No offend taken,Chris. It just needs to be remembered that I am coming from a different area of woodworking. I always made tools,too. But,when I was made toolmaker,I was coming from all over the place. Wood,metal,some glass,etc..
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No offend taken,Chris. It just needs to be remembered that I am coming from a different area of woodworking. I always made tools,too. But,when I was made toolmaker,I was coming from all over the place. Wood,metal,some glass,etc..
Last edited by george wilson; 01-30-2014 at 11:01 AM.
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Kees, we fixed your name on the site – sorry!
Last edited by Megan Fitzpatrick; 01-30-2014 at 11:39 AM.
Contributor
Looking forward to the article. Perhaps some day I may even get a chance to use it. Thanks for posting.
Contributor
Bits of information on subjects like how to set a chip breaker get lost in time.
It may be due to the changes in technology that almost made hand planes and the system of apprenticeships obsolete. Technological advances, a couple of World Wars and a few other events caused a disruption in the flow of life knowledge and training.
It likely happened in just about any craft or trade one can imagine.
Some of the loss may have been due to cultural mores of being careful about passing on information least your "apprentice" learns enough to be your replacement.
Personally, I am happy to have old techniques surface that help in our pursuit of having fun with wood.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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Thanks Megan.
[OP]
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I agree with what Chris and Daniel said above. Just want to add a couple thoughts.
I bought my first planes 18 years ago. I read the FWW article mentioned above. in fact, I read every book and article I could get my hands on in the 90s. I am not a stupid person, but none of it taught me how to use a cap iron correctly. In fact, I did not learn until last year, and I'm still learning.
A couple of things jump out from the FWW article. First, 1/64 is at the outer edge of what will actually reduce tearout. A better description might be "set the chip breaker 1/64 or closer to reduce tearout in difficult grain." Second, the advice on mouth size is unhelpful. If the cap iron is used correctly, you don't need a fine mouth, and trying to use one with a really close-set chip breaker will likely lead to clogging.
This leads me to believe that the author (Mr. Ellsworth) didn't actually use his cap iron to break chips or reduce tearout. He was probably just parroting advice that he'd been taught. I think this is true of almost all these late 20th c. texts.
Contrast the FWW article with Nicholson, writing 200 years ago:
"The distance between the cutting edge of the iron, and the edge of the cover [chipbreaker], depends altogether on the nature of the stuff [wood]. If the stuff is free [straight-grained], the edge of the cover may be set at a considerable distance, because the difficulty of pushing the plane forward becomes greater, as the edge of the cover is nearer the edge of the iron..." ***
Notice that the FWW article never mentions planing resistance. If you are never setting the cap iron closer than 1/64, you are not experiencing the increase in resistance that comes with a super-close setting. You are also probably not experiencing the wonderful sensation of planing directly over nasty, reversing grain with no tearout.
What all this suggest to me is that this knowledge was commonplace 200 years ago, and almost completely lost by the late 20th century. The people who have rediscovered it (Dave, Kees, Warren, and others) have done something really important. It does them a huge disservice to claim that it was known along.
- Steve
*** there is a great post on wood central by warren mickley that discusses this quote from Nicholson.
Last edited by Steve Voigt; 01-30-2014 at 1:54 PM.
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I personally thought there was a lack of practical discussion on just what to do if you had never set a cap iron before, and spent so much time arguing with warren (and don't have many of the older texts people refer to now when they want to throw back at you that it's nothing new - which is true - it's nothing new), and I remember saying something on wood central to warren about 5 or 6 years ago that it made the plane too hard to push (I set it too close, but didn't know that I was just a slight adjustment away from not wasting a lot of money or spending a lot of time making steep single iron planes - which I did do). Plenty of other people probably did the same thing, set it a little too close, found resistance and figured that they couldn't get it.Originally Posted by Sam Stephens
The video was OK, but I probably would've written the WC article without it if it wouldn't have come out. It's funny that Kees was fiddling with the same stuff around the same time, and as far as I know, also before any videos. I didn't offer to write about the setup in PWW or anywhere else, because I felt like a pro should write it in hard print and I also wanted control of what would be said and how long it would be - whatever it takes to describe it more or less, and the ability to revise if we found something new out. We didn't. Well, no pro came forward (and maybe it's so subtle to the few pros who use it on paying work that it would be difficult to describe) and if anyone was going to write the article, I'm happy that Kees did it because he came by it honestly by experimenting, and that gives you a good fresh detailed perspective. Videos and everything are good, but there is no substitute for genuine time spent at the bench.
If I never see another person saying they have a stanley plane for easy wood but can't afford a plane that can handle curly maple, that'll be great.
The two side benefits that come from the setup also are:
* you can take a heavier shaving than you ever imagined when you're working to a marking line, and never have pucker factor
* all of the sudden, the stock irons in stanley planes seem perfectly adequate when the cap iron is set in close on them. They're actually maybe a little bit more pleasant to use when all things (like sharpening) are considered.
Member
In my limited experimenting after you guys starting talking about this stuff (I just don't work enough hardwoods lately to really worry about it) that's the real gem of this whole CB thing - most woods I can get reasonable results with super thin tiny smoother shavings if the iron is sharp enough, regardless of most other settings. But that takes way too damn long, especially if you've got some rough spots left from the jack plane.
It's being able to take a reasonably heavy shaving from a jointer plane, (or a jack plane after moving to with-the-grain-strokes from across-the-grain-strokes) on something tear-out prone, and not have to worry about making more work for myself, or removal of tear-out resulting in a way-too-thin board in the end, that really makes this CB business shine for me. And that's what I think is missed sometimes in the discussion. There are a lot of ways to get a nice smoother to leave a tearout-free surface, or to get a tear-out free surface with scrapers or sandpaper. And maybe that's all most people need, if they're just polishing up wood that's been run through machines. But I surface things by hand because that's all I have access to, and none of the other tricks I've encountered really make taking heavier shavings in the pre-smooth-plane stage as easy as this technique.
" Be willing to make mistakes in your basements, garages, apartments and palaces. I have made many. Your first attempts may be poor. They will not be futile. " - M.S. Bickford, Mouldings In Practice
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I’m really heartened by that statement, because that’s one of the main reasons that made me want to write the article with Kees. Like you, Chris, I had seen a lot of information about chipbreakers, but not written in a way that made sense in the context of a woodworker doing this as a hobby, without the benefit of having someone right there to show what needed to be done.
Like Kees, eventually I figured it out by experimenting in my shop. I also figured out a way to describe the process in a way that I thought was repeatable by others, even without the use of hands on teaching. That was the main goal of our article. Hopefully, when you read the article, you’ll agree.
giant Cypress — Japanese tool blog, and more
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Well I for another one am glad for everyone over the last few years or more not only took the time and also some knocks, but also realized there was something going on that experimentation could explain and quantify.
Before all of the videos and publication, I had seen things about setting the chip breaker close, but nothing explaining what was specifically meant by close and what was really taking place.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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The first part of this is either revisionist or just late as I specifically recall your responses in mine, kees and warren's discussions as to not ever having a need for it. In regard to the material, there has been a completely free (which is important) article to read for more than a year and a half that is specifically written so amateurs can get a quick feel for how to set a cap iron, and so that they get a sense that there is subtlety in some things that they have to work out with experience (hence encouraging experimentation and examination of what's going on). It certainly wasn't written for professionals.
Perhaps my biggest mistake was not promoting the article, or not being part of "club blog" which is at best, a constant stream of repeating things other people have said, but to imply that there has been nothing published that is intended for amateurs is deletory. Even prior to any articles being published, there was no lack of understanding just from the discussions on the board, and apparently Graham Blackburn has had a traveling show for years prior even (that just somehow never made it to discussion) showing people how to use a double iron at woodworking events/shows.
The *entire* progression of all of this can be traced pretty much to warren singly championing the double iron to the ire of most of the other folks on the forums (some who thought he might be trolling), which may have been the impetus for Bill and Steve to go searching, I don't know. I certainly wish Warren would have written the first article instead of me, because it would be definitive by decades of practice (and it cannot be overstated how much more valuable advice from George or Warren is than it is from amateurs like us writing articles - even if we sometimes don't want to do the work to understand what they're telling us). But, I can understand if Warren has actual work to do and doesn't necessarily want to entertain amateurs by micro-detailing everything he does.
Being accurate about the progression of this and what is out there would be appropriate, though.
Member
Blog fights like this have a bit of Sayre's Law quality to them. Perhaps the huge profits from the article could be donated to a woodworking charity?
More seriously, it's great that we can share best practices like this in the internet age. Credit to all of you how brought this good information to the fore. Now go plane some wood!
Guest
The best advice yet! Time at the bench and a problem to solve teaches better than anything else.
Member
What is this "wood" you speak of, and how can one go about using their planes on it. I was under the impression that these tools were only to be used as conversation pieces for internet discussions.
Woodworking is terrific for keeping in shape, but it's also a deadly serious killing system...
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Kes,
I am apologizing for my wording. It was not intended to belittle your work. I appreciate very much the educational value of the article and the video. I have watched the video on Wilbur
site four or maybe even 5 times. I did want to point out the absence of the mouth opening issue. Much had been written about the mouth opening and the claims made are conflicting.
To quote from Steve Voigt post: "He was probably just parroting advice that he'd been taught." The media is infested with that. I wish more would be done to combat this problem with empirical evidence.
Chipbreakers have their limitations. How do they compare with other means of coping with difficult grain. Did higher bed/curring angles come into play because the chipbreakers have limitations?
Best wishes,
Metod
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