sharpening why a curved plane blade

[engineer one]

and there was me trying to get out of this thread without too much damage.
and i thought passion was dead in this world.

i agree alf passing on something new you have found and like is good
news, but my concerns are still the same, for new guys,like the one asking which LV or LN planes to have his family buy, all that investment , and
no clear answer about sharpening.

that was always the gist of my query. i only went to buy some wood, and decided to talk to someone who was demonstrating. nearly had the wife leave me i was gone so long,( i know is that good or bad??)

as i have said before, too many people are backing their own method without thinking about the impact both mentally and financially on others.
when starting out, you want sharpish tools, and the ability to understand when they get less sharp, and the best method to keep them sharp for longer.
that with a plane is way before the argument about setting the blade and throat properly.

back to the cages guys, and lets think about this sensibly.
paul
may all you troubles be plane sailing. :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

i can understand when planes were all of wood, (except blade) then having a curve was useful for the average woodworker, since it meant that adjustments were easier.

The real reason for curved blades is to make wood removal quicker. The more camber, the quicker the removal and the rougher the surface. The less camber, the slower the removal and flatter the surface. It is the common principle of working from coarse to fine.

wood solid wood does not allow for real engineering standards, it moves, so why worry about accuracy of microns when taking off shavings, too little clearance and the draw won't open or the cabinet will distort due to bad design.

The reason for those highly tuned planes is not to dimension wood to precise tolerances it is to avoid tearout. Sometimes only extremely light cuts can be taken without ruining the wood's surface.

i think many people have taken the sharpening story too far, and are in danger of overemphasizing the value of it. if your plane is easy to push and you get a reasonably flat surface, should that not be enough.
the old cabinet makers would i think laugh at our over concern for
flatness.

I agree too much is written about it (I could have done a few blades in the time it took to write this) but I don't know that it can be overemphasized. It takes time to learn what degree of sharpness is sharp enough for the task at hand. Someday you will be planing a surface that is very nearly finished and will tear out a chunk (we all do). Then you will wish you had taken the time to have changed to a fresh finely honed blade. It would have saved you a lot of time and work.

my recent experience suggests that sharpening should work as follows,
use a powered wheel to get your bevel back quickly, i use a tormek,
then flatten the back on a stone, or diamond surface, and the work the bevel to get a good cutting edge with a honing guide and end up with a japanese stone, these moves don't take too long and allow you to be as sharp as you want.

That is a reasonable method. The back has to be flattened only once unless it gets damaged somehow. The bevel has to be re-established only after repeated honings or the blade gets nicked. Most of the time blades just have to be honed and nearly everyone has a method that takes very little time.

[/quote]

 

[Frank D.]

This has been quite a thread! As much about sharpening as teaching it. I feel a little qualitfied to respond since I am a teacher, and I also write about sharpening for beginners. Not that I'm an expert--far from it--but there are so few resources about sharpening in French either in books or on the net, I felt compelled to write an article on it for a French-language web site. I also hand out the article when I give seminars on sharpening to raise money for the same site.
So enough of where I come from, my article turned out to be around 30 pages long, including a few drawings and pics, really aimed at those who know next to nothing. In the whole article I made maybe 2 fleeting references to camber. I thought it would complicate things uselessly, beginners have other things to worry about like blade geometry (bevels), cutting geometry, sharpening materials, and actually getting an good edge. I figure that those 2 fleeting references to camber will probably go unnoticed to most. They will have to buy stones, think about how the blade works, and practice sharpening their blades. If they actually manage to start planing wood, they might eventually notice track marks, or find that their plane is only good at taking thin shavings, or whatever. That's when a light might go on, and hopefully they'll start asking questions. At this point, when they reread my text for the seventh time, they will probably notice or remember what I said about camber, and they'll start to understand why it might be a good thing. But before this I personally don't see the use of bogging them down with info. Get them up and running, then let them think about how they can do better, or differently.
2¢
Frank

 

[Anonymous]

That is a good point, Frank. Even though almost every author of handtool woodworking talks about blade camber, it went over my head for years. Only when I got serious about old tools and old methods did the light go on.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Bugbear, that image tells all :wink:

 

[bugbear]

I think part of the confusion (and consequent headed disagreement) is that the word "planing" means whatvere is in the head of the person saying it.

Planing, even if we're restricting it to bench planes, covers everything from getting paint off a board you're recycling (yes, I've done this), making a damp door fit a frame, rough stock preparation, to creating a surface on tricky grain that is finish-ready.

And, yes, all these tasks have different blade-edge requirment, each of which can be achieved in different way.

Unless everybody is careful to be clear about the context in which they're offering opinions, we're not communicating.

BugBear

 

[Alf]

Unless everybody is careful to be clear about the context in which they're offering opinions, we're not communicating.

Which is when we get back to crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's which all too often turns even the most simple reply into an essay. I think you have to take everyone's response in the context of their previous posts, and if that doesn't tell you enough, ask for clarification on the context. And if that isn't enough just go and try it and see for yourself.

Actually it all boils down to seeeing for yourself anyway, so we might as well close down this forum right now... :lol:

Cheers, Alf

 

[MikeW]

...Actually it all boils down to seeeing for yourself anyway, so we might as well close down this forum right now... :lol:
Cheers, Alf

Course, we don't know what we don't know. :lol:

And if we don't know what to seee <g> for ourselves...gosh, my head is starting to hurt.

Mike

 

[Alf]

seee <g>

Lazzzzzzzzzy typing finger :lol:

 

[MikeW]

Lazzzzzzzzzy typing finger

That's OK. My laptop's 'M' key is acting up. I can actually hit the space bar firmly enough to make it type it.

Makes proof reading a pain.

Mike

 

[Anonymous]

I think part of the confusion (and consequent headed disagreement) is that the word "planing" means whatvere is in the head of the person saying it.

Planing, even if we're restricting it to bench planes, covers everything from getting paint off a board you're recycling (yes, I've done this), making a damp door fit a frame, rough stock preparation, to creating a surface on tricky grain that is finish-ready.

BugBear

I'm kind of partial to Garrett Hack's method of not including smoothing (or "polishing" for an older term) planes in the bench plane catagory. Thus my Steve Knight coffin smoother (straight blade with clipped corners) doesn't violate the bench plane = cambered blade rule. :lol:

 

[engineer one]

one thing i missed in all the comments was the guy who said he could plane an 8ft length of timber by hand.
given how tall i am, about 5.10. i cannot see me being able to be sure of planing an unsupported board of more than about 4 feet using the standard method of weight transfer. is it really easy to move your feet along, and still ensure that you keep the same pressure on the plane body to ensure that it is straight. i realise that a jack can be at least 24 in long, but you still have a long sweep where i find it difficult to see how we get to keep the transfer right.
not a criticism, more a quest for the knowledge.
not least since i can see it working on a shooting board.

paul :?

 

[Frank D.]

Hi engineer one,
This has less to do with a curved blade but I'll bite and be the one who says he can plane a long board. All it takes is a little fancy footwork, small steps, it's really not too hard (I do this even with 4-foot boards). I don,t know if you're into dancing (salsa, waltz, rumba..) but it's no harder. Like any skill it just takes a little practice. Downwards pressure is not so critical as to make it that hard (there canbe slight variation, and you shouldn't have to push down on a plane much anyways). AS long as the board is reasonably well supported you shouldn't have problems associated with flex; narrower boards need more support.
Here's a pic of me edge-jointing an 11-foot board. This board was a little too wide to prop up on my horses (made it too high for comfort), so it made it a little more complicated, but I still managed to walk the plane across without too much difficulty:

Here's my regular setup when I work outside for edge jointing big boards:

I believe IIRC Jeff Gorman talks about walking with the plane on his site.
Frank

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

i cannot see me being able to be sure of planing an unsupported board of more than about 4 feet using the standard method of weight transfer.

Hi E1

Frank's pics and description was first class. However, should you still be coincerned about your ability to edge joint a long board, that is, maintain an edge square to a side, then realise that jointer guides are available, and tailor-made for this situation.

LV have brought out one that is dedicated to the LV BU Jointer. I don't have one but I do have the granddaddy of these, the Stanley #386. The #386 has the advantage of variable geometry, while the LV version (I believe, not actually seen one in the flesh) is a fixed 90 degrees.

Here is the #386 attached to the LV BUJ:

I tend to use it more on a Stanley #5 1/2:

The one point that must be made in this regard is that blades have to be straight, not radiused, since the fence adjusts the plane to cut at one side.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Chris Knight]

Here's another long (8 feet) board being jointed. The lighter coloured narrow board on top is my long straight edge - also planed in a similar manner.

 

[Alf]

It's like the answer to the guy asking how to get to Carnegie Hall. "Practice, practice, practice".

Chris, that's an indecent picture to show someone who's maximum plank width is about 8".

Cheers, Alf

 

[trevtheturner]

And as he's jointing that board, Alf, he probably has at least another one of them! :wink: :lol: :lol:

Cheers,

Trev.

 

[bugbear]

I tend to use it more on a Stanley #5 1/2:

Nice tote tip repair - you or a previous owner?

BugBear

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Nice tote tip repair - you or a previous owner?

Hi BB

My repair. I decided to do it in a contrasting timber at the time as a reminder of the terrible condition the plane was in when I rescued it.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Chris Knight]

Chris, that's an indecent picture to show someone who's maximum plank width is about 8".

I know, I know - can't find 'em like that myself anymore