What's all this bevel up stuff anyway?

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

OK, I just had to come back and say one last ( Yeah, right! :lol: ) thing.

All this praise I have been heaping on bevel up planes should not be interpreted to mean that all bevel down planes are now defunct. Outdated perhaps in terms of design, but not defunct. A #4-1/2 does not suddenly become a boat anchor or door stop. These are quality, precision tools. There is probably going to be some development of the bevel down design to come in response to the challenge (and knowledge gleaned) from bevel up insights. Not to ignore the fact that one of the reasons I enjoy woodworking is to make furniture with old tools. So I still also use my old Stanleys (but in the appropriate areas - it is horses for courses).

Of course, if by now you are totally disillusioned by those awful, outdated and limited LN bevel down designs, just send them to me. I will look after them until such a time you are well again ...

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Alf]

However... bevel downs will wipe the floor with the competition whenever it comes to speed of adustment; try advancing the blade of a bevel up "on the fly"...

Balanced out by the speed of mouth adjustment, perhaps?

For me, their other advantage is repeatability; any time you hone an LA blade you run the risk of changing the angle of insidence... with bevel down you KNOW what it's gonna be irrespective of what you do on the stone. That repeatability liberates you to tune the bevel for longevity rather than effective angle, not something to sneeze at when there's a stack of boards to work through...

That's a fair point, Mike.

Cheers, Alf

Edit for removal of opinion written in haste and irritation. I should know better.

 

[ydb1md]

However... bevel downs will wipe the floor with the competition whenever it comes to speed of adustment; try advancing the blade of a bevel up "on the fly"...
For me, their other advantage is repeatability; any time you hone an LA blade you run the risk of changing the angle of insidence... with bevel down you KNOW what it's gonna be irrespective of what you do on the stone. That repeatability liberates you to tune the bevel for longevity rather than effective angle, not something to sneeze at when there's a stack of boards to work through...

I'm a little confused about the two comments above. How is the adjustment of a bevel down blade any quicker?

As to the matter of sharpening and repeatability, aren't we grasping at straws here? Any woodworker worth anything can sharpen an iron to a given angle repeatably. All of my irons are marked for indexing on my jig or I can do a good job freehand on my finest stones if i'm in a pinch for time. I try to use the jig because it guarantees that my edge stays square and when I'm freehanding I can quite obviously see how far up my blade the mirror polish extends. Plus, the really fine stones aren't gonna work my blade out of square.

 

[Midnight]

Balanced out by the speed of mouth adjustment, perhaps?

Alf... I'm not so sure about that; once the throats of my bevel ups are set.. they stay set... never need adjusting..

 

[Midnight]

I'm a little confused about the two comments above. How is the adjustment of a bevel down blade any quicker?

simply because you can flick the adjuster wheel while you're working, hense "on the fly".....

As to the matter of sharpening and repeatability, aren't we grasping at straws here? Any woodworker worth anything can sharpen an iron to a given angle repeatably.

My point wasn't about repeatability of sharpening, but about repeatability of angle of insidence... In a bevel up, that angle is determined by the pitch of the frog, whereas in a bavel down, the angle is set by the honing angle as I explained in my earlier post...

 

[Alf]

Balanced out by the speed of mouth adjustment, perhaps?

Alf... I'm not so sure about that; once the throats of my bevel ups are set.. they stay set... never need adjusting..

Could be because you're using them for the one type of task; fine trimming of end grain I imagine? Okay, so take a real world example which prompted my comment. My last big planing session was flattening the workbench; I decided to do a DC rather than a Cosman and set the cut fairly light, mouth tight. A couple of swipes and I can see I'm going to be there all day DC-style. Time for some more energetic Cosman-esque scrubbing away (don't get excited - not that kind of scrubbing ). Need a coarser cut.

First let's assume I was using my #5 1/2, Hock blade. Now, the next step for me could be one of two options. One, I could reach for a coarser set jack and have at it. Might need a bit of adjustment, maybe I didn't put the iron away sharp (never! I hear you cry...) but not a big deal. No Hock blade, but hey, never mind. Or I can adjust the #5 1/2 for a deeper cut and, erm, ah, got a bit of a jam here, the mouth needs opening up, where's the screwdriver etc etc. Okay, so I don't have to do this, but if you have only one plane, that's your only option. Obviously I'm not advocating such a minimalist approach :shock: , but there are reasons why this could be the case and it does happen.

Now let's assume I chose to use the BUPP, which as it happens, I did. Did I walk 2 feet across to the tool chest, take out an alternative jack and whip off its plane sock? Nope; seemed quicker to open up the mouth, adjust the cut down with a couple of tweaks and get on with it. Which I did.

Of course in hindsight I should have used the bevel down plane - would have given me a longer break when it came to rehoning the blade. The BUPP's iron is too blooming quick to take out and replace. :evil:

But enough of this missionary zeal. Of course I'm not advocating you discard all your bevel down planes, but I am of the opinion that the bevel ups have many advantages over them - not least as a first plane which needs to be able to do everything. Obviously you have a wide range of L-Ns from which to choose, so that flexibility isn't an advantage to you. Unless you suddenly need to take a kit of tools on site... :wink:

Cheers, Alf

Edit; given a comment on another thread, I think I need to explain why I've gone on at Tony quite so much in this thread. I don't have any objection to his having a different opinion, of course not; I just wanted to clear up what he was basing that opinion on, and that in the big wide world of plane worship his observations were a bit, erm, well, not quite fair. Peace has been declared between us, and I think we've cleared things up so we both know what the other one was getting at (and they said it couldn't be done....) :wink:

 

[Midnight]

Quote:
Balanced out by the speed of mouth adjustment, perhaps?


Alf... I'm not so sure about that; once the throats of my bevel ups are set.. they stay set... never need adjusting..

fessin up time... another blonde / senior / too damn sober moment; that shoulda read..

once the throats of my bevel downs have been set, they stay set...

Nope; seemed quicker to open up the mouth, adjust the cut down with a couple of tweaks and get on with it. Which I did.

For the record... given the example you set to work to, I'd do the exact same thing with my #62 if my course set #5 couldn't cope with the grain...

Obviously you have a wide range of L-Ns from which to choose, so that flexibility isn't an advantage to you.

Given that we're talking bench planes here... 3 is a wide range..??? that might change shortly tho..

As listed in Adam's "whatchya got" list, I've a #4 1/2, #7 and a #62... the #5 is a Stanley... [/u][/i]

 

[Alf]

Given that we're talking bench planes here... 3 is a wide range..??? that might change shortly tho..

Oooo, what ya gonna get?

Cheers, Alf

 

[Anonymous]

For any who are left wondering, I still prefer my bevel-downs to the bevel-ups :lol: for the reasons I have already stated.

I started this thread in an effort to discover why some people seem to swear by bevel-up (Alf for instance who's views on planes I respect very much). I am going to try different angles on the bevel-up as Alf suggested and have ordered a second blade for the #164, but I am left wondering why I bought a plane that I have to modify to get it to perform as well as the 4.5 out-of-the-box :roll:

Dear missionary , looking at your answer to Midnights, post - the bench flattening story, I don't experience the problems you describe. The blade comes out of my bevel-downs faster than my bevel-up (which needs a screwdriver to get the blade out :roll: ). of course I then have to release the chipbreaker and so the time between deciding to sharpen and actually sharpening is about the same for each type.


Cheers

Tony

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

I am left wondering why I bought a plane that I have to modify to get it to perform as well as the 4.5 out-of-the-box

Tony, I'm afraid you still haven't got It.

There is no modification (of the #164) going on here. It is just that you are only using one of several options that are available with this plane, and the option you are using is not going to permit a fair illustration of what the #164 is capable of. Believe me, if you tapped into the strength of this plane, you would probably stop using the #4-1/2!

An analogy: You have two sports cars of reputedly equal performance to test drive. You drive the first but never get out of first gear. You then drive the second and run it through 5 of its 5 gears. You conclude that car #1 has a low top end speed. You are told that it is really a very fast car, but everytime you try it out you never get out of first gear.

OK, so the #164 is that first sports car. and using the 25 degree bevel blade is just first gear. As you increase the bevel angle, so you go up the gears. I reckon that if you used one that was 50 degrees (producing a cutting angle of 62 degrees - which you do with a 25 degree micro bevel o top of the 25 degree primary bevel) you would be in 4th gear. Where is fifth gear? Well, I know of one person who swears by his 80 degree cutting angle!

This is not a "modification", since this inference is that the plane needs it to work well. It is already working well (on end grain) but you have not set it up to work on difficult timber. What I believe you will discover, when you go down this road understanding why you are now doing what you are doing, is that the performance of the #164 will outstrip that of the #4-1/2.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Midnight]

Oooo, what ya gonna get?

ummmmmmm..... 2 VERY large bills.....

more than that I'm not sayin till they get here...

 

[Midnight]

What I believe you will discover, when you go down this road understanding why you are now doing what you are doing, is that the performance of the #164 will outstrip that of the #4-1/2.

Derek...

Like Tony, I prefer my 4 1/2 as a dedicated smoother; I've found over the years that its more than capable of making light work of anything I've set it to...

Now I'll grant you that like Tony, I haven't experemented much with angles on my bevel up (a #62 in my case).. I haven't felt the need to for a couple of reasons...

Firstly, its increasingly doing the job that my #5 should be doing (it's still fitted with the stock Stanley blade), a task that it performs with ease on both iron hard and soft delicate grain...

Secondly... I haven't tried using it as a smoother simply because the one I have..... kicks azz... that York pitch frog don't take any prisoners...

nuff said..???

Ohh.... one last point re your gear change analogy... thought struck me that technically you weren't changing gear... it's more like rebuilding the differential to change the overall gearing...

I reckon I'll keep my #62 with its 30 deg secondry... if it aint broke, why fix it...???

:wink:

 

[Alf]

Dear missionary ,

Yes, my heathen friend?

looking at your answer to Midnights, post - the bench flattening story, I don't experience the problems you describe. The blade comes out of my bevel-downs faster than my bevel-up (which needs a screwdriver to get the blade out :roll: ). of course I then have to release the chipbreaker and so the time between deciding to sharpen and actually sharpening is about the same for each type.

Yep, my mistake. I forgot to take into account the LN effect, which seems to be the real stumbling block. The fact is the LNs, because of the fiddle required to swap blades (well on the #164 anyway; can't recall on the #62) are not good advocates for bevel up flexibility. But to be fair, LN have never claimed otherwise. Derek and I have just been hopelessly brainwashed by that Canadian Conniver... :roll:

Oooo, what ya gonna get?

ummmmmmm..... 2 VERY large bills.....

more than that I'm not sayin till they get here...

Ooo, you rotter. Not playing with you any more [-( :lol:

Cheers, Alf

 

[Midnight]

Ooo, you rotter. Not playing with you any more

I missed something...??

Ahem...

Patience, My Dear Alf... is a virtue...

I'll gloat when they get here... but be warned... I'm givin Philly some competition with this one...

 

[Philly]

Mike
I have been watching your progress on this one-so far, top marks.
Lets see what you got then.... :lol:
Cheers
Philly

 

[Midnight]

All in good time Dude...

:wink:

 

[Midnight]

Lets see what you got then....

dare I say... the first part arrived today...??

 

[Philly]

Masterful,Mike! :lol:
Give it to me slowly.......
Philly

 

[Alf]

The first part? What is it, Mike? Self assembly? Oh wait, no, it can't be... Oh commisserations. It must be broken... Bad luck. :wink:

Cheers, Alf

 

[Frank D.]

I'll take a wild guess: a Shepherd kit!
Frank