Request for advice on timber prep for moulding planes.

[Berncarpenter]

I recently bought a copy of "Wooden Planes and How To Make Them" from Axminster for just a few pounds. It has a fair bit of information on making moulding planes, among others, but only gives the briefest details on choice of timber. It`s not showing on their site now, as far as I can see, but that might just be down to their rubbish search facility. It might be worth looking for elsewhere.

Ian

Thanks Ian I will try and track that one down.

This looks interesting! Would you be planning a set of hollows and rounds by any chance??, Well, a half set maybe #-o
I'm no planemaker, but you have quartersawn there (top pic anyway) so likely to be nicely stable drying from 20 down to say 8-10.
It would be safe surely to reduce this stock to smaller lumps given the intended use, maybe to short billets a little over-length and say 10 - 15mm over in thickness. Plenty of wax over ends extending an inch or so along end grain. This way it will drop in m/c far quicker whilst taking care to avoid shock-drying at all.
I've tried various stuff for end sealing but the old wax still seems the best - I just melt it in a jam jar in water then brush it on quickly. I have a load of hornbeam done that way at the moment and it's behaving very well (a new bench on the way some day soonish!).
You'll appreciate the air-dried beech - it works and handles beautifully in every direction, miles nicer than kiln-dried.
ALSO, get in touch with AndyTnT (toolsntat), he has a set of plane makers planes intended for making woodie moulding planes - he may lend them out if you ask nicely. I've seen them and they are incredible, basically a set of woodies with profiles the negative of the plane to be made, plus a specialist plane for making wedge profiles en masse... fab stuff he has!!
Keep us all posted, a fascinating exercise no doubt requiring much patience but the result would be quite something.

I was lucky to pick up an almost complete half set of hollows and rounds from a car boot sale back in the summer. Most are able to be brought into a useable condition , ive been sorting them out slowly making new wedges and truing up the bodies.

Enjoyed sorting these out but would like to make the few that are missing also some rebate and beading planes.

Getting quarter sawn beech was not easy, it seams most timber is sawn through & through and you have to search to find them centre cut boards . Gavin at Wentwood Timber was very helpful in finding just what i wanted.

I will crack on resaw and wax up . Thanks for this info it was just what I was looking for.

Hornbeam is greet timber thats going to make a very special bench 8)

 

[Berncarpenter]

Very informative section on moulding planes here......
http://www.handplane.com/33/practical-plane-making-2/

Andy

Thanks for the link Andy came across this site while goggling last night but didnt get round to this.

These books from Whelan and from Lee about plane making aren't very detailed about the moulding planes. The DVD from Larry Williams is much better and a lot more detailed. Also available from classic handtools.

I haven't made moulding planes myself, but it was a great help in restoring my vintage ones.

Be carefull with drying beech too fast. It likes to split a bit too eagerly.

Well done Corneel I will get on the phone to Alex at Classic hand tools , One of my favourite tool suppliers

Cheers Bern

 

[Berncarpenter]

So, so lucky to have this supplier of air-dried lumber in my state of Tennessee:

http://www.stonesriverhardwoods.com/

And look at what one of the principals in the firm builds with it:

http://alfredsharp.com/index.php

He's a Cartouche award winner from the Society of American Period Furnituremakers - about as good as it gets over here.

Thanks for the link and i found this interesting http://www.stonesriverhardwoods.com/air-dried-wood

 

[Corneel]

Well done Corneel I will get on the phone to Alex at Classic hand tools , One of my favourite tool suppliers

Cheers Bern

Have fun ;-)

 

[Trafalgar]

So, so lucky to have this supplier of air-dried lumber in my state of Tennessee:

http://www.stonesriverhardwoods.com/

And look at what one of the principals in the firm builds with it:

http://alfredsharp.com/index.php

He's a Cartouche award winner from the Society of American Period Furnituremakers - about as good as it gets over here.

Thanks for the link and i found this interesting http://www.stonesriverhardwoods.com/air-dried-wood

Ringing them up on the phone or emailing one is likely to be connected with Alf Sharp and then the fun really begins. He's more than just a little bit knowledgeable. And I can promise that if you were ever able to see the lumber stores it is an experience you'd never forget. Stunning does not begin to describe it.

 

[matthewwh]

As I understand it (from a gentleman who visited the shop) when a new apprentice started, a lump of straight air dried beech would be marked with his name and submerged vertically on a string into a vat of linseed oil. 12 months later, when the time came for making his jack plane, it would be ready for use. I should think with a moulding plane body you could get away with substantially less time than that if it were cut to thickness first, although it would be advisable to remove some material from both sides when thicknessing.

Submerged seasoning in water is supposed to be especially gentle on the timber, whether this is also true in oil I don't know, although I imagine it would be.

Have you tried your local library for the books? They may be able to order a book in from another library if they don't have it on their shelves.

Edit: Just found this link to an excerpt from the 1892 book The English Sloyd that refers to the beech being steamed to alleviate tension. It also refers to keeping the timber well oiled with linseed after any truing or correcting during its working life.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Depending on where you store it, 20% moisture content is fairly normal for externally air dried timber in the UK. You need Kiln dried which changes the cell structure for ultimate stability.

Dont get this at all. The great old woodies were air-dried and of course at a stage the wood goes into an internal environment to bring it down to workshop-normalised. How does kilning change cell structure, and if so how for the better.

There's some truth in what deema said, although it seems he's not had chance to respond to your question to throw more light on the topic. I guess it won't hurt for me to throw a bit of information in. I can't say with any authority how this information may have bearing on the making of wooden planes of any sort, but that may be because I'm not particularly interested in either using or making wooden moulding planes - electric routers, spindle moulders and the like generally do that kind of work for me, ha, ha, although from time to time I've resorted to a scratch stock or an olde worlde moulding plane for an odd job or two, or just for a bit of fun. Slainte.

Due to a hysteresis loop, wood cells distorted due to drying to very low MC levels never quite return to their original shape and form when they regain moisture. So if you have made a 610 mm (24”) wide panel when the wood was at 14 percent MC it will never quite reach that width again after it’s dried to 7 percent MC, shrunk, and swollen again as it regained moisture bringing it back to 14% MC. It's slightly more stable in other words.

In another hysteresis effect there is a long held belief amongst woodworkers that timber salvaged from old buildings and furniture is more stable than newly felled and seasoned wood. The argument frequently put forward is that the wood has been around for centuries and therefore it must have done all the conditioning and acclimatising that it’s possible to do. Whilst the reasoning is not fully correct there is some truth in the belief that old wood is often more stable than new wood. Research into this phenomenon is limited, but there have been experiments undertaken to better understand it. As wood undergoes cycles of gaining and losing moisture there are changes in its microstructure, essentially chemical in nature leading to hygroscopic and dimensional ageing of wood resulting in a loss of response of wood in relation to hygrothermal changes. In other words, old dry wood that has been through many seasonal cycles of adsorbing and desorbing moisture becomes less hygroscopic with time, and less responsive to variations in temperature and relative humidity. In certain circumstances old wood is likely to be very slightly more stable than freshly felled and properly seasoned material because of a hysteresis loop where wood cells distorted due to drying to very low MC levels never quite return to their original shape and form when they regain moisture. The certain circumstances just mentioned are most likely to occur if the old recycled wood came from an environment in which it had alternated between, say, about 16 percent MC and very dry several times in its life in its previous incarnation, e.g., perhaps in the northern hemisphere in a south facing conservatory, or similar. But old or recycled wood still expands and contract as it takes on and loses water. Taking ancient oak beams from a damp and draughty old barn with no heating, and making them into furniture for a typical modern house will result in the wood losing moisture and shrinking largely as would be expected for freshly felled wood.

 

[deema]

Air dried or kiln dired. I'm sorry not to have added a little more detail. Traditionally, (well in Yorkshire where I come from originally) joiners shops were seldom heated by more than a pot stove in the corner that was principly used for heating up the glue and for making a brew. Consequently, the moisture content of the shop echoed the environment and making planes out of air dried timber was perfectly adequate. The wood would have been stored for a number of years to allow the movement due to moisture changes to be minimal as detailed in the last post.

Role on today, where we live in centrally heated houses with work shops that are in many cases equally dry and heated. If you use air dried stuff in the heated environment where precision and stability are the main requirements for the planes to hold their characteristics, IMO you need kiln dried stuff.

You need to try and get the moisture content down to circa 10% to attain a reasonable level of stability, at this point the wood cells are permanently changed in their ability to take up moisture.

 

[Berncarpenter]

Thanks Mathew , Richard and Deema
Well I have taken Douglas advise and gone for resawing and cutting slightly over size and waxing the ends.

Fired up Big Bertha

No problems resawing ,there was no tension in the timber and so nice straight lengths off the saw

Went for a range of different widths from 3/4''-2''

Left a good 2'' longer and 1/2'' taller 1/4'' thickness should leave me plenty to ply with , i hope

Melted wax candles in the Dragons best pirex bowl and dunked the ends in 1'' deep .

Stacked on workshop shelving out of direct sunlight .

Well I will leave this lot until mid summer and see how it is then , thanks again for all your advise .

Cheers Bern

 

[Plumberpete]

Regarding air or steam drying timber for planemaking, I just came across this in T. J. Gardner of Bristol's 1916 catalogue. All the uppercase lettering is as the text originally reads;

"Special features worth noting about Gardner's Celebrated Wood Planes.
1. - T. J. Gardner's Planes are made from the HARDEST RED BEECH.
2. - The wood used in Gardner's Planes is guaranteed to be NATURALLY DRIED FROM 5 to 7 YEARS.
3. - This in itself RETAINS THE NATURAL HARDNESS in the wood, which is a great advantage over other Planes on the market, which are made from artificially dried wood placed in steam drying rooms from 3 to 6 months, destroying the natural hardness of the wood, making it soft, spongy, and light in weight."

Maybe steam drying is the reason the practice of soaking planes in linseed oil came about?

 

[Jacob]

The best (and often cheapest) source of info on old wooden planes is old planes themselves. Copy, copy! Better than any book.
They can be amazingly cheap £2 ish upwards. Don't even have to be in good nick if they are for study purposes.
I wouldn't worry too much about the timber, as long as it is dry. They used all qualities but presumably charged accordingly.
There's a pervasive myth with amateur woodworkers that many things have to be "just so". Maybe true if you are building violins, but planes are very simple objects. If they go out of shape you always plane a bit off (assuming you've thought ahead and made two)

 

[Plumberpete]

I wouldn't worry too much about the timber, as long as it is dry. They used all qualities but presumably charged accordingly.
There's a pervasive myth with amateur woodworkers that many things have to be "just so". Maybe true if you are building violins, but planes are very simple objects. If they go out of shape you always plane a bit off (assuming you've thought ahead and made two)

I wonder why a manufacturer of planes would be extolling the virtues of air-dried timber to an audience of carpenters, joiners, coopers, cabinet makers and others who knew timber inside out, if air-dried or steam-dried made no difference.

Just a thought....

 

[G S Haydon]

I think you'll be fine Bern. Let the Beech find a balance with your workshop, copy the details of old planes. Sounds easy lol!

 

[Jacob]

I wouldn't worry too much about the timber, as long as it is dry. They used all qualities but presumably charged accordingly.
There's a pervasive myth with amateur woodworkers that many things have to be "just so". Maybe true if you are building violins, but planes are very simple objects. If they go out of shape you always plane a bit off (assuming you've thought ahead and made two)

I wonder why a manufacturer of planes would be extolling the virtues of air-dried timber to an audience of carpenters, joiners, coopers, cabinet makers and others who knew timber inside out, if air-dried or steam-dried made no difference.

Just a thought....

Do they? Where do they say this, and why?
By all means go for air dried if you have any (and you think it matters) but I wouldn't be put off if you haven't.

 

[Plumberpete]

[/quote]Do they?[/quote]

Yes they do.

[/quote]Where do they say this,[/quote]

Read the original post I left yesterday. It's at the end of page two on this thread. As I stated in that post, it came from T.J. Gardner of Bristol's 1916 catalogue. The Gardner family started making planes in 1810, call me flippant but this led me to believe that they might know a thing or two about planemaking.

[/quote]and why?[/quote]

Again, read the original post I left yesterday.

 

[Jacob]

Do they?

Yes they do.

Where do they say this,

Read the original post I left yesterday. It's at the end of page two on this thread. As I stated in that post, it came from T.J. Gardner of Bristol's 1916 catalogue. The Gardner family started making planes in 1810, call me flippant but this led me to believe that they might know a thing or two about planemaking.

and why?

Again, read the original post I left yesterday.

OK read it.

"Special features worth noting about Gardner's Celebrated Wood Planes.
1. - T. J. Gardner's Planes are made from the HARDEST RED BEECH.
2. - The wood used in Gardner's Planes is guaranteed to be NATURALLY DRIED FROM 5 to 7 YEARS.
3. - This in itself RETAINS THE NATURAL HARDNESS in the wood, which is a great advantage over other Planes on the market, which are made from artificially dried wood placed in steam drying rooms from 3 to 6 months, destroying the natural hardness of the wood, making it soft, spongy, and light in weight."

They would say that wouldn't they - they are selling planes after all!
But kiln dried beech is not "soft, spongy or light in weight" so it's probable that everything else they say is baloney too. Just normal advertising in other words.
Even if there is a measure of truth in it all I am suggesting that the OP should not be put off from making planes by not having everything "just so" - any old bit of beech (within reason) will do. But yes, the drier and straighter the grain, the better - mainly because it's easier to work.

 

[Plumberpete]

"They would say that wouldn't they - they are selling planes after all!"

To an audience who know their timber.

"But kiln dried beech is not "soft, spongy or light in weight" so it's probable that everything else they say is baloney too. Just normal advertising in other words."

As has been discussed elsewhere on this thread, steam drying the timber reduces moisture content more-so than airdrying making it marginally lighter in weight and therefore the cell structure more widely spaced (hence spongy). I think what this particular manufacturer is getting at is, if you want a tool that lasts a long time and stands up to the rigours of use by a professional craftsman, buy an air dried one, but yes - straight off the shelf looking at like for like and using it once or twice as a hobbyist - then there probably isn't much difference....

 

[richarnold]

From my own experience of using wooden moulding planes, It is always the late 19th and early 20th century planes that give the most problems in being usable. This is often caused by the timber having moved over the years. In fact it is the 18th century ones that always seem to be the easiest to put back in to action. I do not pretend to understand the difference between the properties of kiln and air dried stock, but can only go on my experience of working with both, and given the choice it would be air dried every time. I fear that the use of kilned dried beech by the later plane makers had more to do with profit than improving the product .
If the op has the opportunity to use air dried stock I would thoroughly recommend it. Apart from anything else, it is so much more pleasant to work with. A bit like cutting a piece of hard cheese as apposed to a lump of crumbly stone :lol:
Cheers, Richard.

 

[condeesteso]

Completey agree Richard - I've been getting through a good volume of beech recently and used both (air-dried from Mac and a local supplier; and kilned European from Morgans). I always find the kilned more sort-of 'brittle' - it feels different to work, sounds different. It's hard to describe but for example I'm pretty sure kilned tears more readily. I also don't understand what changes but something does. I've tried steamed and unsteamed - the volume merchants all say the steaming is just to get colour consistency but elsewhere I've heard that it may change the behaviour in some way. Can't say I can tell any difference between steamed and unsteamed.
All I know is air-dried is like kiln-dried, but gooder.
None of this need concern Bern of course - he has excellent beech and is conditioning it very well for purpose. What's not to like!

 

[Sgian Dubh]

As has been discussed elsewhere on this thread, steam drying the timber reduces moisture content more-so than airdrying making it marginally lighter in weight and therefore the cell structure more widely spaced (hence spongy).

It's got to be a stretch of imagination to suggest that drying wood, any species, somehow causes the cell structure to become more widely spaced. For this to occur would indicate or suggest that the chemical bonds binding the cellular structure together somehow loosen causing the those bonds to disintegrate or separate out somewhat. What happens when wood dries is the cell walls distort, and the drier the wood the more they distort. As the cell walls lose moisture below fibre saturation point (the point below which warp in wood occurs) they shrink and buckle and this reduce the volume of each cell's lumen. Indeed, the warping that occurs in wood as it dries is because of this shrinkage and distortion, with the greatest shrinkage (in all species) following the same direction as the roughly circular growth rings. Slainte.