boards of similar density from the same batch, we'd have gotten some pretty bad results. 

The thrill of going 4000 feet with the last iron was pretty quickly squashed by O1 going just over 2000 feet on the same board after going 800 on the board where LV's iron did about 1700.


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## Jacob (30 Jan 2020)

D_W":8pal2934 said:


> ..... but learned over time I could gain more in the shop with observation and paying attention (to results and effort, and economy of effort) than I could trying to push things into specification and perfect control. Moving forward with what's likely and acquiring more skill, etc, is much faster and with a better payoff than trying to figure out how to make sure everything is absolutely definite in all senses (practically not possible). ......


The would-be perfectionist may get stuck with his perfect routines and obsession with details, whereas chap working for max speed and _just good enough_ result, can always slow down and do it better, if called upon. So it's not about perfection it's about optimisation - getting best value/effort ratio.


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## Wrongfoot (13 May 2020)

I enjoyed reading this from the beginning...

Is this supposed to be as hilarious as it is? Some sort of performance art? :lol:


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## D_W (13 May 2020)

I guess I mistook the group here as being folks who would take something useful and use it. Maybe that's the big joke.


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## SammyQ (13 May 2020)

No Mucker, I found your information useful; made me pause and consider. No joke.

Sam


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## Wrongfoot (13 May 2020)

I didn't say anyone's content was wrong or not useful.

Some of the passion and prose style is definitely entertaining though, that combined with the interactions and disagreements was great fun. Mostly because no-one lost it and was rude. 

Please don't be offended. I was just cheered up by the forum content after a tough day.


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## D_W (13 May 2020)

Wrongfoot":lmm6nb1i said:


> Mostly because no-one lost it and was rude.



I'm going to resist the urge to check to see if that's true. On the internet, it's almost unbelievable!!


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