How to store Handplanes?

[D_W]

There is an increase in the number of people doing it, Derek. That's my point. People are interested in that because they are doing this as a hobby. There are few people who really can instruct on it, or at least demonstrate it competently. Even watching Paul Sellers dimension a piece of rough stock is painful and suggests to viewers that it will take eons to do even very simple dimensioning by hand (and that is not the case. An amateur who wants to dimension by hand can easily build the half dozen pieces they will build with hand tools and not have any issues with the myriad of spooky stories they see people describe - like horribly out of square boards, varying thickness where thickness is important, etc). Sellers is more adept with hand tools than most, and I'm sure more than me, but it's clear watching him that he does not do much hand dimensioning.

I haven't bought pre sized lumber since a year after I started woodworking.

An instructor at a local woodworking school here, the typical type of school that teaches a lot of sharpening and dovetailing type things, said that he's got about a half dozen students who want to learn to do all of their work by hand. How many do you think would stick with it? I think maybe 1 or 2 would be a good shot, but that's a single city. There isn't anything out there for those folks that really is practical except sweat equity. I suggested to the instructor that i could teach him to do it, and I could teach him to make planes of the style I make, but he's hoping I will do it. I don't really get into that sort of thing, i'd rather find the person who's already interested in it (like holcombe or chris griggs) and put the appropriate tools in their hands.

(I almost forgot about Bob Rozaieski - I don't know the guy, though, he apparently doesn't use power tools).

Who else will I be able to have that discussion with? The fact that David C. thinks that I'm as far off base as he apparently does on tool items makes it clear to me that he's never done any of that type of work in volume, and the concept of quality of tools seems to start at the 1970s, which is unusual. I can tell by his preferences, as many others, who is just taking almost entirely smoother shavings.

And that's all the bulk of people will want to do. The few who really want to do everything and who are able bodied will lunge around in the dark for a while using things like heavy metal planes for all steps, bevel up jacks, etc, and they're running with a parachute attached. So be it.

 

[Trafalgar]

The lure behind the notion, at least, of doing it the 'old' way comes from seeing furniture like that shown in this well-worn link:

http://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.com/D ... bindex=18#

And then we realize that they made of lot of it to boot (granted with labor).

Probably all explained by eleven hour days six days a week and those days spent with your head down working and not flitting around. Plain hard work.

We OUGHT to be able to match their production by using machines but even seasoned professionals don't seem to be able to do this when considering some of the price book studies floating around. In other words, even with machines today's professionals appear to still be slower.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

David, I have serious doubts that there are significantly more people working without machines. I do believe that there is an increase in handtool work, as I see an increase in woodwork generally. However - especially where I live - very few use handtools to the extent I do, and it is a rarity that handtools are used at all.

At my local woodwork club, I frequently give live demonstrations of building furniture and joinery. At the last one, where I was demonstrating "Coarse, Medium and Fine", the audience perked up when I told them about CBN wheels. Other than that, I could have been from Mars.

There are two wood schools in Perth. One - aimed at beginners - has just begun to include handtools, but they have really little clue what they are doing. It is a joke. 99% is done with stationery and hand machines. The other school teaches at a high level, and about 20% involves handtools.

You visit the Australian forum frequently, and so you know what the level of expertise is among those that use handplanes. There are other forums - one that Charles visits (unless you have been n=booted off that one as well, Charles :lol: ). There are very few who have much of a clue about using planes, and simply purchase them to be a member of the club. That's OK by me. Whatever floats your boat. Mostly, it is guys working with pine and other extremely softwoods, building very simple constructions. The interest in "extreme woodworking" is tiny.

None of this suggests to me a significant movement towards handtool-only woodworking. Most definitely, if you were a pro, you would be seeking efficiency, which lies with machines.

Charles, the sites you link to show very high-end work, and it just is so way beyond the average woodworker. I get more discussion here about my builds than even on WoodCentral, and especially on SMC. They are read but no one comments and discusses anything. I do not consider what I build to be more than that of a decent amateur, but clearly it either is of little interest to the formites on those sites, or it is too complex to discuss.

Now I am not talking down handtools - you should know me better than that. I am also not knocking what you have pushed by way of the double iron - I think that this is a significant contribution. What I have been saying for a long time is that the middle ground is always going to attract most, and that this is where it is likely to stay ... unless you can sweeten the pot with more honey than vinegar.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[D_W]

Charlie, I agree. I'm talking to someone who already showed us a sweaty picture with a jack plane. The truth of hand dimensioning is somewhere in the middle. It's not as fast as machines, but it's not as slow as it's demonstrated to be by most.

The notion that nothing can be made doing it, or that lumber has to be near perfect to start is something that is easily disproven by what is probably the best work ever done - but I'm sure it was done with some pain involved by those bearing the brunt of the heavy work.

As hobbyists, we're lucky that we can count it as exercise and stop doing it if it hurts.

I'm slowly dumping all of my machines, but I will likely keep the thickness planer. It's hardly worth anything to anyone else, and there's always a chance that someone will need something I don't want to build out of some wood that I don't really want to work. The rest of the work other than thicknessing doesn't really take that much longer with hand tools, and in the opinion of a growing few, the process is a bit more stimulating.

Derek talks a lot about this (the hand dimensioning) as being arduous from the point of view of someone who is working woods that not many people are working. It makes his point of view relevant to them, but to someone like me and most people in the eastern and midwestern US, there is no particular shortage of wood that is easily worked by hand, and without much expense. The trade is more like oak for cherry or maple for cherry.

Derek aside, when other people suggest you can't build anything if you rip with a hand saw or face joint a board with a hand plane, I always say "you can if you're actually good at it and you want to". There's an intersection there with people who describe an early 1800s plane as an antiquated design for backwards people (not sure I've heard that here, but a friend of mine who is as power tool as power tools can be is convinced that the older plane designs are useful only to induce suffering. I gave him a try plane. He's looked at it a lot, I'm sure. I'll bet it's still very sharp).

 

[Trafalgar]

At the end of the day we pushed out cap irons down a little more closely and relaxed the mouth aperture a little. People were achieving quality finishes by working with tight mouths and a relaxed cap iron setting (but by no means way back). I've gone back to the latter because the planes seem easier to push and I get good quality off a scraper when one is necessary. This latter approach 'feels' right, feels more like orthodoxy. And you can't plane everything with a No. 4 either so you'd better have another strategy, right?

Pendulums swing too far.

And there's little if anything about cap iron settings not covered in Planecraft decades ago.

 

[Trafalgar]

David, I've hand dressed a hundred board feet (+/-) of lumber in a one day from roughsawn material to final thickness with one edge shot and one end squared but I was just destroyed and completely ineffective the next day.

I used a wooden jack.

I was taking 4/4 rough to 13/16 which is not a lot of lumber to remove. No doubt the old guys did not make a habit of planing 5/4 lumber down to 3/4. That of course would have been stupid and wasteful.

 

[D_W]

David, I have serious doubts that there are significantly more people working without machines. I do believe that there is an increase in handtool work, as I see an increase in woodwork generally. However - especially where I live - very few use handtools to the extent I do, and it is a rarity that handtools are used at all.

At my local woodwork club, I frequently give live demonstrations of building furniture and joinery. At the last one, where I was demonstrating "Coarse, Medium and Fine", the audience perked up when I told them about CBN wheels. Other than that, I could have been from Mars.

There are two wood schools in Perth. One - aimed at beginners - has just begun to include handtools, but they have really little clue what they are doing. It is a joke. 99% is done with stationery and hand machines. The other school teaches at a high level, and about 20% involves handtools.

You visit the Australian forum frequently, and so you know what the level of expertise is among those that use handplanes. There are other forums - one that Charles visits (unless you have been n=booted off that one as well, Charles :lol: ). There are very few who have much of a clue about using planes, and simply purchase them to be a member of the club. That's OK by me. Whatever floats your boat. Mostly, it is guys working with pine and other extremely softwoods, building very simple constructions. The interest in "extreme woodworking" is tiny.

None of this suggests to me a significant movement towards handtool-only woodworking. Most definitely, if you were a pro, you would be seeking efficiency, which lies with machines.

Charles, the sites you link to show very high-end work, and it just is so way beyond the average woodworker. I get more discussion here about my builds than even on WoodCentral, and especially on SMC. They are read but no one comments and discusses anything. I do not consider what I build to be more than that of a decent amateur, but clearly it either is of little interest to the formites on those sites, or it is too complex to discuss.

Now I am not talking down handtools - you should know me better than that. I am also not knocking what you have pushed by way of the double iron - I think that this is a significant contribution. What I have been saying for a long time is that the middle ground is always going to attract most, and that this is where it is likely to stay ... unless you can sweeten the pot with more honey than vinegar.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Certainly, I am not out to attract numbers. Which I think is where the confusion lies. I'm looking for what Fred Rogers used to often say "simpler, deeper". maybe it was straight razor shaving that got me on this, I don't know. That was another instance where something seems incredibly difficult at first, and after a few months, it's as if it was meant to be.

I think there's probably room for about 1% of woodworkers to work entirely by hand. that's probably about the same as the number of people who really want to learn anything about design. As you say, you can do as fine of work as you want, but most people are satisfied to watch you do it.

When I put up videos about making double iron planes (something I'm almost certainly going to have to redo at some point), I thought that if there were five people looking for the same thing over 10 years, it was worthwhile. Where else will the information come from? I certainly am not interested in pump and dump of the subject (publicize it and then charge people to learn it and basically abandon doing it).

I have no idea if five people will ever build the type of plane. Most will watch the videos, tire of them in five minutes and build a laminated plane. And they'll probably set their laminated plane aside and buy a different plane, that's the nature of the hobby (that is, if they stick in the hobby at all).

I had the wrong idea about dimensioning wood by hand. Even a lot of the more recent texts written in the last 75 years aren't very good at describing the subtleties, they're more prescriptive. I'd suggest to people dimensioning furniture and cabinetry by hand that most shavings should be through shavings, I've never seen that in type until recently, and now I can't remember where I saw it. That's contrary to what everything recent says - but if you go back far enough, you find texts where that is what is instructed. And it's not a surprise to me that that is the case.

Every once in a while, Warren will drop a hint like that, but it's here and gone in a breeze with no explanation. As sparse as the receptors are for such things, I guess that's just the way it is. I'm not going to attract anyone to do things the way I like to do them, it's like playing the lottery. I will, however, foster the interest in anyone who has it, perhaps only at this time by talking about things that will specifically appeal to the few working by hand, or placing planes in places where I think they will be appreciated.

Certainly, I'm not going to go to the trouble of making a double iron try plane, and then give it to someone who only smooths. It'd be a waste, they'd never understand just how spectacular the type is.

Maybe out of all of this, what I'm most annoyed about are the exchanges with David C. I started with all of his DVDs, that's the kind of thing you do when you're working in a vacuum. I literally took notes from his sharpening video and had a sharp iron the first time I ever used a tool. In certain things, I've moved *past* them, which I doubt he would agree with. The fact that he instantly discounts anything I mention is a bit annoying, I guess because I have such high regard for him for springing me, as a beginner, past things that hang so many people up. I also know that he learned to use a cap iron to reduce tearout, because he literally put it in print on SMC, so I'm curious as to why he'd think that's good advice but nothing else is relevant - by delivery, probably, and partially as a matter of a "case has been closed on this for 30 years" philosophy. I think there's more out there for people who want to do "extreme woodworking" as you describe it, and as jacob perfectly put it, there is value in what you learn, even if you stop doing the extreme part.

 

[D_W]

David, I've hand dressed a hundred board feet (+/-) of lumber in a one day from roughsawn material to final thickness with one edge shot and one end squared but I was just destroyed and completely ineffective the next day.

I used a wooden jack.

I was taking 4/4 rough to 13/16 which is not a lot of lumber to remove. No doubt the old guys did not make a habit of planing 5/4 lumber down to 3/4. That of course would have been stupid and wasteful.

That's a significant amount of wood, and most hobbyists wouldn't do that much dimensioning in two days with machines. I'm impressed, I've probably never done half of that in a day.

But I make more things now than I did when I was using power tools, and I certainly have less waste and fewer mistakes.

As a pro, you can build those things into a budget, but you astutely pointed out such things are hypothetical in the first place, because you actually have to find a pro who can keep a customer base so that they don't end up putting beginner's class advertisements on craigslist, or take a job teaching basic woodworking at a local trade school.

 

[D_W]

I was taking 4/4 rough to 13/16 which is not a lot of lumber to remove. No doubt the old guys did not make a habit of planing 5/4 lumber down to 3/4. That of course would have been stupid and wasteful.

I'm sure this is going to go over the head of most, but there is something more attractive about minor variations in dimensioning when it's skillfully done.

I'm mired in the early mornings reading through hasluck's book on carving, and as things used to do, half of the book is on design and taste rather than just what tools to buy and what gadgets to put them in to sharpen them. Those types of variations, and discussion of life are just the kind of thing i'm looking for, and it seems very few people are. You'd enjoy what he says about carving and sanding.

Derek uses the term extreme woodworking, it makes it sound like someone is doing wheelies or getting dehydrated and wearing a camelbak. I'd just call it, simpler, deeper - a practice where a hobbyist is 100% involved in working the wood as opposed to setting up machines, etc (certainly there is some tool setup, etc, but it's less).

 

[mouppe]

Windsor chairmaking is still largely a hand tool preserve. You might see a bandsaw for roughing out the chair, but that's about it.

Most of my work is done with hand tools, but I am lucky in that time is not an issue for me. The building where I have my workshop also does not permit machine noise, so I have to work in a way that suits the building bylaws. I do have a thickness planer in my garage at home, and a Festool tracksaw and jigsaw which I use for rough cutting timber. But even power tool users will probably have to use hand tools at times, for example if their panels are too wide for their jointers, flattening a workbench, etc. So it's always important to have the hand tool skills whether you use them frequently or rarely.

 

[Trafalgar]

D_W:

I have Hasluck.

13/16 might sound like some certain level of accuracy but really it's not. You have to gauge a line somewhere. Again, pendulums swing too far. People over-exaggerate the supposed degree of 'variations' in period work -- yes, on relatively coarse forms. No, on the real stuff. I don't think anybody, ever, skillfully and purposefully introduced 'variations' in stock prep as some sort of design feature (leaving carving tool marks is quite another matter and worthy of discussion on its own). To the extent they are present on straight woodworking they just happened as a result of a myriad of factors like economics, skill, relative importance of the commission, etc.

Watch the YouTube series The Extraordinary Thomas Chippendale (in four parts). The level of accuracy, fit, and finish is breathtaking. Makes almost all the rest look like total pikers. I'm afraid the best the U.S. had to offer at that time did not come close.

 

[D_W]

Charley, what you're talking about is what I mean. I don't mean leaving something looking sloppy on a show surface, I mean close examination of a piece showing that perhaps some of the parts vary a little in aspects that do not affect how things look.

I am not a fan of crackle finishes and shabby chic type things, or inaccurate for the purpose of art.

It is only a matter of how they are present when you work to a marked line instead of extracting calipers , or perhaps when the top or bottom of a piece is left an eighth thicker than the sides because it is practical.

It's not the kind of thing that's communicated well on forums, I suppose - who knows? That's why we get discussions of people arguing about 4 thousandths in a mortise and tenon, and about how accurate hand tools are or aren't. We expect to have no gaps on joints regardless of what's used, but who would know what the hand tool is doing in thousandths? It's not important. what's important is the skill of the maker to get pieces together as a matter of fitting. If a rail on one side is 2 hundredths wider than it is on the other, then it doesn't matter- our eyes see gaps in joints, but we eliminate them not by making sure every piece is within a thousandth all the way along. (which is how one of my power tool friends works - his planer has a dial indicator on the table, he's not ever been able to master finish planing, so he's got whatever you call those rotary carbide heads - everything and there are calipers all over the shop. Every plane includes autocad with all measurements converted to thousandths of an inch). Everything is square, curves are extremely rare and only cut based on similar measurement standards and with a router template of some sort. It makes my head hurt.

The variations issue is the same as the carving tool marks discussion. if they are there and not intentionally put as kitsch, they are lovely. If they are exaggerated, then the work looks fake and contrived. The carving marks discussion would be a great one to have. In hasluck's opinion, a carved piece that is sanded is one that has been ruined unless it is part of cheap furniture.

 

[Trafalgar]

Using aperture to control tearout by Jeff Gorman. Hard to argue with the results on maple:

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

File it under 'more than one way to skin a cat.' We have adjustable frogs, why not use them?

"Some authors write that the cap-iron breaks the shaving and therefore reduces its effective length as a lever. However, a thin 'beam' will bend before it can do much levering..."

True statement.

 

[D_W]

Using aperture to control tearout by Jeff Gorman. Hard to argue with the results on maple:

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

File it under 'more than one way to skin a cat.' We have adjustable frogs, why not use them?

"Some authors write that the cap-iron breaks the shaving and therefore reduces its effective length as a lever. However, a thin 'beam' will bend before it can do much levering..."

True statement.

Definitely true. You have to get to that point first, though. I actually tried the mouth aperture first. In production. It's OK as long as you're only smoothing.

If you're doing more than that, it takes longer than just using the cap iron and taking advantage of the best bedding situation (which is the frog flush with the casting at the back).

If the tiny mouth was important, the old infills would all have mouths of a few thousandths. So would the wooden double iron planes (they more like a 16th, which has benefits in chip escapement and to some extent shows the skill of the maker rather than just leaving the mouth wide open).

So the short answer is, the cap iron is faster and ultimately less work, even in a situation like he shows. Planing a large chip through a narrow mouth provides a feel like driving a car with the emergency brake partially on. Setting the cap iron right does not substantially increase pressure (it's uncommon to have to go that far that the cap iron is really smashing a thick shaving back into the surface). It's clear that the guy doesn't do much more than smoothing if he thinks the cap iron has no effect, it's an easy trap to fall into.

(I thought when i was completing the second infill with a 1 hundredth mouth, I really had the world by the tail. Then I used it, and found it still allowed a fair amount of tearout, which is more harsh on the user than a smooth cut without tearout. And it leaves more work at the smoothing step. At the same time, if the smoothing step can be done first with a shaving of 3 or 4 thousandth, backing off depth then and making a pass or two of very thin shavings is easy. If you start with appreciable tearout and have to make a whole bunch of very thin shavings, it's more work).

 

[D_W]

That guy would have to stop to sharpen more often, too (several times more often). I just read his complete thoughts on the chipbreaker. He's in the weeds, but it's just smoothing,right? You can be. If it takes 2 times as long his way, and twice the effort, it's still a small part of a given project.

He suggests that the cap iron doesn't have any effect at 3 thousandths, which is definitely not the case - you don't need a broken chip to see if the cap iron has had an effect, rather a straight one (but it has some effect even before that).

I could settle this in person pretty quickly, Charlie, just in terms of speed, but short of that, I can't argue against everyone who has no clue how to use a cap iron. It's the same as being told that stropping doesn't improve an edge and being sent to brent beach's site. I pulled a piece of maple out for the same local instructor who would like me to construct a class to use double iron planes, and planed it with a stanley with a cap iron and with a fat shaving, and then a thin one. He was shocked, it doesn't translate without seeing it in person. I can't imagine that it wasn't done when time was money.

 

[Trafalgar]

He may be in the weeds in your opinion but the wood apparently didn't get the memo.

 

[D_W]

He may be in the weeds in your opinion but the wood apparently didn't get the memo.

There's nothing particularly difficult about the piece of wood he showed (it's maple - that problem becomes much harder if it's softer wood or quartered wood with damaged earlywood from improper drying). It's damaged from a power planer, but that's about it.

He restricted himself to a mouth of 3 thousandths, so he can't take shavings thicker than a fraction of that. If he backs off to a plane with a mouth of a hundredth to help, he'll create tearout that he has to take several fine shavings again to remove.

If he took a couple of 5 thousandth shavings with a double iron, the worst he'd have is a few fuzzy areas that need a finer shaving, because the pressure of the chip was lined up directly into the growth of the wood.

Like I said, if you don't care about time, that's fine. I've been there and done that before. I doubt he could do the same work in double the time that I'd do it, and it doesn't address what he'd do to avoid that much damage to the board in the first place.

 

[Trafalgar]

You can lead a horse to water...

 

[D_W]

You can lead a horse to water...

I get the sense that you think there's something about that website that would improve or make easier/faster, etc whatever I'm doing? That's incorrect, I've already been down that road, but you can believe it if you want.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

My bed has drawers in it and the room is usually at about 16-18C, there's no damp I'm aware of. Would this be a good place for storing my planes?
Thanks in advance.

Yes. Warm and dry - perfect. Seeking prior approval from Domestic Authority (if appropriate) would be advisable to prevent unscheduled relocation of planes to somewhere colder and wetter, though.