Kezuroukai, Planing Competition Finals 2012

[Greg Wease]

I would love to know how they prepare the blades for these competitions. To take a sub .001 shaving, about 4" wide is certainly a feat. Is the blades bevel ground on a machine? Is the blade sharpened solely on waterstones? Not to mention the Dai. Does anyone have any insight into this?

A few years ago Hida Tool sponsored two Kazouro Kai events at Palomar College. They brought several woodworkers from Japan including a couple of "national treasure" temple builders who demonstrated a number of skills, not just thin shavings. The activities included construction of a Torii gate, shoji screens, complex joinery, etc. Full-width shavings using 8 inch wide planes were very impressive. The surface finish on all examples was awesome.

Those involved in the planing contest prepared their blades by hand, many using natural waterstones. They sat on the ground polishing and using loops to examine the edges until satisfied. I don't believe grits beyond 12,000 were used--and no machines. By the way, one of the participants told me that his blades were only sharpened to 4000 for daily construction tasks. Dais appeared to have been prepared in the traditional manner using scraping planes to remove material in front of and behind the mouth after flattening.

I believe one purpose of the competition is to generate interest in traditional techniques among younger woodworkers. If they get excited by sub-thou shavings and this drives interest in woodworking in general should we really consider the Kazouro Kai a folly?

[Charlie Stanford]

The way I see it, this kind of activity and attitude to sharpness contributes to continuous development of new waterstones. Personally I don't care for this kind of competition, but as a whole, probably without it, Japan would be sitting on the King stones still. At least I do find it interesting to read about folks who are into this type of things and their take on sharpness and tools.

Like I said in another thread recently, this is not a woodworking activity. It simply involves woodworking tools and wood, but It's about the user's skill, dedication and eyes for a tool. They know full well this kind of perfect planing has no place in a practical woodworking environment. For some people, probably that's all they do, just pursuit of perfect plane tuning and shaving. No actual woodworking. That being said, if you break down a lot of things, there are silly things all around that makes no sense: Paying gym fee to use treadmill and stair master, competitive eating, sitting in front of tv all day, riding around town on a big motorcycle while gunning the engine, chasing a tiny ball with a stick in a course larger than a small town (I know a lot of you like it, but for us non golfers, it is a silly 'sport'), woodworking to furnish their workshop endlessly so they can make more for their workshop, or this is something that really apply to a lot of us...paying hundreds of dollars for a plane when a $10 wooden plane from the old days can be made to work just as good and mastepieces from the past were made from these less than perfect tools.

What I mean is that we do silly things, but I think we strive to achieve something for our own satisfactions. It's probably silly to call them silly when we are also sitting on expensive but less than necessary tools, woodworking projects for the tools you have but don't use or need, and for some, paying more simply because one brand of tool looks more appealing and such while alternative products are just as functional, or even better engineered. So among a lot of silly stuff we do, I think it's good that they are getting out and doing something that excited and interest them.

"$300 is a lot of money!" (was it Wilbur Pan's?) is right. That's how people see our tools, but that's what we use, recommend and repeatedly buy. Even our powered brethren think we are silly for paying so much and using these 'primitive', 'ancient' or otherwise inefficient tools. And the fact is, a lot of people have very little to show for their investment, but as long as it's fun for them, it's worth it, isn't it?

And then there's the stock selection - it's like a karate board breaking demonstration where they use perfectly straight grained clear and homogenous pine that my 85 year old mother could break. If they could raise that sort of shaving on elm or an old piece of chestnut I might be impressed.

[David Weaver]

Winners get scallops smoked with apple chips, losers get their scallops smoked with piss elm shavings.

Anyone disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct gets stuck with taco bell and budweiser.

I think we've got it down now.

We'll have golf, video games, and computers with internet forum access for the folks who are too productive for our contest.

[David Weaver]

If they could raise that sort of shaving on elm or an old piece of chestnut I might be impressed.

That'd be super practical, because then once we knew exactly what we needed use to plane a nice piece of american chestnut, we could go out and buy a bunch for our next project.

Those guys who used clear mahogany and walnut in the past were obviously in the weeds.

[Ryan Mooney]

imho Its an interesting and great display of skill. Is it something you'd do every day? No probably not, but its like any other human endeavor, people will try to take it to the edge and see how far they can go. If it gets a handful of people interested and challenged who wouldn't have been otherwise then double plus good.

For comparison I find nascar sillier

[Charlie Stanford]

That'd be super practical, because then once we knew exactly what we needed use to plane a nice piece of american chestnut, we could go out and buy a bunch for our next project.

Those guys who used clear mahogany and walnut in the past were obviously in the weeds.

This is obviously not about building real furniture. If there is going to be a competition then have a competition. Put the tools and tuners to a real test, not something contrived to guarantee the obligatory 12' long shaving (haven't we seen similar photos before? I think there is a YouTube video.)

The Whitbread race goes 'round the world, not across the English Channel though doing the latter is probably eminently more practical.

[David Weaver]

I really don't know what you could do for a contest other than give people a picture of a moderately difficult piece and give them a limited number of tools and time to complete it.

There's really nothing to test with tools with practical purpose. You can relieve a piece of wood of half of a thousandth with $15 worth of plane.

I do know that the cabinetmaking championship video or whatever it is online is so boring that I couldn't watch it without moving the video slider around. I really have no clue what we're all going to do if we decide that ever competition that we're not involved in is worthless and a waste. The list of hobbies people partake in that don't include everyone in the world is all of them, so presume we have to take the viewpoint of depression era products like my grandparents that you eat, sleep and work, or you'll be subject to extreme criticism. Nothing else other than those three, and two of them can be cut back some if they get in the way of work.

[Mike Cogswell]

It lacks the elegance of American watermelon seed spitting contests.

Seeds? Spit? You're a woodworker with a penchant for primitive tools. Make a trebuchet and see how far you can toss the whole thing - like pumpkin chunking!

[Jim Koepke]

We could have theme food at the american version. Scallops and thick cut potato chips.

One of my thoughts for this kind of thing was to use a plane like a mandolin vegetable slicer for making potato chips or chips from other fruits and vegetables.

To me, this competition is as silly as any sport or other skilled accomplishment. It shows what dedication and care to perfecting one's abilities can achieve.

My thinest shaving was measured by a friend at 0.0006" off of a piece of pine taken with my Stanley/Bailey #3. Big whoop!

Thin shavings tend to tear out less and leave a fine surface behind. Another advantage is if the plane is leaving tracks, you likely won't notice them and they are easier to remove with another pass.

jtk

[David Weaver]

There is one practical question that a thin shaving answers, at least that I can think of - and that's for any beginner who is not sure whether or not they understand sharpening. If you can take a wide, clean 1/2 thousandth shaving, then you have no questions about sharpening and can move on.

[Prashun Patel]

"I can't imagine why what someone else was doing would bother anyone when it doesn't cost you or me a dime?"

+1. It's difficult to take thin shavings. They push that difficulty to the max. We do it with running, mountain climbing, lifting heavy weights, swimming from one end of the pool to the other. It is in our DNA to turn everything into a competition.

Valuable or not, it's an impressive feat in my book.

[Ryan Mooney]

If you can take a wide, clean 1/2 thousandth shaving, then you have no questions about sharpening and can move on.

You of all people should know better than to make a statement like that

[Sam Takeuchi]

And then there's the stock selection - it's like a karate board breaking demonstration where they use perfectly straight grained clear and homogenous pine that my 85 year old mother could break. If they could raise that sort of shaving on elm or an old piece of chestnut I might be impressed.

If that's the idea, I don't know why stop at elm and old chestnut. If you are going to move the goal post, let them prove themselves on ipe or lignum vitae.

But that's not the point of this competition, is it? Shaving is only a data they use to determine the fit and finessse of the tool and user. It makes no sense to use splitty, gummy or otherwise not well behaved wood. Even then, not everyone achieves continuous, consistent and winning shavings, so there has to be a more than just pulling a plane and everyone gets a guaranteed 12ft long shaving, as you put it. When a competition is such that there is a set of rules and standard, everyone gets to be on the same start line and compete fairly. Doesn't that made a valid competition? Yet, look at non competitive criteria and say this is a pointless activity because such and such is not incorporated into the competition and thus no skill involved seems extremely selective. If harder and more difficult wood is required to go through true test of skills, does that apply to woodworking as a whole, too? Is anyone making anything using less than your arbitrarily picked wood specie prove no skill? Or such 'rule' only applies to one activity, but not the other one?

If anything, if they had a tournament ladder, and as they progress through each round they have to plane increasingly difficult wood, that would interest me more, but that's not Kezuro-kai, is it? Even then, it wouldn't interest me to actually tune the plane to that degree, or actually go watch the competition, though. It's just not my thing. It's their gathering and fun.

[Charlie Stanford]

File deep serations in a plane iron and make waffle fries.

[Charlie Stanford]

They wouldn't move on, they'd become an internet honing guru.