no 5 1/2 plane clogging really easily

[AndyT]

Here's the "main" patent concerning the frog design in later Baileys:

http://www.datamp.org/patents/advance.p ... 960&set=90

BugBear

:idea:

So that's the Henry Richards you meant earlier. (Some of us are struggling to keep up!)

I normally assume people will google things they don't know. I'm not cut 'n' pasting the whole internet for this forum!

BugBear

Yebbut...apparently he's not as famous as some other Henry Richards - no presence on Facebook, no LinkdIn profile, not even his own blog!

 

[bugbear]

Yebbut...apparently he's not as famous as some other Henry Richards - no presence on Facebook, no LinkdIn profile, not even his own blog!

All true. How shallow modern culture is.

BugBear

 

[Corneel]

Nice stuff to read. Of course, you shouldn't read too much into it. The inventor claims that his invention will do something. It doesn't say it will actually do these things. We know from later devellopments (the Bedrock was brought to market), that Stanley wasn't too happy with the chatter from the Bailey planes. We also know from the limitted commercial succes from the Bedrock planes that most users found other ways to deal with chatter in Bailey planes. And from our own experience we know how to avoid chatter in bailey planes, through moving back the frog.

And of course, all this is just opinion. :twisted:

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

So, where are we at? The plane's frog IS adjustable, was DESIGNED to be adjustable and INTENDED to be adjusted to alter the mouth setting. A fine mouth setting WILL reduce tear out and a cap iron set close to the blade tip WILL also.

Who knew?

The main thing wrong with the Baily pattern is the thin irons and fairly rudimentary cap irons. Change one or both and the lack of chatter frees up the user to set the mouth where he darn well pleases and we have a fully functioning tool. After all, you cannot harp on about the irons being designed thin and are better for it and then on the other hand say that because something was designed that way doesn't mean it works. Install a stiffer iron and everything works!

Mike.

 

[Racers]

Hi Mike

Everything is a compromise I guess.

Looks like they where designed to be cheap and fairly effective, a good woody smother or infill plane would give a better finish in difficult woods, but will not be as flexible.

A bailey pattern plane with a very thick blade would work very well, but then you might as well have an infill of woody smoother.

Pete

 

[Jacob]

Hello,

So, where are we at? The plane's frog IS adjustable,

Possible but not easy

was DESIGNED to be adjustable and INTENDED to be adjusted to alter the mouth setting.

Doubt it. An afterthought IMHO. They were very competent designers and did eventually come up with an adjustable mouth, after a not very good first attempt (the bedrock). They finally arrived at the adjustable sole piece which is the obvious answer.

A fine mouth setting WILL reduce tear out

Not so well with the ordinary frog (loses support from the mouth hardly worth the bother) but yes with the moveable sole piece

and a cap iron set close to the blade tip WILL also.

Yes, though BU planes don't have them and seem to work fine. Why is this?

...
The main thing wrong with the Baily pattern is the thin irons

Thin iron is the very strength and main point of the Bailey design which is designed around the concept. Thinness and quick release/replace make sharpening so much easier.
I agree about stayset cap irons, they are better.

 

[Corneel]

Point is, you don't NEED to spend money on a new blade and a new caprion. The old ones are perfectly servicable, when you give them full support. And luckily you don't NEED the extremely narrow mouth if you know how to use the chipbreaker. Only thing wrong with them is that the chipbreaker is usually poorly fitted to the face of the blade. You'll have to invest some time in that (which brings us back to the original question).

The Ray Iles blade in my #4 is nice and less chattery then the old blade, but certainly not immune when it doesn't have the full support of the sole. The whole package just becomes more solid when you slide the frog back.

 

[David C]

Is it not odd, that all the quality cabinetmaking planes of the last two centuries, have great big thick blades and chipbreakers??

Spiers, Norris, Addis, Mathieson, Holtey, Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, Clifton Sauer & Steiner, Bridge City, Hock, Gordon,...........the list is endless. The wooden bench planes which work so well have the same. I do not see a single modern planemaker chosing to use a thin blade. Jacob will doubtless see this as a deluded modern fashion, but I don't think so.

The Stanley propaganda which recommended thin irons was a cynical ruse to reduce sharpening time. It did this, but performance suffered as a result.

best wishes,
David Charlesworth

 

[G S Haydon]

Hi David,

The only woodworker I know of that promotes the thin blade is P Sellers, his style seems more joinery orientated so I guess he is less demanding on the plane?

 

[Jacob]

Is it not odd, that all the quality cabinetmaking planes of the last two centuries, have great big thick blades and chipbreakers??

Spiers, Norris, Addis, ....

And all the low quality planes too. That's how they made them until Stanley/Bailey introduced the modern plane which swept the board.

Hi David,

The only woodworker I know of that promotes the thin blade is P Sellers, his style seems more joinery orientated so I guess he is less demanding on the plane?

You could argue that everybody who uses a Stanley, Record, Acorn, Woden, and a lot of other Bailey copiers, also promote the thin blade. They have the option - they make their choices. Are they all deluded?

I do not see a single modern planemaker chosing to use a thin blade.

Fashions come and go.

NB it was the thin blade (and ease of adjustment) which made Stanley's and Bailey's name

 

[David C]

Cabinetmakers who wanted planes which were better able to tackle hard exotic timbers, valued infill planes above all others for the whole of the last century.

The only selling point for Stanley was that they were relatively cheap. Unfortunately Stanley's response to a diminishing market, which certainly set in after the second world war, if not earlier, was to try and maintain low cost by cutting quality. By the 2000 the tools were unfit for purpose without extensive fettling. I was given a new no 5 at that time which was 6 thou hollow in length. It could not plane a straight edge.

The "fashion" argument is baseless twaddle.

David

 

[Jacob]

...
The only selling point for Stanley was that they were relatively cheap. ....

Steel planes were relatively expensive until quite recently. When I was at school the few steel planes were kept in cupboard and only brought out under supervision!
The selling point was the vastly improved performance and ease of use.

 

[Corneel]

When you look at planes sold in the last two centuries you see two big ones: Stanley and wooden planes. Both totally different, both very effective at planing wood. Infills were mainly a UK thing, pretty marginal in the grand scheme of things. The same for all the new planes available today, mostly used in the hobby market.

There is no denying that Stanley blades are quicker to sharpen then woodie blades and the Stanleys are easier to adjust. And this comes from a big time wooden plane fan.

BTW, 18th century benchplanes had remarkably thin irons. They needed solid bedding too.

 

[Racers]

When I was at school we used wooden jack planes, probably because that was the way it was always done, and if you knock a wooden jack off the bench it doesn't break.

Pete

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Pete, when were you at school? I was there '65 - '72, and we were only shown woodies as an exhibit. We never actually used them at all.

 

[Corneel]

BTW, thick irons can chatter too when the bedding isn't correct. My foreplane is a bit like that. Sometimes it chatters in a heavy cut. There is a bit of a bulge in the bed, I should mend that. So, it came as a bit of a surpise to me that people advocate to reduce the bedding in a Stanley plane with a thin iron.

 

[bugbear]

You could argue that everybody who uses a Stanley, Record, Acorn, Woden, and a lot of other Bailey copiers, also promote the thin blade. They have the option - they make their choices. Are they all deluded?

Now that's an excellent justification for the usability of the frog adjustment. :lol:

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

Hi David,

The only woodworker I know of that promotes the thin blade is P Sellers, his style seems more joinery orientated so I guess he is less demanding on the plane?

Actually, Sellers actual techniques aren't as rebellious as selective quoting might make then appear.

For example, Sellers carefully flattens the backs of his chisels, using SiC paper on a granite surface plate (because ordinary granite slabs aren't flat enough) and polishes the backs right up to 1500 grit.

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

Pete, when were you at school? I was there '65 - '72, and we were only shown woodies as an exhibit. We never actually used them at all.

Phil, I'm slightly younger than you, but our standard bench tool kit had only one plane per boy, a wooden jack like this

There were some Stanley number 4s but they were - as Pete said - only released from their protective storage when your work was ready for a last cleaning up stage, to remove weeks of sweat marks and smudgy pencillings!

 

[AndyT]

Hi David,

The only woodworker I know of that promotes the thin blade is P Sellers, his style seems more joinery orientated so I guess he is less demanding on the plane?

Actually, Sellers actual techniques aren't as rebellious as selective quoting might make then appear.

For example, Sellers carefully flattens the backs of his chisels, using SiC paper on a granite surface plate (because ordinary granite slabs aren't flat enough) and polishes the backs right up to 1500 grit.

BugBear

Agreed. And I wouldn't describe his furniture making as 'joinery' either.

Also, given the numbers sold, I suspect that there are plenty of owners of thin-bladed planes happily getting on and using them, regardless of what one or another pundit may have said.