Record No.7

[andy king]

He would take full through shavings with a jointer, butt the boards and see where the discrepancies were (if any) and he would then skew the plane to effectively give it a shorter sole length, by eye, adjust the fit with a couple of deft shavings to rough pencil indicators with perfect results.
It sounds odd, but he was superb at it and demonstrated it quite a few times over the course of my apprenticeship!
The art of the craftsman over the reasoning of tradition I suppose!

But that's what effective use of any plane comes down to, isn't it? Knowing where and how much the given plane is going to remove. It's a sort of controlled carving removing the high spots. We delude ourselves if we think it's just a case of pushing blade X across surface Y until they make a perfect flat/straight surface. If it was, we wouldn't have so much trouble when we're learning.

Definitely so - there is a often a perception that there is only one way to skin a cat and its hammered home as so in many cases, but the art is often hand to eye co-ordination and the skill of the driver over the actual choice or make of tool used, although it is definitely the case that higher end or well tweaked tools tend to be a sweeter drive, especially the planes.

cheers,
Andy

 

[bugbear]

He would take full through shavings with a jointer, butt the boards and see where the discrepancies were (if any) and he would then skew the plane to effectively give it a shorter sole length, by eye, adjust the fit with a couple of deft shavings to rough pencil indicators with perfect results.

That's odd. To take off high spots, the jointer used in the normal way should work just fine; the only requirement for a shorter sole (either "real", or achieved by skewing) is to deepen a hollow spot, that the long jointer wouldn't normally get to.

You say it worked, and I'll take your word for it, but I'd like to understand.

BugBear

 

[dunbarhamlin]

I do sometimes switch to a block when jointing thick veneer (60-120 /1000" ish)
Some pieces can be quite bloody minded. (No, I know I shouldn't anthropomorphise - they don't like it.) I put it down to the vagaries of the wonderful medium we choose to work.

On the lateral weighting/twisting truing technique, I'm intrigued. I've always found this very slow going - perhaps a Cliffie is too stiff to be good at it. I may get a nice floppy #7 to "try" (ahem.)
Of course, most likely it is my technique

 

[bugbear]

On the lateral weighting/twisting truing technique, I'm intrigued. I've always found this very slow going - perhaps a Cliffie is too stiff to be good at it. I may get a nice floppy #7 to "try" (ahem.)
Of course, most likely it is my technique

There seems to some linguistic ambiguity in this thread as to wether the plane is twisted "bodily", so that the sole is put into wind, or wether the whole plane is rotated around a vertical axis, as for a skewed cut.

BugBear

 

[dunbarhamlin]

Oops, yes indeed. I meant twisting the fabric of the plane, not skewing.

My comment about a block plane was in response to the cited topical application of a skewed #7.

 

[andy king]

He would take full through shavings with a jointer, butt the boards and see where the discrepancies were (if any) and he would then skew the plane to effectively give it a shorter sole length, by eye, adjust the fit with a couple of deft shavings to rough pencil indicators with perfect results.

That's odd. To take off high spots, the jointer used in the normal way should work just fine; the only requirement for a shorter sole (either "real", or achieved by skewing) is to deepen a hollow spot, that the long jointer wouldn't normally get to.

You say it worked, and I'll take your word for it, but I'd like to understand.

BugBear

Hi BB,

He would demonstrate it clapping long boards together, maybe 6ft or so.
His reasoning, as I recall, was that a long plane, even when taking a full shaving can be prone to slight flexing during a long cut, discrepancies from the structure of the timber making the cut minutely irregular and so forth, often proven when we saw those long continuous shavings emerge but with minute gaps in the odd area of the joint when clapped.
He would simply mark the start and finish of what he saw as marginal touching points with a pencil, put the board in the vice, skew the plane and take a shaving where required.
I never questioned it as it always seemed to work!

cheers,
Andy

 

[bugbear]

He would simply mark the start and finish of what he saw as marginal touching points with a pencil, put the board in the vice, skew the plane and take a shaving where required.

Removing localised high spots, then. Fair enough.

BugBear