new plane and/or scraper?

[Anonymous]

The addition of a thicker blade made of better quality steel does improve the performance of modern Stanley and Record bench planes a lot.

Can you help me out by being more specific? I have heard and read this statement many times but I have tried for a couple of years now to quantify it without success. My experiments using different blades in the same plane on the same boards yield only one result I can document and that is edge retention. One subjective thing I have found is that the thicker blades give a better tactile sensation, the plane feels more solid and the sound is different and I like it..

I think these points about sum it up and I agree with them all, although I do find the edge appears to be sharper - and for longer. Also I find the finish left by the Hock 'glows' more than that left by the Stanley which I can only attribute to better cutting of the fibres and less tearing.

I think the whole experience when using the Hock is an improvement over the original from 'feel' to finish. Don't underate 'feel'.

I didn't notice much difference with the Clifton chipbreaker used in conjuntion with my Shepherd blade but I can feel a difference when it is used with a standard Stanley blade. I haven't done any testing to see if the performance improved, it just feels better.

I didn't try the Clifton without the Hock as I was looking for improvements in the overall use of the planes rather than evaluating each component on it's own merits.

 

[Anonymous]

The addition of a thicker blade made of better quality steel does improve the performance of modern Stanley and Record bench planes a lot.

Can you help me out by being more specific? I have heard and read this statement many times but I have tried for a couple of years now to quantify it without success. My experiments using different blades in the same plane on the same boards yield only one result I can document and that is edge retention. One subjective thing I have found is that the thicker blades give a better tactile sensation, the plane feels more solid and the sound is different and I like it. Then again, I think I've also mentioned before that I may take my sharpening a bit OTT! (only SS (TM) though!)

Hmm, I don't remember writing about sharpening, I do use a variation of SS though :lol: .

Just my quick tuppence worth here, to muddy the waters - replacing a modern Stanley iron for a better after market (whether it be an A2 like a Hock, or a high-carbon like Ray Iles or Clifton...or even a laminate like the Samurai) has one other advantage - sharpness! I think I've posted it before elsewhere, so won't repeat the gory details, but in brief...the impurities added to modern Stanley irons (chrome, vanadium etc) to make them drop proof, stainless and all the rest of the rubbish make it harder, if not impossible, to get a truly sharp edge on the iron - something to do with molecule size, i believe ?? (Ron Hock's web site has a bit of info on this).

The "impurities" you mention are alloyed materials added to change the properties of the steel. Andrew F is a metallurgist & woodworker who did a great explanation of this. See http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/archives_handtools.pl?read=4444 As noted, it is difficult to get the particle size of those alloyed materials to the point where they will form a keen edge. Even on a material as widely used as A2, there is still debate on whether cryo treatment is beneficial or necessary.
Another item to consider is how those blades wear. Brent Beach's study shows some very interesting phenomena http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach

Having said this, the only time I've swapped an iron for an after market one didn't make a blind bit of difference - and the reason for that was that I'm an idiot It was the lovely Stanley #4 1/2 I picked up dirt cheap at a car boot sale - I wasn't sure of its age, so got a new Ray Iles high-carbon iron for it, in case the iron was a crappy modern one...the Ray Iles claims to be significantly thicker than new Stanley - new iron turns up, check size - about the same...grind and hone both to my normal standard...same performance. I have a feeling that this #4 1/2 is a bit older than I first thought!

Hey, nothing wrong with extra blades! I keep several extra 2" & 2 3/8" blades on hand so I can just switch to a sharp blade when necessary. I find sharpening in batches more efficient.[/url]

 

[Shady]

Darn this is interesting: all else apart, I have one question for Roger: you state that blade thickness with respect to limiting flex becomes 'self defeating' because the blade tip simply gets further away from the bed, and thus less supported.

I understand your logic, but I'm not sure I agree: if for example a steel blade were the thickness of a razor blade, it would have excellent support up to very close to the tip, but would still 'judder'/'flex'/'bend' under load, even with a splendid bedrock bedding (and I agree that we should be clearer on what we mean by these movement terms - but you get the point for this argument). Conversely a stupidly thick blade (let's say 1 inch!!) would have far less 'bed support' at the tip, but will deform less under an equivalent load (all other things being equal) My gut feeling is that this is something to do with the physics of vibration in an elastic material being related to length verses width (think of a rubber band wobbling as opposed to a block of the same rubber - thickness does dampen vibration), but that's pure computer scientist's logic at work in the real world (!): any materials scientists able to help us here? This might be part of the reason for traditional Eastern blades being substantially thicker than Western.

 

[Philly]

Hi All,
Just a few bits to add/subtract to this thread....
Whilst lurking in a Japanese tools forum I came across a thread on planes. The guys were talking about the width of the mouth and how in japanese planes this does NOT have to be extremely narrow for fine smoothing work. They reckoned that by having the chipbreaker extremely close to the edge of the blade and having the chipbreaker tensioning the blade edge a fine shaving should be possible in most woods. These guys seemed quite adamant about this (maybe this is Jap plane folklore ). What they were saying was this-by applying consistant pressure to the edge of the blade it will cut better as it is better supported and tensioned.
I must admit I think the term "chipbreaker" is a misnomer-do you really think it breaks the back of the shaving as it comes through the mouth? I honestly don't think so, and since aquiring a few bevel up/no chipbreaker planes which perform as admirable as my chipbreakered planes, am convinced of this. In most Woodworking books, the chapter on handplanes shows the shaving being broken backwards, preventing tear out. But look the shavings as they come out of the plane-mine mainly come out curly and smooth not "broken".
Any thoughts on that one?
confusingly,
Philly

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with your approach, Shady. Taking things to extremes helps to visualize them.
Look at the contact points on a Bailey type plane blade. When the cap iron is fastened to the blade, there is contact in the area of the screw and at the end of the cap iron. Put the cap iron/blade assembly in the plane and the blade contacts the bottom and top of the frog (we'll ignore the possiblilty of sole contact for now). The lever cap is then put into place and it contacts the cap iron at the cam on the lever and and the bottom edge contacts the curved portion of the cap iron, transferring pressure from the lever cap/cap iron interface to the cap iron/blade interface. Now at the the top of the frog, the lever cap, cap iron, blade and frog all contact in close proximity but at the edge of the blade the situation is much more complex.

Let's assume the we grind the primary bevel to 30º. This means the bevel is twice as long as the thickness of the blade. If the blade is .1" thick, the bevel would be .2" long. Measured along the back of the blade the top of the bevel would be .173" above the edge. The top of the bevel is the closest possible contact (bedding) point A typical setting of a cap iron is about .03" above the edge of the blade. This means the blade becomes a cantilevered beam which is fixed at the top and pivoting around the top of the bevel. Force is being applied by the cap iron at a point .143", in this case, from the pivot or fulcrum which provides a dynamic, not static, loading at both the blade/frog and blade/cap iron interfaces.
Cap iron placement doensn't change based on blade thickness but the top of the bevel (our fulcrum) moves twice as much the increase in blade thickness. So increasing blade thickness increases blade rigidity but it changes the leverage on the blade at a higer rate than it gains rigidity and the pivot starts moving up the frog where the frog gets thinner and weaker.
After all that, we know the blade has to protrude below the sole of the plane, the cap iron has be be back some distance from the edge of the blade and the blade has to be rigid enough to withstand the force required to cut wood. So what is the magic number? I don't know but it's somewhere around .1", hmmm... about like a Hock blade.

 

[Midnight]

Roger..

I apologize if my comments struck you as inflammatory.....that was the last thing I'd intended...
As for qualification, I was simply talking from repeated and bitter experience, using 3 different planes, all three sharpened equally with exactly the same stones, and tried on exactly the same boards... I honestly don't know how to be more subjective...

I tried repeatedly to operate with a near closed mouth on oak, elm and sycamore, woods with slightly different characteristics, a mixture of straight and interlocking grain, course and delicate structure, fairly soft...and "harder than a witches heart". In every case, the results were the same... as soon as the blade encountered any figured piece of the board.....the tip would flex, dig in, rip out and chatter through the rest of the stroke... I quit trying when I got sick to the back teeth of planing out tear out...

Re the steel quality... my implication was that the poor quality of the steel lends itself to excessive elastic deformation; I'm guessing that's a product of both the structure of the material and the lack of thickness to it. The stock chip breakers do nothing with regard to tensioning the blade to a point near the limit of it's elastic deformation. Combined with the poor support from the frog, I found repeatedly that as soon as the blade was advanced away from the rear of the throat (i.e. left unsupported at any point other than the frog) it resulted in very destructive blade flex... I got nothin to gain by making this up... nothing to gain from encouraging others to avoid the same mistakes I've ran into, other than the satisfaction of knowing I've helped someone...

For comparison... I experimented a couple of times; back to back comparisons of both my Stanley #7 and my L-N #7, using them both on the same board, both sharpened on the same stones, both subjected to comparable changes in set up.
Cutting to the chase... the only difference I noticed with the L-N with the mouth closed to approx 5 thou was that there was more backlash in the adjuster.... the Stanley transformed from useable (provided I steered clear of hard grained areas) to destructive almost immediately... In both instances, the blades were retracted and gradually advanced till they'd just began to take a full width shaving.

 

[Anonymous]

Mike,
I didn't take your comments as inflammatory and I'm sorry if I gave that impression or came off as inflammatory myself. I really enjoy your posts. From your descriptions, the problem sounds more like a frog that is not seating firmly than a blade problem.
I sometimes run into boards I can't plane without tearout using Stanley planes but it is the limitation of the plane itself. If I get tearout with a sharp blade, switching to a different blade thickness or material doesn't cure the problem. I resort to using a better plane, a scraper, or even sanding