Hand planes

[memzey]

Just noticed you're in Enfield Lock Paddy. We used to live on Aldridge Avenue and my in laws still live on Ordnance road. Whereabouts are you based? I'm often in the area and have probably gone past you more than once!

At Enfield Dock at the very end of Ordnance Road South (next to river). You won't have driven past as we are in an industrial estate, but may well have walked past if you walk down the river. big white polytunnel opposite side of the river from where rifles pub used to be

I used to walk the dog down there along the canal! I know exactly where you are. Isn't there a metals place near you as well, selling bar stock and the like?

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Yeah, Parkside steel. they don't keep stock anymore (all kept up north), just offices. I do a fair bit of business with them (well a fair bit for me, peanuts for them)

 

[memzey]

Awesome. It's a shame I don't live round there anymore (in St. Albans now) I'd have had you round for a cuppa! Such a small world. My front door was about 100 yards from your workshop!

 

[Bm101]

Blimey Memzey! I hate to say this.... But I feel I have to. Don't go popping in to have a chat with Paddy. He comes across as a reasonable sort online. But let me tell you.
He's a Monster. A Monster I tell you! :shock:
When he offered to put my workbench top through his P/T for free I didn't realise I'd have to hold one end of it, (I could have had a bad back for all he knew!). I got to have a look round my first real wood workshop, boatbuilding no less (I like narrowboats), have a nice chat with a genuine and friendly fella and worse I literally, literally mind, had to put him in a half-nelson and *** him in the kidneys a coupla times to make him accept a bottle of wine for helping me out.
When I posted a daft noob question (yeh I know, shock!) on here about fret saws and he offered me one of his for free it was even worse. :|
People like Paddy are the reason you should listen to your Mum and never meet up with strangers off the internet.

Sometimes I remember those two meetings and I get a cold shiver down my spine. Then I realise I have left the window open again.

 

[memzey]

lol! Sounds horrendous! Speaking of meet-ups I notice you dodged our little get together for Herts based forumites and IIRC you are not far from me? I think we are planning another one in Jan near Watford and then Feb will be in Snorbs. You should get yourself to one - the last one was a great night.

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Sometimes I remember those two meetings and I get a cold shiver down my spine. Then I realise I have left the window open again.

Chris, that's because the glass in your windows is so clean you can't see it's there

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Memzey, if your in the area feel free to pop in

 

[custard]

Three or four thou shavings can be read through

I was thinking about that today in the workshop. It sounded an implausible claim, so I decided to test it.

I took a piece of Swiss Pear, not the palest of timbers, but certainly not the darkest, a reasonably representative timber choice in other words. I planed off a four thou shaving then taped it to a printed page,

That's a pretty coarse shaving, you can see in the photo it's starting to ripple like you'd get with veneer rather than drape like you'd get with a fine shaving. But as for the claim that it can be read through? Well, no you can't. Unless of course you've got X-Ray specs!

For comparison I dialled back the plane to a one thou shaving and tried that.

 

[custard]

Incidentally, the plane I used was a bog standard Record 05. It's had a basic fettling, but it's certainly not had lavish levels of attention.

The sole was flattened, but nothing extravagant, it hasn't been polished up with Autosol or anything like that.

The iron is a bog standard Record issue. It was given a slight hollow on the non bevel face using the Paul Sellers hammer trick, which then makes it easy to properly flatten it off.

The cap iron had its mating surface properly honed, and the back had a few swipes on a strop. Nothing fancy, just basic maintenance.

The reason all that's important isn't to deliver transparent shavings, there's no call for them in my furniture. But having a plane properly tuned allows you to do things like this.

With a plane capable of a one thou shaving you can, for example, begin to use a shooting board with real precision. Taking full length shavings in tough timbers like Oak, splitting a knife line right down the middle, and consistently getting perfect 90 degree results.

This is an Oak drawer side after shooting with a one thou setting, the surface is virtually polished and more importantly it's dead accurate. I tried shooting the same board with a four thou setting and it was just not acceptable. The effort required to drive the iron through the timber caused it to skew and twist just enough to throw out the accuracy and chew up the surface.

Bottom line, it doesn't take that much effort to get a plane to perform to this level, but if you want to produce quality furniture then it's an effort that you have to make, four thou just isn't good enough.

 

[skipdiver]

I would concur custard. I have exactly the same plane and have used it on site all my life with not much regard to furniture making levels of sharpness and very thin shavings. Now i work mainly from home and am trying to get better as a woodworker, trying more disciplined stuff, i also fettled the Paul Sellars way and gave my planes a general overhaul. They now work much better than they ever did but my previous work never gave me cause to tune them in such a way. Planing up the end of a hand cut hipped roof timber for example didn't require shavings of a thou. I'd have been there all day. Horses for courses.

 

[custard]

Planing up the end of a hand cut hipped roof timber for example didn't require shavings of a thou. I'd have been there all day. Horses for courses.

Absolutely agree, even on on the highest quality furniture I want the thickest shaving I can get away with. However, a plane that will deliver a one thou shaving will also deliver a four thou or an eight thou shaving when required. What you need is a plane that has the versatility to do it all.

 

[Vann]

...If you are teaching yourself "in the dark" with no one to show how a well tuned plane should work it is difficult to know when you have it right...

Well said, Paddy.

I bought a new plane (Stanley No.4) when I started my apprenticeship in 1973. I could never get it to work, and thought I couldn't plane. It wasn't until I bought a Veritas LAJ about 8 years ago that I found what a plane is capable of. I now have too many.

But for a learner "in the dark" (to quote Paddy) buying a modern PoS is a mistake. Buy a modern premium plane, or an early Stanley or Record, and learn to plane wood.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[nabs]

Why are old pre ww2 Stanley planes regarded as much better than the latest offerings?

re. the original question, I have not got a clue, so in traditional fashion here is some largely unrelated information. My first plane was a Record no. 4 circa 2000, bought for a job round the house. Like many before me I did not know how to get it a work and it sat on a shelf for 15 years.

It was the recent discovery that it could be made to work, and the epiphany that followed when I manged it, that set me of down the most enjoyable path of old tool acquisition and other woodworking-deferral activity. In the process I have ended up with a handful of record planes from different eras which means I can do a quality comparison. Here is my assessment of the differences between new and old:

• * thinner casting
  * the top edges of the sides are no longer ground smooth and are painted over
  * the handle and knob are made from plastic rather than beech or rosewood
  * the frog yoke adjuster is now a two pieced pressed steel affair rather than the original cast iron version.
  * Painted rather than chrome/nickle plated lever cap
  * the lateral lever adjuster is made of one piece of steel pressed into shape to form the finger hold, rather than a more robust riveted and welded part
  * The screw adjuster to allow the frog to be moved back and forward to widen or narrow the mouth has gone

obviously there are varying degrees of penny pinching (c.f AndyT's post on his Anant) but based on my small sample of Records, I would say that all bar the last of these cost cutting measures are either cosmetic or easily put up with, and even the removal of the mouth adjusting screw will not be missed by many.

And in fairness, I should add that the new model uses a brass furled nut on the lever cap that replaces the original thumb-push, which I happen to think is an improvement!

so all in all, it could be said that the makers of Record tools at least had made reasonable compromises to reduce the price of the tools without impacting functionality.*

but, but...
Isn't there a more sinister cost saving measure to consider? Namely the invisible one alluded to earlier in the thread where in the good old days the casting were allowed to "season" before grinding - I have read often that this is an important step and skipping it increases the likelihood of the casting warping after it is ground, leaving you with a bent plane.

To someone like me, who knows nothing about metallurgy, this all sounds very plausible, particularly so when you hear blacksmiths use terms like "grain" when discussing iron, which makes metal working sound sort of woodworky. But is it actually true? I remember reading somewhere about a learned article that had been published by an engineering firm in the 70s that dismissed the whole seasoning thing as superstitious nonsense, but infuriatingly I can't find the reference or the article now.

Does anyone know the truth of the matter? Enquiring minds want to know!

* PS don't take this as an endorsement - you can get a perfectly good secondhand Record, with none of the above compromises, for less than the - very reasonably priced! - new Irvin Record version. Just sayin'....

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No harm in posting it again -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYyV6IU ... tml5=False
Just about all you need to know.

 

[Downwindtracker2]

Cast iron when it cools leaves stress in the casting. When it ages some of that stress works itself out. You can understand why a manufacturer would use green castings, that's money sitting there, not earning interest. Veritas reheats after casting to stress relieve. When first flattening a fleamarket find, you can really see where the iron has moved.

Three jacks in the hand. I have 3 Canadian made Stanley #5s, two were made in the '30s, one in the '70s. The one made in the '70s is purple(maroon) which I bought new as an apprentice . Purple ones are considered the lowest point of North American Stanley production. While they are all flat, Canucks do better than Yanks, only the '70s one has both sides square.

 

[D_W]

I can't speak for new planes, but I have heard the unseasoned casting thing more than once about new power tools. The later or cheaper they're made, the less time the castings season - usually.

That said, I don't know what I do with a table saw that requires perfection. My first table saw (a delta) was more than a hundredth hollow from front to back. That was sort of a pain, but it didn't affect anything as I don't do joinery from my tablesaw. It had a lot of runout at the arbor, too, 2 thosuandths at the flange, and it sanded the wood as it went by. That could've been corrected, but I never saw the need.

Fine looking three planes on the left above.

I've seen that sellers video before, it's a bit more involved than I like to go (unnecessary fresh metal in some places is a rust magnet), but that's all just opinion. I wish he'd teach his gaggle of followers to use hardwoods and set the cap iron, but most of the free videos are white pine. I have never had an environment that would tolerate furniture made of white pine, though it's certainly nice to work when it is properly sawn and clear.

 

[Biliphuster]

The iron is a bog standard Record issue. It was given a slight hollow on the non bevel face using the Paul Sellers hammer trick, which then makes it easy to properly flatten it off.

To pick one thing out of your very informative series of posts, how does one do this trick? That hollow looks very handy and I have a couple of blades which could really do with that attention. I have tried googling "Paul Sellers hammer trick" but I have not stumbled across the correct page.

 

[JohnPW]

https://paulsellers.com/2014/05/does-pl ... you-hours/

You hit the bellied bit of the iron with a soft faced hammer. I think it would be better to put a piece of wood on the iron and then hit the piece of wood. But there's chance the iron might crack, as mentioned in one of the comments.

 

[custard]

how does one do this trick? That hollow looks very handy and I have a couple of blades which could really do with that attention.

I tried it a couple of times with a nylon faced hammer and the iron resting bevel side down on a piece of softwood. I didn't have much luck with the method and abandoned it.

Eventually I gave it another go. This time I put a piece of thin MDF (3mm or 6mm) on top of the iron and used the ball end of ball pein hammer, I started gently and then worked up the weight of the blows until it did the trick. Encouraged by that I tried it on another iron, going back to the nylon faced hammer but delivering a mighty whack, worked again. Then on a third iron I tried more gentle taps with a Japanese hammer that has a slightly crowned face, success again.

I've now done four or five Stanley and Record irons this way, they all now look like the one in the photo that I posted. That's how I like my plane blades to look, with a perfectly mating cap iron which can be positioned anywhere from 0.1mm to 2.0mm back from the cutting edge without ever getting shavings trapped beneath.

I wouldn't go overboard with the Paul Seller's hammer trick, just enough to make flattening off less of a chore. I don't know this for a fact but I suspect that if you were over enthusiastic you could produce a belly on the bevel side of the iron, which might then mean it would rock on the frog and chatter?

So where I am now with plane irons is this. New thick irons for premium planes, they're either flat when bought or they're returned. Old thick irons for woodies, long slog on a coarse stone or the David Charlesworth ruler trick. Thinner Bailey Plane irons, the Paul Sellers hammer trick.

Good luck!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

You could probably skim the iron with a very fine used flap disc to achieve the same end.