Roughing planes, shaving thickness

[ED65]

Whatever you use for roughing, a rank-set wooden jack, a no. 5 or 6, a wooden scrub plane or a converted plane of one sort or another, could you measure the centre of the thickest shaving you can create working across the board or diagonally please? And the thickness of the typical or average shaving if that's different.

TIA

 

[custard]

It would vary massively by timber species. When using the same plane and iron, the Bubinga slab I showed previously would have a shaving thickness of perhaps half of what I'd take on an Elm or Walnut slab, and the Bubinga shaving would in turn be thicker than I'd take on the Leadwood slab I also showed in a previous post. It really is all about the wood.

 

[Jacob]

It'a all about the blade shape (sorry custard!).
Tighter the radius the deeper but narrower the cut. So in softwood a scrub can remove a narrow shaving several mm thick.
That's the whole idea and purpose of a scrub plane - it 'scrubs' the surface of old timbers taking off the dross (paint, grit, dirt, all of which will blunt a plane) cutting a deep shaving mostly in the clean wood underneath. You can then treat it like sawn timber and plane with a cambered jack. You wouldn't use a scrub on clean sawn timber it'd make the surface even rougher.

 

[custard]

"When using the same plane and iron"

I guess you missed that bit Jacob.

 

[Jacob]

"When using the same plane and iron"

I guess you missed that bit Jacob.

Oh yes!
Obscure question though. Useless information unless you also have details of the plane, set, blade shape, wood, etc. Without checking I'd guess the thickest shaving I could create would be about 3mm with a scrub (about 30mm radius blade). I'll check later.

 

[AndyT]

I've not done much measurement of shaving thickness, but in this post - post949032.html#p949032 - I was reducing the thickness of some oak by about an eighth on each side, so was using a wooden jack plane set to get on with the job. So about 26 thou was an ordinary thickness on that job.

or indeed

 

[bugbear]

I split and then planed down some ash from the woodpile a while ago. Too small a piece for diagonal work.

Thickest shaving from my waste bin is around 40 thou.

BugBear

 

[mr edd]

I've been processing a 6 foot long section of an ash tree trunk by hand last autumn for building a posh work bench . Thickest shaving around 1mm with a metal no. 5 but as trunk was riven with wedges smaller high spots might have been a bit thicker shavings.

Edd

 

[D_W]

I've been processing a 6 foot long section of an ash tree trunk by hand last autumn for building a posh work bench . Thickest shaving around 1mm with a metal no. 5 but as trunk was riven with wedges smaller high spots might have been a bit thicker shavings.

Edd

Need pictures!! no axe or adze work?

 

[mr edd]

Hi D_W

Don't own a adze only had a small hatchet. Quickly found out after splitting the trunk with 10_12 iron wedges and maul I needed something with a longer handle to split the fibres in the middle of the trunk.... they really do hang on! Many skinned knuckles later I had a number of 4" x 11" quartered sections. Axe to remove bark and some waste straight onto bench jack planed roughly square set to dry for six months came back with jack plane to process some more. Around 1mm thick shavings.

The riving can leave some pretty high but narrow
spots, I'm mid 30's joiner/ carpenter and not slight build so I can move a hand plane for a some time before I run out of steam. I do a fair bit of hand processing trees, I have access to a workshop with a 16" planer thicknesser but not allowed to bring my 'fun' stuff in for fear of ruining the blades.

I do have sporadic photo's of the process but I am sh#@te with technology I really must read the instructions on here for reducing photo size.

 

[swagman]

I don't bother measuring the thickness of shavings. Its a pointless exercise.

 

[AndyT]

While the absolute thickness of the shaving taken is of little interest to the individual worker, we're all working in our own separate places. If Ed wants to know whether his work pattern is common or unusual, he needs data about what other people are doing.
We could just report shavings as thick, middling or thin, but that wouldn't help much.
Fortunately, measurements have been efficiently standardised, worldwide, for quite some time, giving an efficient way to compare practice among ourselves.

 

[ED65]

Thanks to everyone who provided a thickness, appreciate it gents.

 

[ED65]

I don't bother measuring the thickness of shavings. Its a pointless exercise.

Stewie you're a plane maker, I'm sure you can visualise one reason for wanting to know the maximum shaving thickness one can expect a given plane to produce!

If you're still drawing a blank this recent thread will give part of the reason for my enquiry.

 

[Jacob]

Actually I can't see the reason for your enquiry either.
Shaving thickness is obviously part of the equation when it comes to looking at plane performance but not the only one.
A little scrub will gouge out a deep but narrow furrow, deeper than anything else, but that isn't necessarily what you want.

What are you hoping to do with this information?