Advice appreciated what plane?

[ED65]

Yup. Doesn't need to be a couple of millimetres though, less than 1mm will do.

 

[D_W]

This is, incidentally, why modern flatter cap irons...aren't working as well for some users compared to a bog-standard thin cap in a Bailey-pattern plane

Who are these users? Do you have a link?

I use both an older Record and a Lie Nielsen with closely set cap irons, I can't tell any difference in their ability to tame tear out, both planes get the job done equally well.

I think he's referring to the new cap irons coming with something less than ideal as initial angle. If you work them, they work fine. They've lost the spring that older cap irons have (which is only a preference thing of mine).

If the leading edge of them is set comparable to a stanley cap, they'll work the same - both can be susceptible to slip-under shavings in the hardest of wood (cocobolo and bubinga, etc), but I haven't had issues with either type.

A friend who got me into woodworking exemplifies the issue with the LN caps, though - they come with a blunt (or used to) wall on the front, which is less than ideal for tearout mitigation. I don't know if LN provided a guide somewhere, but there wasn't anything comprehensive in the plane box, so he honed his cap iron to 25 degrees and it promptly bent the first time he was planing with it (shaving runs into it, dents the edge as if someone had tapped it with a hammer).

They sent him a new one and said "needs to be steeper than 25 degrees". Obviously. But as an infrequent user, he was offended and took it as them criticizing him.

The only real issue with LN caps was that some were too short to be used set close to the edge (the adjuster runs out of travel). In the last several weeks, someone pointed out on another forum that the luban (LN copies), at least in some cases, have this flaw copied in and can't be used with the cap close set. When the Chinese copy something in hand, they really copy it exactly.

So, not technically more capable (the old vs. the new), but the shape of the old style is already where you need it to be and it can be adjusted to the edge and past if desired, and still work in the plane.

Though "everyone already knew about the cap iron" (Charlie Stanford always tells us everyone knew about it - even though he can't seem to notice a difference between it and a primus plane with the mouth set tight), LN shipped planes with too-short cap irons for half a decade and nobody ever noticed. But they all know, you know? (as LN would - they corrected the issue once they knew about it).

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

David, while the LN and Veritas chipbreakers work well when the angle at the leading edge is increased to 50 degrees, I also like to add a little bend to the front to create some spring. A little spring is beneficial. My complaint about the Stanley chipbreakers is that the ones I have are thin and have too much spring. That makes them less reliable when setting up.

As you know, I identified the Luban chipbreaker as a LN knock off - design errors and all! What a hoot that was!

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Woody2Shoes]

The thinking behind shaping the top of the leading edge of the chipbreaker ties in quite nicely with the analysis done in this old Japanese video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdk4uRYioZg

Also here: http://planetuning.infillplane.com/html ... study.html

Cheers, W2S

 

[custard]

Thank you David and Derek, I didn't know that.

Maybe I just got lucky with my tools, when I look at a Lie Nielsen cap iron next to the Record equivalent I can't see that much difference in their angles,

On Monday I was again up to the eyeballs in tear out prone wood. I'd got out some spectacularly figured stuff for an upcoming job,

But the timber yard had massacred the surfaces,

Even taking infinite care with my planer/thicknesser (back bevels, sharp knives, low feed speed, 0.1mm shaving cuts) I was still getting patches of problems,

There was no option but to set to with a hand plane and a closely set cap iron,

Took a couple of hours, but once again that sorted everything out,

Record or Lie Nielsen, doesn't seem to make much difference. I might give the backs of the cap irons a bit of a polish, but apart from that I don't do anything special, yet the results speak for themselves. I'm working with highly figured timbers almost every day, and DW's campaign to promote the benefits of a closely set cap iron has had a really positive impact on my working practises.

 

[Chris152]

I've no idea about the ins and outs of cap irons etc, but that's a truly stunning piece of wood. I can hardly see it as flat.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

when I look at a Lie Nielsen cap iron next to the Record equivalent I can't see that much difference in their angles,

Prof Kawai reckons any angle on the cap iron between 40 and 60 is sufficient to produce what he calls the "cap iron effect" i.e. a beneficial influence in reducing tear-out. My ((very good) LN knockoff!) QS chipbreakers have a bevel of somewhere around 25-30 degrees. By putting a slightly steeper 'micro-bevel' on the front edge, I guess I'm moving it firmly into the 40-60 range identified by Prof. kawai - it works nicely for me. I find I can get better results on things like yew with my QS #4 with a micro-bevelled cap iron than I can with my old Stanley #4 - all things being (roughly) equal.

Your results clearly illustrate that your un-tweaked LN and Record cap irons work very nicely too! Looking at that figure makes my eyes go funny...

Cheers, W2S

 

[D_W]

Thank you David and Derek, I didn't know that.

Maybe I just got lucky with my tools, when I look at a Lie Nielsen cap iron next to the Record equivalent I can't see that much difference in their angles,


On Monday I was again up to the eyeballs in tear out prone wood. I'd got out some spectacularly figured stuff for an upcoming job,


But the timber yard had massacred the surfaces,


Even taking infinite care with my planer/thicknesser (back bevels, sharp knives, low feed speed, 0.1mm shaving cuts) I was still getting patches of problems,


There was no option but to set to with a hand plane and a closely set cap iron,


Took a couple of hours, but once again that sorted everything out,


Record or Lie Nielsen, doesn't seem to make much difference. I might give the backs of the cap irons a bit of a polish, but apart from that I don't do anything special, yet the results speak for themselves. I'm working with highly figured timbers almost every day, and DW's campaign to promote the benefits of a closely set cap iron has had a really positive impact on my working practises.

That is one of the most gorgeous pieces of wood that I've seen. The fantastic uniform curl and the grain under it sawn straight down the board. Fantastic figure and properly sawn in an era of boards that generally have runout somewhere in their length due to the automated mills.

I'm glad that at least a few people who work wood often have mentioned the cap and using it. It's almost always divisive with backseat drivers: "you can do that a whole bunch of different ways".

Of course. And they all take longer. Unless you're lucky enough to have a giant spiral planer or oscillating multidrum or wide belt sander.

The LN cap iron information is esoteric, just interesting to me because I thought we'd heard the last of it until someone popped up recently as mentioned trying to diagnose why they couldn't get their cap iron set close to the edge of their plane on a luban.

The LN planes affected at the time (this is 5 or 6 years ago now) were those with 2 3/8th irons. If there were others, I don't recall. I have a single LN plane now (bronze 4) and it's properly drilled. And a delight to use on hard woods. A bit of a drag on pine.

 

[richarddownunder]

[/quote]This is, incidentally, why modern flatter cap irons (case in point) aren't working as well for some users compared to a bog-standard thin cap in a Bailey-pattern plane, because what angle is that?[/quote]

Following on from this, I had a go at adding a ~60° micro-bevel on the front of my Norris smoother cap iron - which is a little like the LN one pictured. So, did it improve things? It is hard to tell, it wasn't a controlled experiment, but subjectively, I planed the surface of a difficult bit of mahogany and got very little tear out -better, I think, than before. I did the same on several other planes with mixed results. In some cases (e.g. the Record SS I have never got working well...as opposed to my war finish Record SS that beats them all) it seemed to make a difference and it seems to have less tear out, in others not so much. So, maybe in some cases this has further optimised planes that were already mostly (apart from the Record) working well. So thanks for the tip.

Cheers
Richard