A planing question.

[Jacob]

Planing is only about removing 'humps'. You can't fill in hollows you can only remove the humps either side.
And a short plane will do just as well - you just have to use it differently and keep a closer eye on progress.
Can't see the point of a straightedge for planing edges - much easier to just look along it and if in doubt try winding sticks.
"Straightedge" features a lot in woodwork chat nowadays but it isn't part of the trad tool kit at all and isn't really necessary. Have people have lost confidence in their eyesight? How does a straightedge help - you still have to look at it in use, and also check it for straightness.

 

[woodbrains]

Planing is only about removing 'humps'. You can't fill in hollows you can only remove the humps either side.
And a short plane will do just as well - you just have to use it differently and keep a closer eye on progress.
Can't see the point of a straightedge for planing edges - much easier to just look along it and if in doubt try winding sticks.
"Straightedge" features a lot in woodwork chat nowadays but it isn't part of the trad tool kit at all and isn't really necessary. Have people have lost confidence in their eyesight? How does a straightedge help - you still have to look at it in use, and also check it for straightness.

Hello,

They did use straight edges, you know! Custard's mahogany one is a very old design, as is his method for making them. Steel ones, for sure, would have been too expensive and heavy for the vintage craftsmen, but straight edges would have been made and therefore used.

Mike.

 

[David C]

Well I find the video quite remarkable! I will have to look into this.

My experience is the same as Custards.

 

[Jacob]

Planing is only about removing 'humps'. You can't fill in hollows you can only remove the humps either side.
And a short plane will do just as well - you just have to use it differently and keep a closer eye on progress.
Can't see the point of a straightedge for planing edges - much easier to just look along it and if in doubt try winding sticks.
"Straightedge" features a lot in woodwork chat nowadays but it isn't part of the trad tool kit at all and isn't really necessary. Have people have lost confidence in their eyesight? How does a straightedge help - you still have to look at it in use, and also check it for straightness.

Hello,

They did use straight edges, you know! Custard's mahogany one is a very old design, as is his method for making them. Steel ones, for sure, would have been too expensive and heavy for the vintage craftsmen, but straight edges would have been made and therefore used.

Mike.

It's easy to tell if an edge (or a face of a board) is straight by just squinting down it. You can also see if it twists but winding sticks will help here. Either way I can't see how a straight-edge could help.
Across the grain is different and an edge helps here - but nothing special just any old board with a freshly planed edge. Or a builders's spirit level - which is what I'd use.
Across the grain a steel ruler helps as you can rub it about a bit and it makes a mark on the high spots and shows up cupping on a board.

I can't see any point in the hollow planing video and I wonder why he needs a straight-edge - he just needs to lean down and look along the board. In fact he should do - he needs to develop some basic skills and not rely on an expensive gadget!
His demo would no doubt come out differently with a different plane or technique but in general anybody planing 'blind' will usually produce a convex edge (as the OP noticed!) - a plane will remove more at the start and end of a pass as the aft or fore parts of the sole are not resting on the wood. Hence the universal advice to press the front down as you start and the back as you end a stroke. Otherwise described as 'try to plane a hollow'. Which is also what Custard shows and Dave describes I think - with 'stopped' planing. And Corneel and Graham describe above ( I haven't read all this thread through yet!)

Anyone joining two boards should match one against the other, not each to a straightedge, which in any case wouldn't show any twist and could be quite misleading.
It's the engineers turned woodworkers who bring in these redundant ideas IMHO - 'surface plates' and the likes :lol:

PS man in vid with hollow edge - first thing I'd do is check the straightedge - not by buying another one but by looking at it.
Non so blind as those who will not see!

PS a thin straight edge which is the slightest bit bendy is more or less useless used as per the vid. but is good for cutting straight lines with a knife - which is why there are so many metal straight edges around - they are used by craft workers with card, leather etc.

 

[custard]

After sleeping on this a couple of other things occurred,

When edge jointing, achieving straightness (or a minute hollow) is only one part of the challenge. As well as being straight the edge also needs to be square. Getting an edge perfectly square right along it's length is in my experience quite a bit harder than getting it straight.

So the real test of any technique is if it delivers an edge that's completely smooth throughout (for glue strength), an edge that's straight/minute hollow, and also an edge that's square and free of wind. I can't escape the conclusion that hitting all those objectives will need one final through pass of the plane, and to achieve a final pass that ticks all the boxes is a fair test of anyone's planing skills!

Another thing that occurred is how tight the glue lines have to be before you, the craftsman, are satisfied with them? There's no right or wrong answer to this, a chicken coop doesn't require the same standard as exhibition furniture. But when I'm thinking about edge jointing I'm looking for a method that reliably allows me to deliver completely invisible glue lines like this,

All I can say is that the method of stop shavings that DC outlined, which is basically the method I see widely used by most of the many cabinet makers I know, allows me to consistently produce this quality of work. I'm not saying this is the only way of achieving this standard, but I am saying this is the standard of finished work that I'd judge any edge jointing method by. If it can't result in ultra tight and invisible glue lines then it may well be the right technique for other woodworkers, but it's not right for me.

The third and final point that I thought about was the issue of achieving straightness by one complete pass, versus a number of shorter planing strokes. As a joint surface then I think edge jointing demands a single final pass from a sharp bench plane, and that's also the way I believe you get really invisible glue lines. However, I know some people advocate using end to end passes of the plane to achieve flatness on a face surface (as opposed to an edge). I've read articles by Christopher Schwartz where he seems to advocate really long bench planes to mechanically surface a table top, relying on the plane's length and geometry to automatically deliver flatness after following a set planing regime. I'm less convinced by this. I used to work in a workshop that regularly turned out large Hay Rake style Dining Tables. The clients who could afford something like this were generally looking for real whoppers, anything from 14 seaters and up. So the challenge became flattening a table top that was far too large to pass through the workshop's machinery. The craftsmen who were tasked with this used hand planes, and their general view was that, if necessary, they were perfectly capable of doing the job with a tiny block plane. The reason is that their methodology was to identify the high points (using a pivoting straight edge) and progressively knock them down until the top was acceptably, visually, flat. I agree with that view (it's hard to disagree, the results spoke for themselves). But when edge jointing we're not producing a visual surface, we're producing a joint surface. And that requires, in my view at least, a completely different approach.

It's an interesting discussion, so I'd also thank people for their thought provoking contributions.

 

[Jacob]

...
When edge jointing, achieving straightness (or a minute hollow) is only one part of the challenge. As well as being straight the edge also needs to be square. Getting an edge perfectly square right along it's length is in my experience quite a bit harder than getting it straight.

Easier if you concentrate on matching edges to each other. If one has a bevel of 95º that's fine as long as the other has 85º. Works most easily if you put one board in a vice and sit the other on it to see how it goes. You don't need a straight edge and in fact you could do it without a square - but you might as well get them squarish before trying to fit them together

...... The craftsmen who were tasked with this used hand planes, and their general view was that, if necessary, they were perfectly capable of doing the job with a tiny block plane. The reason is that their methodology was to identify the high points (using a pivoting straight edge) and progressively knock them down until the top was acceptably, visually, flat.....

Exactly. That's how you flatten things with hand tools - with a gouge or adze even, and a straight edge comes in handy here. Much the same as the edge joining process except there you don't use a straight edge instead you use the other edge and maybe swap them over.
An alternative (for faces, not edges) is a bright torch with a focussed beam - it shows up bumps and hollows and all planing marks - so much so it can make you want to give up in despair!

 

[D_W]

I also agree, no visible glue line. Period. I have never joined a board that left one, it's unacceptable when you're a hobbyist because you have no excuse to say "well, the budget didn't allow it".

I don't know any local hand tool pros here except a guy who mostly gives classes, and I am not saying I am anything special with planes, but I could plane him under the table. He is generally teaching students who don't know how to sharpen or set up a plane, and he feels like my interests in using mostly or only hand tools are a little too obscure (I know him by chance outside of woodworking, he's a friend of the guy who got me into woodworking). He is a nice guy, though, that's just the state of the hobby and class attendees around here - you can't teach people like me, I'm not a good learner, but I am generally a good problem solver, which is how i make a living. Our local woodworking club is a lot more advanced, but I drew a crowd last year when I went there to pick up lumber in a smaller car and broke it down with a hand saw (the only person in the entire US who was felling beech for quartersawn billets - and supplying horizon - who supplies all of the makers here - happens to deliver to our local club for free). They only like tools that plug in, and there's lots of studio furniture talk there - i don't favor that. Nice guys, though, and productive.

Anyway, the method I showed, you have backed into now what the greatest advantage is of it with speed - you find square first (after removing bumps, etc), especially if you're working by hand, because there is no machine to get you close, and you're either working off mill marks and odd humps before this, or you're planing off your own hand saw marks. By the time I have found square end to end, I have found straight, sometimes just a little hollow. I have a set smoother for that if it matters, just like in the videos. Cambered and centered well, you can nip the ends off of the boards with an even cut without affecting the squareness, and since it's already a smoother, it's set so that it will only take off a couple of thousandths at a time. If doing that work with a try plane, where the edge jointing strokes tend to be 5-7 thousandths - the work is very quick, but the unintended hollow can be a little bit bigger and the smoother is more necessary to nip off the ends, and it makes me feel good to do as you say, which is to run over the whole surface with the smoother to make it uniform. Cap iron is essential with those (try plane) thicknesses to avoid tearout. With metal planes, not so much. If i am only edge jointing, I prefer metal planes, but I get straight and square faster with the try plane.

I like the stop shaving method that you mentioned (and did previously use it - it's reliable), but just figured that out of economy of time and effort, anyone working by hand would get to the point of doing it the way I'm doing it. It looks like I was wrong about that.

The biggest pain in the gones for a hobbyist like me has always been clamping large items without a helper, but at least as far as panels go, the plano clamp has eliminated that being anything more than an exercise in turning handles to tighten the contraption.

After all of this talk of squareness, etc, we're way off from the OP's original issue, which was just planing the ends off boards. Squareness wasn't part of the talk, so I didn't discuss it specifically or demonstrate it in the video. It would dilute the discussion and make it too long.

 

[Trafalgar]

If I kept planing an already straightened or slightly hollowed edge I'm quite sure that a hump would appear because to prevent it would take far more concentration than I'm willing to expend on such a simple task, and it might appear anyway depending on the plane I was using. Stopped shavings are the deal, then passes until you take one or two continuous shavings from end to end. And of course you do check for square to the reference face, again, all covered in just enough detail in Robert Wearing's books. Jointing up a panel is always a little more ticklish and invariably requires essentially inexplicable nips and tucks here and there to get things just so, at least mine do. Theory says this shouldn't be the case, but it is.

 

[D_W]

I squared the edge of the board that I planed in the video tonight just to make sure I'm not crazy (at least not based on this).

Through shavings, reasonably squared (dead nuts on the square, though the board is still rough on the face). I don't know how long it took a couple of minutes? the board is still flat - mostly - a slight hollow is developing (as usual).

I have no idea why I'd do it any other way. I'll bet 200 years ago, it would look more like my method than Robert Wearings.

(I do remember when I first started, fighting keeping things square while working the stop shaving method. It seemed like a bit of luck to get both dialed in. Now it takes an incorrectly set plane to not be about to hit square and flat quickly without doing anything other than just planing the board).

I really don't get why this is that uncommon - it's certainly not hard. There are lots of things in wearings book that work but take unnecessary time. I think this is one of them, but if it doesn't work for other people, so be it.

Challenge yourselves (not just in response to charlie, but to everyone) once in a while. I don't mean complicated layout, but expecting to plane flat and feel square, etc. And to get tools set up so that they're really dialed in (no issues with lateral adjustment, etc, no tearout, and so on....). It pays dividends in time later on.

 

[Jacob]

Sorry DW I just realised it was your video I was criticising. I thought you'd just lifted it from the net.
Have you checked your straight edge? i.e. in both directions - is it rigid and flat along the face as well as the edge? A bendy straight edge is no use used on edge in your way and can produce false results.
Is your plane perhaps slightly convex along the length of the sole?
Do you get the same result with different planes and different materials?
How do you account for others not achieving the same strange hollowing effect?

Why do you use a straight edge rather than just looking down the workpiece?

 

[D_W]

Sorry DW I just realised it was your video I was criticising. I thought you'd just lifted it from the net.
Have you checked your straight edge? i.e. in both directions - is it rigid and flat along the face as well as the edge? A bendy straight edge is no use used on edge in your way and can produce false results.
Is your plane perhaps slightly convex along the length of the sole?
Do you get the same result with different planes and different materials?
How do you account for others not achieving the same strange hollowing effect?

Why do you use a straight edge rather than just looking down the workpiece?

No worries, Jacob, it's a terrible video and was only put together to make a point. Both straight edges came with a two ten thousandths per foot flatness guarantee, they are milled steel and rigid. Of course, they are flat to each other. I'm sure they're right because I usually clip the ends to tune a matched panel if anything. Sometimes nothing are all, though, but the real economy in this comes with dimensioning and being able to just plane to a mark.

I get the same result with every plane, every wood. Some of my planes are convex a couple of thousandths (which I consider to be a bias in favor of the user), the two in the video are flat to within the smallest feeler that I have ...1 1/2 thousandths . It's only necessary that the sole isn't concave, there's no appreciable tearout, etc. The plane has to be working correctly, of course, to take an even shaving end to end.

No clue why nobody else has stepped forward yet. You'd think people would get tired of planing a hump into their work, which is why I worked to get to this point. Now it's just the default stroke. Because I'm planing flat by default, I can feel if a board isn't flat, the same as you can feel one that's out of square, or at least not the same squareness end to end.

 

[D_W]

Why do you use a straight edge rather than just looking down the workpiece?

I don't, usually, but I know most people are familiar with starrett and used it for proof. For a matched joint, the boards together tell the story. For cheap stuff like sticking, I use me bench top.

I usually use the straight edge on plane blanks, especially if I'm going to give the plane to someone else.

I made a video once jointing rough 8/4 ash and said "you should be able to feel and see roughly straight and square", and it got a lot of thumbs down! I thing people didn't like the video because it's not immediately helpful, and I jointed 8 pieces or so and didn't talk much. It bothers a fair number of people that I don't clean my shop for videos or edit them, and that I'm working in a small area. If I used all 900 sf of the shop, I'd have a bigger mess. I only use the whole area while spraying.

 

[G S Haydon]

Had a go myself at lunch time. Took an oak board, 1 1/2" wide, perhaps 3f long. Took in excess of 10 shavings and added to the hollow, can add photos later. Plane used was a Record 5 1/2.

The only way I can describe it is as Corneel did, try to dig the centre out. While that might sound crude, it's a pretty accurate description. If I think about digging hole, I find my emphasis changes to adding more pressure midway and light pressure at the ends.

I think the stop shaving method is sound, and, if making very unique items, it's very low risk when you've got a high risk task at hand. It's not a method I would use if I was preparing timber for a project or in normal workflow, just those times with high risk.

 

[D_W]

I think the stop shaving method is sound, and, if making very unique items, it's very low risk when you've got a high risk task at hand. It's not a method I would use if I was preparing timber for a project or in normal workflow, just those times with high risk.

Precisely. Eventually, if you keep doing what you're doing, it will also become what you do when there is "high risk" because everything you plane will be flat. I don't feel like I'm scooping at this point, I feel like I'm planing an even stroke - the easiest thing to do - it's a little less emphasis on the middle of the board than you would've made, but same line of thought. Think about where you want to remove the wood and do it evenly.

It will be faster, too.

I often state that the cap iron eliminated the single iron bench plane because of economics (aside from the fact that it just works better). I have no proof of that, but no other factor would've been as influential as money - that is what caused factories to squeeze out makers very early in the US). I believe that the method I use to true edges and faces would've existed along with the cap iron for the same reason - economics, and apprentices and masters would've had no tolerance for wasting time that didn't need to be wasted. There is no set of steps to go through. You plane the board square and you can feel if it's flat at the same time. If it doesn't feel untoward, it's flat when you have it squared, all at the same time.

That doesn't mean it's appropriate for someone with 3 months of woodworking experience, I guess. But, there are lots of little wastes of time (guides, flattening stones, etc) that are common these days, most of them can be worked past.

Anyway, if you have to use stop shavings, then you have to. If you don't, then you don't. If it's easier to do the latter (less effort), then I can't see why anyone would do the former just to agree with a text book or method that's reliable for people who don't plane that much.

Efficiency isn't that big of a deal for me, I have all the time in the world and no customers. I found stop shavings a little bit aggravating, though, because it interrupts a natural planing stroke. If I had a good power jointer and power planer, maybe I wouldn't care as much. There's not much left to do after good stationary power tools have done their work. Even if I don't have any use for efficiency, it's satisfying to understand it.

Thank you for making the attempt, Graham. I thought Kees' advice was quite good before it was poo pooed as being impossible. There is yet one more speed gain that we haven't discussed, but it probably applies more to wood straight off of a table saw or that is being prepared from rough. I found it out after I started making planes.

 

[Jacob]

If "stopped" shaving means not shaving the full length of a piece then everybody does it (including DW) when they have to i.e. to remove high points.
If the high points are not that high then everybody does what DW does - which is to dig in a bit by shifting pressure - you can see him doing this in the vid - his hand is off at the end of a the pass.
DaveC does the same but more specifically - whole plane off not just pressure off.
If there are no high points then digging in will produce a bit of a hollow - given a sharp plane and a steady action.
Most people will do all these things without giving it a thought.
Over-thinking causes confusion!

 

[D_W]

Already said that earlier. I just don't have to stop my plane to get stop shavings. If the board is high in the middle, my plane doesn't cut on the ends. At least not both of them. Before I get to that most of the time, I've already hit the edge of a board with a try plane, so there isn't much left to do. It's faster to joint with a try plane with a heavy shaving, too, but you have to be able to do it tearout free. Certainly removes out of square areas a lot faster.

I'm curious as to what steps the "stop shavers", the ones who physically stop the plane short of the edge of the board , what those folks do for squareness. When I first started to join panels, I did squareness first, then stop shavings, then check for squareness once more, and correct if needed. Now, it's all one process. When the try plane or metal jointer goes over a panel and doesn't feel high, anyway, or push your feel away from vertical, the board is ready to go. Check for squareness, and if it's a match planed panel (talking about furniture type work, if it was architectural work, probably no need to even check for square, you'd be able to see close enough), then check the match and adjust the panel left in the vise as needed, apply rule or straight edge to the face of the matched panel and if it's all in plane, off you go).

Of course we are all doing the same basic things, it's just a matter of how many steps. You can do a bunch, or you can find squareness and flatness all at the same time.

you can do it with thin shavings, or if you have a pile of 25 edges (not just panels ,but edges of any type), you can break out a try plane cutting a heavy shaving and do 99% of the work *very* quickly. The only detriment is that if you use a try plane for an extended length of time on edges only, it will go a little hollow in the middle.

Now, let's get back to the point of the OP - we don't know what he's doing other than that he says he's planing the ends off of boards. That doesn't have to be, that's the whole point. I don't much care about what's in various modern books, we can probably better much of it. IF we can't, then we ought to adhere to it.

Talking about all of this has been more than I'd ever thought about it before, other than that I made a conscious decision a couple of years ago that I'd like to move past stop shavings because I don't want to have to take them on the faces of boards, and I shouldn't have to keep checking for flatness on something that I just dropped an eighth or something with a try plane (could be a piece of cabinet sticking that was over thick, etc). I never had to type or say a word of it until giving the OP a reasonable answer.

I've got a superior method for taking the planer marks off of a board and having an initial smooth with no plane marks, too. One pass. Does anyone else need to save that time? Probably not. Do I think it's worth discussing? Maybe another day.

 

[D_W]

Side comment - I'd love to see some of the folks here who do a lot of work by hand just record a session of it. Maybe an hour or three, just with a camera in the background.

There is a lack of that on youtube, because most of the people posting videos are either copying something someone else did (and not really making anything), or they're trying to make short videos to make money.

Videos of people actually doing work don't really generate many views.

 

[Ttrees]

A bit late to the game here, as the workshop was a bit chaotic.
I done the test anyway, to see what the outcome would be.
Well, I'm afraid I cant be a reliable subject, as my bench flexes in use.
And to add more inconsistency... I have much too deep of a camber on the iron for the job.
So what was the outcome ?
After planing a length of timber flat which was around 1 1/2" or thereabouts, by about 7 foot,
and with a fresh sharpening afterwards on a Bailey no.5 1/2
I detected the end getting low after 6 shavings.
I could not see the low spot on each side of the timber though, so the camber might have been off center a bit.
I took some more strokes, focusing on the other side of the cambered iron to even off the high spots.
I did seem to be getting more of a hollow in the middle, although I felt this might just be a hump before the
end of the timber.
To do this again I would want to have a bench that does not flex, and do it with a very tiny camber
to have any surety.

I suspect if I had spot planed those high spots and taken more through shavings afterwards, it might have caused
this phenomenon.

Interesting topic
Tom

 

[custard]

I'm curious as to what steps the "stop shavers", the ones who physically stop the plane short of the edge of the board , what those folks do for squareness.

It'll vary according to board thickness. But for the 1/2" to 1 1/2" thick boards that are the lion's share of cabinet work I'll take a pass or two on the machine planer then clean off the scalloping with one or two through strokes of the bench plane. Then test for smooth, straight and square.

About half the time, maybe a bit more, that's it.

Sometimes though I'll mess up and the plane will skip or skew, generally at the start of the cut. Or I won't find the dead centre of the camber, or very occasionally I'll wander from side to side during the stroke. In any of these cases the board will fail one or more of the tests. I might go back to the machine planer, although in a shared workshop you've often then missed your turn. Alternatively you might have painstakingly matched the paired boards for a certain grain arrangement, so taking off a mill or more of wood for a second time with a machine planer might risk that. Therefore most times I'll go to stopped shavings using the bench plane. And it's during that process that I bring the board back to square.

I'll check every 4 to 6" and pencil in marks that tell me where I have to drift the camber to correct any problems. I'll keep checking, but by the time the stopped shaving sequence is done (a minute or two at most), I've generally got my eye in with the plane settings and the edge is square, but not yet smooth or straight. Then it's one or two through passes with the bench plane and I'll run a finger slowly along the edge feeling for smooth, a final check with a combi square for square/wind, and a long wooden straight edge or the blade of a 600mm combi square for straight or a minute hollow.

Next the two paired boards get tested against each other. One goes in the vice glue edge up, and the other gets placed on top of it glue edge down. I'll pivot the top board, listening for a slight scraping sound, and feeling for some friction out at the ends. If it pivots freely that's a clear fail. And I'll closely examine by eye for any gaps at the joint. If there's a sliver of daylight in the centre that's okay, but I want to know I can block it out just with hand pressure. I place the blade of a 300mm combi square vertically on the two boards at a few different positions and check that they're in line. Any concerns and I'll investigate until I've identified the specific problem and fixed it.

Next the boards get placed on waxed bearers for a dry glue up in the cramps. If the grain pattern across the boards is now out of whack this is the last chance to shuffle the overlong boards back and forth to make amends. If all's well then I generally glue up there and then. I don't like leaving edges for more than 24 hours to gather dust, oxidise, or get dinged.

One last point. I'm fussier with tight grained pale timbers than with open grained dark timbers. Just because glue lines are more obvious against a pale, smooth background. PVA gives the best glue lines, but if the job demands hide, UF, or epoxy glue then I crank up the fussiness a notch to get acceptable results. I'm looking for tight, strong joints, with invisible glue lines and I'll do the least amount of work to achieve that.

 

[Trafalgar]

I made the top to this cherry desk in about two and half hours from rough lumber -- planed, jointed, glued, breadboard ends mortise and tenon joinery, pegged, and glued, top finished planed, both sides, one coat of oil applied (it had several others over a period of days). Perhaps this was slow by the planing experts' standards, but as I recall the work seemed to proceed fairly well from this furnituremaker's perspective. The edge jointing was accomplished with the stop-shaving method we've been discussing.