Chris - who told you that you need a high end plane (whatever that is) with a high bed angle, crazy tight mouth and you can only take 0.001" shavings?Originally Posted by Chris Griggs
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Chris - who told you that you need a high end plane (whatever that is) with a high bed angle, crazy tight mouth and you can only take 0.001" shavings?
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No one specifically. Its just one of those things that comes up from time to time. Someone will post about having issues with tearout in some type of curly/figured north american hardwood, and the general advice is usually, tighten the mouth, raise the angle of attack, take a thinner shaving. Its also the advice you read in every woodworking magazine and most blogs. (just type "planing curly maple" or "planing birdseye" or "tearout problems" into the search function and you'll find dozens of such threads - though you'll have to weed out the ones talking about power planers)
Of course, all these things work, but I remember being a newbie and reading a bunch of things that said those types of things, and thinking that I needed something other than a standard bailey to work figured wood. I quickly learned that I could work figured wood with a standard bailey, but learning to use the CB has allowed me to not worry about having as tight a mouth or taking the thinnest shaving possible. Actually, what I really believe is that an especially sharp blade is the most important factor in working semi difficult woods, but using the CB as definitely changed the way I think about and do things.
I do by the way recognize that curly maple, birdeye, curly cherry, etc. is not that difficult to plane compared to truly gnarly woods (which I don't work with anyway), but tearout problems with it do come up a fair bit on the forums.
Last edited by Chris Griggs; 12-16-2012 at 8:32 PM.
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From Chris Schwarz website:
"OK, actually I just gave myself an early Christmas gift and deleted my web browser’s links to a couple woodworking forums."
I guess this thread has something to do with this. Last drop in the bucket kind of thing. And I think that's a shame. There is no reason to belittle other people, whoever they are. Roy and Chris are fun characters. Probably not the end all and be all of woodworking lore, but nice guys nonetheless an very entertaining.
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Just like to say thanks for bringing this up again. I followed some of this information previously, but then got distracted and forgot about it. I'm glad to see it brought back to the fore. These are indeed the subtleties of experience that quickly get lost in the noise. I need to go back and read it all again closely. Thanks George and David! Don't stop.
It's also worth noting that there are often opportunities online for miscommunication, misinterpretation, and omissions, whether deliberate or inadvertent. The forum provides a feedback loop where those can be cleared up if done in a civil manner. Sometimes it takes a few cycles of people asking "Is this what you mean?" and patient replies to get it sorted out. It's easy for good information to get buried in the confusion, but persistence helps keep it available for the rest of us to rediscover.
Steve, mostly hand tools. Click on my name above and click on "Visit Homepage" to see my woodworking blog.
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Probably a good idea. Someone who is as public a figure as he is and has so many followers is going to have an equally large number of critics. It's just the nature of putting yourself out there to such an extent. Honestly, if I were in his shoes I would probably do the same if not all the time at least periodically. For whatever, reason there has been a fair bit of criticism on the forums lately.
I'll say again that I really like what he puts out there. He may not be a master woodworker, but he certainly puts a lot of great information out there (sometimes his own sometime historical). I guess I think of him as sorta and expert hobbyist, in that he seems to have a lot of expertise about what is practical and what is impractical for hobbyist woodworkers. He's certainly a far far more accomplished and knowledgeable woodworker than me. I do agree that a lot of his stuff is directed at total beginners, but I think a lot of it is also just sorta basic advice/tips that could be helpful to woodworkers of many levels. I can say that I've gotten tons from reading his blog over the past few years, and probably wouldn't have had any idea of where to start when I got into hand tools if his writings weren't so available. I don't follow any single person as the end all be all expert, but I don't shut out good information when its there either. Though I don't follow his stuff the way I did when I first started and know that there have been times when I didn't fully agree with something he suggested, off the top of my head I can't think of anything specific that I tried as a result of his advice that didn't somehow improve my woodworking. Raise you hand if your workbench is inspired in part or on whole by a design that he brought to your attention (both my hands are raised right now).
The fact that he didn't espouse the use of the CB until recently doesn't make me think less of him (though perhaps it came across that way) - its become clear that lots of serious woodworkers weren't really familiar with how to set a CB. Again, I just thought a direct reference to the guys (Dave et al) who were really pushing the issue would have been cool. I'm, btw, not implying that he was somehow trying steal credit form anyone - my assumption is he read some discussions on it, watched the video, did some experiment for himself and then reported out what he thought. From his perspective, there probably wasn't anything to specific to sight other than the video. When I say a reference to those guys would have been cool, I mean exactly that.... it would have been cool to see, simply because those are the fella's who I credit with finding a way to really teach/explain to people how to set a CB properly.
I'm actually a little surprised that he got pissed enough about a bunch of forum discussions to make a point of posting a blog article saying that he was deleting them from his browser. Honestly, he's been in publishing long enough that I would not have thought he gave a crud about what most of us think. Kinda makes me want to search all of last weeks threads on this forum and others and try to figure out what the nail in teh coffin was.
Last edited by Chris Griggs; 12-17-2012 at 7:29 AM.
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I flatten and rectify (1) and bring to desired thickness (2) whilst simultaneously shooting for a surface quality that pleases me (3) given the constraints of (1) and (2). I know of no other way it can be done or any other viable sequence. To the extent that there is wriggle room on (1) and/or (2) then obviously one can spend more time on (3) if it's necessary. To be perfectly honest and forthright, a 9" smoother in my hands is often still removing a hillock here and there, and bridging the occassional dip and swale, not continuously cutting the full length/breadth of board or panel at all times and in all places. If your very finely set smoother does then kudos! That's a testament to flatness and surface uniformity! If this more often than not coalesces for you at the moment you reach your planned stock thickness then that's terrific. I'll not argue with that sort of obvious success. To me this would practically be an embarrassment of riches.
Happily, and possibly something some would consider as a retreat to a fall back position, I do know how to raise a cob-webby shaving the full length of a hand scraper blade. It's an essentially unmeasurable shaving (in thickness) that would almost melt (poetic license requested) in a sweaty hand. I've never seen a handplane produce anything close, certainly not as wide, an obvious physical impossibility; and a lot of people make a shaving with a scraper only an inch or so wide, hence the zebra-striped surface - in certain circumstances more harm than good. That said, I don't scrape and scrape either and some tearout or other sundry markings and artifacts on furniture are fine by me; read the late, great Gene Landon on the subject. I wouldn't, and don't, hesitate to use sandpaper on a block for some unruly patches than don't respond well to plane or scraper, or are up against some other part making planing and scraping not particularly viable, unnecessarily risky, or just plain awkward.
In my shop wood moves, and stock can arrive from suppliers a little less flat than I would have preferred. I sense your stock is better behaved and perhaps your shop has better climatic control than mine. This obviously speaks to the relative degree of *particularly* constraint (1) in my first paragraph.
I have no facility for measurements by eye (or any other method) other than 'weak 32nd,' 'glint of light,' 'smidgen,' etc. I am unable to assert with any surety at all anything like "1/128" of an inch and that sort of measurement, or even an estimate of that sort of measurement, is at the end of the day meaningless to me and the way I prefer to approach my work.
Last edited by Charlie Stanford; 12-17-2012 at 8:34 AM.
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I agree. I have learned a great deal of things from him in his books and magazine articles. I appreciate his ability to convey an idea or concept without running off on tangents and keeping things simple.
I am not surprised. There has been some pretty critical talk about him that has done nothing for woodworking, it only served as a means of belittling him.
I have learned a ton of stuff about woodworking here, it is an extremely valuable asset to me. I appreciate the wealth of knowledge that is here and can only dream of producing some of the things I have seen on this forum. However, the way some of these past discussions have been going, I have been quite turned off by what has been going on lately and I have lost respect for some people.
As I have said before, I was raised and I truly believe that "You can learn something, from anyone."
I will continue to be a fan of CS. He has helped thousands with his work including me.
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I agree, it wasn't Chris saying "look, I've been figuring some things out lately, it was the attribution of other people implying that specifics like that are discovered because of his tinkering. Very few people have any idea who Bill Tindall and Steve Elliot are unless they post on woodcentral, and even then you might not know who that would be. Steve did specific scientific or semiscientific work describing all of the whiz bang alloys quite some time ago. I don't know if Bill worked with him on that or not.
Steve and Bill did the great work to dig up not only the video, but to correspond with people who don't speak English to dig up the technical information that went along with it as well as a hand tool specific instruction, which turned out to be hard to translate.
Without the video and the paper stuff, I could still be following every thread telling people with the "what plane should I buy next" question that they just need to learn something instead, but that always offends. Not that it bothers me that much, as a professor in my college major said "learning is painful". At any rate, a lot of the very specific information in the last 5 years has come from forums and forum members, out of the ground rather than across the press wire.
Maybe Chris saying that he's deleting the forums from his bookmarks will lead more people here to participate in the discussion. Maybe not, but I can't think of anything negative about the chance that it does.
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Actually, if it makes him a little more cautious and points him more toward publishing and finding experts to provide the information, that wouldn't be negative at all. It doesn't seem to have had that effect, though.
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Charlie,
Just to be sure, I think we are in complete agreement here!
Two things. I only meassured the distance of the chipbreaker to the edge twice. Just to get an idea what I was looking for. Because I was allready playing with the chipbreaker for some time before I saw the video, without too much succes, I needed that meassurement to finally come into the ballpark. After that I knew what I was looking for. Indeed, a glint of light. On a jointer a bit more, on a smoother a bit less. Another good way of recognising when you are right is looking at the shaving. When it stretches out, you probably have the chipbreaker in the right spot.
The other thing. This playing around with the chipbreaker is NOT about fluffy shavings. Au contraire. It helps you to take thicker shavings without introducing tearout. That's the whole point of using the chipbreaker.
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I wish more people would measure things this way when it comes to plane setup. I always get confused when folks would talk about thickness and distance in terms of thousandths of inches. Pieces of paper (standard copy/printer paper) is about as accurate as I get when it comes to such things. For setting chipbreakers I'd say that on a smoothing plane it is good to set it just a smidgen further from the edge than a glint of light
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That I understand!For setting chipbreakers I'd say that on a smoothing plane it is good to set it just a smidgen further from the edge than a glint of light
clamp the work
to relax the mind
[OP]
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As far as to what I have had to say,I challenge anyone to disprove it.
My purpose here was to see that credit is given to David,who started the chip breaker conversation,enlightening many of us. I felt denied credit,too,after making all those planes. No reason to say "other artisans" when "the toolmakers" is exactly the same number of letters. Just why was that? If wanting credit for David offends anyone,I'm sorry. like David's professor(and one of mine also said)"Learning is painful."
You'd better be a member of "the clique" if you want to be included. That is "why".
Josh,if you do not know some of these "woodworking personalities",you may not know what is going on behind the scenes. Do not be quick to judge. I've been there,done that,when I was less informed.
Last edited by george wilson; 12-17-2012 at 10:54 AM.
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I never did, you can infer how close it is based on what happens to a thickness of shaving, I guess, but the actual numbers that come out of the video are for ballparking. (so that someone who was using 1/32nd of an inch realizes why that setting doesn't do anything other than help keep shavings from residing in the plane indefinitel). I was too afraid that I would tap a ruler on a sharp edge and have a ding in it. I did put a caliper on thick shavings, though. certainly stepped up the thickness of my smoother shavings to about twice what they were before I used a cap iron effectively.
Exactly.It helps you to take thicker shavings without introducing tearout. That's the whole point of using the chipbreaker.
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No you were right about that one George. But then it went on and on about the quality of his work and how he handles a saw and all that. Same about Roy's work. Looking back, I think that wasn't neccessary.
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