Accurate angles

[MikeG.]

So did you make your own shooting board and if so how would you have done it with the tools you had that you were unable to make accurate cuts with............

If you can't plane a straight edge on a piece of ply, then glue some sandpaper down to something flat, and rub the edge along that. That's the entirety of the accuracy you need for the board (just glue that bit of ply to another bit of ply and the board is done). For the fence, you simply need your plane sitting in place with the blade retracted, a square square, and a short piece of straight wood for the fence. If you aren't confident that your fence is straight, do precisely what you just did for the ply. Glue the underside of the fence and put a screw through the board into the near end underside (of the fence). Offer up the square to the sole of the plane, and manouevre your fence until it is square. Clamp this in place and check again, then whack another screw in. Job jobbed.

I reckon that someone in their first week of woodworking could manage that.

 

[powertools]

Thanks for all that advice but it is not me who has the problem and this is not my first week of woodworking.
Possibly you would need to know if the op actually owns a hand plane to know if your solution is of any help.

 

[Racers]

So did you make your own shooting board and if so how would you have done it with the tools you had that you were unable to make accurate cuts with.
To help the op would need advice on getting the best from the tools at hand and then how to progress from there.

If you can’t make it accurate make it adjustable.
My shooting board is.

Pete

 

[Jacob]

..... A bellied chisel would not perform as well versus one with the back (just behind the edge) flattened? .....

Why not?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Bring out the popcorn. :lol:

 

[thetyreman]

\/

 

[shed9]

Bring out the popcorn. :lol:

I ran out yesterday.

 

[SammyQ]

Because Jacob, as you know perfectly well, the 'belly' would hold the cutting edge higher than the belly on the wood. This would cause cuts above where intended, so trimming tenon cheeks ( for example) would be inaccurate and need tedious, frustrating, remedial action.
Everybody, from Joyce, to Charlesworth, from Wearing to Peters advocates careful flattening of the first inch or so behind the cutting edge on the rear of the chisel.
Sorted.

Sam

 

[SammyQ]

And you three other grinning twerps can 'get sorted' too! :x
Cardinal rule, number one: " don't poke the monkey through the bars". 8)

Sam

 

[Jacob]

Because Jacob, as you know perfectly well, the 'belly' would hold the cutting edge higher than the belly on the wood.

Oh I see. What you would do in that case is lift the chisel a touch until the cutting edge is where you want it.

...
Everybody, from Joyce, to Charlesworth, from Wearing to Peters advocates careful flattening of the first inch or so behind the cutting edge on the rear of the chisel.
Sorted.

Sam

I'd be surprised if that was true - in so many words at least.
The first inch or so gets flattened in the normal course of sharpening when you turn it to take off the burr. Unless you flatten the whole face (which some maniacs do recommend) over time this means that a chisel of plane blade face becomes slightly convex as more material is lost from the first inch or so. What Charleworth calls "bellied" . Not actually a prob - all old well-used blades/chisels are like that. "Flattening" is a recent fashion.
In severely blunt case you can get an edge more quickly by lifting plane /chisel blade a touch to get a little bevel on the face side. This no prob either.
PS Dave actually recommends this and calls it "the ruler trick" but its much easier without the ruler. :lol:
Phew, nice to get away from Brexit and back to the real world! :shock:
PPS Just checked - neither Joyce nor Wearing mention flattening at all in their sharpening suggestions. I doubt Peters does - I'll have a look when I find his book.

 

[galleywood]

quixoticgeek
What do you think of the replies so far?

 

[SammyQ]

Jacob? Suggest you re-examine D.C.'a extensive comments on Japanese chisels...I cant be bothered to repudiate the rest of the flame post, save to point out said authors had magazine articles as well as books? End of.

Sam

 

[Phil Pascoe]

PS Dave actually recommends this and calls it "the ruler trick" but its much easier without the ruler. :lol:

Yes. For a plane iron, not a chisel.

 

[quixoticgeek]

In short. Overwhelmed. Hadn't expected the answers I got really.

I had to leave most of my tools behind when I moved, so am kinda starting again from scratch. I have a very small subset of tools available for use at the local Hackerspace, but on the whole the quality is not great (I binned 2 squares last week when I realised they weren't square, and I didn't want anyone else wasting materials). So it means that I'm looking to buy tools to use for this project. I don't have a plane, and I left the mitre saw behind (having concluded it was crap). The chop saw I have access to at the hackerspace is not accurate, it's been used and abused by too many people. I do have access to a table saw, and a router table. The table saw can cut 90° only. A suggestion from a friend here was to use the router table with a 30° bit in it (https://www.ecotools.nl/hm-fasefrees-35-mm-30/). If I cut the wood to a 90° angle with the table saw, I can then impart the angle with the router bit. Touch it up with sandpaper, and it should give me the angles I need.

Taking evening classes in Carpentry are not really an option, so learning how to use a sounding board (I had to google that to find out what it is), unless through books or youtube is not going to be easy.

You've all given me lots of answers, but I'm not sure I can pin any one of them as "Aha! that's the solution". All of them require a massive out lay on tools for what I thought would be some simple cuts. I had half expected a "Yeah, that saw sucks, but this one here which is 3x the price is what I have and it works good", or "This mitre block for €30 on amazon should get you pretty close to what you want...". I think this is largely down to me asking the wrong question.

Things like the making a plane work for the task looks like it would involve buying a plane, some waterstones and a grinder to sharpen it, and then the materials to make a sounding board. While these are all tools I would like to own in the long run, it's a big outlay, and any tools I own I have to transport in a backpack on a bike too and from the workshop. Not to mention it kinda takes the momentum out of the project if I have to sacrifice a few days to learn a tangential skill, and make the relevant tooling. Again my bad for asking a poorly worded question initially.

Thank you all for your answers, sorry I asked such a poorly worded question in the first place.

J

 

[Jacob]

Jacob? Suggest you re-examine D.C.'a extensive comments on Japanese chisels...I cant be bothered to repudiate the rest of the flame post, save to point out said authors had magazine articles as well as books? End of.

Sam

Haven't read Dave on Japanese chisels (cant be bothered) - but they are different - shorter, wider, and with distinctive hollow formed on the face. This makes actual flattening of the whole face quite easy and the best way to go - that's the whole idea of the hollow.
n.b. They almost invariably have rounded bevels in the old fashioned way as the Japanese don't (didn't) use honing guides.
Western chisels are longer, not hollow, except often ground slightly concave when new (in my experience). This makes initial sharpening very easy but it gets progressively slower as the small flat behind the edge develops.
You don't have to believe everything you read in woodwork mags you know! Most of it is just trying to sell stuff and there are lots of dodgy guru self promotions.
In fact the popular notion that you have to "flatten" the face of new chisel/plane blades is very bad advice and must have wasted thousands of hours of time and even spoilt some perfectly OK tools. There have been threads on here with beginners attempting to flatten the faces of brand new whole sets of expensive chisels. It takes 30 seconds to hone a new chisel, never easier than when brand new.

 

[Jacob]

PS Dave actually recommends this and calls it "the ruler trick" but its much easier without the ruler. :lol:

Yes. For a plane iron, not a chisel.

Chisel too if necessary. You don't have to obey instructions!

 

[SammyQ]

Thank you phil.p.

Secondly, it's beneath my dignity to prolong filibustering. End of.

The original poster(quixoticgeek?)is welcome to continue to ask questions.

Sam

 

[OscarG]

Hi Julia

I think the easiest way to solve this is get a powered mitre saw. You could pick up a decent DeWalt, Bosch, Makita (one of the big makes) fairly easy on ebay, there's loads of them.

It'll always be useful for future woodworking.

Good luck!

 

[woodbloke66]

Haven't read Dave on Japanese chisels (cant be bothered) - but they are different - shorter, wider, and with distinctive hollow formed on the face. This makes actual flattening of the whole face quite easy and the best way to go - that's the whole idea of the hollow.
n.b. They almost invariably have rounded bevels in the old fashioned way as the Japanese don't (didn't) use honing guides.

I don't intend to get drawn into one of these prolonged, interminable 'discussions' on bevels, sharpening etc because it's all been said and done dozens of times, but so you know Jacob, the 'hollow(s)' on a Japanese chisel is called the 'ura' and it's there because the hard cutting steel is very, very hard...much, much harder (around RC64 or more) than Western chisels which are a bit flabby in comparison Were the 'ura' not ground into the back, you'd be there for a month of Mondays trying in vain to flatten, prepare (or whatever) the blade. Grinding the 'ura' effectively removes a vast amount steel in contact with the cutting medium, usually a waterstone in Japan which then makes the whole process of working on the back much quicker, as you rightly say.

Last and finally, so you again know (as you should do by now :lol: ), you never, ever, ever deliberately put a bevel on the underside of a chisel. Ever...end of - Rob