Karl Holtey - flattenning

[lurker]

I wonder if he is aiming at making tools to plane wood or, perhaps, something else?

Why Sneer?

The bloke has found a niche market and filled it.
He has a full order book.
His work & name is recognised worldwide
I assume he lives a happy life

Who are you to question the motives of his customers?

 

[wizer]

I had a few Holtey's once. But I got bored of them....

 

[lurker]

I had a few Holtey's once. But I got bored of them....

Do you have any left up in your loft?
Are you sure - would you double check.
PM me your sales price ( I have £100 burning a hole in my pocket!)

 

[Karl]

What a load of self indulgent hype.


Get real and get out there and do some woodwork instead of all this pointless anal discussion.

There are many posts on this website to which the above could be said, but is it your place to tell people what to have a discussion about???

Cheers

Karl

 

[wizer]

I had a few Holtey's once. But I got bored of them....

Do you have any left up in your loft?
Are you sure - would you double check.
PM me your sales price ( I have £100 burning a hole in my pocket!)

They're not worth that...






Sorry, that was a step too far. I'd love a full set of Holteys and wouldn't think twice if I had the cash spare.




Back to arguing over the minute details...

 

[bugbear]

What a load of self indulgent hype.

tolerances of 0.0015 are more than adequate for a wood plane

Heh. I don't think Karl is aiming at "adequate".

BugBear

I wonder if he is aiming at making tools to plane wood or, perhaps, something else?

Oh, they definitely plane wood. They may tick "other "boxes" too.

BugBear

 

[karl5005]

As an engineer I'd take issue with this statement. Certainly when dry grinding heat is generated. However if the machine is set up correctly you have a huge mass of cast iron to act as a heat sink so with care heat is not a problem.

However just about all commercial surface grinders have inbuilt coolant systems (as does my machine at home). With coolant even quit aggressive cuts can be made which no discernable heating taking place.

Hand methods can certainly produce good results (certainly good enough for all woodworking purposes), and I for one much prefer the look of hand scraped machines. Given that modern surface grinders are capable of producing optically flat surfaces so perfect that two pieces of metal can be joined by molecular bonding I think it fair to say that the surface grinder wins on flatness.

Perhaps a better statement would be a dry surface grinder if used too aggressively can generate sufficient heat to distort the sole.

If you really want to get technical have a look up the effects of carbon transfer from diamond grinding wheels into steel tools. A lot of very local heat is also required so I think we are all safe with our diamond stones.

Kind Regards

James

I will try and answer all your points James. I am not an engineer and I have had to gain all my knowledge through experience and common sense.

The item that I am grinding is basically a U section of mild steel so fits the description of a thin walled box section. Whatever work holding method you can use it will be suspended above the surface of the chuck. Therefore does not have the benefit of the heat sink. This could still be a problem even if it was flooded with coolant; it takes a very small temperature change to cause distortion. This is one area in which I do have experience. Where there is a small increase in temperature, which is barely detectable by touch, a plane body of say 10” long would want to bend and this would be upwards into the grinding wheel, by several thou. Considering that I like to work with a half thou cut this can be catastrophic. Even if the depth of cut was increased by another half thou this would just generate more heat and then the whole thing compounds. Things could go a bit pear shaped.

If you look closer, as someone else has commented, you will see that the plane already has its wooden infill and I don’t think I would want to spread coolant over this.

My No 982 plane was born out of many difficulties of which the grinding was one of them. Now I am producing super flat even textured surfaces which might be a common goal for all of us.

I have nothing against surface grinding and I try to use this method where ever I can.

Karl Holtey

 

[karl5005]

As an engineer I'd take issue with this statement. Certainly when dry grinding heat is generated. However if the machine is set up correctly you have a huge mass of cast iron to act as a heat sink so with care heat is not a problem.

Some of Karl Holteys planes are steel sole with brass sides, so maybe the two metals will distort like a bimetal strip when heated? Also, I guess there are more internal stresses with the dovetailed joints than in a cast iron plane?

I do not like using bimetals and I make it a rule that I don't make dovetailed planes in brass and steel over 10" long. Where there are any reasonable temperature changes you are quite right there will be flexing.

Karl Holtey

 

[karl5005]

I knew someone who used to buy a new Aston Martin every year. As part of the deal he spent a week each year at the factory as a trainee learning a different aspect of its construction. I wonder if Karl would accept the same sort of arrangement.

For the same annual expenditure, I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to!

BugBear

Yes, please

Karl

 

[karl5005]

hi

just seen this thread as I've just arrived in Holland to visit my daughter , Karl was perfectly right , any plane which has had a grinder used to flatten it sole, is only fit for one thing in the bin . hc

Quite a lot of newly discovered antique infill planes usually end their days on the grinding table.

Karl Holtey

 

[Mikey R]

I do not like using bimetals and I make it a rule that I don't make dovetailed planes in brass and steel over 10" long. Where there are any reasonable temperature changes you are quite right there will be flexing.

Karl Holtey

Thanks Karl - and thanks for the blog and contributing on this forum! Its really interesting seeing your processes and your products part way through the process!

 

[Modernist]

Well my comments seem to have stirred up some deeply held views.

It was not my intention to stifle debate but to make the point that there is a dividing line between making planes for even extremes of use and planes almost as "art" objects.

It is normal to expect to do some fine finishing to any new blade and someone made the comment above that having done that then there was little or no difference between the serious quality brands. I doubt that any re-finishing to the bed of any of the big 3 would produce any noticeable improvement in end result.

There is a danger that the craft gets too precious as we see with those drooling over planes containing "shavings from the master"

Anyway each to their own

 

[head clansman]

hi Karl

all my planes have been flattened by hand , I'm no engineer i can't afford the luxury of the machine that some have , and don't have that sort of experience to use those machines anyway , if i cant find the puff to do it after a half days work and it still need more flattening then it's simple bin it , it aint worth the effort and if it needed that much time spent on it it wasn't right in the first place.

excellent blog , keep it coming when it's quit tonight I'll take a more in depth look see , really enjoyed what i seen earlier. hc

 

[ivan]

When doing careful work a shaving is 1 to 1.5 thou thick. If the plane is not flat you won't get a shaving!

Using stop shavings and a flat plane on a furniture sized part will get it about 2 thou concave; no bumps to upset your square, and flat enough to give accurate dimensions when squaring across a carcass part.

Cast iron moves with time; both LN and Clifton planes have been out of spec at purchase time by 3 or 4 thou, and those in spec have later moved outside the mfrg limit. Flattening will thus be needed periodically until the casting settles down. You can do a fair job with wet/dry/film on a granite plate, as evidenced by engineers blue.

 

[PaulO]

I doubt that any re-finishing to the bed of any of the big 3 would produce any noticeable improvement in end result.

Sorry but you are just plain wrong. If you have a plane from the big three with a sole you haven't touched I'd be happy to prove you wrong.

But maybe your standards of work are lower than mine? :wink:

As I said in my previous post I have flattened the sole of five LN all of them were improved ( #5, large shoulder, #9, block plane, 112 scraper). I'd go so far as to say the shoulder plane was unusable before flattening. The #8 had a perfect sole out of the box, but I gather they do extra manual flattening of these in the factory.

 

[Benchwayze]

you ask 5 engineers the best way to do a job you will have 10 different answers.

...and if you ask 5 different woodworkers the best way to hone a blade you'll end up with 1000's of different answers :lol: - Rob

There's only one way Rob...
Properly!
As you say though, that can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different workers!

When I was in the Navy there were three way of doing everything.
The right way
The wrong way
and the Navy's way!



John

 

[Modernist]

I doubt that any re-finishing to the bed of any of the big 3 would produce any noticeable improvement in end result.

Sorry but you are just plain wrong. If you have a plane from the big three with a sole you haven't touched I'd be happy to prove you wrong.

But maybe your standards of work are lower than mine? :wink:

You may well operate on a higher plane than a mere mortal like me but I wonder how much your timber moves in the week after you've planed it? I can easily produce shavings of less than 1 thou on my LN 4 1/2 with the body straight out of the box so what more could I need.

 

[bugbear]

Well my comments seem to have stirred up some deeply held views.

It was not my intention to stifle debate but to make the point that there is a dividing line between making planes for even extremes of use and planes almost as "art" objects.

Yes - this is (fairly) obvious. The question then comes down to; is it legitimate for some people to make, and some people to want planes that ARE at the level of Art?

I see no justification at all for forbidding it - I find it rather pleasant to live in a world that has wonderful, (but uneccessary), things.

BugBear

 

[Mikey R]

I see no justification at all for forbidding it - I find it rather pleasant to live in a world that has wonderful, (but uneccessary), things.

BugBear

Surely thats what we're all in this to make - functional objects that are a little bit better than absolultely necessary! Otherwise theres Ikea.

 

[Modernist]

The question then comes down to; is it legitimate for some people to make, and some people to want planes that ARE at the level of Art?

I see no justification at all for forbidding it - I find it rather pleasant to live in a world that has wonderful, (but uneccessary), things.

BugBear

Of course it is, and so do I. What I find difficult is the degree of near religious fervour which tends to accompany these tools. A focus on effective function and an acceptance of the law of diminishing returns is a useful yardstick. Karl Holtey makes wonderful objects in the form of planes with a staggering standard of specification and finish but as such they distance themselves from the process of planing, other than in clinical conditions and also by virtue of their price. The price may well be justified for the particular object but not as a means to smooth a piece of timber.

Of course they have their place but lets not attach so much emotion to them that we lose sight of the purpose.