# edge jointing and the mysterious vanishing camber



## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

I started trying to edge joint 4 ft long boards. The wood is quartersawn American cherry. The last time I tried to do this I gave up and used an electric router with a guided bit. But armed with the methods described by Charlesworth in his dvd using a cambered blade and taking stop shavings, I tried again. And as is usual, things happen that I don't understand. 

I started on the first board using a bevel up LV jointer with a cambered blade, and got reasonably close, but my straightedge would rock a bit, and I couldn't seem to get out that last bit of convexity. Mysterious. 

Now the LV jointer had been in use for a while. I had used it when face jointing this same timber. I switched to a Clifton #7 that I thought had a fresh blade, also cambered. That seemed to work much better, and I breezed through several boards, using the LV jointer first and then switching to the clifton as I got close and taking stop shavings to remove convexity in length and shifting the plane left or right to correct problems in the width. 

Now I worked on a board that had a knot in the middle of the edge, which may not have been the nicest thing for the edge, but as far as I could tell, the Clifton was still going stong, producing fine wispy shavings. 

Then I started work on a board that just wants to stay convex. It has a big bump in it and the plane won't cut the bump away. Now my planes do not have perfectly flat soles, but they nevertheless worked OK on the first half-dozen pieces I jointed. I would take stop shavings and eventually the edge would reach a point where the straight edge wouldn't rock. And the crucial test: when I lay two of these pieces together the edges meet with no rocking or gap evident. But in this case, the plane refused to cut, even though the wood had a bump. What is going on? It's the same plane that was working before. I didn't adjust anything. I suppose there's the blade. 

The plane was taking nice shavings, but I thought maybe I should sharpen. One oddity was that the plane was squeaking in a certain place on the wood. I inspected the blade and it looked, from the glint on the edge, like the edge had probably deteriorated in the center region where all the work was happening. I held the blade up to a straight edge. 

Hmmm. That's funny. The blade seems to be hollow in the center. I have a lot of difficulty looking at blades against straight edges and drawing clear conclusions, but it appears that the blade is making two contact points with the straight edge. I'm pretty sure I didn't sharpen a hollow into the blade! Is this an expected pattern of wear, that I would remove the entire camber in use? The bevel angle was about 28 degrees. The camber was of the size Charlesworth recommends, as I recall, though it was a while back that I established it, and I'm not sure what the blade actually looked like when I started work. I tried to re-establish the camber, but I'm not sure I've succeeded, and in any case I have not recreated the earlier delightful situation where the process was working. 

I took the blade out of the LV jointer and looked at it with a straight edge. It appears to be still cambered, though it's possible that the curve is too flat in the center. (Because this is a bevel up plane the camber is much larger.) This plane was working harder than the clifton, because I had it set for a thicker shaving, and I was using it on some rougher edges. Why didn't this plane work? (I suppose the sole could be at fault: maybe it's not flat in a way that's somehow more harmful.)


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## woodbloke (5 Nov 2008)

Stop shavings will produce a very slightly concave board, so that when two boards are offered up, there will be a slight gap in the middle (traditionally the thickness of a fag paper) After a certain amount of shavings though, the jointer won't cut so the board ought to be done, ie concave, assuming of course that it's square as well - Rob


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Right. I understand the principle. But it doesn't always work. When I was face jointing I would often encounter situations where there was a clear hump and yet the plane wouldn't cut. My impression is that they usually had something to do with twist, but really, I'm not sure. (The other place to lay the blame is on defects in the sole of the plane.) 

In this case, again, the work is humped by a significant amount, like 0.01" or maybe more, but the plane won't cut so I can't make it better. I think the hump is actually somewhat local. If I recall right, half the board was concave (straight edge didn't rock) and the other half had the hump. (There's the odd squeaking on the wood as the plane doesn't cut; I don't think I've ever experienced that before.) If I get to the point where my straight edge doesn't rock then that means I'm slightly concave and I declare victory. As I understand it, with a 4 ft long board I might be able to plane a significant hollow into the work with my jointer, so I'm not trying to proceed until the plane won't cut. Once I'm getting close I start testing with the straight edge. (One other thing was that I decided that my 4 ft straight edge is unreliable, so until I manage to get a replacement, I've been using my 2 ft straight edge at several spots and then doing a final check with the other 4 ft boards I've already worked. I don't see a gap, but I assume a small gap is present.)


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## woodbloke (5 Nov 2008)

The straight edge as you say may be suspect. If in doubt cut off a bit of mdf at least 300mm longer than your boards and use that as a reference. The machined edge from a bit of mdf is usually pretty straight and ought to help to see where the problem lies - Rob


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## Paul Chapman (5 Nov 2008)

Hi Adrian,

Provided the boards aren't too thick, you could always try the other method of jointing them, and that is to plane them together. I always favour this method where possible and think it's far more accurate and faster.

Clamp the boards together, face side to face side, plane them straight in the length - but do stop shavings as you are now, so as to ensure that you don't plane them into a curve. Use a straight blade. When you put the edges together any deviation from 90 degrees in one board will be cancelled out in the other, even if it varies along the length of the boards.

This doesn't answer your original question about the hump and the camber but, overall, I find it a better way to joint boards and you might find it sorts out a few of the problems you are having.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

There are a few reasons why I don't blame the straight edge. One reason is that I have already jointed 6 boards and they match up with each other. They do not match up with the board currently on the bench. (They rock against each other, so they meet in a convex way.) 

My 4 ft straight edge is a cheap one (US$30) made of phenolic. I noticed that it told me the board was convex if I put one edge down and it said concave if I put the other edge down. So as I noted, I'm not using this one any more. 

My 2 ft straight edge is a Starrett that I think is reliable. This is the straight edge I'm using to probe for bumps until I do the final test with one of my previously jointed boards. It's a much better reference than the phenolic one. (It cost more than twice as much for half the length). And I haven't noticed any strange behavior coming from it.


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## Racers (5 Nov 2008)

Hi,

Sounds like you need to resharpen your blade.

The method I use it to match the boards together, plane one check for square and make sure it looks flat and set it to one side, plane the next one and offer it up to the first and check it matches up to the first one adjust, then plane the other edge of the second board then do the third adjust etc the only time I used a straight edge was to check they where faces where flat to each other.

I had all 6 boards for this stacked on edge on my bench without glue.






Pete


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":10db3uhh said:


> Provided the boards aren't too thick...
> 
> Clamp the boards together, face side to face side, plane them straight in the length - but do stop shavings as you are now, so as to ensure that you don't plane them into a curve. Use a straight blade.



After all that effort trying to camber now I need to go back to straight? 

Thanks for the suggestion. What thickness would you consider this suitable for? My material is 0.85 inches and 1.1 inches in thickness and I had the impression that people mainly like this method for thinner like half inch stock. 

I have another reason for not wanting to do it that way which is that I haven't figured out how the boards are going to go together, so I don't know which edges will the be ones finally glued together. I assume that doing it this way you not only have to put together the same boards but at exactly the same spot, so you can't shift things around at all. I wanted to get the boards to their final width to make sure my panels will come out wide enough before making the final decision about how to arrange the wood. 

One last thing I was wondering about. Presumably if you do this then the angle of the edge to the face might vary over the length. It seems like this would confound my ability to tell if the surface was straight.


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## dunbarhamlin (5 Nov 2008)

Might be worth checking your straight edge anyway.
Use a piece of MDF (preferably whitewashed - easier to see) score down the length of the straight edge, flip it and score down the same edge over the same line, with end points common to your original line. If its out of true, the resulting line will thicken/split into two. (Rotating instead of flipping could give a false true if the edge is sinusoidal)
(Obviously, also need to check the straight edge edge isn't in wind for this to be worthwhile)
(I've had a (Axminster) 'straight' edge where only one (bevelled) edge was good, and the square edge was significantly out.) 

But for the same issue having manifested when edge planing (unless these are squarish in cross section) the stubborn high spot on the face could have been due a low spot on the oposite side (unwound shavings good for support in this case)


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## Paul Chapman (5 Nov 2008)

Assuming you are using a #6 or #7 plane with a 2 3/8" blade you should be OK with boards up to 1" thick. If you need to remove a lot of material to get them straight you could plane most of it off the boards individually, then finish them off together.

People often criticise this method because they say that if you have to separate the boards and then put them together again you will have difficulties. However, I just square a line around the boards, say an inch in from each end, and it's easy to line them up again. You will plane the line off the edge but simply join it up again.

The method only really works if you sort the boards into order first - so if you don't want to do that, it clearly won't work for you.

It shouldn't cause you any problems in terms of testing the straightness of the boards. You will find that, using your fingers as a fence, you will be able to plane the boards to virtually 90 degrees anyway. To test for straightness, just put one of the boards on top of the other. The problem you are currently having with straight edges only really arises because you are planing the boards separately. If you do them together, you don't really need a straight edge because when you put the boards together, it's obvious where any discrepancy is.

Hope this helps.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

dunbarhamlin":k8198x0d said:


> Might be worth checking your straight edge anyway.
> Use a piece of MDF (preferably whitewashed - easier to see) score down the length of the straight edge, flip it and score down the same edge over the same line, with end points common to your original line.



So the idea is to draw one line and then flip the straight edge over and draw the same line the other way? This could fail if the straight edge is symmetrically out of true, like if it had a hollow or bump right in the middle. 



> But for the same issue having manifested when edge planing (unless these are squarish in cross section) the stubborn high spot on the face could have been due a low spot on the oposite side (unwound shavings good for support in this case)



I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that when face planing the problem could have been due to the board flexing? (I shim the boards all around to prevent this when face planing.)


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## MooreToolsPlease (5 Nov 2008)

If the edge has a significant bump in the middle, and you are starting at the end then if it is big enough the plane wont cut.
for boards with a bump in the middle, start in the middle and work your way out.
Thats how I have always tackled this problem, although I use an electron burning planer.
Having said that, the bevel up jointer I received today seems to do a pretty good job after a clifton#7 for those special edge joints :wink:


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## dunbarhamlin (5 Nov 2008)

Sorry - not very clear. As you said, turning it end for end _could_ falsely indicate all was well if had matching high and hollow in each half.
Mark the line against the straight edge, turn it over like a page of a book and mark again against the same edge, so the same end of the straight edge is towards you both times, and you've marked first to the left, and then to the right of the straight edge. This gives a mirror image of the original line - provided the edge isn't also twisted (in wind) which would mean the two arrisses of the tested edge wouldn''t match.
(Same technique as testing a square)

Yep - did mean flexing (and remedial shimming)


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":3n0cosyi said:


> It shouldn't cause you any problems in terms of testing the straightness of the boards. You will find that, using your fingers as a fence, you will be able to plane the boards to virtually 90 degrees anyway. To test for straightness, just put one of the boards on top of the other. The problem you are currently having with straight edges only really arises because you are planing the boards separately. If you do them together, you don't really need a straight edge because when you put the boards together, it's obvious where any discrepancy is.



If I have to take the boards out of the vise to test for straight and then put them back in and get them aligned together again each time that seems terrible. 

For some reason, my problem seems to have been interpreted as a measurement problem. I really do not think that I have a measurement problem. I did 6 boards with my current measurement process using my 2 ft straight edge to test my progress and a final check with one of the other already jointed boards. 

To repeat, I do not have a problem with straight edges. I have a problem with planes: the planes won't cut off the bump (in length) that I know is there because my straight edge and my previously jointed boards all tell me I have a bump. Knowing where the discrepancy is doesn't help a whole lot if I can't somehow exploit that information to remove the discrepancy. (Actually I find it rather difficult to decide where, exactly, a bump is located. It arguably may not But that doesn't matter if the plane will take off high spots. I don't need to know. I just need to know that there is a bump.) 

But I find myself in the situation where the plane won't cut any more. That is supposed to mean that I have a hollow. In fact, on a 4 ft board it should be a perhaps somewhat large hollow. But that's not the case. I have a bump. Really. It's the wood that's got the bump, not the straight edge. 

Presumably this same situation could arise with two boards together. 

One observation: if the straight edge has the bump it has to have exactly the same bump on both edges, because I've flipped it over and gotten the same result. If the straight edge has the bump I should have an enormous hollow between two of my boards that match the straight edge. Nope.


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

MooreToolsPlease":12bc9bat said:


> If the edge has a significant bump in the middle, and you are starting at the end then if it is big enough the plane wont cut.
> for boards with a bump in the middle, start in the middle and work your way out.



I couldn't find any place where the plane would cut along the edge. 

So it's possible that I can take stop shavings and the plane won't cut when there's a bump?


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## Paul Chapman (5 Nov 2008)

adrian":9r8uh3y9 said:


> I have a bump. Really.



If you really have a bump and the plane won't cut, then it sounds like there is a temporary problem with the plane. Is the blade sharp? Do you have the cap iron set too close to the edge of the blade? Has the cap iron slipped down because it wasn't tightened up properly, thereby stopping the plane cutting?

Can't think of anything else :?

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## MooreToolsPlease (5 Nov 2008)

If you are pushing down on the back of the plane then its possible that the edge of the blade wll never even touch the wood.
How big is the bump in the middle of the board?
If it were me, then I would start in the middle and making sure that the plane is close to level slowly work from the middle out, as soona s you have established a flat it will be easy to rectify


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## PaulO (5 Nov 2008)

Stop shavings end to end will only produce a concave edge if the work piece is the right size. If the piece is longer than three to four times the length of your plane you have to use a different method, checking and working on smaller sections with a straight edge. 

You talk about rocking the straight edge to test for bumps. The method that I use, and was taught by David Charlesworth, is to rest the straight edge on the surface to be tested. Support (but don't grip firmly) one end of the straight edge. Now move the other end of the straight edge in the plane of the surface. As you will do this you will see that the straight edge will pivot about the highest spot. If you have achieved a concave surface it will pivot about the end you are supporting. You can check the amount of concavity by inserting shims under the straight edge until it pivots about the shim.

WRT the camber on the blade, it is highly unlikely that you have removed the camber through use. What is more likely is that your sharpening technique has focussed too much pressure on the centre strokes. I test the camber by sighting my blade against a 1" thick piece of ebony that I have planed flat. With that contrast it is easy to see the camber. David C uses a piece of phenolic. What you obviously don't want to check your camber against is a metal surface, as you will destroy your sharp edge.

So I think your problems are a combination of
1) Trying to straighten (concave) too long a piece using stop shavings
2) Possibly a problem with the sole flatness
3) Possibly trying to take too fine a shaving for the size of bump you have
4) Problems with your sharpening technique (maybe)

In edge jointing the camber of the blade should help you square the edge, using the drifting method. But also gives you a slightly concave edge across the width, which in combination with a slight concavity along the length should give a nice tight edge joint.

All of these topics are covered in David Charlesworth's excellent tool tuning course, which I can highly recommend. I have just booked myself in for another week with him next year, and I notice that he has dropped his prices.


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":3ktac747 said:


> adrian":3ktac747 said:
> 
> 
> > I have a bump. Really.
> ...



Well, I didn't really think I had a dull blade, because I hadn't noticed any drop in cutting performance. But as I noted in my first message, I inspected the blade and found that it seems to be reverse cambered, with a hollow in the center. (I say "seems to" because I always have uncertainty about what the blade edge looks like when I put it up to a straight edge: light always shines through everywhere.) This is particularly strange since I sharpened the blade to have a camber. I sharpened the blade and tried to restore the camber. I'm not sure I got an adequate camber. But afterwords I reassembled the plane and it still wouldn't take off the bump. 

The cap iron is not in the way. The plane cuts. It just won't cut what I want it to cut. 

Does the squeaking signify anything?


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

PaulO":31mca2z2 said:


> Stop shavings end to end will only produce a concave edge if the work piece is the right size. If the piece is longer than three to four times the length of your plane you have to use a different method, checking and working on smaller sections with a straight edge.



My plane is 21 inches, I think. The workpiece is 48 inches. I'm below your limit, at less than 2.5 times plane length. I'm curious about the recommended approach for longer, though. 



> You talk about rocking the straight edge to test for bumps. The method that I use, and was taught by David Charlesworth, is to rest the straight edge on the surface to be tested. Support (but don't grip firmly) one end of the straight edge. Now move the other end of the straight edge in the plane of the surface. As you will do this you will see that the straight edge will pivot about the highest spot. If you have achieved a concave surface it will pivot about the end you are supporting. You can check the amount of concavity by inserting shims under the straight edge until it pivots about the shim.



I've done this too, but rocking gives me some information about how big of a bump whereas spinning the straight edge only tells me that there is a bump. I do both, actually. I spin first and then rock. 

I have Charlesworth's DVD on jointing where he shows the use of the stop shaving method, and also this approach to finding bumps. 



> WRT the camber on the blade, it is highly unlikely that you have removed the camber through use. What is more likely is that your sharpening technique has focussed too much pressure on the centre strokes.



So you're thinking that I may have had a camber a while back, but I removed it by sharpening with too much focus on the center? (This is a possibility, though I don't think I could have gotten a concave edge by sharpening. I suppose I can go check my stones right after I flatten them and see that they really are flat and not crowned. I'm not sure I want to spin my straight edge on my stones, though.) 



> I test the camber by sighting my blade against a 1" thick piece of ebony that I have planed flat. With that contrast it is easy to see the camber. David C uses a piece of phenolic. What you obviously don't want to check your camber against is a metal surface, as you will destroy your sharp edge.



Is phenolic flat? (My phenolic straight edge seems to be a little dubious.) I thought ebony was a kind of unstable wood, prone to warping and such. Do you find that your reference stays flat? 



> So I think your problems are a combination of
> 1) Trying to straighten (concave) too long a piece using stop shavings
> 2) Possibly a problem with the sole flatness
> 3) Possibly trying to take too fine a shaving for the size of bump you have
> 4) Problems with your sharpening technique (maybe)



So what about #3. If the shaving is set too small can I get the situation where the plane won't cut? (In other words, it's not just that I'll have to take extra passes?) The shavings were about 0.002" or a bit under. I was using other planes for thicker shavings, and I found that if I got a great deal thicker then I had to rely on momentum to keep the plane moving, and hence I lost control. 



> All of these topics are covered in David Charlesworth's excellent tool tuning course, which I can highly recommend. I have just booked myself in for another week with him next year, and I notice that he has dropped his prices.



For various reasons, it's impractical for me to take a course right now, so I have to make do with the DVDs. I notice that a new one, 188 minutes long, is coming out.


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## PaulO (5 Nov 2008)

adrian":39sqxffg said:


> My plane is 21 inches, I think. The workpiece is 48 inches. I'm below your limit, at less than 2.5 times plane length.


My guess is that your plane has a bump larger than the shaving you are trying to take


> So you're thinking that I may have had a camber a while back, but I removed it by sharpening with too much focus on the center? (This is a possibility, though I don't think I could have gotten a concave edge by sharpening.


Does sound strange, how and when do you flatten your stones?


> Is phenolic flat? (My phenolic straight edge seems to be a little dubious.) I thought ebony was a kind of unstable wood, prone to warping and such.


No reason to suggest that phenolic is intrinsically flat, David and I check our references against a small 100mm straight edge, like this:
http://www.dick.biz/dick/product/707290/detail.jsf

I do this every couple of months and haven't had to replane my block yet. I know David does replane his reference occasionally, but that might be because of abuse by students (to the phenolic, not him :wink: ). This reference is only as long as the blade is wide. Just a softish, dark surface to eyeball camber against



> So what about #3. If the shaving is set too small can I get the situation where the plane won't cut? (In other words, it's not just that I'll have to take extra passes?) The shavings were about 0.002" or a bit under.


That sounds like a reasonable working shaving size, so I am guessing your sole isn't that flat.


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

PaulO":1o5a4zx8 said:


> adrian":1o5a4zx8 said:
> 
> 
> > My plane is 21 inches, I think. The workpiece is 48 inches. I'm below your limit, at less than 2.5 times plane length.
> ...



The bump is definitely larger than the thickness of the shaving. It's probably something like 5-10 shavings thick. Could even be more than that. But I don't mind taking 5-10 shavings.... On previous board I have removed sizeable bumps that took more than 10 passes of the plane to eliminate, so it doesn't seem like this should be a problem. 

I know that my planes are not as flat as people here have recommended. I also don't see any reasonable way to get them flatter without laying out an enormous sum of money (to buy a 22 inch long flat reference surface that is too heavy for me to move around by myself), and spending a great deal of time on it, so I figured that I'll just have to do what I can with what I have. And one observation is that flatness doesn't seem to be a decisive limitation because I managed to joint the first 6 boards with the same plane. I didn't drop it on the floor after board #6 so I think it should be just as flat as before. 



> > So you're thinking that I may have had a camber a while back, but I removed it by sharpening with too much focus on the center? (This is a possibility, though I don't think I could have gotten a concave edge by sharpening.
> 
> 
> Does sound strange, how and when do you flatten your stones?


I have shapton stones and flatten them on the glass diamond flattening plate that shapton sells. (I previously was flattening on the shapton lapping plate and I discovered that my lapping plate had developed a bump. I managed to get a replacement lapping plate out of them but now I'm scared to use it for anything...) 



> I [check my ebony reference block] every couple of months and haven't had to replane my block yet. I know David does replane his reference occasionally, but that might be because of abuse by students (to the phenolic, not him :wink: ). This reference is only as long as the blade is wide. Just a softish, dark surface to eyeball camber against



I was trying to think if I have anything on hand that's dark and hard so I could whip out a suitable reference (assuming, of course, that I can get the plane to cut the reference material...) I have some 3/8" thick stuff that's hard and somewhat dark (chechen), and I have some thick stuff (black walnut) that's dark and soft... I assume if the reference is too soft it'll get cut up, so I ought to try to use a wood that's reasonably hard, but if it's thin, it's probably less likely to stay flat, right? 

Is phenolic easy to work with hand tools?

How important is it to have the camber in order to get the board to behave along its length? As far as I can tell, the cambering is for getting the board to behave in width (to make it square to the face). In other words, can I blame an inability to cut off the bump on the size of the camber somehow?


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## Racers (5 Nov 2008)

Hi. Adrian

I flattened my No7 with a sheet of glass and some 60 grit stretched tight on it. it didn't take long. 

Pete


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Racers":bh1quz9t said:


> Hi. Adrian
> 
> I flattened my No7 with a sheet of glass and some 60 grit stretched tight on it. it didn't take long.
> 
> Pete



I tried that approach with a #5 I got on ebay and the plane got, if anything, less flat as a result of my couple hours of labor over the sheet of glass. So I'm pretty nervous to do it again, particularly on a good plane. As I understand it, that type of approach will tend to give a curved surface, not a flat one. i've also made water stones non-flat by lapping on a sheet of glass. To get a flat surface, as I understand it, I need to get a flat reference (and I've read that glass won't work due to lack of texture to hold the blue) and files or scrapers and remove the high spots. The process sounds like it takes some learning (gee, kind of like trying to make wood flat) and it doesn't sound like it would be particularly fast.


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## Mr Ed (5 Nov 2008)

I think theres a number of issues here;

1. When edge planing for joining boards the primary objective is to get a perfect fit to the other board. I use straight edges to make sure I'm heading in the right direction, but the final checking tool for each edge is the board its joining to. The pursuit of the perfect edge can become a bit esoteric; perfect in what context? The only true measure of the perfect edge here is if it fits the one on the other side.

2.In edge jointing the cambered blade is only going to help you across the width of the edge. In the convexity or concavity of the edge along its length (which I think is your issue if I understand correctly) its irrelevant.

3.If you have a gradual bump in centre of the length of the edge its quite possible you could plane up one side of it over the crown and down the other side. I would think you would notice transition from one slope to the other, but maybe not. As others have said, the way to deal with this is to work in the middle first. If the plane won't cut due to length you can skew it to effectively shorten it, so the sole is hanging over both sides of the board.

4. It would be surprising, but not impossible, if either of the planes you have would be out of flatness to such an extent that it causes the problem you are having.

Hope something here helps.

Cheers, Ed


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## Paul Chapman (5 Nov 2008)

If, as you say, you have planed several pieces without any problem and it's only this one board which is causing you problems, then I wouldn't start worrying about flattening soles and other drastic things. I'd look for a simpler explanation. 

Have you tried turning the board around and planing it in the opposite direction?

Have you tried another board and still had the same problem?

Cheers :wink:

Paul


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

Because I was stuck on this for a while, it becomes hazy what exactly I tried or didn't try. I did turn the board around. That didn't seem to help. I think I tried a shorter plane, but now as I think back I'm not sure. (I have the shorter plane set to a really heavy shaving and have been using it as the first plane on the edge, the remove the saw marks. If I tried the short plane, I didn't reset it for a thin shaving.) I did not try a different board. 

If I have a list of things to try when I return to the shop that will be good. 
So far those things are: take shorter cuts around the bump, use shorter plane/skew the plane, try a different board. Did I miss anything?


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## PaulO (5 Nov 2008)

adrian":1v8rdw3s said:


> I was trying to think if I have anything on hand that's dark and hard so I could whip out a suitable reference (assuming, of course, that I can get the plane to cut the reference material...) I have some 3/8" thick stuff that's hard and somewhat dark (chechen), and I have some thick stuff (black walnut) that's dark and soft... I assume if the reference is too soft it'll get cut up, so I ought to try to use a wood that's reasonably hard, but if it's thin, it's probably less likely to stay flat, right?
> Is phenolic easy to work with hand tools?



Phenolic is easy to work with hand tools. I wouldn't worry too much about the softness, as you only place the blade lightly on the reference. I chose ebony because it was dark and tight grained, and I didn't have any phenolic lying around 

But as Ed said, the camber of the blade isn't the source of this problem, as you have worked out. But the camber does help you get the edge square.

How about ripping a clean edge and trying again? You obviously have the bump / slope / convexity in some strange configuration that means the blade misses the bump for your plane / shaving combination. For example if the convexity in the edge of your board over the length of the plane is greater than the height of your bump + shaving.


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

PaulO":2i9xupif said:


> But as Ed said, the camber of the blade isn't the source of this problem, as you have worked out. But the camber does help you get the edge square.



Right. But even if it's not directly connected to this particular problem, if I don't get my cambering worked out properly at some point I'll have trouble getting the edge square if not now, then later. 



> How about ripping a clean edge and trying again? You obviously have the bump / slope / convexity in some strange configuration that means the blade misses the bump for your plane / shaving combination. For example if the convexity in the edge of your board over the length of the plane is greater than the height of your bump + shaving.



I suppose I could try this, though my ripped edges (by bandsaw) tend to be kind of wavy and, as I'm nervous about having enough width, I'd rather not cut it off unnecessarily at this stage. I guess it seems like a reasonable thing to try if nothing seems to work on this board, but if I go on to another board and everything works fine.


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## newt (5 Nov 2008)

I am not sure if you said what type of wood you are using, not that I think that is an issue, just interested. The first thing I would do would be to try a shorter plane in the middle. You said that you had the shorter plane set for a thick shaving it gave me the impression that you did not want to adjust it for a fine shaving if that is the case why not. If the shorter plane does not cut and the blade is sharp and it is definitely convex in the middle then it may be something very strange about the wood. You could just check that it cuts ok in the middle with a chisel. If that does not work I would assume all your planes soles have suddenly become concave. Even is this was the case increasing the depth of cut would eventually produce a shaving.


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## adrian (5 Nov 2008)

newt":2o16rj2y said:


> I am not sure if you said what type of wood you are using, not that I think that is an issue, just interested. The first thing I would do would be to try a shorter plane in the middle. You said that you had the shorter plane set for a thick shaving it gave me the impression that you did not want to adjust it for a fine shaving if that is the case why not.



I have nothing against adjusting the shorter plane for a thinner shaving. I wrote that it was set for a thick shaving in the context of trying to recall what I did, and one thing I know I did NOT do was adjust it for a thin shaving. 

The wood is quarter sawn American cherry. It's a fairly soft hardwood, easy to work. I was having a bit of trouble with tearout on the face of the boards, but the edges are planing smooth like glass (and it seems like I can plane either direction).


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## newt (5 Nov 2008)

Adrian, When you say you cannot remove the hump in the middle, do you mean the plane does not remove any shavings or you produce shavings but the hump remains.


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## ivan (6 Nov 2008)

David Charlesworth's 3 books have all the DVD info and a lot more, cheap on Amazon's Marketplace etc. When I began woodworking I had a devil of a problem with a Record #6, which when I knew more, turned out to be _25 thou hollow._ You can imagine the problems that caused. But you can't flatten without a flat plane, sound as if yours is 5 or 10 thou hollow. Books above have info on flattening, you can use float glass of 1/2" or so - must be thick - maybe scounge an offcut. Chinese granite plates are not too dear if you also do a bit of metalwork.

When your plane is really flat, you can plane with stop shavings till it doesn't cut, and then give 1 or 2 through shavings; at this point you can test 1 board against the other by pushing each end and seeing where it pivots (the other end if both slightly hollow) I think this is also covered in DC's books.


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## Racers (6 Nov 2008)

Hi,

You can get a plane sole flat on glass, but you must either stick the sandpaper down or stretch it tight its the little ripple that forms as you push the plane forwards and backwards that causes the sole to go convex. 

Pete


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## adrian (6 Nov 2008)

My planes have hollows that are around 2-3 thou, as I recall. I didn't test them recently. 

I've also read in the messages about plane flattening that glass can flex. So if I wanted to risk a plane with the sandpaper approach I need a piece of glass that is very flat and is 1/2 inch thick and at least 2.5 feet long so I have room to move the plane on the sand paper? (Is all glass flat to .0001" or something?) I guess part of the problem here seems like the target tolerance. If I wanted to make it flat to 10 thou or 5 thou it wouldn't seem like that difficult, but to be flat to 1 thou or less seems like a major challenge. Ivan suggested that Chinese granite plates might be affordable. I can get a small 12"x18" granite plate without spending too much, but at 85 lbs I don't think I could move it around without help, and that's not big enough for a 21" long plane. Actually looking around I see some bigger ones that appear affordable (though I expect that the cost of delivery is about 3 times the cost of the product, so maybe not as affordable as they appear). But nobody seems to sell 36" x 6 inch granite plates. 

I cut some lines in a piece of MDF to test my 2 ft starrett straight edge. The results of this test are that it is perfect. I'm not sure what the accuracy limit on this test is. (I doubt it would detect a 2 thou deviation, for example--the knife would follow the previous line.) It appears that Starrett claims this item is flat to 0.0004", though I suspect the layer of wax I put on it varies in thickness by more than that...

The behavior that I observed was that there is a substantial bump on the wood but the plane won't cut at all. So it wasn't that it was cutting and cutting and the bump remained. 

Is it possible that the ability to cut a bump could depend on the twist along the edge? If the edge isn't square to the face but instead twists across the length could a plane trying to make a centered cut ride the twist somehow and be unable to cut? Like if the bump is in the middle but the twist gives a high spot at both ends of the plane that hold it above the bump? (If this were happening I assume that a shorter plane would have a better chance of cutting, and presumably the best thing to do would be to remove the twist first.) 

I have read all of the Charlesworth books as well. In fact, I strongly prefer books to DVDs both as a general personal preference (I read a lot) and because it's much easier to refer to them in times of need. But for some reason, I seem to find the Charlesworth books difficult to learn from. I'm not sure why. I read them all but somehow the DVD was still a revelation. But for example, I wonder if it's worth getting the DVD on shooting boards. I already improved my shooting board technique based on what he said in the book....

So I snuck down to the shop last night and tried to do some planing with the sharpened Clifton #7 and found that, lo and behold, it is now taking off the bump. I'm not sure why. 

Of course, I discovered a different problem, namely that I seem to having a much harder time that before getting and staying square to the face. Before it seemed like I could just drift the plane a bit here and there and the edge would come to square and then it would stay square while I worked on the lengthwise condition of the surface. 

Now I found that when the bump was gone, the edge was out of square. And I tried to adjust the plane, because it appeared that maybe it wasn't cutting in the center and so I wasn't doing what I thought I was doing, but making this adjustment seems to be difficult, but because I don't have a clear way to tell when I'm off by just a little bit, and because the adjustment lever makes small adjustments difficult. I tried the method of running a little scrap over the blade and looking for the little shavings in the plane. And that worked to a point, for getting me into the right neighborhood, but not for the final adjustment. 

After a great deal of fussing and frustration I eventually got an edge that appears square and that stayed square when I turned my attention to the lengthwise direction. And I was able to remove the bump. So I don't know what was going wrong before. 

We'll see how things proceed with the next board. 

One thing I did notice is that the method of swiveling one end of the straight edge sometimes gives a puzzling result. There seem to be three outcomes. One outcome is that the straight edge spins freely on a point somewhere in the middle. Clearly there is a bump. The straight edge will rock. Another outcome is that the straight edge pivots on the fixed end. Clearly the surface is concave. The third outcome is that the edge pivots on a point about an inch from the other end. So if I shift the right end of the straight edge, it pivots on a point an inch in on the left. Is there a small bump at the left end? Well, if I shift the left end then the straight edge pivots on a point an inch in from the right end of the straight edge. In this case the straight edge will not rock perceptibly. Could this indicate that the surface is flat relative to the straight edge?


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## Paul Chapman (6 Nov 2008)

adrian":2cis4mm4 said:


> So I snuck down to the shop last night and tried to do some planing with the sharpened Clifton #7 and found that, lo and behold, it is now taking off the bump. I'm not sure why.



Maybe the problem all along was the (lack of) sharpness of the blade. That seems to be the only thing that changed.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## dunbarhamlin (6 Nov 2008)

Good stuff, glad it seems sorted, Adrian. I find sometimes I just have accept that _something_ I did worked - and hope either there isn't a next time, or that I'll notice what does it when it does recur.

The straight edge check is indeed just as good as the eye can see ( I have thread counters in various sizes to help see detail)

Easier adjustment is I think one of the benefits of a significantly cambered blade.
For my straight blades, I've taken to using a small plane hammer for fine adjustment (toffee hammer would do as well) - didn't get raised eyebrows from Rob when I mentioned it the other week, so guessing this is OK, and it's certainly quicker than fiddling with the lateral adjuster.

Cheers
Steve


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## Racers (6 Nov 2008)

Hi,

The glass can't flex if it is on a hard surface like your bench ot a lenght of MDF. My sheet is only 6mm thick but my bench is flat. I clamp a block of wood at each end to hold the abrasive and them use clamps to pull the blocks apart too tension the sandpaper, giving me a 3 foot clear run to flatten planes on.

Pete


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## adrian (6 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":18aavosx said:


> Maybe the problem all along was the (lack of) sharpness of the blade. That seems to be the only thing that changed.



It's possible that the profile of the blade changed, as I tried to establish the camber when I sharpened. (Recall that the blade edge appeared to be concave before sharpening.) This might have thwarted my efforts to get a square edge. If a non-square edge presents problems it could have played a role. I have yet to attempt to make a dark wooden reference for checking camber. 

I did also try sharpening my LV bevel up jointer and trying it, but it doesn't seem to cut as well as the clifton for some reason. I'm not sure why that should be---I think the cutting angles are the nearly the same (45 for the clifton and 12 deg bed+32 deg bevel = 44 for the LV). It also had a jerky cutting pattern, as if the wood was going up and down a lot, so it would cut for a moment, and then cut for another moment, and so on. And each place it cut it would tend to leave a sort of gouge line. When I returned to the Clifton it cut in different places, and was generally more smooth. 

My bench isn't flat. I have some MDF lying around. Is it flat to 0.0001"? (I actually got it to try to use it as a router guide for jointing edges when I couldn't get the planes to work....and I found the edge to be inadequately smooth.) I could lay some glass on top of the MDF which is resting on my non-flat bench with shims to support it, I suppose, and blocks to keep the MDF from moving. 

Pete, I don't understand your description of how you attach the abrasive. Can you elaborate? 

Regarding the lateral adjustment, you just tap the iron itself with a small hammer? Does this approach work regardless of the type of lateral adjustment mechanism the plane has? I think I had two issues with lateral adjustment. One is figuring out when it is properly adjusted. The second was making adjustments. The first was a bigger problem than the second---I couldn't tell if it was wrong and what needed to change. The second was problematic because I couldn't tell for sure if I was making a change and I had a poor sense of how much change I was making. But if I had a solid grasp of the first then the problems with the second would be less of a problem.


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## dunbarhamlin (6 Nov 2008)

Yep, just little taps. Don't know about LV LA adjusters, but it does the trick on my Bailey style planes (Cliftons and a Record) and on a modern Stanley block I was using the other week with the useless little pressed yoke type lateral adjuster.


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## woodbloke (6 Nov 2008)

dunbarhamlin":2embolz9 said:


> For my straight blades, I've taken to using a small plane hammer for fine adjustment (toffee hammer would do as well) - didn't get raised eyebrows from Rob when I mentioned it the other week, so guessing this is OK, and it's certainly quicker than fiddling with the lateral adjuster.
> 
> Cheers
> Steve


As Steve said, one of the many topics we touched on last week. Nothing wrong in using a small tapometer for fine adjustment...I sometimes use a nylon headed or small toffee hammer to adjust planes...just as long as it's _very_ small 'tap' :wink: - Rob


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## adrian (7 Nov 2008)

I tried another board last night. Evidently I still have a problem with the lateral adjustment on my Clifton because I was having a lot of frustration getting and staying square to the face. But the plane was taking off the bumps, or at least almost doing so. Once I got the bump removed then it wouldn't be square and I'd square it and then there'd be a bump and then I'd remove the bump and then it would be out of square and .... around in circles for a while. I think I quit working when I found it wasn't square after the last bump removal. So I have not recovered the previous tool configuration where once it got square it just magically stayed square. 

The only other observation is that I don't reach the point where, when I move one end of the straight edge it swivels on the other end. When the plane stops cutting I'm at the point where if I swivel one end of the straight edge it swivels on a point 1 inch in from the far end. I can't get beyond this. My suspicion is that this indicates that I haven't actually achieved the target of a slightly concave surface. But I'm not entirely sure how to interpret this. I could believe that it's a limitation of my non-flat plane sole. (I was wondering if slightly extending the blade might eliminate this problem, as the shavings seemed kind of wispy and might have been down around 1 thou---I didn't measure.)


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## Chris Knight (7 Nov 2008)

Adrian,
You can get some funny-seeming effects if the edge is not square to the face all the way along, or more generally if the edge is not in fact a plane surface but twists along its length - check this with winding sticks and ensure you remove the high spots to produce a plane surface before proceeding. 

This should in fact be the first job in any planing you do.


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## adrian (7 Nov 2008)

waterhead37":3edbmjzh said:


> Adrian,
> You can get some funny-seeming effects if the edge is not square to the face all the way along, or more generally if the edge is not in fact a plane surface but twists along its length - check this with winding sticks and ensure you remove the high spots to produce a plane surface before proceeding.
> 
> This should in fact be the first job in any planing you do.



My general approach has been to bring in a coarsely set plane and try to remove the rough saw marks and gross irregularities. Then I check for square to the face and try to fix that. Then at least I try to remove the bump in the length. But, at least last night, the process of removing the bump is making the edge no longer square, so it twists here and there away from square. And then I end up in an endless cycle of fixing the edge to be square and than making it flat in length and then fixing it to be square and making it flat in length....

If a small amount of twist can throw this process off (nobody has yet suggested that this could be a problem) then the reason I seem to be somewhat less successful at removing the bump this time around might be that I'm introducing a small twist as I remove the bump, whereas before I wasn't (for some mysterious reason) doing so. 

For face jointing it doesn't seem like you can check for twist before you establish straight lines across the width of the board---your winding sticks might rock, if it's convex. I tried this once when it was concave and then I removed too much material trying to correct it because the high spot wasn't very big...


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## Paul Chapman (7 Nov 2008)

I think the major problem, Adrian, is that you are grappling with several problems at once. One of the issues I have with the David Charlesworth method of planing the edge of boards is that the method becomes increasingly difficult the longer the boards are. If you add to that the problems you've been having with too short straight edge, then it's no wonder you're struggling a bit.

In your position I would seriously try the method where you plane two boards together - not necessarily on the boards you are dealing with at the moment, because you have already said that you don't want to do those that way, but on some practice pieces. I'm sure that will give you some extra confidence and help you to improve your technique.

The advantage of planing boards together is that you can forget about getting the edges at 90 degrees (that will take care of itself) and just concentrate on planing the boards straight in the length. I would suggest getting some boards about 3/4" thick and give it a go (any old stuff would do). I'm sure your technique will benefit.

I was taught to joint boards like that at school in the 1950s and never looked back  

I can do it the Charlesworth way as well but it's not my preferred technique.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## adrian (7 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":232ygh33 said:


> I think the major problem, Adrian, is that you are grappling with several problems at once. One of the issues I have with the David Charlesworth method of planing the edge of boards is that the method becomes increasingly difficult the longer the boards are. If you add to that the problems you've been having with too short straight edge, then it's no wonder you're struggling a bit.



Won't any method become increasingly hard as the boards get longer? The fact that I'm using a short straight edge should make it easier to conclude that things are OK...I'm not sure that's really a major problem. (Though I am planning to get another long straight edge.) 

I think the fact that I successfully jointed six boards is a wonderful success. Clearly the technique is workable. It's not my confidence that needs help, but my actual technique. How can I reproduce the setup that lead to that initial success? I seem to have had great luck with the initial setup of my plane and now something (lateral setting? blade profile? blade extension?) is different. 



> In your position I would seriously try the method where you plane two boards together - not necessarily on the boards you are dealing with at the moment, because you have already said that you don't want to do those that way, but on some practice pieces. I'm sure that will give you some extra confidence and help you to improve your technique.



I'm curious about why this will give me extra confidence. Switching to technique B after initial success with technique A doesn't seem like an obvious confidence building method to me. Maybe I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but I *never* got a straight edge until I used the Charlesworth method. I gave up trying to get a straight edge and used a powered router to do my edge jointing the last time around. (And the boards were only 2.5 ft long--I couldn't even get that straight.) So the Charlesworth method is actually working, which seems like a pretty big advantage. If I were to clamp the boards together I'd still be using that same method of stop shavings to try to get the board flat in length, because I don't have any other method to use! (Well, ok, so I had some success in the past with a method of deliberately creating a large hollow in the middle by taking shavings across the grain and then trying to cut off the high points at the ends, but it wasn't a very reliable approach.)

One thing that has puzzled me is that when I look in books that talk about jointing, they usually dismiss the job as trivially easy (all sweat and no technique): you just plane the surface and it turns flat. That just has not been my experience. (Do I have the wrong tolerance?)



> The advantage of planing boards together is that you can forget about getting the edges at 90 degrees (that will take care of itself) and just concentrate on planing the boards straight in the length.



This is only true if waterhead37 is wrong. I'm inclined to suspect that twist matters, that it alters the way the plane rides the edge. I've had experiences in face jointing that would be explained by twist playing a role. So if twist matters, then in order to get a straight edge on the pair of boards clamped together I actually need to get the edges in a plane, just maybe not one that is 90 degrees to the board. A job for the winding sticks, I suppose, but I don't have a ready, reliable way of removing twist. It's not obvious that this is easier. In other words, either way, I still need to remove twist. In one case I have to use winding sticks to find it and in the other case I find it with my try square. I think the try square is easier. 

I'm curious: what to you do at the final edge, where the board won't be joined to anything else? Doesn't this edge have to be square to the face?


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## Chris Knight (7 Nov 2008)

You can use a couple of mini G cramps to clamp a piece of wood to the side of the plane to make a fence to hold your plane square to the face of the board (it will need rebating to create enough stand off to allow the blade to full meet the edge of the board).

I did lots of edge jointing this way before I became proficient in the use of a cambered blade.

I never got on with clamping two boards together like Paul does; my boards are invariably of different widths and I found it very difficult to get long boards into position in the vice.

Adrian, where are you based? Someone may be able to show you if they know where you are.


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## Paul Chapman (7 Nov 2008)

Adrian,

Planing is rather like riding a bike - one minute you can't do it, the next minute you can, but you can't work out why :? :lol: The bottom line is that it comes down to practice and technique. I am only suggesting the method whereby you plane two boards together because I find it very simple that way and it might help you. We could debate it for hours but that wouldn't do much good. Try it some time when you have an hour to spare - you might find it works for you.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Mr Ed (7 Nov 2008)

I think Pauls right, you have to try all techniques until one clicks for you.

Also, whilst its good to discuss technique up to a point, you can over analyse things and sometimes its just better to spend the time doing it.

Cheers, Ed


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## Mr T (7 Nov 2008)

Hi Adrian

I would agree with both Paul and Ed. It is easy to over intelectualise a process that can only come with practice. It is also very difficult to write about. However if an experienced woodworker could actually see you planing they may be able to spot the problem, a bit like a golf professinal observing a golf swing.

Chris


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## adrian (7 Nov 2008)

I have to admit that part of my reluctance to just try planing two pieces together as a test is that I doubt that I have two similar sized pieces that are jointed flat available to use for a test. (Most of the scraps I have lying around are either narrow or short, hence unsuitable. Anything long is also rough and thick.) So I'd have to joint the faces first....or....buy new wood. Hmmm. (I'm also a bit limited in that I have only one plane blade left that doesn't have a camber.)

I do have a future project list and the project after next will feature raised panels with thin wood, and I will certainly try the clamping together method then. At my current rate of progress, though, it will be a great long while before I get to the project after next. 

I actually have the Veritas jointer fence...but since I put the camber on my blade I think it unadvisable to use it. 

Sometimes practice is the answer. There's no question about that. But no amount of practice with a bad method is going to be as good as switching methods. When I'm trying to get something done and I'm frustrated because I don't understand what's going on, more time spent in this state of frustrated confusion does not make anything better. Cutting dovetails is comparatively easy. Yeah, they might not come out perfect. And I can see how this or that could have been better, but I don't recall ever wondering "why isn't this chisel cutting the wood" or "I just don't understand what to do next to finish these dovetails". These things happen when I try to plane wood flat. At least for me, I need some kind of analysis of how and why they happen so that I have some idea what to do about it. What changes might make a difference? If I can't find anything to change then everything grinds to a permanent halt. 

In answer to the question of where I am located, the answer is that I'm rather far away in the small town of Vienna at the outskirts of Washington, DC.


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## tnimble (7 Nov 2008)

I have had the bump in the board problem a couple of times. I'm near 100% certain the not planing whilst on the bump is unrelated to sole flatness. My no 5 and 6, which are my favourite planes for tis job, are a tiny bit concave with a slight relief at both the toe and heel. The concavity is delibarate and measured as beeing flat (I do my measurements with Mitutoyo caliper and indicator calibrated and rated for max 0.03mm deviation with 0.01mm repeatability, starrett straight edge, Moore and Wright feeler strips and gauges, gauge blocks all grade 00, and well stored and cared for)

When analysing such a board is reads as beeing two slight concave boards. Also the height of the bump seems not to matter much as other bumps that are either lower or higher are planes away without problem. Also when having a bump in the board switching to another board without resharpening or readusting the plane does not show the same problem as with the other board.

I am to believe that the unplanable bumb must be related to either a specific bump profile, change in wood hardness, grain direction or combination. I have had success in removing the bump when opening the mouth and with switching to my no 3 or my LV edge plane. Setting to blade to a more agressive cut has not helped me by much, at the point where the plane does start to cut it immediately goed from not cutting at all to digging in badly.

I use the Charlesworth method for sorting out an edge to be slightly concave along the length of the board. I use my LV edge planes for squaring up, I find this the most fast and repeatable way. I usually give the board a few swiped with one of the edge plane first to sort out most of the twist and squareness. Then I plane the length using stop shavings, plane 1 full shaving, and finally plane 1 shaving with the other edge planes which is set very finely. If the board misbehaves with slight tearout I swap the last two steps.


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## Paul Chapman (7 Nov 2008)

adrian":22bakehk said:


> In answer to the question of where I am located, the answer is that I'm rather far away in the small town of Vienna at the outskirts of Washington, DC.



Oh well, a visit is out of the question then  When I have a moment I'll take some photos and show you how I would do it.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## adrian (7 Nov 2008)

tnimble":3pgcgkpu said:


> I am to believe that the unplanable bumb must be related to either a specific bump profile, change in wood hardness, grain direction or combination. I have had success in removing the bump when opening the mouth and with switching to my no 3 or my LV edge plane. Setting to blade to a more agressive cut has not helped me by much, at the point where the plane does start to cut it immediately goed from not cutting at all to digging in badly.



Thanks for your report. Do you find that the unplanable bump is unplanable both with your #5 and your #6, or does switching between these make a difference? (If the problem is that the plane sees it as two hollows then I would think that switching to a different length plane ought to make a difference.)



> I use the Charlesworth method for sorting out an edge to be slightly concave along the length of the board. I use my LV edge planes for squaring up, I find this the most fast and repeatable way. I usually give the board a few swiped with one of the edge plane first to sort out most of the twist and squareness. Then I plane the length using stop shavings, plane 1 full shaving, and finally plane 1 shaving with the other edge planes which is set very finely. If the board misbehaves with slight tearout I swap the last two steps.



Do you sharpen your #5 and #6 straight or cambered for this task?


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## adrian (19 Nov 2008)

For a while I seemed to be getting along OK using my #7 and my LV 5 1/4. When one plane wouldn't cut I found I could usually move forward by switching to the other one. 

Lateral adjustment remains something of a challenge, but at least I had the #7 adjusted so the cut was sort of close to the middle, off to the left half an inch. But then I discovered that the #7 was no longer cutting in that same spot. The location of the cut had shifted to the far left edge. I tried to adjust it and I could get it to cut at the far right or far left, but nowhere else. 

Upon removing the blade I found the same thing that happened before: the blade is concave in the center. It actually has two bumps, about 1/2 inch in from each side. So despite a claim to the contrary, I am indeed losing my camber in use, somehow. (This is kind of frustrating because I don't have a quick easy way to create the camber. I didn't think I'd have to make a new camber every time I honed the blade.)


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## newt (19 Nov 2008)

If you are losing the shape of the camber during use and producing a concave blade with two humps on each side of the centre, then the blade must be very very soft. Does this happen with the blade in the other plane. If this is happening due to use I would then expect as the blade became concave that it would become very blunt and not cut. Are you sure that the blade is not concave after you have honed?


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## tnimble (19 Nov 2008)

adrian":3mljhk8g said:


> Thanks for your report. Do you find that the unplanable bump is unplanable both with your #5 and your #6, or does switching between these make a difference? (If the problem is that the plane sees it as two hollows then I would think that switching to a different length plane ought to make a difference.)
> [/qupte]
> As the bump is always relatively high it happens with the no 8, returning to diagonally srub planing the board (if the board permits it (sizewise)) or only the bump resolves all.
> 
> ...


All my bench planes except the ones use for shooting have cambered blades. Per jointer I've 2 blades ready with different cambe sizess for smaller/thinner and wider/thicker boards.



> Upon removing the blade I found the same thing that happened before: the blade is concave in the center. It actually has two bumps, about 1/2 inch in from each side. So despite a claim to the contrary, I am indeed losing my camber in use, somehow. (This is kind of frustrating because I don't have a quick easy way to create the camber. I didn't think I'd have to make a new camber every time I honed the blade.)



What make (and type) of blade, how many has been sharpened/honed off in total from its original length?

If the blade has been ground back behind the heat treated part, or it has losts its hardening due to over heating while grinding it (by previous user for instance) or when a blade is very very new I can imagine this happening. If neither is the case a bad production blade (skipped the heat treatment) or planing, planing, planing and planing with a dull blade without honinh for a long long long time could cause this.


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## adrian (19 Nov 2008)

The blade is the original stock Clifton blade and was new when I bought the plane. The amount of blade "used" is negligible. Does Clifton use very soft blades? I suppose I could replace the blade. I was thinking I might raise the bevel angle a bit---I have it at 28 or 29 degrees. 

It has not happened to the other plane. Studying the other blade, I found that the camber was less than I thought...but I last sharpened that one a couple months ago so I don't recall exactly what camber I managed to apply. It's possible it had a larger camber and wore down but not enough to become concave. It's also possible I had a small camber and nothing about the edge geometry changed. There was a glint visible on the back of the blade along the center of the edge indicating some sort of edge failure, I assume. (And this glint was pretty hard to remove at the stones.) 

Regarding the concave blade, when I sharpened the last time I compared the blade to a straight edge and found it to be convex. It would rock, for example. It won't rock now. 

But also note the change in the behavior of the plane. Freshly sharpened, it would cut a shaving near the center. There was a period where the blade would "mysteriously" cut only the edges of the board I was working and not in the middle---behavior consistent with a concavity in the center of the blade. Right before I took the blade out I could not adjust it to cut near the center, only at the far extremes. So clearly something changed. As far as I noticed it was cutting fine and then it abruptly stopped cutting in the center. I didn't notice a period of poor performance before it stopped entirely. (I may not be very good at recognizing when the blade is starting to dull but still cuts reasonably well, though.) 

In an effort to describe the amount of planing I did that caused this:
My total number of boards is 10 four foot boards and 9 two foot boards. So the only other way I can describe the amount of use is to note that I sharpened the jointer after planing 6 of the four foot board edges flat. And I have since then planed all the rest of them flat and then gone back, after figuring out how to arrange the boards, to touch up and make sure that the boards that will be glued together fit well. And I've worked through all but 4 of the four foot boards. The American cherry is a soft, easily worked wood that is friendly to the tools.


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## newt (19 Nov 2008)

I think we must assume that the blade is at fault, either to soft (most likely) or so brittle that the edge broke off. How easy is it to sharpen? One thing you could do is to get a small file and stroke it on a peice of mild steel and note the sound then do the same on the side of the plane blade it should skate over the surface and be much more difficult to mark.


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## Mr Ed (19 Nov 2008)

I think you must have ended up with a blade that somehow missed its heat treatment. That or the temper having been drawn through over heating whilst grinding are the only logical explanation for wear at the rate you describe.

Cheers, Ed


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## tnimble (20 Nov 2008)

Swap the blade, altough sharpening a a few more times may still sort it out (during heat treatment the outer most part of the metal will be softer, but this softer metal should have been removed after a few sharpening sessions)


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## bugbear (20 Nov 2008)

adrian":3p46r3bf said:


> There was a glint visible on the back of the blade along the center of the edge indicating some sort of edge failure, I assume. (And this glint was pretty hard to remove at the stones.)



I would recommend a 10x loupe as part of everyone's sharpening kit. A plastic lensed one is quite good enough, and rather cheap.

BugBear


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## Paul Chapman (20 Nov 2008)

adrian":3u4a32an said:


> There was a glint visible on the back of the blade along the center of the edge indicating some sort of edge failure, I assume. (And this glint was pretty hard to remove at the stones.)



When a blade gets blunt, the previously sharp edge becomes rounded, so when honing it is necessary to remove this roundness, which will be on both sides of the blade. The more blunt the blade (ie the more you carry on using the blunt blade and delay honing) the more pronounced this roundness will become and the more honing you will need to do to remove it.

What I now tend to do when honing my blades is to hone them with a 30 degree bevel, using a Veritas honing guide, then use the feature which enables you to alter the roller to give a 1 or 2 degree micro bevel. I find this the fastest way to remove the roundness and achieve a perfectly sharp edge. Another way of doing it is to use the David Charlesworth 'ruler trick', although I don't favour that. Alternatively, you can just carry on honing at a single angle, but that will take longer.

The glint you are seeing on your blades is, I suspect, bluntness caused by not ensuring that the roundness is completely removed - a blunt blade will always show a glint whereas a sharp one won't.

The reason you are seeing this glint along the centre of the edge is, I suspect, because you have cambered the blade, so most of the cutting is taking place at the centre of the blade. The edges of a cambered blade won't be doing much, if any, cutting unless you have the blade projecting a fair amount and are taking thick shavings. That might also explain why you appear to be getting much more wear at the centre of the blade.

Hope this helps.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul

PS Another way to see where the wear is taking place on the blade is to keep the end of the cap iron (chip breaker) polished. When you've been planing for a while and remove the blade and cap iron, you will see that resin and general gunge from the wood has collected on the cap iron. This is caused as the shavings pass through the mouth of the plane and over the cap iron. If your blade is cambered, you will no doubt find that this gunge covers only the central portion of the cap iron, because that's where all the cutting is taking place. Wherever the gunge has collected will show the portion of the blade where the wear has taken place.


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## adrian (20 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":3c0snlr7 said:


> When a blade gets blunt, the previously sharp edge becomes rounded, so when honing it is necessary to remove this roundness, which will be on both sides of the blade. The more blunt the blade (ie the more you carry on using the blunt blade and delay honing) the more pronounced this roundness will become and the more honing you will need to do to remove it.



I did inspect the edge with my Bellomo Triplet 10x loupe, and it appeared that the glint was due to rounding, but I find it remarkably hard to be sure of what I'm looking at. I think I need a microscope. In any case, it was more damage than I have observed in the past when I have been sharpening. 



> What I now tend to do when honing my blades is to hone them with a 30 degree bevel, using a Veritas honing guide, then use the feature which enables you to alter the roller to give a 1 or 2 degree micro bevel. I find this the fastest way to remove the roundness and achieve a perfectly sharp edge. Another way of doing it is to use the David Charlesworth 'ruler trick', although I don't favour that. Alternatively, you can just carry on honing at a single angle, but that will take longer.



The ruler trick and the secondary bevel are two completely different things. I use a secondary bevel. However, it tends to grow bigger and bigger and then the advantage is not so big until I grind back the primary bevel. At the moment, my secondary bevel on the clifton is about half of the bevel. On the other plane I think it's about the same. With only a degree or two difference (I use the Veritas as well) the secondary bevel grows pretty quickly. Charlesworth advocates the use of a tertiary bevel for rapid polishing. This bevel would be ground away completely each time you hone. I haven't been doing this. 

The ruler trick is a method of applying a tiny back bevel so that you can polish the back of the blade up next to the edge without having to work a large area to a high polish. I don't think it would help much for removing a rounded over area at the edge--one doesn't generally try to reshape the blade by working the back. The ruler trick is an attractive idea to me because trying to get a decent polish up at the edge on a flat blade is very difficult, at least for me. The plane sticks to the stone, and it's very hard to get a decent polish. I've never gotten the back of my blade to look as good as the bevel. The problem with the ruler trick is that you have to take the blade out of the honing guide to use it, so you can't go back to the bevel side afterwords unless you go to a higher angle. 

I've been reluctant to use it because of this limitation, but I keep looking at those not-very-polished backs, and think that maybe things could be better, so I actually tried to sharpen a blade the Charlesworth way (with tertiary bevel and the ruler trick). The Veritas guide actually damaged the edge when I reinserted the blade for the final polish. (The damage is where the cambered blade pressed up against the stop that determines the extension. It may be necessary to avoid using the stop and just estimate the projection for the final step. Or to do like Charlesworth and switch guides, I suppose.)




> The glint you are seeing on your blades is, I suspect, bluntness caused by not ensuring that the roundness is completely removed - a blunt blade will always show a glint whereas a sharp one won't.



Well, assuming that I did a decent job, that glint wasn't there after I had sharpened. 



> PS Another way to see where the wear is taking place on the blade is to keep the end of the cap iron (chip breaker) polished. When you've been planing for a while and remove the blade and cap iron, you will see that resin and general gunge from the wood has collected on the cap iron.



I'll have to check the cap iron and see if I notice anything. There is a deposit of gunge on the blade right in front of where the cap iron was, and indeed it is heaviest in the center where, presumably, the most cutting took place. (It's recalcitrant gunge...I've had difficulty cleaning it off, actually.)


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## Paul Chapman (20 Nov 2008)

adrian":36yvdro1 said:


> I use a secondary bevel. However, it tends to grow bigger and bigger and then the advantage is not so big until I grind back the primary bevel.



What I do is hone the blade at 30 degrees on my coarse and fine diamond stones and this quickly removes the old, *very small*, micro bevel, then put on a new micro bevel each time. I then finish on a leather strop with jewellers rouge.

If you keep on honing the secondary bevel so that it gets bigger each time, your honing is going to take longer and it will take a lot of honing to get rid of the rounded over edge. If you do it my way, it's very quick and you don't have to bother with grinding.

Don't bother with microscopes :shock: If you hold the blade up to the light and the light catches the edge, the blade isn't sharp. A really sharp edge won't reflect the light.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## tnimble (20 Nov 2008)

adrian":1usf9ckh said:


> The Veritas guide actually damaged the edge when I reinserted the blade for the final polish. (The damage is where the cambered blade pressed up against the stop that determines the extension. It may be necessary to avoid using the stop and just estimate the projection for the final step. Or to do like Charlesworth and switch guides, I suppose.)



The stop is of soft aluminium the blade is high carbon tool steel ground around 30 degrees. It should not be able to damage the edge inless slammed / pressed pretty hard into the stop. With HCTS ground at this angle it's even possible to plane some length of aluminium (yes I have done that, last week I planes a dado in some poly carbonate with my LN shoulder plane)


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## Jake (21 Nov 2008)

This saga gets more and more strange. Are you sure you haven't put a slice of cheese in the plane by mistake? :lol: 

Got any pictures to share, or did I miss them?


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## woodbloke (21 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman wrote:


> What I do is hone the blade at 30 degrees on my coarse and fine diamond stones and this quickly removes the old, very small, micro bevel, then put on a new micro bevel each time. I then finish on a leather strop with jewellers rouge.
> 
> If you keep on honing the secondary bevel so that it gets bigger each time, your honing is going to take longer and it will take a lot of honing to get rid of the rounded over edge.



...which is basically what I do. Grind at 23deg, honed bevel at 30deg, micro-bevel at 32deg. Eventually the 30deg bevel will get too wide and then it's time to regrind again. I also use the 'ruler-trick' to polish the back of the blade - Rob


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":24iegk47 said:


> adrian":24iegk47 said:
> 
> 
> > I use a secondary bevel. However, it tends to grow bigger and bigger and then the advantage is not so big until I grind back the primary bevel.
> ...



Er, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this means you're grinding the primary bevel every time you sharpen. If the microbevel is so very small, then chances are I'd need to grind the primary bevel anyway to get rid of the type of rounding I was observing. This would mean that instead of my honing taking longer and longer each time it would just always take an eternity as I'd always be grinding away at the entire primary bevel instead of working on a secondary bevel that was gradually getting bigger. Even if I didn't have a problem to grind away, I still have the issue of having to grind away the microbevel each time by working the entire primary bevel. That doesn't sound fast. 

The point of grinding is that you use a fast very coarse abrasive. I have two ways of grinding, a 120 micron diamond stone and a WorkSharp fitted with 40 grit sandpaper. Both leave big nasty gouges in the metal that you wouldn't want up near your edge. If I were to use these methods to grind back a 30 degree bevel and then I went to put on a microbevel...by the time the microbevel was fully established and the scratches from the previous step were gone, it wouldn't be a very tiny microbevel any more. So if I wanted to make this system work I'd have to grind back the 30 degree primary bevel with something finer...which would take a long time. It doesn't sound very quick...


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

Jake":2aufz0ok said:


> This saga gets more and more strange. Are you sure you haven't put a slice of cheese in the plane by mistake? :lol:



I've got some old Parmesan in the back of the refrigerator. Maybe I should try fitting it into the plane and seeing if the performance improves. 



> Got any pictures to share, or did I miss them?



Hmmm. It hadn't occurred to me to try to photograph this. It just didn't seem like something that would work...but as I think about it now it seems like I ought to be able to put a bright light behind the blade and get some kind of image showing the concavity. 

The next time this happens I'll give it a try. At the moment I have only 3 more joints to match up, then I have to glue everything. And then I'll have to work the resulting panels to their final dimension. I don't know if it's enough more work to cause the problem again. On the other hand, I'll need to work the dreaded end grain somehow.


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## Paul Chapman (21 Nov 2008)

adrian":i74iyoq9 said:


> Er, maybe I'm misunderstanding



Possibly. You also seem reluctant to try anything anyone suggests. Maybe the best thing would be to find someone who lives near you and who knows how to sharpen blades, to show you how to do it.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## woodbloke (21 Nov 2008)

Adrian wrote:


> but this means you're grinding the primary bevel every time you sharpen



No...the primary bevel (in my case 23deg, the *big* wide one) is re-ground *only* when the secondary bevel (the one at 30deg) has been honed so much that it becomes difficult to establish an edge (and ultimately remove the micro-bevel). The grinding process shortens the effective length of the steel (which is why old, well used blades are always short) but at the same time it also narrows the 30deg bevel from being fairly wide (say 2mm) to the width of a hair :wink: so that it then becomes much easier to make the micro-bevel at 32deg...this is achieved with about six strokes on a very fine stone, I use a Spyderco 10000g ceramic - Rob


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## ivan (21 Nov 2008)

You mention trouble with the lateral position - is this shifting in use? One of my Clifton frogs required a bit of flattening as did the blade face that meets the frog. When rectified the lateral adjustment was much stiffer with a similar lever cap setting, and it stopped drifting in use. Flat the 'working' underside of the lever cap. Don't assume _anything_ is _actually_ flat! A cheap Chinese granite surface plate has definite rigidity, I think Harbor freight do one, was in FW?. Mine is big enough for a #8.

If the blade has a lot of camber with a fine cut set, on flat work, the plane will cut initially in the blade centre, and then will stop cutting when the edges of the sole touch the work. (unless you then increase the cut). 

You should still be able to get a full width shaving with a cambered blade, so the camber must be a shaving thickness or less. If you plane watching the mouth, till you get a continuous shaving (on an edge), the shaving should be in the centre of the mouth or the lateral lever needs adjsuting.

For longer boards, if you plane 2 together, you can invert one on the other and test the joint in the straightedge way - pivot from both ends - then joint is hollow, eye shows how much.

Whilst testing out your planing and the plane itself, by practicing, you could revert to a straight edge which removes one variable, and then introduce it later. As you can see, camber can give rise to odd effects if you _keep planing over exactly the same ground_.I was taught to correct an edge to 90 deg (with a straight ground blade, camber was only for rough stuff) by tweaking the lateral lever to correct, but find the cambered blade method easier.


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

Paul Chapman":1ivxjrl6 said:


> Possibly. You also seem reluctant to try anything anyone suggests. Maybe the best thing would be to find someone who lives near you and who knows how to sharpen blades, to show you how to do it.
> 
> Paul



In the case of sharpening, there is a huge diversity in recommendations for how to go about it. I have been sharpening (or at least trying to sharpen) for almost ten years now and while I don't claim to be an expert at it by any means, I do have some modest amount of experience and hence some idea what will happen if I try a particular approach. 

And I'm pretty darn sure that if I try an approach where I grind the full bevel each time that it will take me longer---probably quite a bit longer. I can't try everything, so I have to consider what seems reasonable and this just doesn't pass the test. (Another consideration is how long does it take to try something and how easily is it reversible. One reason I was reluctant to try the ruler trick is that it appears very difficult to reverse if I don't like it.)

Now putting a tiny tertiary bevel on the edge seems reasonable (as suggested by Charlesworth and as woodbloke does). I was a bit nervous about how long it takes to remove the microbevel each time, though it couldn't possibly be any worse than the time required to remove the rounding I observed recently....or re-establish the camber. I did just go ahead and try this on one of my blades. This is like what you're doing without the painful grinding of the entire primary bevel each time. 

Here's a question that arose with the microbeveling. So I raised my bevel angle from 30 to 35 as Charlesworth suggests and went to the polishing stone and started to create the microbevel. How can I tell when the microbevel is done, when the polish is sufficient and the scratches from the coarser stone removed? I'm not sure I did enough polishing on the blade that I converted to this approach.


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

woodbloke":2jxjr0kc said:


> Adrian wrote:
> 
> 
> > but this means you're grinding the primary bevel every time you sharpen
> ...



According to Paul Chapman (the "you" in my quote above), he doesn't have a 23 deg bevel. He just has a primary bevel at 30 degrees which he works every time with "coarse and fine diamond stones". He says that one advantage of his way is "you don't have to bother with grinding". You're doing something different than him, I think. 



> The grinding process shortens the effective length of the steel (which is why old, well used blades are always short)



I don't think the grinding process should have any effect on the effective length of the steel. When you grind you won't go all the way to the edge, so the blade length will not change. The reason old blades are short is that the honing removes material at the edge and gradually makes the blade shorter. Even if you don't grind, you'll still lose length---it'll just be more work.


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

ivan":2hvzjj22 said:


> You mention trouble with the lateral position - is this shifting in use?



I don't think so. I was paying attention to where I had to position the plane to achieve a full width shaving and it was staying in the same spot. 



> One of my Clifton frogs required a bit of flattening as did the blade face that meets the frog. When rectified the lateral adjustment was much stiffer with a similar lever cap setting, and it stopped drifting in use. Flat the 'working' underside of the lever cap. Don't assume _anything_ is _actually_ flat! A cheap Chinese granite surface plate has definite rigidity, I think Harbor freight do one, was in FW?. Mine is big enough for a #8.


However, I have not done any adjustments to the frog or lever cap. I worked the chip breaker to get a good fit, but that's about it, I think. 



> If the blade has a lot of camber with a fine cut set, on flat work, the plane will cut initially in the blade centre, and then will stop cutting when the edges of the sole touch the work. (unless you then increase the cut).



Wouldn't this require a very extreme camber to occur on the edge of a board? The shaving would have to be less than the edge width. On a face you could easily get this behavior. 



> You should still be able to get a full width shaving with a cambered blade, so the camber must be a shaving thickness or less. If you plane watching the mouth, till you get a continuous shaving (on an edge), the shaving should be in the centre of the mouth or the lateral lever needs adjsuting.



I thought you wouldn't want a full width (of the blade) shaving because then the plane would leave lines at the edges of the shavings when it cut. You want the shaving to taper off to nothing at the sides so that you can make a smooth surface. For edge planing it seems unlikely that you'd get such a large camber that you wouldn't get a full width shaving. 



> For longer boards, if you plane 2 together, you can invert one on the other and test the joint in the straightedge way - pivot from both ends - then joint is hollow, eye shows how much.


This would require a straight blade, right? (No camber.)



> Whilst testing out your planing and the plane itself, by practicing, you could revert to a straight edge which removes one variable, and then introduce it later. As you can see, camber can give rise to odd effects if you _keep planing over exactly the same ground_.I was taught to correct an edge to 90 deg (with a straight ground blade, camber was only for rough stuff) by tweaking the lateral lever to correct, but find the cambered blade method easier.



What test would you propose that I perform with a straight edge? Given the difficulty I have with lateral adjustment, it seems like using a straight blade would be more difficult, though I suppose it could be an opportunity to practice lateral adjustment. (I noticed that Rob Cosmon shows this technique in his DVD, Rough to Ready.)


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## adrian (21 Nov 2008)

tnimble":2mlo9ivj said:


> The stop is of soft aluminium the blade is high carbon tool steel ground around 30 degrees. It should not be able to damage the edge inless slammed / pressed pretty hard into the stop. With HCTS ground at this angle it's even possible to plane some length of aluminium (yes I have done that, last week I planes a dado in some poly carbonate with my LN shoulder plane)



Because the blade is cambered it meets the stop at a single point, so all the forces and stresses that I might apply as I try to get it properly positioned will be focused on one single point of the edge. Even so, you think the aluminum is too soft to damage the blade? (If so, I'll have to investigate further the source of the damage.)


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## tnimble (21 Nov 2008)

adrian":soqnczbn said:


> tnimble":soqnczbn said:
> 
> 
> > The stop is of soft aluminium the blade is high carbon tool steel ground around 30 degrees. It should not be able to damage the edge inless slammed / pressed pretty hard into the stop. With HCTS ground at this angle it's even possible to plane some length of aluminium (yes I have done that, last week I planes a dado in some poly carbonate with my LN shoulder plane)
> ...



Never noticed any damage to any of my blades. And I sometimes go back and forth between the bevel edge and the back while forming a blade to shape (I've made some moulding plane blades and odd sized straight blades) to prevent a larger bur to form.

I'll insert one of my Hock blades into the Veritas MKII not so gently for you. :shock: (got a box with a couple of unused and unfettled blades anyway)


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## tnimble (22 Nov 2008)

I did most of the flattening of the back of this new Hock 1 3/4" O1 chisel. It should be pretty comparable to the characteristics of a Clifton blade. Then I made the basic shape for a very light cambered edge suitable for a no 3 smoother. I used the Veritas using the no 2 setting on the roler posision, and the set the angle gauge to the position inbetween the 25 and 30 degrees.







I took the blade out and repolished the blade to remove the burr created by putting on the shape to the bevel edge. Then I reinserted the blade in the veritas MKII. With the blade not contacting the angle gauge i hit the back of the blade with my palm, I repeated this 3 times. Then whilst pushing the blade against the angle gauge I tightened the blade clmap. I tapped the end of the angle gauge ruler thingy a couple of times, loosed the screw and removed it. This is how the blade looked like after that treatment:











I switched to the Canon EF 100/2.8 usm macro lens to get a better look of the corner of the blade where it has forcefully met the angle gauge a couple of times. I can't see or feel any damage to the edge.


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## Mr Ed (22 Nov 2008)

I think Jakes 'slice of cheese' theory is looking like my favourite explanation.. :lol: 

Cheers, Ed


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## adrian (24 Nov 2008)

The blade where I thought I'd nicked the edge with the honing guide was actually an A2 veritas blade, but I assume that would be less rather than more prone to damage. Clearly I'm going to have to try this process again. Thanks for doing the test! (I noticed that your honing guide has a different piece for the blade stop. Mine is painted black.) 

I finished up with the cherry and moved on to gluing. I did joint about 20 feet of 1.5" wide softwood to aid in the gluing process, and another 25 feet of 3 inch wide softwood (with knots) without observing any deterioration in the performance of the planes---the mysterious concavity has yet to reappear.


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## ivan (25 Nov 2008)

By "lateral setting" I mean the setting of the lateral adjusting lever, (*not* the position of the plane over the edge you're planing.) This can "creep" in use and take you unawares. You might re read this section my post above with this in mind.

If a blade has a crown of (say) 4 thou , and you set the blade to take a two thou shaving, and you plane a shaving from piece of flat, pre-planed timber, the shaving with not be the full width of the blade. If you keep planing over the same track very soon the plane will stop cutting altogether, (see post above) It is very difficult to crown a blade to an _exact_ number of thou (unless you use a very expensive set of Odate crowning plates) so you may well be seeing this effect when you plane an edge. (on an edge you keep going over the same track) Hence my suggestion to plane with a straight edge, easy to get with a Veitas wide roller, and get the feel of the plane before trying fancier stuff with a cambered, or crowned blade.

When you get more used to the feel of the plane, you can begin to hone a slight crown so you can still get a full width shaving of about 2 thou, which tapers out to whispy thin-ness at each edge. (Bear in mind setting the same blade for a thinner shaving will result in a cut less than the full width of the blade. Being able to estimate a shaving thickness by observation is another planing skill to develop)


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## adrian (25 Nov 2008)

ivan":yb63yyvo said:


> By "lateral setting" I mean the setting of the lateral adjusting lever, (*not* the position of the plane over the edge you're planing.) This can "creep" in use and take you unawares. You might re read this section my post above with this in mind.



I understood this. My observation was that the plane was taking a full width shaving when positioned a certain way over the edge. If I shifted the plane to one side or the other than the shaving would no longer be full width; rather it would remove material only from one side of the workpiece or the other. If the blade were shifting laterally in use, then I would observe a change in the location of the full width cut. Since I did not observe such a shift, I believe that the lateral adjustment was not creeping in use. 



> If a blade has a crown of (say) 4 thou , and you set the blade to take a two thou shaving, and you plane a shaving from piece of flat, pre-planed timber, the shaving with not be the full width of the blade. If you keep planing over the same track very soon the plane will stop cutting altogether, (see post above).



This applies to shaving a face, but not an edge. In the case of the edge, the cut is the full width of the wood, so you never form "rails" that keep the plane from being able to cut. (In principle this same thing would happen even without a crown because the plane has edges where it does not cut, so if you had a straight blade and you worked in exactly the same track the plane would start riding on the uncut region where those edges are.)



> It is very difficult to crown a blade to an _exact_ number of thou (unless you use a very expensive set of Odate crowning plates) so you may well be seeing this effect when you plane an edge. (on an edge you keep going over the same track) Hence my suggestion to plane with a straight edge, easy to get with a Veitas wide roller, and get the feel of the plane before trying fancier stuff with a cambered, or crowned blade.



Since my shavings are the full width of the edge the situation you suggest cannot arise. To get this situation on an edge would require an extremely large camber such that a centered shaving is not full width on the edge. (For a 2 thou shaving and a 2 3/8 inch blade the camber would have to be 0.03 inches at the edge of the blade, assuming a circular blade profile and 45 degree bed angle. My camber is about a tenth of that.) 

When my blades were flat the edge of the blade left trails through the wood, which I didn't like much. I'll admit that the period where I worked with flat blades was fairly short. For a long while I was sharpening on dished waterstones, so everything had a camber (chisels too, presumably). Once I corrected this I had a period with flat blades, but I observed the plane tracks problem and I learned about Charlesworth's approach and so I applied the camber. 

It took a significant amount of time for me to camber the blades, so I'm not inclined to grind off the camber for a short experiment. I do have two flat blades left for bevel up planes that I could experiment with. But what am I supposed to be trying to learn? What experiments should I conduct? What should I be paying attention to? (I'm not entirely sure I believe in the theory that I should adjust the tool into an abnormal state to try to gain insight into its function since what I really care about is how the tool behaves in normal use, which I think means with a camber.)


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## o_LuCaS_o (8 Jan 2011)

Hi!

Adrian, it's been a long time since this thread was alive. I found it a few days ago and read it with a lot of interest. How is Your edge jointing going? Did You ever encounter the problems You mentioned here with the concave camber and persistent bump? I've been doing some edge jointing myself and noticed a few things about bumps. I've been planning a piece of birch, which I thought is one of the most pleasant woods to plane, but the piece I have is a little knurled. The grain often changes directions, also on the edges. The result is tearout, even with thin shavings and a higher pitch angle (LV BUJointer w/54deg angle). Near the end of one of the edges I encountered tearout and in that spot it was hard for me to "dig in" with the "stopped shavings" method, leaving a bump near the end. Was that a case in your problem? You also mentioned a squeaky noise while planning. Maybe it was a knot You had in the edge, that was hard to take down with the jointer.

The thing I'm wondering about is, if grain direction changes giving tearout can prevent one from getting a really true surface, or at least make the task harder? Should one locally change the planning direction to take the tearing spots down and then return to the globally proper direction?

Regards, Lucas.


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## adrian (10 Jan 2011)

o_LuCaS_o":1uq5794e said:


> Hi!
> 
> Adrian, it's been a long time since this thread was alive. I found it a few days ago and read it with a lot of interest. How is Your edge jointing going? Did You ever encounter the problems You mentioned here with the concave camber and persistent bump?



I think it may be better to start a new topic instead of reviving this ancient one. 

I have not gone back and re-read this thread and I don't recall the problem I was having with the persistent bump back then. With the vanishing camber I quit using the Clifton plane and haven't had that problem occur with any of my other planes. I've had various other issues arise in edge planing, and you can probably find threads about them posted here if you search. I tried match planing but it didn't work because the grain of the two boards went the opposite way and even when I tried a 70 deg cutting angle I still got tear out. I had the mystery of the bevel up plane that stops cutting in 15 minutes while the bevel down plane cuts for ever. 



> I've been planning a piece of birch, which I thought is one of the most pleasant woods to plane, but the piece I have is a little knurled. The grain often changes directions, also on the edges. The result is tearout, even with thin shavings and a higher pitch angle (LV BUJointer w/54deg angle). Near the end of one of the edges I encountered tearout and in that spot it was hard for me to "dig in" with the "stopped shavings" method, leaving a bump near the end. Was that a case in your problem? You also mentioned a squeaky noise while planning. Maybe it was a knot You had in the edge, that was hard to take down with the jointer.
> 
> The thing I'm wondering about is, if grain direction changes giving tearout can prevent one from getting a really true surface, or at least make the task harder? Should one locally change the planning direction to take the tearing spots down and then return to the globally proper direction?



You aren't clear if 54 degrees is your cutting angle or your blade bevel angle. If it's your cutting angle you could try raising it more. I was using 59 and some people use higher. 

It's been a while since I edge planed, but when I did I had wood with some small knots where the grain reversed. As I recall, I did have more difficulty in planing those regions and getting the surface flat. Could something different happen to the fibers when planing the wrong direction? Is it possible that when the fibers are standing up that the plane sort of "pushes them over" and then they pop back up so that they aren't getting cut off the same way? (In other words, that you get more fiber spring back?) 

I have certainly changed directions at times when the grain reverses. However, I end up with a bump at the point of reversal when I do that. To remove the bumps I have to be able to plane the neighborhood of any point on the board all in the same direction.


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