Page 3 of 25 FirstFirst 123456713 ... LastLast
Results 31 to 45 of 363

Thread: A chip breaker reminder

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    SF East Bay, CA
    Posts
    287
    Quote Originally Posted by David Weaver View Post

    Anyway, no offense. It's all part of reality, when you see something that works, you know there will have been someone else (or possibly a lot of people) who figured it out long before you did.

    One additional comment that I should have made originally. When I say I was setting the cap iron close, I'm talking about a 64th or maybe even a 32nd. This is not the same. Again, thanks for the info.

    Take care.

    Larry

  2. #32
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    SW FL Gulf Coast
    Posts
    341
    Quote Originally Posted by david charlesworth View Post
    I am quite clear that it was not common knowledge in England and I don't recall seeing it in the whole of Fine Woodworking.
    In the very first issue of Fine Woodworking, Winter 1975, Volume 1, Number 1, in "Hand Planes - The care and making of a misunderstood tool", Timothy E. Ellsworth states:

    "The chip breaker should be set back 1/64 to 1/16 inch from the cutting edge of the iron. The closer setting would be used for the very fine shavings on finish work and for hard-to-plane woods. Setting the chip breaker back 1/32 to 1/16 inch would be for rough work and large shavings."

    The diagrams on page 23 clearly illustrate a close setting. Given that 1/64" equals sixteen thousandths or .0156 of an inch, it may be rather coarser than the suggested .005" or .006" for the tightest smoother setting, but at any rate, it's ballpark.

  3. #33
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Philadelphia, PA
    Posts
    3,697
    I saw statements here and there similar to that when I got my first hand plane a few years back and was researching/learning how to tune/use it. I think most people had heard of the concept, but until Dave started telling me how to use it and what to look for, I had never once seen any real instruction on what to look for. I recall seeing one writeup on a website where a guy used a loupe to set the CB really close, but the focus was on on how to get it a few thou form the edge away from the edge and not at all on why or what to look for in results. It was just "this is where it needs to be". I remember trying it briefly and then writing it off as esoteric hogwash. Add to that the fact that none of the best known writers were promoting it and I (and I believe many experienced and inexperienced woodworkers) came to view it as a vestigial component left over from early Stanley marketing and cost cutting practices.

    When Dave first started talking about this I had been PMing with him about wanting a new smooth plane. He said, "hey, give this a try". I doubted him at first and told him I had tried it and it didn't work, but after maybe 2 or 3 emails to address some trouble shooting over the course of a week I did a 180 on my view of a CB.

    I think I was Dave's guinea pig regarding how to convert someone. Right about that time, he started posting about how to use the CB anytime anyone would post about tearout or wanting a new smoother, and me, his little convert, would followup with some comment about how I had seen the light. It was actually pretty funny - Dave literally took every opportunity he could to bring up the concept, and whats really cool is it actually worked! He (and his cronies over at woodcentral) COMPLETELY changed the conversation. Before then, the discussion (in multimedia anyway) was typically whether or not the CB actually did anything. Now the discussion is how, if, and when to make use of the CB - I haven't since seen anyone say "its just an extra useless part to gets in the way" or "it was just a way for Stanley to reduce the amount of steel in there blades" since (both of which I had previously believed).

    Hope this doesn't come across as some type of crazy rant - its not meant to. I just think its cool and quite funny how much influence Dave's stubbornness had on the woodworking community at large. I also still get excited every time I see the CB working... thicker shavings, less tearout, no more struggling to close my planes mouth up as tight as possible, no concern about changing grain directions - what not to be excited about?
    Last edited by Chris Griggs; 12-14-2012 at 4:20 PM.

  4. #34
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Lewisville, Tx
    Posts
    158
    I tried this method a few weekends ago on some qswo and was very, very happy with the results. My previous efforts with that species led to purchases of LA jack/smoother and a cabinet scraper.

    The question that remains in my mind (in the absence of shop time) is what to do with the stock prep before smoothing. Do this setup mitigate tearout so well that I can ignore any nastiness left by my jack? I know the answer will likely be "it depends" but any personnel observations on this would be appreciated.

  5. Quote Originally Posted by David Myers View Post
    I tried this method a few weekends ago on some qswo and was very, very happy with the results. My previous efforts with that species led to purchases of LA jack/smoother and a cabinet scraper.

    The question that remains in my mind (in the absence of shop time) is what to do with the stock prep before smoothing. Do this setup mitigate tearout so well that I can ignore any nastiness left by my jack? I know the answer will likely be "it depends" but any personnel observations on this would be appreciated.
    These uber-fine cap iron setting are for final smoothing raising material that is more tissue than wood shaving. If your jack is leaving behind a lot of junk it would take forever to clean up a board with the settings suggested in the original article.

  6. #36
    You can use the same method with the jack, if you need to. Just set the chipbreaker a bit farther back so that it's set for the chip size with the jack.

    If you have so much camber that the chipbreaker is projected further out than the corners of the iron, it's no problem because the chipbreaker will never protrude below the mouth of the plane, which means that part of the iron would never have gotten into the cut, anyway.

    That said, it may be easier to minimize jack tearout by planing downgrain, and start applying the cap iron on the next step, whatever that may be (jointer /try /fore)

  7. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Charlie Stanford View Post
    These uber-fine cap iron setting are for final smoothing raising material that is more tissue than wood shaving. If your jack is leaving behind a lot of junk it would take forever to clean up a board with the settings suggested in the original article.
    I suggested in the article that the best general setting is more of a backstop setting, somewhere around 8 thousandths with a 50 degree cap iron face. That setting is more than capable of taking coarse smoother shavings.

    The issue here is that you won't go straight to a smoother regardless. A coarser cap iron setting on whatever's between the jack and the smoother is useful, though.

  8. #38
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    'over here' - Ireland
    Posts
    2,532
    It's probably not entirely new, in that my Father who was by no means an expert woodworker but who took some night classes in woodworking in a local technical college here in Ireland back in the 1930/40s showed it to me as a kid trying to set up an old wooden jack plane to cut cleanly. Being shown it is one thing, and realising the significance is another however - the benefit in my case was heavily masked by my futile efforts to create a sharp edge using a worn out old oil stone.

    What it very much brings to mind is what's been said several times already - how so much truly practical knowledge gets lost in the noise, and how with repetition myths (which are not necessarily untrue - just not necessarily the whole story) can exclude subtler facts. The same basic issue is all over the place so far as set up of tools and machines is concerned - i've been posting about something similar in respect of jointer set up. As in there tends to be a relatively simple or idealised version of how you set it up - which becomes the dogma and gets repeated by all and sundry. Most of whom have never truly trialled the information to discover its limits.

    There's actually potentially a whole additional world of fine tuning/smart moves below the standard/idealised procedures for many machines and tools which is not recognised by the dogma. The basics of jointer set up for example tend to deal with getting the tables coplanar, and the knives at the right height relative to the outfeed table. It becomes clear however when you set your machine up in practice that there's a whole world of little set up moves and operating techniques beyond that that can be used to fine tune straight/concave jointing, and to some degree to overcome some of the effects of less than perfectly flat tables.

    This sort of information almost never gets written down - it at best surfaces in the form of a comment by somebody who knows. Which most of us promptly miss the significance of.

    It seems to me that there's scope for a whole swathe of books and magazine pieces revisiting tools and machines we're inclined to think we know all about in greater depth - at a truly fact based and expert level. Maybe it's the long awaited antidote to dumbing down in the mags, the return of truly useful content??? Maybe we need a research project to gather this sort of detail information and test it...

    Well done guys....

    ian
    Last edited by ian maybury; 12-14-2012 at 7:31 PM.

  9. #39
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,469
    Quote Originally Posted by Larry Whitlow View Post
    ...... As I said, a TV show that advised to hold the chip breaker back kind of threw me for a loop...
    One show - possibly the same one you are referring to - was the Woodright's Shop, and the episode was with Chris Schwarz: http://m.video.pbs.org/video/2172600556/. about 18 minutes in.

    The point is that modern teachers - and Chris is definitely one of the influential modern teachers. David Charlesworth is another - pass on their knowledge, which in this modern era may have been developed from experience and readings rather than a formal training with long historical roots. The way a chip breaker can be set for a smoother has been around for a long, long time. The fact that it is not common knowledge is simply that it is not included in modern texts or by latter day teachers. Someone like Chris is a marvellous teacher, but what he/they teaches is not necessarily always in the historical context. I think that Chris, per se, does a lot to add historically correct technique to our knowledge base, but this one he overlooked, and then that was passed on. And so it goes.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Last edited by Derek Cohen; 12-14-2012 at 10:50 PM.

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Williamsburg,Va.
    Posts
    12,402
    Yes, and with all due respect, jamming backsaws repeatedly in cuts,and whamming nice,new Wentzloff rip saws into the floor a few times while sawing vertically seated on a low "sawing bench" can be included in "so it goes" So can hammering a nail into a tired little noodley(sp?) puddle instead of a proper,straight across the grain clinch,with a point bent down to staple into the wood. And don't use the excuse that filming is hard. I made a harpsichord and violin with my staff on film. The only retakes were when a "hair got caught in the gate"(of the camera). And,we were in a terrible,crushing rush to get it done in the Winter months,when it was quiet. I was only 33.
    Last edited by george wilson; 12-15-2012 at 8:34 AM.

  11. Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    Yes, and with all due respect, jamming backsaws repeatedly in cuts,and whamming nice,new Wentzloff rip saws into the floor a few times while sawing vertically seated on a low "sawing bench" can be included in "so it goes" So can hammering a nail into a tired little noodley(sp?) puddle instead of a proper,straight across the grain clinch,with a point bent down to staple into the wood. And don't use the excuse that filming is hard. I made a harpsichord and violin with my staff on film. The only retakes were when a "hair got caught in the gate"(of the camera). And,we were in a terrible,crushing rush to get it done in the Winter months,when it was quiet.
    I'm glad you mentioned all of this. That "clinching" job of which you speak particularly made me cringe. And everybody's woodworking is made better by a too-low sawing bench isn't it? Those bloody things look like a Medieval torture device to me - all stooped over. My back hurts just thinking about it. I doubt the saws themselves appreciate the Close Encounters of the Schwarz Kind with the floor, either.

  12. The super-fine settings made for an interesting afternoon's diversion for me. That was about it. They work (no doubt) but the surface has to be really homogenous in the first place, almost to a machine-like standard, I rarely achieve that to be honest.

    I definitely do not go through a tedious progression of planes and cap iron settings that culminate in the super-tight settings mentioned in the articles. I wonder who really does, in the "post-Kawai" (sp?) world we now supposedly live in. If the end result of all of this is supposed to look like what you get when you hand plane light machine marks out of stock that has otherwise been competently processed on jointer and planer I can reliably be counted out. If I'm misunderstanding the process then ignorance is bliss.

    I'm typically back to around a 64th (I'd guess), as David Barnett mentioned in his post quoting an old FW article. For me, this pretty much is the "close as you can get it" recommendation to be found in several books by British authors (not sure what Charlesworth was looking for, perhaps Hayward providing a specific measurement in thousandths of an inch). Furthermore, I would add "reasonably" after the word "can" as a lousy two cent contribution to the discussion.

    Can it be gotten closer? Sure, with some squinting and carrying on. But then that setting might not work as well on one species as it did on another. And then fiddling and faffing about ensue. I don't despise the scraper and I am on speaking terms with garnet sandpaper. 250 years or so ago I guess it would have been brick dust, loose grit of some sort, something lost to history, a shop secret, or nothing. Not worried about it.
    Last edited by Charlie Stanford; 12-15-2012 at 7:28 AM.

  13. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,469
    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    Yes, and with all due respect, jamming backsaws repeatedly in cuts,and whamming nice,new Wentzloff rip saws into the floor a few times while sawing vertically seated on a low "sawing bench" can be included in "so it goes" So can hammering a nail into a tired little noodley(sp?) puddle instead of a proper,straight across the grain clinch,with a point bent down to staple into the wood. ...
    Yes, and that may be an example of learning from a book rather than receiving advice and guidance in a shop setting. The problem is that I wouldn't know any better, and no doubt others would also trust this information - assuming that it is the correct way to use this technique ....

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Last edited by Derek Cohen; 12-15-2012 at 7:44 AM.

  14. Quote Originally Posted by Derek Cohen View Post
    Yes, and that may be an example of learning from a book rather than receiving advice and guidance in a shop setting. The problem is that I wouldn't know any better, and no doubt others would also trust this information - assuming that it is the correct way to use this technique ....

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Possibly, but the three examples George provided don't even pass the laugh test. How could anybody come to a conclusion that a saw striking the floor is any part of good technique? It probably makes sense when building a saw bench (a back "wracker") to hold the saw to the ground for a moment and consider how high the stool should be to provide clearance at all angles, don't you think?

    As to the clenching - all you have to have seen is one medieval British church door (a photo would do fine) to see how a nail should look when the clenching is done. Well, at least.

  15. #45
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,469
    I was referring to the clenching, not the sawing - I should have been more specific. How many medieval British church doors have any of us examined to know what to look for? I know I would have no clue at all.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •