Video of a cap iron at work..and discussion about the cap

[george wilson]

A very instructive video,David. I think what most guys are going to be concerned about are the obstacles of getting the chip breaker's edge and the blade's edge to mate up closely enough for these very fine settings. Also,both the chip breaker(CB) and the blade have to have very flat surfaces to keep chips from getting between them. The cutting edge of the plane blade will also have to be quite straight,as well as the edge of the chip breaker,in order for them to mate up that closely.

As usual,it will take the development of some decent amount of skill to make this CB/blade relationship work out properly.

I know from my own experience that using a polished blade and seeing that fine "line of light" is an important device in this as in other applications. Some may not be able to see the small edge of the blade protruding,but with that line of light shining out beyond the CB,it will be more possible. I use 4X drugstore glasses to help my old eyes to see small things.

I am not sure if the idea of using a Clifton chip breaker would work out. When you sharpen the blade,you are shortening the blade,and the chip breaker may be too close,or even go over the cutting edge next time it is clicked in place,so caution on that part when using cb/blade edge tolerances that close.

It seemed in one part of the video,that taking a fine enough cut with no CB,but still against the grain still produced good results,though some of us already knew that from experience. Planing across the grain is also useful in dealing with figured woods. Curly maple is featured on many of the musical instruments,especially bowed instruments. Use of a toothed iron and scrapers,too,is a good technique. Honing a steeper angle on the front edge of the plane iron is an old trick that must have been regularly practiced in the past centuries,judging from the presence of so many original,"dubbed over" plane blades that we have in the museum's collection.

This "dubbing over" technique has also worked quite well in thickness planers with regular style knives. Grinding a blunter leading edge on the blades makes the machine scrape as much as cut,and it does work well on figured woods. These insert cutters employ the same technique,really,a much blunter cutting angle. The machines have the horse power to handle it.

[Chris Griggs]

I am not sure if the idea of using a Clifton chip breaker would work out. When you sharpen the blade,you are shortening the blade,and the chip breaker may be too close,or even go over the cutting edge next time it is clicked in place,so caution on that part when using cb/blade edge tolerances that close.

I wondering that actually. I guess I was thinking that it would probably need to be adjusted every few honings, but given how close we are talking perhaps you're correct that it would need to be reset moire often anyway.

[David Weaver]

Yeah, one thing about the video is that it is just one type of wood (not sure what) and it's the simplified scenario of with and against the grain.

What it does show is that if you can plane with the grain, anything works.

If you can plane into the grain and you can thin the shaving, that also works well.

You're also right that there is a bit of skill involved in preparing a chipbreaker (I haven't used the clifton stay set, maybe it could be used a time or two, but their idea of price on a replacement blade and chipbreaker has kept me far away from using any of their goods). On a stock stanley, a user has to set it each time they sharpen, hopefully once they do it enough, they get quick at it, and hopefully if they have problems because of lack of fitness of the chipbreaker edge, they can figure out how to correct it.

When I wanted to build infill smothers, my biggest motivation was 1) that my stock that I can get at the local yard isn't as straight as you'd believe it would be, so making glue-up stuff with all downhill planing isn't always possible and 2) I wanted to be able to smooth something with straight through strokes, fairly quickly no matter what it is.

The infill works for that. I thought more people would build there own, but there have only been a few (maybe people go to sanding or scraping when things don't work out, but that's not a very fast way to fix the problem).

I was pretty pleased to find out that you can still leave the shaving pretty blunt (like 2 thousandths) and pretty much plane anything with a regular common bench plane, which most people abandon as soon as the wood isn't nice. Either that, or they go to super-fine sharpening and super thin slices, which isn't very nice to deal with when you have a lot of large surfaces for furniture (I still don't like to build furniture).

I'm not done building single iron planes, though. I'd like to have a single iron panel plane that looks nice and is scratch made, something in the 50 degree bed range with a 2 1/4" to 2 1/2" range.

Raney mentioned to me on another forum that he's only met two people who control planes with the second iron. I thought that was pretty surprising. I may yet go back to using mostly single iron planes (because it's easy when you have a plane that is made finely and already controls tearout with the mouth).

I think Bill's idea was a little different when he took this on. He mentioned that he uses planes for joinery, but he doesn't like to smooth with them because it's a skill set that is too filled with failure and difficulty. Some of my friends are in the same boat, they get set up to use planes, and it's a novelty, but they go right back to their sander when they actually do anything that isn't just a board to make play shavings on their bench.

Who knows where all of this discussion will go, it might go nowhere and everyone may go straight to buying a high angle plane, or building one (building is always more satisfying, I think), or maybe folks who put the plane down for fear of tearout and due to preference for a sander will decide they can give the smooth plane another whack. Those types could probably use a plane without a set chipbreaker fine, though, because they'll be planing a surface that's already flat and not removing evidence of strokes from a jointer.

[Sam Takeuchi]

I've read somewhere before that Clifton stay set cap iron has some play in it and while it's not great, it's enough to make it annoying. I haven't played with Clifton ones, so I can't verify it myself. If it does have a bit of wiggle, I'm thinking it could be a problem when you are talking about setting it 0.1mm to 0.2mm away from the edge. I have vintage Record (pre-1960's) stay sets (one for No.3 and one for No.4), both are quite well machined and has no wiggle whatsoever. But while installing it onto a blade, toe piece has to be held by one finger to keep it in place, it can be a bit fidgety trying to get it real close and try to keep the piece from falling. After a while, you hold the toe piece without thinking, so it's not a problem, but as far as setting cap iron goes, stay set doesn't make it easier than a regular one piece.

First picture is how I hold the toe piece while adjusting cap iron. It's not difficult, but it is not as care free as one piece cap iron.
Last picture shows cap iron set to 0.2mm from the edge. Cap iron edge is honed and polished at 35 degrees. No particular reason. Originally it was ground at 34 degrees.

So from my experience, I don't think stay set will contribute any to making things easier...at all.

[jamie shard]

So that's about .2mm? That seems pretty do-able by eye.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Yep. It's doable by eye. It is shot in super macro mode though.

[Chris Griggs]

So I currently have John Coloccia's LV BU smoother in my shop (set to have an included angle of 45 degrees) and I've been using it side by side with my Stanley No.4 (setting the CB at various distances). Last night I played around some more and what I concluded was, believe it or not, that none of the woods I work or have on hand are gnarly enough for it to matter all that much. The worst stuff I have on hand is curly soft maple and a piece of very hard curly cherry that came from an area right by where a big branch had been. Thing is, and I guess this may seem kinda "duh" to many, I can go with or against the grain with either plane, and not get tearout. Works on either plane even if the mouth isn't crazy tight (though it not wide open), and works whether or not the CB is .004" from the edge or 1/32 from the edge. Don't get me wrong, I've now seen the value that a closely set CB can make on the stanley and certainly the LV BU smoother is much nicer feeling to use (once I got used to the girth and 4 fingered grip - disliked it when i first picked it up), but last night more then anything I was reminded of just how far a really sharp blade and light cut can take you. The end result was the same with both planes at various mouth and CB settings.... I decided I need to get my hands on some tougher wood before I continue to form conclusions about the effect of the CB... Then again, I'm perfectly happy working cherry, walnut, and soft maple, so maybe a lot of this is moot for me at the present time anyway.

On another note, I see now why Derek and others who work super hard wood like the BU smoother so much. I really didn't think I would like it (and didn't at first), but it just plows through the wood like its not even there. If I were working that kind of wood, and was doing most my prep with machines, this plane would definitely be the bees knees. I'm growing quite fond of it (its hard not to like any well designed well made tool), but given the woods I work and the fact the I do all my stock prep by hand, I'll probably stick with a narrower No. 4 sized BD plane, even if I do decide to upgrade from my Stanley in the near future.

[Chris Griggs]

Thanks for the info Sam. And nice pics. I don't think I'd be able to get such a great shot of the CB and miniscule protruding edge.

[george wilson]

I am thinking that just blunting the top edge of the single iron will accomplish as much as having a separate chip breaker. Blunting the single iron acts as its OWN built in,one piece chip breaker. It has the same effect as raising the pitch angle of the plane iron.

Mr. Lee sent me his book on sharpening,and he advocates this approach. A friend used to blunt the front angle of his thickness planer blades by hitting them on a 20" disc sander. It made the planer plane difficult woods more smoothly. I've known about the blunting for many years by now. I haven't done it to my own planer as I went to the Dispoz-a-Blade system(which Grizzly also sells),and the knives are only .040" thick,or so. Too thin to go and blunt. Blade changing is remarkably fast,though,so I use it. Short of buying a Byrd helical head,I am using the present system. I'm thinking of buying a bigger planer,so don't want to waste the money on an insert head for this one(the dispoz-a-blade was bad enough on entry cost!,cheaper on blade changes in the long run,though).

Generally,I've used other dodges for difficult wood than blunting the blade.

Any arguments???

[David Weaver]

It definitely works, I'm sure people have done it for a long time.

I saw a patent somewhere in one of the encyclopedias of knowledge or something along that line of someone touting a large single iron with a back bevel, somewhere around the 1830s. I'll bet that long before that, craftsmen stoned the backs of their irons to

My new-found fascination with the second iron is that it keeps you out of trouble without putting a back bevel on an iron, and it preserves the bright finish you get with a common pitch plane. You can just back it off if you don't need it (which is the case most of the time, espec. if smooth planing is a matter of improving the surface over a power planer). the nice thing about using it in a heavier cut is you can speed up removing what the jointer left behind, without the threat of tearing something out when you start to develop bigger flats but still don't want to wait to get everything uniform with a super thin shaving.

[Jack Curtis]

I am thinking that just blunting the top edge of the single iron will accomplish as much as having a separate chip breaker....

Seems that if blunting works, as logically it should, so should something like grinding a hollow.

[Chris Griggs]

Just to clarify, because I'm not sure if I follow or not...

By blunting, do you mean putting a slight convex bevel on the back of the blade? Essentially, the same thing as using a back bevel, but a little more quick and dirty?

[george wilson]

I don't understand what you mean by grinding a hollow,Jack.

Chris,I mean that by grinding or honing a blunter angle on the leading edge of the iron,you are causing the iron to bend the chip tighter,just as the chip breaker did,but without the trouble and skill of setting the chip breaker very close. Also,you don't need to get the cutting edge of the blade and the edge of the chip breaker dead parallel to achieve setting the cb so close to the edge of the blade.

[Jack Curtis]

I don't understand what you mean by grinding a hollow,Jack....

If the idea is to create an obstruction on the bevel, perhaps the change in direction caused by a hollow would serve the same purpose.

[John Coloccia]

I just wanted to note, because I don't think anyone else has, just how similar an iron with a large, closely set chip breaker it to a scraper.