Hand Plane setup, sharpening & how to plane properly - in person course

[Cabinetman]

What's your reason for the mouth being so tight?

Cheers
Tom

I’m sure he can answer for himself, but the reason the mouth is tight is so that the sole of the plane in front of the mouth holds the timber down, thus helping by preventing the surface of the timber being lifted up by the wedge action of the blade, which causes tear out. Ian

 

[Ttrees]

I tried the same thing for a wee while, and I eventually gave up on the idea of any tight mouth
when I came across examples which needed more influence, although I likely had my cap iron steepish, 50 something at the time, so did not try with a lower honed cap iron to match,
if this or changing the wear on the casting is what @hennebury does.

Maybe I'm being a bit of a neigh sayer, not being familiar with using both cap iron and tight mouth,
and keen to see if he recommends this, or keeping the mouth open and getting the cap iron to eliminate the tearout in the first place, and then move on to using both, for whatever reason.

I think I might have a video somewhere, and it would be funny to look back at it now, as it's evident that what I was doing at the time, easily took twice the effort, I remember the plane nearly coming to a halt planing some stuff.

Hard to believe that using both makes for less effort when the going gets tough, and the shavings need be heavier.
Unless this is strictly for smoothing?

Happy new year to all of ye!

Tom

 

[hennebury]

@hennebury
Obviously we can see some influenced shavings, looks to me like what appears like the cap is as far as possible from the edge, whilst still working with minimum effort.
I question whether it's harder work when an influenced cut is used with a thicker shaving.

Not sure what you might have done to the plane in front of the mouth, but was much more difficult when
I was taking productive shavings, not being aware of whatever it is you do to make it work well.
Not having seen this, but I can see the evidence of influence, nevermind the beautiful work.
I can take your word for it, no need to get photos of thicker even more influenced shavings.

What's your reason for the mouth being so tight?

Cheers
Tom

There is a sweet spot, a perfect relationship between the thickness of the shaving and the chipbreaker, and to some extent the throat opening. Theoretically you should be able to remove the chipbreaker and set the throat opening to prevent tearout. You would have to have extremely accurate adjustment of the throat opening and be able to adjust it as you adjusted the blade for shaving thickness, to a prefect relationship. It seems that the best way to control tearout is to take thin shavings and a close set chip breaker. If you match the perfect relationship to the thickness of the shaving and the chipbreaker setback, matched with the type of wood you would have the best cut that you can get. It is however difficult to adjust planes to such a fine degree with any hope of doing it accurately. Even supersurfacers are not fully adjustable on the fly. Can you adjust a throat opening in or out 0.001" or 0.0005", because if you are taking shavings in the range of 0.001"- 0.002" it makes a difference. The same with chipbreakers 0.001" makes a difference, not easy to adjust your plane to those tolerances, and lets face most woodworkers probably are not familiar with those type of tolerances in setting tools, but tearout is visible at very small tolerances. Woodworking is a wide wide range, where some are okay with + or- 1/16th" and others 0.0005". So with handplanes and the relentless pursuit of absolute by some of the crazies with the drive to get the best possible finish with a handplane, nothing wrong with that, your life you get to make the rules. Some are okay with some level of good enough, some reach for the ever elusive absolute, that is life, that got us out of the caves and to where we are today, it is the drive to go further. There are those that say its unnecessary, and they are right of course, but then human existence is also unnecessary. Depends what floats your boat.

The close throat opening I set in my plane was just tinkering to see at that setting how thick of a shaving Would go through it. The shaving was thicker than the opening and was somewhat compressed as it was a little tight to pull out.
Supersurfacers have an adjustable throat opening, adjustable in and out, up and down and tilt, so that you can put a line of pressure directly ahead of the cutter, I find it all quite fascinating and love experiment and observing the results. I enjoy making shavings and playing with the tools.....what can I say.
My advise, if you wish to learn woodworking, trust no one... least of all yourself. Learn to question, test, observe and analyze. Life should be about exploring potential.

 

[hennebury]

I really don't use the really tight throat opening, I use the chipbreaker to control tearout, I have the throat opening fairly close, but have no way to accurately and easily adjust it on the fly. So I set it open a bit so its not compressing the shaving.
Below are the setup instruction for the knife and back-knife( chibreaker) for supersurfacers.

 

[hennebury]

Of course if you had a handplane with the adjustable throat like on a supersurfacer it would have more influence on tearout.

 

[Adam W.]

Well that saves me having to go and find that fancy carpentry mag for Tom.

Interesting read @hennebury, thanks.

 

[Cabinetman]

Hard to believe that using both makes for less effort when the going gets tough, and the shavings need be heavier.
Unless this is strictly for smoothing?

I use a number four smoothing plane for nearly all my work, I have set up one for difficult timber where the mouth is closed up a bit for fine shavings and the other one is for day-to-day stuff, and the mouth is set up so as not to impede the shavings at all – even on my one for difficult timber it’s not so close as to cause problems.
@hennebury yes thanks, I would like to have seen the Japanese using your machine with an adjustable mouth, that video showing the blade pushing through the timber in slow motion and watching the timber lift ahead of the blade causing tear out, it just screamed out to me that it needed something to hold that timber down so that it could then be broken by the cap iron. The thing that would hold it down of course is the plane's sole in front of the blade, and it makes sense to me that the closer you can get that to the blade the better – within reason obviously. Ian

 

[Cabinetman]

Of course if you had a handplane with the adjustable throat like on a supersurfacer it would have more influence on tearout.

Like on my Stanley block plane where the planes sole in front of the blade is adjustable, the added bonus would be that the frog would be set solid as part of the casting, and would support the blade all the way right to the business end thus reducing any vibration/chatter.
Holding the "front sole" firmly after micro adjustment of the mouth might be an interesting design problem or maybe just turn the front knob to tighten. Ian

 

[Adam W.]

I think my LN mitre plane has the same setup as that too.

And the Veritas low angled jack, come to think of it.

 

[Cabinetman]

Well it’s certainly an easier way of adjusting the mouth on a plane than the trial and error "move the frog up a bit method" I suppose, be interested to see if they do a smoother like that.

 

[Jacob]

Like on my Stanley block plane where the planes sole in front of the blade is adjustable, the added bonus would be that the frog would be set solid as part of the casting, and would support the blade all the way right to the business end thus reducing any vibration/chatter.
......

Well yes - moving the mouth is better than moving the frog and losing that little extra support behind the blade. Best avoided for all normal purposes.

 

[paulrbarnard]

What is the general opinion on the tapered blades found on a number of older wooden planes? As the get worn down they cause the mouth opening to get bigger. I resoled one of my wooden smoothers because the mouth was too big. It made a significant difference.

 

[Jacob]

What is the general opinion on the tapered blades found on a number of older wooden planes? As the get worn down they cause the mouth opening to get bigger. I resoled one of my wooden smoothers because the mouth was too big. It made a significant difference.

A lo of woodies turn up with inset repair to the mouth or even worn right down but with a whole new sole added. They just get adapted and survive I guess.

 

[D_W]

What is the general opinion on the tapered blades found on a number of older wooden planes? As the get worn down they cause the mouth opening to get bigger. I resoled one of my wooden smoothers because the mouth was too big. It made a significant difference.

If the mouth is an issue, then there should be more cap iron use. The mouth becomes a problem when it's large enough that you can accidentally catch the end of a board (picture the mouth being large enough that if you don't introduce the plane flat, the blade goes into the end of the board and lifts off the end as a chip instead of cutting it).

The wear on the sole is going opposite of the blade getting thinner (the wear is the bigger of the two problems). It gets awkward when the mouth gets really large and you can fill the mouth or resole, but it shouldn't affect tearout unless you're skipping using the cap iron (which isn't a good compromise - relying on the mouth instead of the cap).

I've made planes with an intentional plug from new (wooden planes) so that the wear can be set internally like an infill plane with the intention to replace them as the sole is worn, and they work well (very tight mouth, no clog), but the look is regarded as a worn out plane so it's not something that will become popular.

A wider mouth is also trouble on a smoother if you intend to use the plane for smaller bevels or chamfers (enough of the bit being planed will slip between the iron and mouth to be pried off rather than planed off).

 

[D_W]

Anyone considering what Mark is saying about the supersurfacer should consider that if a closed mouth introduces extra work in combination with the cap iron (without much functional improvement), the machine won't care that much about the extra effort. You'll notice it - especially on a plane that takes bigger shavings (e.g., if you try to make a jack with a small mouth and then use it like a jack plane).

The super surfacer can pretty much do what you'd do by hand and then plane three times longer because it can force a dull iron with negative clearance into a cut. The fellow in the US who dug up the K&K articles in 2012 also had wear profile pictures from the K&K trials (Which were generally for the benefit of machine planing and not hand planing - thus the idea of steep second irons and very precise settings and repetition through a machine).

They ran irons that we would use that would go some small fraction of a KM (like an O1 iron may go 800 feet at a smoother setting or water hardening may go 600) figures like 1.6KM. Very early in that figure, no human would've kept a plane in the cut or been able to use it at all, but the machine can continue to force the iron down into the wood despite the belly on the bottom of the iron and continue the cut.

Which would be useful as far as the machine goes as the idea that you'd sharpen it as often as a hand plane would go out the window (then combined further with a bunch of exotic steel irons or inserts).

 

[D_W]

What is the general opinion on the tapered blades found on a number of older wooden planes? As the get worn down they cause the mouth opening to get bigger. I resoled one of my wooden smoothers because the mouth was too big. It made a significant difference.

By the way, a good rule of thumb when making or refitting a wooden plane is that the mouth should be at least double the thickest shaving you'll take. If you're resoling a smoother, then that can still be very small. Maybe a hundredth or a fraction more (even though the angles inside the plane make that temporary).

There are planes with tapered inserts (including japanese planes) that run inside the plane in front of the iron. As the sole wears, you adjust the insert downward (and the insert is fatter further up, so as you advance it downward and then plane off the bit sticking out, the front of the mouth is again closer to the iron. Think crudely, an upside down triangle. AS the mouth of a plane opens, tap the triangle at the front of the plane mortise down and the mouth closes, and then you plane or abrade off the bit that's now sticking out below the mouth.

gimmicks like this started to appear in japanese planes around maybe 50 years ago and then disappeared seemingly when the market became mostly american and european buyers (which is probably by far the biggest customer for japanese tools and razors now - not domestic).

At any rate, if you're adding a sole or insert on an old plane, the mouth will start to create serious pointless friction around double the chip size (you'll be bending the shaving, but not preventing tearout ahead of the cut - just reducing the catastrophic type). If you get clogs with a tighter mouth, increase the angle inside the plane before opening the mouth further (the former will always allow feeding, sometimes increasing the mouth without steepening the internal angle in a wooden plane just allows bigger clogs).

 

[hennebury]

A simple pleasure to watch

 

[Cabinetman]

Incredible bit of kit, there must be a use for the shavings, insulation?

 

[user 29368]

I'm going to bring this thread back down to earth now...

I've read the record guide to planing (many thanks to @mrpercysnodgrass ), watched some vidoes linked to here and read the posts. Enjoyed the Japanese film showing the effect of altering the cap iron on tareout - that was new information for me.
I've made some progress over the last couple of days. First of all my number 4 plane iron is buggered, the top section that extends beyond the frog is bent forwards which means it isn't flat and the left had side of the blade is very slightly twised up on one side. I'm going to buy a new blade and start again.
The 4.5 seems in good shape and just needs sharpening.

The 5-1/2 which I like the feel and weight of needed sharpening which I have done. I kept the iron as straight as possible in the honing guide and got a good edge that easily removes hairs from my arm. I also did what Paul Sellers suggested and used a pen to mark the sole prior to rubbing over sand plaper to get it flat, it is flat and smooth.

Pic of iron. Far from perfect, but notably better than I'd managed before.
(after doing a load of work, and it is still sharp).

I have had this peice of Sipo for a while, but not wanted to attempt to squre it up incase I got it wrong.
It had band saw marks on all 4 sides and 2 were not square. (Pic taken part way through the work)

I was able to take very fine shaving with the 5.5 plane, it sounded very smooth as it was cutting too. Perhaps this is an easy wood to plane? I guess it is, more or less no tare out in either direction.

I checked it with sqaures, a long ruler and on my very flat bench top (not pictured) mulitpule times. It is now as square all round as I can get it.

However I am having problems getting a square edge on some 18mm thick maple.
These 2 pictures sum the problem up, I can't get it flat, I keep swaping the the error from one side to the other.
Not sure what I am doing wrong, will keep practicing.

Should I use a smaller plane for this job? Or perhaps a shooting board?

 

[Peter Sefton]

Looks like you have made some major progress, planing the edge of narrow timber can be challenging. Make sure your blade is very sharp and fine set, I tend to use a slightly cambered blade and try and use the centre of the camber over the high spots to take them down

Cheers

Peter