cabinet pitch - hand planes

[G S Haydon]

I have a wooden Jack 47.5 (I think). It's not so old, I can grab a couple of pictures tomorrow if interested.

 

[Corneel]

Sure!

 

[Woody2Shoes]

But why "York pitch"?

Certainly, York was an important centre of plane making, but as far as I am aware, York plane makers made any pitch angle their customers wanted. Peter Young confirms this but offers no suggestion that York Pitch started in York.

It's probably an unanswerable question.

Same reason that a full-pitched delivery in cricket is called a 'Yorker' .................. OK, maybe not!

I wondered about this too and Googled (googlied??) "yorker" and saw that there's a suggestion that the cricketing word may be derived from a middle-English word for "to trick or deceive" (as a yorker basically wrong-foots the batsman) - maybe, just maybe, an early woodworker discovered a "trick" with his plane iron? Cheers, W2S

 

[swagman]

Although a 45 degree bed is referred to as Common Pitch, 47.5 does seem to have been the more popular choice in the U.K for double iron wooden bodied bench planes.

Its likely that 47.5 was considered much more effective at working a wider range of timbers that included hardwoods.

 

[Vann]

Although a 45 degree bed is referred to as Common Pitch, 47.5 does seem to have been the more popular choice in the U.K for double iron wooden bodied bench planes.

Its likely that 47.5 was considered much more effective at working a wider range of timbers that included hardwoods.

I'm not lucky enough to own one, but I'm sure I've read that Norris smoothers are all 47.5 degrees.

My tuppence worth.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[D_W]

I'd be interested in seeing what the difference is considered to be between the two pitches. I'd have trouble telling which was which in anything that I've planed, though the extra 2.5 degrees of clearance might be nice.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I've just checked two wooden jack planes, both of them Ebay finds for not very much, and both fairly 'heavy patina'. Neither have a maker's name, both have grain in the stocks at about 45 degrees to the sole - so we can safely assume they were not 'premium' tools! One has an iron by Onions, the other by Gilpin - no guarantee either are original to the planes, of course, but the wedges fit quite well, so they may be; that might suggest a Birmingham origin.

One is bedded at 47.5 degrees - which adds to the findings of others mentioned above. The other is bedded at ..... 50 degrees! The taper of the irons takes about 1/2 degree off each (I measured that!), so EP would be about 47 and 49 degrees. The 50 degree plane has a slightly tighter mouth (about 3/32") than the 47.5 degree (about 5/32"), though as both planes have had their soles trued an unknown number of times plus one (my reconditioning), it's probably as well not to read too much into that - though both irons are close to full length.

As to difference in use, I can't say. I've not used either plane enough yet to notice any difference.

Just goes to show; you live and learn - and never assume anything!

 

[nabs]

I checked my extensive collection of wooden jacks and jointers (one of each) - I think one is hand made ( Thomas Turner jointer - end of the 19th century?) and the jack I suspect is factory made (Preston) and later - both are 47.5.

( incidentally, a tip I got from woodcentral was to check that the sole has been planed/worn parallel to the top - apparently they are often planed narrower towards the toe over time and this will change the pitch measurement wrt the sole)

I do take the point about what kind of impact 2.5 degrees would have in use, and I am not qualified to comment in terms of practical experience, but it is hard to believe it is arbitrary.

Take for instance Vann's comment re. Norris

I'm not lucky enough to own one, but I'm sure I've read that Norris smoothers are all 47.5 degrees.

..and indeed 47.5 is referred to as "Norris Pitch" here : http://sauerandsteiner.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-we-can-do-this-plane.html

but having looked at David Russel's (excellent) Antique Woodworking Tools where he documents dozens of Norris smoothers (including the bed pitches*), it seems they actually produced smoothers in a whole range of pitches from 45 right up to 53 degrees. A maker famous for accurate workmanship must have been creating these variations deliberately, surely?

Nick
* (Mr Russel only provides pitches in whole numbers -sorry 47.5 fans!)

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I think it's worth bearing in mind that the old boys almost certainly didn't think/work in degrees (and they didn't think/work in metric for similar reasons!) - they thought in terms of ratios. I reckon that a ratio of 10 to 11 would give a pitch angle of about 47.7 degrees. My 120-plus-year-old roof is pitched at a ratio of 11 to 10 (42 point something degrees) and I've never measured the rise and the going of my staircase. Cheers, W2S

 

[AndyT]

Another tiny sample of Jack planes.

Unreadable maker, Atkins and Sons iron, 40 degrees
Preston, 47.5 degrees.
Twentieth century Emir razee style, 47 degrees.
Unreadable maker, Marples iron, 45 degrees.

I also found that a smoother I bought just because it had a rear, closed handle is at 50 degrees. Something I'd not noticed until this discussion prompted a closer look. No useful markings on the plane. Irons by Ibbertson.

 

[D_W]

The whole norris line of planes (and others who did make some models with very fine mouths) is interesting to me as a sometimes low-skilled maker. I've made three infills and made the mouths really tight on all of them (it's not hard to do on a metal plane, but it does take a little bit of hand work that a manufacturer might not have loved, thus the larger mouth on the norris no 5s).

From a practical standpoint, with the use of the cap iron, there would be no difference in performance between 45 and 47 1/2. It is, in fact, difficult to see a difference with a set cap when the pitch is 45 vs. 50. It's my opinion that if someone tried a bunch of different angles for a plane intended to work all woods, you could land on anything between 45 and 50 and not notice too much difference unless you started to count minutes. Maybe at 50 you'd notice a little if you do heavy work.

I also noticed when I was building single iron planes, and using only single iron planes, a mouth has to be exceedingly small, even at 50 degrees, to really deal with anything difficult unless you just do fluff shavings. Some more experienced than me mentioned that if the wood is just a little poorly behaved instead of a lot, then 50 is good. Our wood in the states just isn't that great, anymore. You order curly, you get a lot of straight stuff, you order straight, and half of your wood is curly.

Personally, just curious about all of this because my opinions on planes were completely revised after I'd dimensioned 100 board feet or so of wood, and they haven't changed a lot since then. I wonder all kinds of things, like:
* did apprentices notice a setup that took 10% more effort to plane (maybe not, unless they were working for a time mark)
* did masters notice when an apprentice was 10% faster, almost certainly
* when did planes become primarily fitting and smoothing, vs. being used in a fair bit of heavy work

And...a million other pointless questions.

 

[G S Haydon]

Not had time to head into the garage but it seems like Andy has similar stats to what I had.

For a left field look http://pinie.cz/en/wooden-planes, I have a few but not had a moment to use. The pictorial instruction on the backs of the packing boxes they come in are quite concise and instructive. Smoothing plane bedded at 49 with a double iron http://pinie.cz/en/our-products/smoothing-plane.

They are very "workmanlike", however I'd like to take my Pinie try plane for a spin and see how it performs.

 

[AndyT]

Graham, your mention of Pinie reminds me of my £5 East German Universal Plane, which (on page 3 of a long discussion) I found could be set at either 45 or 49 degrees.

That was back in 2011 - new readers click here

ugly-duckling-t54430.html

Maybe its unsung designers were really onto something!

 

[nabs]

I think it's worth bearing in mind that the old boys almost certainly didn't think/work in degrees (and they didn't think/work in metric for similar reasons!) - they thought in terms of ratios. I reckon that a ratio of 10 to 11 would give a pitch angle of about 47.7 degrees. My 120-plus-year-old roof is pitched at a ratio of 11 to 10 (42 point something degrees) and I've never measured the rise and the going of my staircase. Cheers, W2S

i think this is a very good point Woody - 13 in 12 gives an angle of about 45.5 - I looked (in vain) to see if there was some wierd Roofing terminology that might have been handed down to the plane makers, but it seems not

It is a shame, but I expect that there will never be a definitive explanation for why the makers made these apparently subtle distinctions between e.g 45 and 47.5 bed angles - given all the many variables like wood type, double vs single iron, mouth gap, pitch etc - I suppose it may just have come down to tradition and preferences as much as anything else

 

[D_W]

Not had time to head into the garage but it seems like Andy has similar stats to what I had.

For a left field look http://pinie.cz/en/wooden-planes, I have a few but not had a moment to use. The pictorial instruction on the backs of the packing boxes they come in are quite concise and instructive. Smoothing plane bedded at 49 with a double iron http://pinie.cz/en/our-products/smoothing-plane.

They are very "workmanlike", however I'd like to take my Pinie try plane for a spin and see how it performs.

That sounds ideal, "workmanlike". I had a primus smoother at one point, the ad copy for it makes it sound like it's just better than a stanley plane in every single way (which the maker might assume), but the mechanism in it made me wish that it had no adjuster at all. Those planes would be more my speed. (I can't find any shortcoming with Stanley's plane, though, either).

Same goes for infills. The adjusters usually cause me more trouble than good, and if I go back and make a couple more at some point, they will be sans adjuster.

 

[G S Haydon]

Andy, that is some innovation! Thanks for the link

DW, workmanlike with a dash of crude. When I feel up to it I'll try and make them do something!