Do I need a shoulder plane?

[Christian Thompson]

If your 78 is sharp enough to cut endgrain pine, no tear out, it should be sharp enough for mahogany.
If it's just slow going, can you saw well enough to cut out the rabbet to near the score line?

When I actually got a cut, it was cutting nice thin sheets of end grain, so I agree that sharpness wasn't the biggest issue. My biggest problem was the plane skipping and jumping and setting the depth of cut correctly. Pine seems a little more forgiving if I take too big of a cut. The depth adjusting lever is harder for me to finely control than a screw so I was either taking too much or none at all. I also think the really short piece I was working on was making things a little unstable.

So far spelching (I agree that word sounds nasty :-) hasn't been a huge problem. I've just been knifing the line on the back side a bit deeper and the blow out stops at the line. Chamfering seems like a good idea to reduce the risk even more. It does get a little finicky for the last few passes. Maybe I can clamp a piece to the back. I can't visualize how I would use a shooting board with this kind of rabbet. It would be nice to have one of those donkey's ear shooting boards for the small miter. The few resources I've seen on cutting these mitered dovetails say to just do it free hand (shoulder plane or chisel), but seems like that would take the margin of error out.

The more I think about it the more it seems like I should be sawing out most of the waste. It still would be nice to have the shoulder plane with the fine adjustment and the lower cutting angle to clean up at the end. I've got LV's in my shopping cart. Just need to pull the trigger :-).

Thanks,
Christian

[Todd Hyman]

Yes you need a shoulder plane! Its one of those tools that when you need it, nothing else will do.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

It would be nice to have one of those donkey's ear shooting boards for the small miter. The few resources I've seen on cutting these mitered dovetails say to just do it free hand (shoulder plane or chisel), but seems like that would take the margin of error out.

I've never done these style of dovetails, so maybe I'm off, but it seems like you've got a few important show surfaces - the mitre at the top and (and bottom, I suppose) of the joint, where you want the two pieces to match up well, and then the "tip" of the "ramp" formed by the mitre, running along the length of the joitn, where you want things to pull together tight.

I don't imagine the tiny mitre is giving you any strength, (that comes from the tails) and doubt it could easily be glued together, (two mostly endgrain surfaces) and with such a small surface, I'm not sure it's going to move much on it's own (i.e., if a gap starts opening there, I would look at the dovetails first - I don't think that tiny mitre is long enough to bow away on it's own.)

So it seems like if you were cutting it with a chisel or a plane, the first little bit at either end of the mitre you would want perfect; you're close to the marking line, so this should be easier, and you can always drop the chisel in a knifed line and pare that bit perfect as well. Along the length of the mitre, you just want the "tips" to mate up. If things get a little undercut (turns into more of a knife-edge) in the middle, that's not going to hurt. You could be fairly imperfect if you're imperfect in the wrong way and it's going to look fine.

Edit: because my rambling doesn't make sense -

f288.jpg

My understanding of the joint would be the parts coloured in blue are going to be the parts that show or contribute to the show. The long blue areas could even be less. The red colored area could be undercut and the joint would still show nice. I don't think trying to be super accurate with a shooting board for making this mitre is worth the extra effort; I'm not sure it would gain you anything.

[Christian Thompson]

I agree with all this and also started to think you would need a really thin plane (like 1/8") in order to use the donkey's ear since the plane would have to fit in under the hidden dovetails. The only problem with undercutting is that I am making a box and am planning to saw apart the lid and base after glue up. So I'm going to have kind of a weird looking glue line at the corners inside the box when it is open. The undercut would show in that case. I'm hoping with a few more practice joints I can get it fitting well enough and will try not to worry too much about small gaps.

[Christian Thompson]

Ok. Done. I just ordered the LV medium shoulder plane. I like the low bed angle and precision depth adjuster. I think with a combination of sawing out most of the waste and then trimming with the shoulder plane this task will be a lot easier.

Thanks for all the advice and encouragement!

Christian

BTW, I just told the wife and apparently this is my Christmas present and she is now ordering a spa package for herself. I still think it was worth it .

[David Keller NC]

Christian - Looks like I was a little too late chiming in on this thread, but I think what you're encountering wasn't the type of plane that you had (moving fillister vs. shoulder plane), it was the make of plane that you had. Stanley made some fine tools, but it's important to remember that their primary professional market were carpenters and finish carpenters, not necessarily cabinetmakers. In Stanely's zenith in the 1920's, very, very little furniture was made by hand in this country (US).

For a carpenter or finish carpenter, being able to make ultra-fine adjustments to a joinery plane to achieve very high precision wasn't an issue - it was about hogging off a lot of wood in a hurry on the non-show surface to get the piece to fit into its place in a kitchen.

A Lie-Nielsen or Lee-Valley moving fillister (I'm counting L-N & LV's skew block planes here, not just LV's moving fillister) has far, far more precise depth-of-cut adjustments than any antique Stanley, and those antique Stanleys from the 1920's have far more precise adjustment mechanisms than Stanleys from the later part of the 20th century (1960's and later).

All that said, you're going to find the most salient piece of advice on this thread is: "don't cut end grain with a plane unless there's no other way". Yes, you can certainly cut end grain with a high degree of control with a shoulder plane, but it still isn't going to be easy.