Hand planes

[Trafalgar]

I've always been doubtful that squeezing a chip between the jaws of a set of machinist's calipers would give an objectively accurate measurement or a consistent measurement from chip to chip. I guess those who developed such a skill are to be congratulated. Otherwise, even the rankest of beginners or even a non-woodworker can tell the difference between varying degrees of thick shavings and vanishingly thin shavings by eye. It's like asking for a big piece of pie vs. a little piece of pie. It's not too hard to tell the difference. I wonder if Alan Peters ever measured the thickness of a chip his entire career. I bet not. If so it was probably on a lark or a quittin' time diversion.

Woodworkers need to be able to judge things by eye or get very close -- edges square to face, face in or out of twist, etc., etc. Measuring chips just promotes dependence on measuring tools too much IMO or the notion that one needs to attempt to measure very small increments rather than using standard terminology like 'bare' and 'full' which should be enough.

It's just not a terribly difficult concept, that of retracting a cutter until it won't cut and then advancing it a little at a time until it just barely starts to cut, and then moving on from there. My seven year old daughter has virtually zero problem with the concept. It's like running a bath at the proper temperature -- not that hard -- but you usually have to fiddle with the hot and cold a bit before it's just right. It would be idiotic to stick a thermometer in the water when your hand tells you all you need to know.

 

[custard]

I wonder if Alan Peters ever measured the thickness of a chip his entire career.

I trained in the same workshop where Alan Peters trained, callipers may well be the most used tool in the place.

Just sayin'.

 

[Trafalgar]

What on Earth for? Measuring shavings?

Other than for calipers for the lathe, an entirely different tool, he makes no mention of an instrument capable of taking measurements to thousandths of an inch in his book Cabinetmaking, the professional approach (in his list of tools and machines that covers close to two pages).

 

[D_W]

I'll bet Alan Peters probably didn't care what other people did with their calipers. Unless they were a student of his and he was telling them what to do.

 

[Trafalgar]

I have no idea. Just curious about making these sorts of close measurements in furnituremaking. One strives to work to close tolerances through the use of gauges, marking one workpiece from another, etc., but I haven't heard much about working to the sort of nominal measurements these things are theoretically capable of producing -either reading a vernier scale or a digital readout and attempting to reproduce it on another workpiece.

If a tenon is a hair too fat for its mortise wouldn't we just use our finely set shoulder or other plane and make a pass on either face until it just fits, for instance? Surely, nobody is measure the amount it's out are they, and then attempting to dial that measurement in on a plane?

Otherwise, transferring a measurement with a set of calipers with no particular regard to the number is certainly orthodox but doesn't require a machinist-quality instrument or anything even close. It's no different than using a story stick in actual fact.

 

[custard]

Just curious about making these sorts of close measurements in furnituremaking.

That's fair enough.

If you want to make something like this,
http://www.barnsley-furniture.co.uk/pro ... sideboard/

Or even a little something like this,
http://www.barnsley-furniture.co.uk/pro ... ing-stand/

then callipers come in pretty handy.

 

[Trafalgar]

This piece was made in the 1800s: http://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.com/V ... oryid=1365

I think you may be confused about using a simple set of calipers to transfer a setting from a template or workpiece vs. measuring components to thousandths of an inch and working to that nominal measurement. One can't build any of these pieces without working to extremely close tolerances but it is not required that one work to a number like "one inch and one-half thousandth." "Hey, Bob, I need three workpieces cut to a radius of three feet, three and three thousandth inches and they need to be four and two thousandths of an inch wide." I feel fairly sure that the pieces to which you've linked were not built using that sort of strategy. I know the one I linked to wasn't built that way.

 

[custard]

Maybe. Anyhow, lunch break's over so I'm getting back to making furniture. Now, where did I put my callipers?

 

[Trafalgar]

Heck, don't be bashful. Your background and training speak for themselves. If you work to these sort of numbers that's super. I'm entirely envious. I wouldn't know where to begin to integrate this sort of technique.

 

[Beau]

I don't know if it was beneficial or not but on my training callipers were used on a regular basis. One test piece (a punishment for a balls up) was to make a cross with a halving joint and every dimension had to be within 0.1 of a mm and would fit perfectly either way around. It was challenging but achievable. There are times when precision adds a bit of class to something that would otherwise be lacking. Maybe callipers are not always needed but they have seen plenty of use in my workshop over the years as have a set of feeler gauges for draw fitting.

 

[Trafalgar]

I assume one would't start with a cut list or templates produced to these sort of dimensions - nobody designs furniture in wood in thousandths of an inch. At what point in the process does the furnituremaker begin to measure components in thousandths and use this nominal measurement elsewhere?

 

[D_W]

If you have cheap power tools, they're pretty useful. I like to have a cheap caliper on my thickness planer, though it's not actually necessary to have.

I don't know when the last time was that I measured a chip that wasn't for discussion purposes online. It'd be difficult to have any discussion about plane shaving thickness without providing a measurement, though, and it is mildly interesting if you're dimensioning wood to know what the difference is between various woods. For example, 7 thousandth of ash planes about as hard as 1 hundredth of cherry, though you can't necessarily see any difference without measuring.

I'll leave the high end furniture arguments to other people - I only have the urge to build tools when it comes to non-necessary items.

 

[Trafalgar]

Sometimes all a plane needs to do is remove what amounts to a little dust -- the first turn that just begins to produce a bare amount of contact of cutter to wood - especially true on end grain, when a workpiece is the barest whisker too long. Maybe that's something that needs a measurement but I sure hope not. I certainly don't own a tool that could measure the length of a workpiece to this sort of accuracy. My eyes have problems with 32nds if the light is not perfect (which it rarely is).

I'm less flummoxed by thickness, which is where calipers excel, than perhaps anywhere else in the process and I get flummoxed plenty by all the rest. If I set a gauge a hair off of 3/4's I'm not worried about a thing as long as I leave it set there and mark everything that needs to be the same thickness. It pays to have several gauges, set at each thickness you'll need, and left there until all the workpieces are produced per the cut list. If machining, everything that needs to be the same thickness is run through consecutively, as a group.

Any minor discrepancies in hand planing the individual parts is resolved by flushing adjoining surfaces of the assembled component after the glue dries.

 

[D_W]

Any minor discrepancies in hand planing the individual parts is resolved by flushing adjoining surfaces of the assembled component after the glue dries.

I don't disagree with the thickness planer use, but no discrepancy in thickness is pretty difficult with hand tools when you're doing everything from start to finish. I'm sure you do with planes as I do, I'm looking for a feel. If it feels like it's about 80% of what I could get through the plane, then that's what I use - until you get to the smoother. I don't use joinery planes much where I can use chisels, but I don't build much furniture, either.

I'm not sure I can recall using a caliper on fine work, but I often find my hand dimensioned pieces to be several hundredths different than what I was shooting for when I am done finish planing them. I haven't been burned by that yet. Not talking about length, but width and thickness.

One of the things I like most about working only with hand tools when the time allows for it is the need to measure very little and care very little about one board being 0.72 inches and another 0.76. If I didn't measure, I don't think I'd even know unless I put one on top of the other. Those types of things appeal to me as being interesting on a piece - potentially - down the road. Loose joints do not.

Same goes for planes, the first three infills I have made do not have perfectly square sides. The fit on them is wonderful, no gaps. I've never had the urge to turn them on their side and square the cheeks to the sole because ...I've never had the urge to turn them on their sides to use them for anything.

But, still, I'm surprised how irritated you are about this whole caliper thing, and I'm assuming that most of the people who talk about shaving thickness don't check it at all unless they're trying translate "feels like 80% as thick as I can go with a try plane" to a number for other people to compare. Until or unless someone pops up and says that you must use calipers to measure shaving thickness to do accurate work, why get worked up over what other people do for curiosity?

 

[Trafalgar]

I'm not irritated in the least, though others may be irritated at the questions I've posed.

The whole shaving thickness thing is just absurd on its face and always has been, at best an affectation, and I'm way less curious about that than I am the other things I mentioned. To the extent that I've ever given credence to measuring the thickness of a shaving, and did so with a straight face, I'm ashamed and embarrassed.

Hand planing wood is about as exciting as cleaning toilets and one of the first things the Brits, the Shakers, and everybody else with half a brain wanted to and ultimately did mechanize. I do it, but I get no particular thrill or feeling of accomplishment from it.

 

[D_W]

I'm not irritated in the least, though others may be irritated at the questions I've posed.

The whole shaving thickness thing is just absurd on its face and always has been, at best an affectation, and I'm way less curious about that than I am the other things I mentioned. To the extent that I've ever mentioned measuring the thickness of a shaving, and did so with a straight face, I'm ashamed and embarrassed.

And maybe somewhat insecure? Jeez, Charlie. Is this the biggest thing on your radar today? Is your closet so clear that you could only be ashamed that you possibly measured a shaving in the past?

I remember, maybe a decade ago, someone said that a woodworker never looks at their shavings (I think it was in response to a rob cosman video when he was selling whatever it was at the time he was selling - replacement plane irons, maybe? and he was doing the woodworking show trick of taking thin shavings and letting them go so that they drop to the ground slowly). And a couple of people pounded their chest and said that there's no reason to look at shavings.

Except that a shaving will instantly tell you if you have a nick in your iron or if you're getting tearout (without having to stop and look at or feel a surface), or if the cap is set in the right place, and I'm sure there's 5 other reasons that I don't know because I'm willing to admit that I'm an amateur who is just happy when things turn out nice and I can make progress somewhere.

Whether or not someone uses calipers to measure shavings, who cares - as long as they're not asserting to a bunch of newbies that it's a must?

 

[D_W]

Separate aside for the caliper users, something that's actually useful when fitting something to a known size.

Measure the thickness of a piece of wood. Take a shaving with one of your planes - something substantial enough that you can measure it (not a fluff shaving, given they're not easy to measure). Then measure the piece of wood.

It's interesting to note that the amount of wood removed is only some fraction of the shaving thickness. I'm sure there is some relationship to thickness (well, there probably is) in terms of the decrease in stock width as a percentage of the shaving thickness.

From time to time in doing tight fitting work, it is definitely useful to know how much wood is being removed at each swipe so that you can get close to a final measurement without going over it, or so you can fit something like an infill to a known body width without having to repeatedly take the infill in and out of the body (anyone who has ever made one will know that's a pain, because the sides pinch in and put tension on the infill after the dovetails have been peined).

 

[Trafalgar]

David, we plane wood effectively and move on. What's left on the floor isn't my primary concern. I've never uber-tuned a single plane yet I don't think I've ever owned one that wouldn't produce the sort of shavings you guys say you've measured at less than a thousandth of an inch -pretty damned whispy. I've either been extraordinarily lucky, Record planes were that good, or the vast majority of this stuff is pure hogwash. Barring an absurdly concave sole, they'll all take a reasonably fine shaving. Good enough. If it isn't there's always a scraper which will produce a surface virtually indistinguishable from a planed one and will do it with sub-thou shavings if necessary.

 

[AndyT]

If someone writes on a forum that they set their plane to get "paper thin" shavings, there are people, apparently, who will start a tedious digression onto all the different types of paper and how some are quite thick while others are much thinner.

This nonsense can be avoided by making a measurement, using an international standard unit, such as the inch or the millimetre. Once upon a time you could get away with talk of "the thickness of an old groat" but in an online discussion, transferable measurements are better.

 

[D_W]

David, we plane wood effectively and move on. What's left on the floor isn't my primary concern. I've never uber-tuned a single plane yet I don't think I've ever owned one that wouldn't produce the sort of shavings you guys say you've measured at less than a thousandth of an inch -pretty damned whispy. I've either been extraordinarily lucky, Record planes were that good, or the vast majority of this stuff is pure hogwash. Barring an absurdly concave sole, they'll all take a reasonably fine shaving. Good enough. If it isn't there's always a scraper which will produce a surface virtually indistinguishable from a planed one and will do it with sub-thou shavings if necessary.

Still not getting it. You don't pick up a shaving and look at it off of the floor. You watch it as it's coming out of the plane.

Not sure what uber-tuned is, but I doubt many people do it other than a few woodworking gurus. Not going to get worked up if someone has a plane that shaves thinner shavings than mine, or if someone measures them, either.

Andy's post is right on target.

I sense we're getting the old Charlie back now. The one that gets irritated by odd things and goes into "one up" mode then - the one who could go up Mt. Everest in shorts without any oxygen.