swagman
Established Member
custard":2fjl1zp1 said:
Theres probably a good reason Chris Schwarz looks uncomfortable using a hand tool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LkC8JpO1g
Where did the knowledge about the capiron get lost?
- Thread starter Corneel
- Start date
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Theres probably a good reason Chris Schwarz looks uncomfortable using a hand tool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LkC8JpO1g
swagman
Established Member
Bm101":2xdx2b6t said:
This is 1 of my favorate Monty clips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
Zeddedhed
Established Member
I've been reading this thread with interest and it prompted me to dig out some old notebooks from my first ventures into working with wood - my C&G in carpentry and Joinery back in 1985. I found a scribbled drawing of a standard Stanley Bailey type set-up with my appallingly hand written notes suggesting that the cap iron should be set (and I quote) "a gnats pube" away from the cutting edge.
So whilst it's apparent that my instructors at Poole Technical College were aware of the importance of a close set Cap Iron, I have no conversion tables handy that tell me what a gnats pube is in mm.
Incidentally, the guy who taught us (Mr Scott if I recall correctly) was an appalling communicator but a true genius as a maker. He did one day a week at the college under duress - and hated teaching - he was actually a very shy man.
A few of us who showed sufficient promise or interest were invited to spend a few weeks at his workshop and then he came to life - he was like a different person. A great old guy who couldn't talk the talk but certainly walked the walk.
So whilst it's apparent that my instructors at Poole Technical College were aware of the importance of a close set Cap Iron, I have no conversion tables handy that tell me what a gnats pube is in mm.
Incidentally, the guy who taught us (Mr Scott if I recall correctly) was an appalling communicator but a true genius as a maker. He did one day a week at the college under duress - and hated teaching - he was actually a very shy man.
A few of us who showed sufficient promise or interest were invited to spend a few weeks at his workshop and then he came to life - he was like a different person. A great old guy who couldn't talk the talk but certainly walked the walk.
Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)
Established Member
custard":15pd8d68 said:
Custard, the point about the wood is very relevant - all your points are relevant, but this one is often overlooked.
I said a number of times in the reviews I wrote that I suspect that most planes are overkill for most woodworkers. I wonder how many amateurs choose figured and interlocked wood for a furniture build? The fact that 50 degrees is considered a "high angle" in the USA forums suggests to me that the experience of interlocked wood is vastly different to the woods we have in Oz. And then would a professional woodworker choose such wood, or rather go with something less difficult and obstructionistic? In any event, how many pros rely on handplanes for dimensioning or finish?
Furniture makers in Australia did not always build out of Jarrah or similar woods with complex grain. Early makers used prized and then available wood, such as (from New South Wales) Australian Red Cedar. Link: http://www.australiancedar.com/Cedar/Au ... iture.html
Unhappily, this was overused and is rarely available today. Jarrah is not widely used in Australia as it is indigenous to Western Australian only. It is typical of the Eucalyptus found around Oz, which are hard and interlocked woods. Jarrah was being used in the mid 1800s, but this, too, like other local species, has become prized as its rarity increases. Most, if not all, the hardwoods I build are reclaimed from demolitions.
I very much doubt that the furniture makers of the 1800s in Australia used much of the woods we use today. They lacked the machinery to dimension the hard, hard woods, and there were other alternatives. The point I am making rather clumsily is that woodworkers choose their materials carefully if they have any sense (I clearly have none).
I also doubt that high angled planes were used in the early days of Australia. Most of the furniture makers came from the UK, as seen in the number of familiar branded vintage tools available locally for sale. The high angled planes appear to have been a rarity, and today are popularised by Terry Gordon (HNT Gordon). I'm surmising here, because I have not researched the history, but also have not seen any other brands but his. This suggests that one either made do with Stanley and infill planes with common angles, either fuelled by a chip breaker, or not, or scrapers and sandpaper. People make do.
When I put aside the power tools and began using handplanes, about 20 years ago now, my influence was a US forum, Badger Pond (no longer with us). High angle planes were considered the answer. Clark and William (USA) and HNT Gordon (Australia) set the pace. After a short stint with Stanley planes, I moved to HNT Gordon. They were, and continue to be, superb at their job.
About 10 years ago I moved to using bevel up planes, initially with a resurrected Stanley #62, and then through the testing I was doing for Lee Valley/Veritas. The advantage for me of these planes is that they could achieve a high cutting angle (around 60 degrees, same as the HNT Gordon woodies). The disadvantage was that I prefer freehand sharpening, and BU planes really benefit from a honing guide to achieve a specific secondary micro bevel angle. I stuck with them as the common angled planes, such as Stanley, just tore out in the local woods (regardless of fine shavings, tight mouths and sharp planes). This was pre-chipbreaker days.
I would credit David (DW) with the renaissance with the chipbreaker (around 2012). David often mentions Warren, his mentor as his inspiration. He refers to Warren’s information as “vague”. I would describe it as “close to his chest”. He gave up few if any details. David figured them out, and then a number of others began to see the possibilities and started to contribute. There were a few. Kees (Corneel) was another who offered up useful information (a couple of good videos, and later an excellent piece of research).
My own contribution (back in 2012) was very modest, just to compare high angled planes with- and without chipbreakers and against common angle planes. I must acknowledge that I really did not have the touch for setting the chipbreaker at that time. Still the results demonstrated to me there were variable settings and a number of features that interacted: bed angle, angle at the leading edge of the chipbreaker, distance of chipbreaker from the edge, and depth of cut.
Currently, my preferred smoothers and jointers are bevel down and used with the chipbreaker. Indeed, I changed down from a LN #3 with a 55-degree frog to one with a 45-degree frog. The Veritas Custom #4 has a 42-degree frog. The Veritas Custon #7 has a 40 degree frog. These perform as well, or better, than a HNT Gordon with a 60-degree bed. Why change? Because the lower angles push more easily, and BD is easier to sharpen than BU. On the hardwoods I work, there is not much, if any, different in finish. It is the ease of pushing and sharpening that got my vote.
I believe that bevel up planes or Stanley-minus-chipbreaker are still going to be the choice for most amateurs since they are easier to use, and will suffice unless there is a need to plane more interlocked grain. I still maintain that, for most, the performance of these planes exceeds the difficulty of the wood worked, and high angle planes offer an easier route than learning to set a chipbreaker. However for those willing to take the plunge, the chipbreaker is an old revolution made new.
Regards from Perth
Derek
This is all complete and utter nonsense. Effectively people are arguing about who was the first to mention cap iron reducing tearout on the internet. :shock: As though it was a new found concept and that they should be given a Nobel prize for woodworking! It's just complete nonsense!
BTW. I was the first to mention hand stitched rasps back in 2001. I can also lay claim to many other inventions, one of which was a concept for maintaining the correct angle for the primary grind on plane blades. :roll: It's just that no one listened, probably because I actually make stuff rather than pretending that I do.
PS. Don't forget that Pedder invented the saw, Swagman invented the saw handle and some guy on Woodnet invented the saw vice.
BTW. I was the first to mention hand stitched rasps back in 2001. I can also lay claim to many other inventions, one of which was a concept for maintaining the correct angle for the primary grind on plane blades. :roll: It's just that no one listened, probably because I actually make stuff rather than pretending that I do.
PS. Don't forget that Pedder invented the saw, Swagman invented the saw handle and some guy on Woodnet invented the saw vice.
Zeddedhed
Established Member
MIGNAL":hftj09wx said:
Quite right. The very idea that there has been a 'renaissance' of the chipbreaker' is an utter joke.
Amongst anyone who uses planes for a living the chipbreaker has always been a part of our knowledge/armoury or whatever you want to call it. Most of them don't even know the names that have been mentioned in this thread, let alone spend their time on the forums.
If I'd asked Mr Scott (see my previous post) who were the prominent figures in the world of wood working when i was doing my C&G he would have looked at me as though I had two heads.
It didn't matter and it doesn't now.
Only to woodworking fetishists and fanboys.
Ahh yes, I know you guys have just known more than everyone else.
Mignal - that's a fairly cynical view of it. I am not going for that (clearly to me Warren Mickley mentioned the cap iron every time the question of difficult planing was asked long long before I figured it out - at least a decade? and if you discuss it with him, he will tell you that he hasn't used anything but since either the late 70s or early 80s. But as I recall, it was something he gleaned from reading, not from instruction.
My point is, there is a popular question that gets asked, and it goes something like this:
"I'm planing curly maple and getting tearout, what should I buy?" I saw that question for 6 years and I don't remember a single person ever saying "get a plane with a cap iron and learn to use it, and don't buy anything else unless you want to buy it for sport". Well, warren would say things, but I couldn't put them together because there usually wasn't enough resolution. I thought maybe he was trolling the amateurs.
I read blogs, I read magazines, whatever - some of us have to learn on our own and don't just have someone telling us everything. If I had someone who really shaped how I think about whether or not I even want to make something, let alone how well, it would be George Wilson, who politely will tell you what you can improve, and he'll tell you *how*. But dumping machines at the time, Warren would say things like "you should be able to finish every board with through strokes on a smoother plane, and if you can't, something is wrong". I had made some planes that were fairly costly to me in time and money, but they weren't that useful for dimensioning, and neither were some very good single iron wooden planes that I bought. Warren won some of those hand tool contests, and I was under the mistaken impression that one of them was smoothing with a #3 (I think there still was a contest where he used a #4 and dusted a bunch of people using planes that cost several thousand each).
In all of that time, I don't remember a single person ever suggesting a double iron, and you have people in the US (just as the guy who charlie keeps linking) suggesting that the double iron doesn't do anything at a shaving thickness you'd use to finish a board. That there are plenty of other useful shaving thicknesses, notwithstanding.
It really makes little difference why it would've been said and by who on the internet, what made me angry is that I had sunken hundreds of hours into making tools and not a single blogger, or professional woodworker in the states could've (or did). I still have those tools...fortunately, one of them could be set properly as a double iron plane, but others can't. If a single person would've given relevant instruction on the cap iron, I probably wouldn't have bought or made all of those specific single iron plane.
It took me two weeks to learn to use a double iron almost as well as I can use one now, it took less than two weeks for me to get a stanley #4 (millers falls #9 actually) to work better (as in do a better job eliminating tearout in some very difficult quartered woods) than a 55 degree infill with a mouth between 3 and 4 thousandths.
What I'd like to know is if everyone was so well versed in using a cap iron and so competent with it, why didn't a single person lend me a hand in text form? George helped me make nice saws, but he wasn't allowed to use double iron planes at colonial williamsburg, the curators felt there weren't enough around to allow anyone to use them. So he wasn't any help on the whole topic.
All the while, Lie Nielsen was making double iron planes where the cap iron didn't reach far enough to actually use the cap iron and not a single person anywhere ever said anything about it. Why would that have been? I wrote an article to keep people in my position from spending money they don't want to spend, and shortly after I wrote the article, several people started complaining that they ran out of adjustment on their LN planes. If this was widely known, why didn't anyone in the UK complain about it? Shortly after the complaints started in 2012, LN fixed the problem.
I should never have had to figure anything of the sort out, this is something that someone instructing woodworkers should've covered in detail and described the way I described it in an article so that you can use the cap iron with greater effect than anything else.
Or said differently, as Warren says (paraphrased), it works better than anything else and if you don't think it does, you don't know how to use it as well as you think.
That's why I am asking that if this was such a widely known (and presumably everyone was competent with it if that's the case) thing, why aren't there dozens of easily found archived posts where someone other than warren suggested learning to use the cap iron instead of buying another plane? As I said, perhaps there is on here, that's why I made the request. There aren't anywhere else that I've frequented, or I wouldn't have waited 6 or 7 years to figure it out.
Once it did come up, there was a myriad of discussion items that anyone who knows how to use a double iron plane already know. Less effort per volume of wood removed than any other setup that is similarly capable, irons that stay in the cut longer than they would a single iron plane, etc (meaning more work between sharpening), and Kees, who was onto this stuff the same time has done a good job of actually proving in an experimental context that those are true. Anyone who joints with a single iron vintage jointer and then a double iron with a similar hardness and durability iron will instantly recognize how much more work they can get done before sharpening with a double iron plane. Both because the plane will stay in the cut for more feet of work done, and because you can take a thicker shaving without risk (and because of the common pitch).
I think derek is 100% correct that most people are looking for point and shoot, and the above isn't for them. If you want to do an appreciable amount of dimensioning in dried (thanks for pointing that out, custard) wood, then unless you like doing unnecessary work above and beyond that rendered due to working by hand, there's really no other way to go and it's easy to see from an economic standpoint why the double iron took over.
I cast off the suggestion of links like charlie showed because the guy doesn't know that much about the double iron plane, and he found a way to plane a surface that takes much longer and more disassembling of tools than someone who was competent with a simple stanley plane.
I would bet more people learned to use a cap iron in the last 4 years from Kees and I than in the prior 10 from the rest of you guys who "already know", and that's pitiful. Nobody should have to learn something from an amateur like me.
Mignal - that's a fairly cynical view of it. I am not going for that (clearly to me Warren Mickley mentioned the cap iron every time the question of difficult planing was asked long long before I figured it out - at least a decade? and if you discuss it with him, he will tell you that he hasn't used anything but since either the late 70s or early 80s. But as I recall, it was something he gleaned from reading, not from instruction.
My point is, there is a popular question that gets asked, and it goes something like this:
"I'm planing curly maple and getting tearout, what should I buy?" I saw that question for 6 years and I don't remember a single person ever saying "get a plane with a cap iron and learn to use it, and don't buy anything else unless you want to buy it for sport". Well, warren would say things, but I couldn't put them together because there usually wasn't enough resolution. I thought maybe he was trolling the amateurs.
I read blogs, I read magazines, whatever - some of us have to learn on our own and don't just have someone telling us everything. If I had someone who really shaped how I think about whether or not I even want to make something, let alone how well, it would be George Wilson, who politely will tell you what you can improve, and he'll tell you *how*. But dumping machines at the time, Warren would say things like "you should be able to finish every board with through strokes on a smoother plane, and if you can't, something is wrong". I had made some planes that were fairly costly to me in time and money, but they weren't that useful for dimensioning, and neither were some very good single iron wooden planes that I bought. Warren won some of those hand tool contests, and I was under the mistaken impression that one of them was smoothing with a #3 (I think there still was a contest where he used a #4 and dusted a bunch of people using planes that cost several thousand each).
In all of that time, I don't remember a single person ever suggesting a double iron, and you have people in the US (just as the guy who charlie keeps linking) suggesting that the double iron doesn't do anything at a shaving thickness you'd use to finish a board. That there are plenty of other useful shaving thicknesses, notwithstanding.
It really makes little difference why it would've been said and by who on the internet, what made me angry is that I had sunken hundreds of hours into making tools and not a single blogger, or professional woodworker in the states could've (or did). I still have those tools...fortunately, one of them could be set properly as a double iron plane, but others can't. If a single person would've given relevant instruction on the cap iron, I probably wouldn't have bought or made all of those specific single iron plane.
It took me two weeks to learn to use a double iron almost as well as I can use one now, it took less than two weeks for me to get a stanley #4 (millers falls #9 actually) to work better (as in do a better job eliminating tearout in some very difficult quartered woods) than a 55 degree infill with a mouth between 3 and 4 thousandths.
What I'd like to know is if everyone was so well versed in using a cap iron and so competent with it, why didn't a single person lend me a hand in text form? George helped me make nice saws, but he wasn't allowed to use double iron planes at colonial williamsburg, the curators felt there weren't enough around to allow anyone to use them. So he wasn't any help on the whole topic.
All the while, Lie Nielsen was making double iron planes where the cap iron didn't reach far enough to actually use the cap iron and not a single person anywhere ever said anything about it. Why would that have been? I wrote an article to keep people in my position from spending money they don't want to spend, and shortly after I wrote the article, several people started complaining that they ran out of adjustment on their LN planes. If this was widely known, why didn't anyone in the UK complain about it? Shortly after the complaints started in 2012, LN fixed the problem.
I should never have had to figure anything of the sort out, this is something that someone instructing woodworkers should've covered in detail and described the way I described it in an article so that you can use the cap iron with greater effect than anything else.
Or said differently, as Warren says (paraphrased), it works better than anything else and if you don't think it does, you don't know how to use it as well as you think.
That's why I am asking that if this was such a widely known (and presumably everyone was competent with it if that's the case) thing, why aren't there dozens of easily found archived posts where someone other than warren suggested learning to use the cap iron instead of buying another plane? As I said, perhaps there is on here, that's why I made the request. There aren't anywhere else that I've frequented, or I wouldn't have waited 6 or 7 years to figure it out.
Once it did come up, there was a myriad of discussion items that anyone who knows how to use a double iron plane already know. Less effort per volume of wood removed than any other setup that is similarly capable, irons that stay in the cut longer than they would a single iron plane, etc (meaning more work between sharpening), and Kees, who was onto this stuff the same time has done a good job of actually proving in an experimental context that those are true. Anyone who joints with a single iron vintage jointer and then a double iron with a similar hardness and durability iron will instantly recognize how much more work they can get done before sharpening with a double iron plane. Both because the plane will stay in the cut for more feet of work done, and because you can take a thicker shaving without risk (and because of the common pitch).
I think derek is 100% correct that most people are looking for point and shoot, and the above isn't for them. If you want to do an appreciable amount of dimensioning in dried (thanks for pointing that out, custard) wood, then unless you like doing unnecessary work above and beyond that rendered due to working by hand, there's really no other way to go and it's easy to see from an economic standpoint why the double iron took over.
I cast off the suggestion of links like charlie showed because the guy doesn't know that much about the double iron plane, and he found a way to plane a surface that takes much longer and more disassembling of tools than someone who was competent with a simple stanley plane.
I would bet more people learned to use a cap iron in the last 4 years from Kees and I than in the prior 10 from the rest of you guys who "already know", and that's pitiful. Nobody should have to learn something from an amateur like me.
custard":r1vk71lo said:
The problem with the planes was that the hole for the adjuster dog was in the wrong place. If you set the cap iron close to the end of the cutting iron (where it needs to be to actually mitigate tearout), you would run out of adjustment and not be able to get the iron projected out of the plane.
I'd assume that they began machining the adjuster hole a little further from the edge, which would be the cheapest way to remedy the problem.
I had only one LN plane left by then, and as soon as I learned to use the cap iron, I set it aside in favor of a lighter vintage plane. For reasons that I don't know (maybe setup) some planes had the problem, some didn't. Mine did, too, but I wasn't using it by then. I sold it (and disclosed it).
While I think LN believes some nutty things about how to use their planes, they are a top top shelf company and I doubt anyone incurred any cost to get a chipbreaker made properly.
I ask all of the questions and intentionally draw some heat about this because there seem to be half a dozen little things like this that weren't noticed by anyone. I doubt most established businesses bought LN planes, that may be part of this one.
D_W
Just as an example of one of us this side of the pond saying Set your chip breaker right see David Charlesworth's comment on CS's blog http://blog.lostartpress.com/2007/12/31 ... -tear-out/
I doubt I was much into forums in those days and I bet most of my contemporaries were not using forums before circa 2008. I still do not respond much hence less than 100 posts per year and this thread is heading for a record for me.
Just as an example of one of us this side of the pond saying Set your chip breaker right see David Charlesworth's comment on CS's blog http://blog.lostartpress.com/2007/12/31 ... -tear-out/
I doubt I was much into forums in those days and I bet most of my contemporaries were not using forums before circa 2008. I still do not respond much hence less than 100 posts per year and this thread is heading for a record for me.
Corneel
Established Member
I did a quick and dirty search through UKworkshop's archives, and truth be told, indeed you find the occasional lonely voice recomending to set the capiron very close to the edge to prevent tearout. I found a guy named Ivan and Pekka Huhta from Finland (not heard from him in a long time?). but the vast majority of forum users recommend the tight mouth, high cutting angles and scrapers.
Never trust a skinny chef or an out-of-shape/overweight 'hand tool' woodworker.
It's just a guess but could it be that a closely set cap iron is so basic to planing that other people thought you're already using it, so any suggestions would mention other things you could do, ie higher pitch, scraping, toothed blade, narrower mouth etc.
From a 1950 Stanley leaflet:
I think I saw a Lie Neilson plane like that at college, another student was trying to set the depth and the blade wouldn't stick out of the sole. I had a look at it and saw that the cap iron screw slot wasn't long enough, I just assumed Lie Neilson had deliberatly made the slot shorter to prevent a user from getting the most out of the blade.
Attachments
bugbear
Established Member
JohnPW":3a0drwfr said:
I've met TLN several times, and he really does not strike me as the kind
of guy who is THAT desperate for a few cents.
"Heck", in weekend use, even the sabotage you suggest would still have
the profit (early blade replacement) coming to TLN's successor, if at all.
BugBear
Paddy Roxburgh
Established Member
I've just got in from work and for some reason I have had this business going around my head all day. Having read some of the responses, from Derek, Corneel and in a earlier thread from Graham Hayden I think that I may have been slightly wrong on some of my previous assertions. The conclusion that I have reached from this has very little to do with actually woodworking and a lot to do with the internet and tool makers being the go to resource for learning.
First there are some uncontroversial facts,
1. Setting the cap iron very close to the cutting edge is a useful way to control tearout
2. There are other ways to control tear such as high angle planes, tight mouths and scrapers
3. This information has been completely accessible in published literature for many years. My copy of wearing's Essential Woodworker published in 1988 for example, also in much older texts such as Planecraft.
All the above are easily verified
Now for some slightly more controversial claims
1. At some time before 2012 this information was lost/forgotten by woodworkers in the internet forum world.
2. It was rediscovered by DW and some others in 2012 and is now known to most internet woodwork forum users
Now since DW started posting about this a few months ago I have found the above difficult to believe. There are many on this forum who have stated that that they have always been aware of the use of the cap iron to control tear, something that is quite easy to believe as it is all over the published literature. One example is Richard Jones who was taught by Wearing in the 60s (from a previous post on this forum). I can think of no reason not to believe him in this, also no reason why Wearing would write about it in his book but not share it with someone he was mentoring. Another example is Zedhead's tutor in the 1980s. However Derek, Corneel and Graham have all stated they were not aware of the use of the cap iron to control tear until they heard it from DW in 2012, so there is some truth in the above statements
Personally I had no problem with tearout before 2012 as I took boards out of the machine and used a RO sander or if tear was bad a belt sander. It is only only in the last couple of years that I have got more into using hand tools. To this end I have extensively used the internet as a resource and this is why I read this forum. It is here that we really get to the heart of the matter. Some of the leading figures on the internet are not necessarily outstanding craftsmen. Custard's comments about CS are a good example, however because people such as myself are looking for information online to help them the most prolific writers are often followed. Indeed Custard you are a good example of this. I always read your posts and believe you to be a very skilled craftsman whose advise I should follow, but I do not actually KNOW this. What you say seems to make sense to me and I have decided that you are worth listening to, but I have never seen you work, I have never touched your work, perhaps your just gifted at the blarney. I don't think that this is the case, but it is never the less possible. I can only judge you by the things I already know, perhaps you only know a little more than me and the rest is blarney that I swallow wholesale.
It would appear to me that pre 2012 and DW's cap iron renaissance that a lot of hobby woodworkers were talking to each other and not reading books by highly skilled craftsmen. This kind of crowd sourcing for information left noone any wiser. In my actual business, repairing and maintaining canal boats, this kind of "blind leading the blind" is rife I can't even read the boaters forums as there are so many people talking so much BS. I only offer my advise to people who come to my dock and ask for it and even then some people want to argue with me "but the man at the paint shop said....". The man in the paint shop sells paint, he doesn't black boats. this leads me to the other source for information, the tool makers/dealers. High end, high angle planes said the tool dealers, forget your old stanley or woody, spend a load of money with LN and Veritas and your problems are solved. Essentially adverts became the go to source for information. I am not saying that there are no good products from these people, but their vested interest is clear. selling stuff
It is interesting to note that Paul Sellers, who, like Custard, I always listen to, does not see a close cap iron as a particularly efficient way to deal with tear. His opinion is that most boards are fine with a sharp iron and a 1-2mm gap and the others need a quick clean with a no. 80. I think this comes from the fact that he teaches with the premis that you only have one no. 4 (maybe 2, one set up as a scrub) and that it needs to be able to be adjusted for a variety of cuts from coarse to fine. A smoother with a 0.1mm set to the cao iron is not useful for thicker cuts when shaping wood. Personally I have a 4 1/2 which is only for final smoothing and a 4 for general work (and a couple of 5s with different cambers and a wooden jointer, oh yeah and a few others that get less use).
So in conclusion I would say the thing to learn from this is if you are not lucky enough to have been taught by a master you can rely on careful about what you learn on the net. Where possible read classic published literature (this would have saved a lot of pre 2012 internet woodworkers a lot of grief and money).
Paddy
First there are some uncontroversial facts,
1. Setting the cap iron very close to the cutting edge is a useful way to control tearout
2. There are other ways to control tear such as high angle planes, tight mouths and scrapers
3. This information has been completely accessible in published literature for many years. My copy of wearing's Essential Woodworker published in 1988 for example, also in much older texts such as Planecraft.
All the above are easily verified
Now for some slightly more controversial claims
1. At some time before 2012 this information was lost/forgotten by woodworkers in the internet forum world.
2. It was rediscovered by DW and some others in 2012 and is now known to most internet woodwork forum users
Now since DW started posting about this a few months ago I have found the above difficult to believe. There are many on this forum who have stated that that they have always been aware of the use of the cap iron to control tear, something that is quite easy to believe as it is all over the published literature. One example is Richard Jones who was taught by Wearing in the 60s (from a previous post on this forum). I can think of no reason not to believe him in this, also no reason why Wearing would write about it in his book but not share it with someone he was mentoring. Another example is Zedhead's tutor in the 1980s. However Derek, Corneel and Graham have all stated they were not aware of the use of the cap iron to control tear until they heard it from DW in 2012, so there is some truth in the above statements
Personally I had no problem with tearout before 2012 as I took boards out of the machine and used a RO sander or if tear was bad a belt sander. It is only only in the last couple of years that I have got more into using hand tools. To this end I have extensively used the internet as a resource and this is why I read this forum. It is here that we really get to the heart of the matter. Some of the leading figures on the internet are not necessarily outstanding craftsmen. Custard's comments about CS are a good example, however because people such as myself are looking for information online to help them the most prolific writers are often followed. Indeed Custard you are a good example of this. I always read your posts and believe you to be a very skilled craftsman whose advise I should follow, but I do not actually KNOW this. What you say seems to make sense to me and I have decided that you are worth listening to, but I have never seen you work, I have never touched your work, perhaps your just gifted at the blarney. I don't think that this is the case, but it is never the less possible. I can only judge you by the things I already know, perhaps you only know a little more than me and the rest is blarney that I swallow wholesale.
It would appear to me that pre 2012 and DW's cap iron renaissance that a lot of hobby woodworkers were talking to each other and not reading books by highly skilled craftsmen. This kind of crowd sourcing for information left noone any wiser. In my actual business, repairing and maintaining canal boats, this kind of "blind leading the blind" is rife I can't even read the boaters forums as there are so many people talking so much BS. I only offer my advise to people who come to my dock and ask for it and even then some people want to argue with me "but the man at the paint shop said....". The man in the paint shop sells paint, he doesn't black boats. this leads me to the other source for information, the tool makers/dealers. High end, high angle planes said the tool dealers, forget your old stanley or woody, spend a load of money with LN and Veritas and your problems are solved. Essentially adverts became the go to source for information. I am not saying that there are no good products from these people, but their vested interest is clear. selling stuff
It is interesting to note that Paul Sellers, who, like Custard, I always listen to, does not see a close cap iron as a particularly efficient way to deal with tear. His opinion is that most boards are fine with a sharp iron and a 1-2mm gap and the others need a quick clean with a no. 80. I think this comes from the fact that he teaches with the premis that you only have one no. 4 (maybe 2, one set up as a scrub) and that it needs to be able to be adjusted for a variety of cuts from coarse to fine. A smoother with a 0.1mm set to the cao iron is not useful for thicker cuts when shaping wood. Personally I have a 4 1/2 which is only for final smoothing and a 4 for general work (and a couple of 5s with different cambers and a wooden jointer, oh yeah and a few others that get less use).
So in conclusion I would say the thing to learn from this is if you are not lucky enough to have been taught by a master you can rely on careful about what you learn on the net. Where possible read classic published literature (this would have saved a lot of pre 2012 internet woodworkers a lot of grief and money).
Paddy
Charlie, I'm currently at 185 pounds - a real monster given that I only get into the shop part time (I'd probably weigh 30 pounds less if I was in it 7 days a week). I have been heavier, and I have been less heavy - but less heavy was before hand tool woodworking. Of course, if I suggest something that's correct, if I were a little bit fatter, it wouldn't be correct. I understand your stellar deduction, whether or not something is correct is based not on fact, but appearance of the source.
I'd certainly say something more along the lines of, "never ask for the opinion of someone who can only present advice after the fact". (notwithstanding the habit to try to wedge others' work all the time instead of ever referencing your own).
I'd certainly say something more along the lines of, "never ask for the opinion of someone who can only present advice after the fact". (notwithstanding the habit to try to wedge others' work all the time instead of ever referencing your own).
bugbear":2d5tqbwn said:
I have talked to folks there several times, too. I have no doubt that folks at both LN and LV have nothing but the best intentions, and they've shown by their actions in responding to any issues that they are johnny on the spot any time they can help anything.
I think this was a case where nobody making or using the planes there was setting the cap iron close, so they didn't notice there was a problem. They have covered in a decade or two (they've been around longer, but only "big time" for a short period of time) what other makers have had generations to learn and pass on.
