Face side

[D_W]

I do have an 80, certainly. I haven't used it in a while, but I've got it and a 212, which is a nice little plane (that one is lie nielsen).

I guess the issue here is that it's not "new" (the cap iron), it just seems minimally mastered.

I agree that ash is troublesome to plane. You can plane it tearout free without trouble with a cap iron, sharpness isn't an issue - you can do it with a washita stone. Maybe the distinction here is that there is a difference between tearout free and complete uniformity at the surface.

Aside from ash, I probably don't plane much similar to what you're describing - never been into boats. I did recently work with a lot of ash, though, and for what it looks like, it's a nuisance to get perfect surface uniformity (which I'd say is a higher standard than tearout free).

You probably don't know the names of the people being discussed because they're in the states. I don't know who many people on here are, but that's OK.

I agree on the premium planes, they don't actually do anything better. They are guaranteed to work out of the box for a beginner, though.

 

[Bluekingfisher]

I even watched your video about the capiron and as far as I could gather you said the same as I was taught at school in the early 80s, set it close but not too close.


I need to watch this, see what the fuss is about. Where do I find it? Youtube? under what title?

David

 

[Trafalgar]

I'm not sure it qualifies as a crowd, I thought there were only three people in the world who are initiated in "the secret of the capiron",

It is certainly an elite group of people you've never heard of. This much is for sure.

It's a pretty new (re-new) thing, eh? The only guy who is actually doing it makes a living off of his work. Certainly, he has no clue what he's talking about if he makes a living without needing subsidy from a spouse or museum or school/college/instructional job.

Brian Holcombe does a pretty good job demonstrating a planed surface that's been worked up with a double iron. Certainly he doesn't complain about how hard it is to be a member of the secret society. It was pretty easy to put two planes in his hands, because I knew he'd know how to use them.

The rest of you guys, I'm not sure if you could figure it out with the cap iron included and the adjuster excluded. Again...you guys are "so accomplished" but somehow you're in the weeds on something really simple. I don't get it, never will.

Who are you talking about in your first paragraph?

 

[AndyT]

Who are you talking about in your first paragraph?

And does he have any useful information on the concept of the Face Side, for those readers who don't want every hand tools thread to divert onto a few overplayed topics?

 

[iNewbie]

I even watched your video about the capiron and as far as I could gather you said the same as I was taught at school in the early 80s, set it close but not too close.


I need to watch this, see what the fuss is about. Where do I find it? Youtube? under what title?

David

Ill assume its this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hylKg_7ZvY

 

[D_W]

Perhaps there are some a lot better and simpler than mine. Richard MacGuire, perhaps, I know a lot of people would rather get the message from him.

I wasn't reading this board when all of this came up in the states, but it's strange that almost nobody on any of the other boards said anything about the cap iron. Perhaps I'm leaning on it more than most people do (but leaning on it has been very beneficial in terms of using it and narrowing kit under the bench).

 

[D_W]

Who are you talking about in your first paragraph?

And does he have any useful information on the concept of the Face Side, for those readers who don't want every hand tools thread to divert onto a few overplayed topics?

No worries, I'm not going to push it any further in this thread. It's not worth fighting about, or even mild disagreement at this point. I only responded because it was brought up - if you go back, you'll find I didn't initiate it.

(presumably the drawer front question has been answered pretty well...so well, in fact, that there was discussion of marking legs..)

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Richard, stop in my side of the States if you come over here again ...
I'm a little bit baffled by all of you guys who are many times more accomplished than me ..but can't seem to regularly rely on planing to finish most surfaces (and all of the flat ones). If you don't want to, that's fine, but to say that it can't be done? Baffling.

I'm not saying planing to finish ready can't be done David. What I am saying is that for speed in most commercial environments, other strategies are used. When dealing with high volume work, it's more likely the strategy is to get the surface good enough for a similarly good quality finish, which is not necessarily the same as immaculately prepared and ready for a premium finish. (Ninety five per-cent of clients can't tell the difference between a good and immaculate finish anyway, and many are hugely impressed with merely shoddy)

I can't recall all the items I've made this week (a lot), but polish/finish ready basically means smooth off the worst blemishes with coarse abrasive paper, fill the holes, and finish sand at 240 grit - job done, and off to the polisher/ painter.

It's a different story with one-off, low volume, high value custom furniture, where time is built in for a premium preparation job, but even here, I resort to scraping and sanding after planing to tease out those troublesome areas of ribbon figure, knots, reversed grain, etc. And once you sand a small show area, you're committed to sanding everything that's similarly on show to ensure a consistent surface under whatever polish is applied at the end.

I could do it all with only hand planes, but the time needed can really stretch on and on with particularly troublesome wood, and it becomes unprofitable to do so, and so the compromise has to be made of reaching out for the scraper(s), and abrasives, whether hand sanding or power sanding.

I certainly know how to tune and sharpen a plane and set a cap-iron, and I truly enjoy it when a hand plane sings, but even a good quality and well set-up plane has its limitations.

Incidentally, I'd be pleased to catch up with you if, and when, we make it back over there - I hope you're not in hot and humid Texas, my previous home when we lived there, and we happen to be over in July/August, ha, ha. Slainte.

 

[D_W]

Hi Richard - I'm in Pennsylvania. It's pretty easy weather here, unless you don't like cold in the middle of winter.

I agree with your assessment, sometimes I get caught up in the one off world.

I worked in a 500 man cabinet factory when I was in college, and I guarantee there was no hand plane in the location, but there certainly were plenty of wide belt sanders and things of the like. The doors looked just fine (no clue which side of the drawers was the face side).

Once you add wide belt sanders and the like, it's a whole different ball game. The guy with the plane might as well put it in the trunk and drive away.

 

[Trafalgar]

This work was all sanded. If this is supposed to an inferior surface plus finish I'd be happy to take it any day:

http://pollaro.com/portfolio/ruhlmann/cabinets/

 

[Bluekingfisher]

I even watched your video about the capiron and as far as I could gather you said the same as I was taught at school in the early 80s, set it close but not too close.


I need to watch this, see what the fuss is about. Where do I find it? Youtube? under what title?

David

Ill assume its this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hylKg_7ZvY

Thanks mate, I came across DWs site on YouTube.

David

 

[Trafalgar]

Set it so close your smoother won't cut. Then back it off a bare fraction until it does.

 

[D_W]

Set it so close your smoother won't cut. Then back it off a bare fraction until it does.

That about summarizes it. If it's too close and doesn't cut or provides too much resistance, back it off. If you get tearout, set it closer.

Should pretty much be able to set it by feel, dead on, in a couple of weeks, and never reset except when sharpening.

 

[Trafalgar]

All covered in Planecraft!

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Same advice in Wearing's essential woodworker, along with some other tear out reduction strategies,

 

[D_W]

All covered in Planecraft!

There should be a reference or 100 out there before 2012, eh?

 

[Trafalgar]

Same advice in Wearing's essential woodworker, along with some other tear out reduction strategies,

Yes, Wearing's entry is essentially Planecraft typeset slightly differently. If it ain't broke....

 

[Trafalgar]

All covered in Planecraft!

There should be a reference or 100 out there before 2012, eh?

Of course. Posted before and posted again -- more than one way to control tearout as mentioned in both Planecraft and innumerable other references one of which is:

http://www.amgron.clara.net/shavingaperture53.html

One's planes have two adjustments that have an effect. No real need to prefer one at the expense of the other.

File it under: 'why be a one-trick pony?'

 

[D_W]

All covered in Planecraft!

There should be a reference or 100 out there before 2012, eh?

Of course. Posted before and posted again -- more than one way to control tearout as mentioned in both Planecraft and innumerable other references one of which is:

http://www.amgron.clara.net/shavingaperture53.html

One's planes have two adjustments that have an effect. No real need to prefer one at the expense of the other.

File it under: 'why be a one-trick pony?'

That's not a very good example because the writer doesn't really know what he's talking about. Do you recall the part where he suggested that the shavings need to be something like .03" for the cap iron to break chips? In reality, the cap iron has a great deal of effect with shavings of .003. It's only when you get below 2 thousandths with most wood that you really eliminate the chance of prying up something that affects the surface.

So, again, I'll wait for the sources of pre-2012 *discussions* where someone other than warren actually accurately discusses the cap iron. Because it appears almost nobody does. There are, however, plenty of references to the cap iron, marginalization of its effectiveness, description of the need for extreme sharpness or small mouth aperture, and promotion of a technique that takes much more time and effort to get the same result as a reasonably well set cap iron.

And we start another lap around the same circle, and we'll be in the same place. Charlie, you can say something again about scraping curves, we're on a railroad track making laps, anyway. there will be a few people who will discover just how much better the cap iron is on a flat surface than anything else. The folks who don't want to find that out but who want to just argue about it instead, i'm not really interested. they can formulate arguments while feeding door panels through a wide belt sander (admittedly, a piece of equipment I wouldn't mind having myself).

 

[Trafalgar]

Again, I ask, who is Warren? What does he make?

If you follow the chart in Planecraft it's clear they're recommending a progression of the cap iron setting down to somewhere around 1/128" of an inch away from the edge or closer, though nobody would suggest that this is something one would actually measure. The simple math is obvious. The implication that the cap iron should be adjusted for desired effect is equally clear and moreover that extremely close settings are being recommended for difficult to plane woods when they are encountered.

Warren, whoever the hell he is, has discovered nothing.

The editors of Planecraft had Warren's personal revelation (read reinvention of the wheel) beat by at least 50 years. The admonition in the book with regard to the cap iron is crystal clear. The measure of the advice found there is not in the woodworkers who have never read the book, or who read it and ignored it. It stands on its own as much today as when it was written in the 1920s and reprinted several times all the way through a last special printing in the 1980s underwritten by Woodcraft.