Plane Length

[Paul Chapman]

and has some grain reversals.

Depending how problematic the grain reversals are, it might be better to use a toothed blade to start, then possibly I would use a finely set #6 to remove the cross-hatchings from the toothed blade, then possibly a #80 scraper or scraper plane.

Alternatively, if the wood is near finished thickness, then I might do it all with a scraper plane. However, if the grain reversals were not too problematic, might do it all with the #6.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[newt]

As Paul says he can achieve a smooth finish with his 6 or 7 which does still begs the question as to why one should use a smoother. I think Ed has raised an interesting point.

 

[Mr Ed]

I suppose friction comes into this somewhere, hence the longer planes sometimes being offered with corrugated soles. I guess the shorter plane would be easier to push due to reduced friction from a smaller surface area and the shorter length offers some manoueverability benefits on smaller workpieces.

That said, I don't find the friction from my 5.5 a problem - occasionally if I do, I use a bit of beeswax and then it sails across the surface. I also don't find the size of it a problem on most workpieces.

So as we stand I've still not heard any compelling argument for a smoother needing to be short (say the length of a no.4) and I get the impression a few others would also challenge the time honoured logic that smoothers are always shorter lengths.

Cheers, Ed

NB - Incidentally this could become a very thinly veiled search for the self-justification of a new tool purchase if I become convinced a 'short' smoother would change my life... :wink:

 

[Paul Chapman]

Incidentally this could become a very thinly veiled search for the self-justification of a new tool purchase if I become convinced a 'short' smoother would change my life... :wink:

Well, I also find my #3 very useful........ :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[newt]

Ed I don't think friction is an issue here as surface area is not directly related to friction. The plot thickens so to speak, however I have this feeling that someone is going to come along and say your all bloody fools of course a short plane is needed because-------------

 

[newt]

I have just looked up the section on smoothing planes by Garrett Hack. They should be very very heavy, between 8 and 10 inches long, wider at the mouth narrow at the tail, with a very thick iron. This type of plane enables the effort to be concentrated at the cutting edge and the high mass provides the momentum and stability needed to cut difficult wood, and they are much easier to control. However he goes on to say that the larger jointer planes can because of their mass provide a better finish than the more lighter short smoothers.

I have a LN bronze no4 and a LA LV Jack (blade ground to give 45 degrees effective angle of cut) the difference in finish is hardly perceptible, however for me the LN is nicer to hold and feels more compact, and yes the centre of effort is by virtue of its compact size is more directly over the point of cut, which would not be the case with a very long plane. For me if I had to have only one plane it would be the LA jack.

 

[matthewwh]

The length of the sole is important because the line between the contact point at the tip of the tail and the one in front of the mouth define a chord across the tightest arc you can hollow with the plane.

A short plane defines a much tighter arc and is therefore better at staying in contact with the timber if there are any small hollows left - which is what you want when you are focussing on creating a smooth finished surface. The odd thou out of flat won't be noticed, but a patch where blade and timber lost contact on the final pass will stand out like a sore thumb.

If you need a visual explanation, try planing the edge of a thin board as hollow as you can with a short plane then have a go at it with a long one. The longer plane will trim the ends flat but leave a hollow in the centre. Think of this edge as a cross section through a board and you have a patch where the plane failed to make contact.

Now try it the other way around, the short smoothing plane will always make contact with the surface left by the longer plane.

 

[Mr Ed]

Matthew

What you say is correct, but not really answering the issue. If the surface has been trued with either a longer plane, or a machine surface planer (as most of us do) there is no reason for the smoothing to be done with a short plane. You could argue that a longer plane will enable you to maintain a true surface more easily and the additional weight seems to be something most people think is beneficial for smoothing.

So for me, the fact that the shorter plane can accommodate a more significant hollow in the work whilst still maintaining contact should not be a valid reason provided the surfaces being planed were prepared properly earlier in the process.

Cheers, Ed.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I have a LN bronze no4 and a LA LV Jack (blade ground to give 45 degrees effective angle of cut) the difference in finish is hardly perceptible, however for me the LN is nicer to hold and feels more compact, and yes the centre of effort is by virtue of its compact size is more directly over the point of cut, which would not be the case with a very long plane. For me if I had to have only one plane it would be the LA jack.

Pete,

I've been giving this a bit more thought. I think the length of the plane depends on the piece of wood you are planing. For example, if you were planing the top of a dining table, then the best smoother, in terms of length, might be a #7. If you were making a jewellery box, then a #3 or even a low angle block plane might be best.

In relation to weight, I think the design of the plane and the way the weight is distributed, are important. Your bronze LN and your bevel-up Veritas planes are both heavy. However, the way the weight is distributed is different. I've tried your BU Veritas planes and what stuck me was that the weight is very low down which is why I think they feel so much better as smoothers.

It's also the reason why I like my Clifton planes so much. Size for size, they are heavier than LNs and bevel down Veritas planes. They have much thicker bodies and, therefore, the weight is very low down.

If I took one of my Records and one of my Cliftons (which have the same blades), honed them the same and set the mouths the same, the Cliftons would perform better, particularly in difficult or very hard wood. My conclusion is that most of this is down to the weight and how it is distributed.

What you call the plane doesn't really matter - it's how it performs for the particular job in hand in my view.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[tnimble]

Your all bloody fools of course a short plane is needed because (hi newt)

the longer planes all have wider blades. When planing a piece wood from ****, where the scraper (plane) would take forever to take the wood down the last mil, a plane with a high effective pitch blade is needed. The force needed to push the blade across is related to the width of the blade exponentially. (hold true also for low and normal EP).

Besides that I think it's very hard to check what your doing if planing a piece of wood say 4" long, 1" wide and 1/8" thick with a no 7. Also the plane would have a natural tendesy to pivot around the board its ends.

 

[matthewwh]

So for me, the fact that the shorter plane can accommodate a more significant hollow in the work whilst still maintaining contact should not be a valid reason provided the surfaces being planed were prepared properly earlier in the process.

Cheers, Ed.

There's an important point!

It's like the American tourist who said "Windsor is a beautiful castle, but why'd they go and build it so close to the airport?"

I'm sure many folks on here know, but for the benefit of those that don't, the process of flattening a board by hand would originally have started with a riven (split from the tree) board - later, after the invention of the pit saw, they would have been sawn. The board is then scrub planed across the grain to bring it approximately flat. The heavily curved blade of the scrub plane would leave a furrowed surface, so that a coarsely set Jack plane could be used to cut off the crests and bring it to a flat surface. The thickness would then have been marked relative to the flat face and the other side planed in the same way down to the line. All the above work would have been done by apprentices before the master took over to do the final preparations with his finely set panel planes and smoothers. The sizes and shapes of planes that we use now were originally developed for this process.

Nowadays we take boards that were sawn flat at a mill, pop them over a planer and then through a thicknesser and get a superior result in much less time, in other words the machines are our apprentices and they do a very good job, we ask less of our handplanes than they did in the olden days, so in a way you are right.

If you only ever work on freshly machined surfaces, then a long plane that dictates flat to the surface, or a short plane that follows the flat surface, will have broadly equal results, so it becomes more a question of using what you are comfortable with.

We still have problems like twisting or cupping that can occur if boards have been machined and then stored before use, or conditioned in the place where the finished piece will sit.

As DC says, a 5 or 5-1/2 set up as a 'super smoother' (or panel plane as I would call it) is the best tool for correcting these small discrepancies and giving a clean uniform surface that is ready for finshing. As Philly said, if you have reached your final dimension all round but still have a low spot in the face of the timber, a smoother will be better able to hit the low area (without enlarging it too much) in fewer passes than the panel plane would.

 

[Mr Ed]

It's like the American tourist who said "Windsor is a beautiful castle, but why'd they go and build it so close to the airport?"

??

You've lost me there I'm afraid Matthew.

Ed

 

[Mr T]

Hi

Interesting thread this, in a geeky sort of way!

The confirmation of the planes we use now was arrived at many years ago by craftsmen who were not quite so hung up about perfection as we are today (just look at the dovetails on a standard Victorian chest of drawers to see my point). So when cleaning up a piece prior to finishing or planing a frame and panel after gluing up, flatness was not such an issue, so the short sole on a smoother was useful.

With our current emphasis on accuracy and glass flat surfaces perhaps the short sole is not a useful as it was.

Chris

 

[matthewwh]

You've lost me there I'm afraid Matthew.

Ed

The designs for the range of planes that we see today evolved to work as parts of a system that has been out of common usage for many years i.e. hand planing from riven or sawn boards. In the same way as Windsor Castle was originally developed for living in and/or fighting from.

To consider a handplane with reference to a planer & thicknesser (although in reality that is the way that we tend to use them these days) is similar to the visitor who percieves the castle purely as a tourist attraction and questions why it is located right at the end of the main runway of Heathrow airport, with no regard for which one was there first.

 

[tnimble]

Matthew, I do not completely follow you / miss the point.

In my view there is little to no difference between a board that would be roughted and surfaced by an apprentice using hand planes or by a machine. The major differences are: the machine is cheaper over time than the wages of the apprentice, the machine is faster, the machine leaves a crosswise surface ripple whilst the apprentice leaves shallow lengthwise tracks.

The master woodworker would make the joinsts and refine the surface with a smoother or scraper to further reduce the shallow plane tracks or the surface ripple, to hide layout lines and small imperfections to have the wood finish ready.

If this smoother must the short or may be longer still depends on the size of the workpiece, the force needed to plane at high EP, if refining a board or leveling a mitre key or dovetail pin/tail.

 

[matthewwh]

Hi Laura,

I would add to your list that Modern machines produce a substantially more consistent and regular surface than a trainee with a coarse jack plane. Therefore the likelihood of reaching the final dimension of a machined board and still having a hollow somewhere in the surface is significantly reduced.

As Ed said in his first post,

"We all know that a longer plane can create a truer surface as the length allows it to bridge the bumps and plane a level face. Hence the reason a jointer is the length it is."

The short sole of a smoother does exactly the opposite, following the bumps and hollows more closely, because its priority is to produce uniformly smooth surfaces rather than perfectly flat ones.

 

[Jeff Gorman]

Philly wrote:

>As for the weight of a smoother - if we use it for its true purpose (to take a final polishing cut with a very fine shaving thickness) then a heavy weight really shouldn't be necessary.<

I think it is worth noting that any increase in weight above 'normal' will be a small proportion of the downwards force (weight) that is applied when planing, and not as effective as one might think when considered in relation to the effort required in lifting the plane, though the additional momentum can be helpful, especially when finishing a long stroke almost one-handed.

 

[Mr Ed]

Last night I re-read the section on finishing planes in Garrett Hacks Handplane Book and he is convinced that heavy weight is essential for optimum smoothing planes. So convinced in fact, that in the dozen pages I read he makes the point on weight several times.

Hacks comments back up what I have heard lots of other people say over the years about the weight of finishing planes. I dont know if there is a scientific basis, but there seems to be a body of experienced woodworkers that believe it to be the case.

Are they wrong?

Cheers, Ed.

 

[tnimble]

Hi Laura,
I would add to your list that Modern machines produce a substantially more consistent and regular surface than a trainee with a coarse jack plane. Therefore the likelihood of reaching the final dimension of a machined board and still having a hollow somewhere in the surface is significantly reduced.
...
The short sole of a smoother does exactly the opposite, following the bumps and hollows more closely, because its priority is to produce uniformly smooth surfaces rather than perfectly flat ones.

I don't believe that holds up very well. An apprentice that would do a bad
job would either receive back the board or not bother to come back.

The smaller imperfections left in the board would like the surface ripples be levelled out by the longer smoother better then with a very short smoother which can even enlarge the imperfections.

You state "a trainee with a coarse jack plane." In which you either suggest that from sawn of rived wood one goed from course planing directly to finish planing with a smoother. Or that the apprentice would only do the course work and then hand over to board to the master woodworker, who inturn firsts levels the board with a long plane setup for medium shavings and then goes to the short smoother.

The first would be very unlikely, because it producses little quality. Perhaps that was done for furniture for the poor. The latter would unlickly, the master woodworker would have already enough todo. Also there is little to no reason wht the master woodworker would do such a bad job on the medium planing that large hollows where left in the board.

 

[custard]

Last night I re-read the section on finishing planes in Garrett Hacks Handplane Book and he is convinced that heavy weight is essential for optimum smoothing planes. So convinced in fact, that in the dozen pages I read he makes the point on weight several times.

Hacks comments back up what I have heard lots of other people say over the years about the weight of finishing planes. I dont know if there is a scientific basis, but there seems to be a body of experienced woodworkers that believe it to be the case.

Are they wrong?

Cheers, Ed.

I don't think it's weight in itself that's important (in other words a light plane held firmly could deliver the same result as a heavy plane), but pressure means the fibres immediately ahead of the blade are held down more firmly, preventing tear out in difficult grain. Assuming of course that the throat is finely set and the plane's sole is flat with no hollow ahead of the blade.