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I share your fascination with the cap-iron DW, and I would have replied sooner but I was waylaid by the epic chisel/shoe-saga thread! One of the frustrations is that the evidence that can be got from the surviving planes is not reliable - they are either worn-out or hardly used, and the...

thanks Jürgen - what a fascinating video! graphic demonstrations of tear-out and the effect of the cap iron and also how savings form - really helpful and informative. I'll be having another go at working with my smoother this weekend!

we all need to start somewhere, Stewie! I was experimenting with thicker shavings to try and understand why it was clogging with shavings. Thanks for the diagram - I think it shows that, on the reasonable assumption that a shaving, once broken by the cap iron, will tend to continue on at the...

Following Stewie's post, I thought I would try a few experiments with my wooden smoother, which I have posted about previously - it is unusual in as far as it is marked 'cabinet' and has a 50 degree bed angle. The Wear is 104 degrees and the cap iron is 30. the plane is always clog-free when...

If you are in a hurry you can just stick the brass components in a drill-driver and use a bit of autosol/wirewool. it takes seconds.. I have repainted a couple of drills and one plane with enamel paint, applied with a brush - the first time I tried I just removed the old finish and painted on...

a cap iron Haiku: tried, in vain, to make it smooth My cap-iron did it But for some, not

You are quite right - I meant to say that it was cosmetic and more expensive. I assumed all the other changes prior to the 60s were only cosmetic. Having said that, I had not realised about the little circular disk on the lateral lever being a better design (I had wondered what that was...

In my (admittedly limited) experience with old Record planes, the differences between the pre-1960s versions are cosmetic, with one exception, in that some of the earliest versions came with Rosewood knob and/or tote, which, since it had to be imported, was presumably more expensive than native...

personal differences aside, I don't see any disagreement here - it is true that cap-irons help prevent the plane iron from flexing under shocks from knots etc and also that this is not its only benefit. There are lots of devices to improve stiffness of the blade, including making them thicker...

I find that if you screw the cap-iron and blade together with the normal amount of tension it is easy to make any final adjustment by tapping the cap-iron screw with the shaft of a screwdriver. My cap-iron experiments are limited to tool-fiddling tests on bits of cheap construction grade...

Here are some of mine - from left to right, I say 1) drop forged 2,3,4) hand forged, including a hand forged bolster 4) 'gobbed on' bolster my theory ( and I am making this up!) about the mortice chisel is that there is too much metal in the bolster to have been moved with a hammer, and...

I was reading A Glossary of Old Sheffield Trade Words and Dialect the other day, as you do, and found out that when bolsters were soldered on, rather than forged, they were said to be gobbed on "... it may be a term of contempt indicating that such bolsters were nobbut stuck on we spit" and...

lovely saw Stewie - did you copy the handle details from any particular historical saw, or is it your own design? It is beautifully done!

thanks cc - It is surprising that 19th C makers adopted thicker irons, when thinner versions were apparently 'good enough' in the previous century. I think you have a good theory - the disadvantages of a thin iron are not serious in many circumstances (and are sometimes non-existent, as...

I think those of us lucky enough to be buying old tools in the UK are still getting exceptional value for money compared to the cost of similar quality modern alternatives. A case in point being the oft-lamented increase in prices of bench planes on ebay, but these are still surely a...

thanks Corneel - that is very interesting. Although I had seen pictures of low angle mitre planes with thin blades, I always assumed that for bench planes they had always been thick and tapered (at least until the end of the 19th C). Do you think think thin single irons are peculiar to the...

I did not say thick blades were slow to sharpen, just slower :D As you rightly say, how much slower depends on your sharpening regime.

.. well that was the point of the original post - thin blades do feel less 'solid' under some circumstances, and there are various ways to make them feel better (thicker blades, 2 part cap irons, 2 part lever caps). however, many (most?) people are more than happy with a standard bailey...

I think it is pretty clear the cap-iron was not only a stiffening measure - Leonard Bailey patented a modified cap-iron specifically to address issues that occur because he was using very thin irons (c.f https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=pate ... S72443.pdf) but cap-irons had been in use for at...

thanks Derek - the straight shavings that result from a close set cap-iron are very distinctive, but I did not realise the same thing happened with high-angle planes. Most interesting!