Tapered vs Krenov/Hock vs Japansese Style irons

[David Weaver]

Nothing disparaging jack, you're just missing the mark. You still are. Maybe you work wood that's easy to work, and that's all. If you do, that's fine.

Your paraphrase (thrown in a corner) is also incorrect. For 5 years, I used both types of planes just about equally. Mostly in combination with lie nielsen planes. Proper use of the cap iron ended all of that, as it is slower to do with a japanese plane. To work quickly through what I usually work (mildly figured medium hardness stuff), you either tolerate tearout or you use the cap iron. I can't figure out why I'd spend a longer time doing it with japanese planes. That's it, pretty simple. I wish their use of the cap iron was better set up, but even Odate describes the cap iron on japanese planes being a later-era add on, perhaps to copy western planes.

You could tell us what the other advantages are. Higher cost, or maybe less clearance. They do provide a brighter surface on softer woods, without a doubt. That's about where it stops for me.

I stand to be corrected on the edge holding (re: the comment about blue steel vs. A2), but all there is to do is prove that Brent Beach's actual measurements are not correct. As stan has pointed out, the forged irons are much better quality, but in my experience the forging adds toughness, but the wear from planing across or with the grain (as opposed to end grain) doesn't benefit a lot from forging like impact type of wear does.

Like I said, which is relevant to the OP. If someone doesn't get into japanese tools, they aren't missing anything, and they only have the (apparent here) disapproval of the fringes. Same if someone has an entire kit of japanese tools and no western tools, why bother if there isn't a problem to solve? Someone who has worked competently with both would come to that conclusion.

[David Weaver]

Back to the topic here, got something in the mail today. $22 for the iron and cap iron and $11 to ship. Apologies for the picture quality, with flash at this point (it is night time), any straight on picture results in glare.

I'd love to comment on how lovely the iron is, but I'll have to build a plane around it to know. I've got no business building another plane right now, but I have a nice 4" thick 9x9 cocobolo bowl blank that may be perfect for it.

It's a nurse iron of the more modern flavor (1920s era maybe?), and as was discussed earlier on here, it came from one of the ebay sellers in the UK. Spotless and attractive, completely unused. It appears for the most part to be machine made, or at least finished a little more coarsely (in terms of abrasive marks) than an older iron.

This is the kind of thing I was advocating buying, and it would look right at home in a nicely built late 18th or early 19th century style plane.

P1030663.jpg

[Steve Voigt]

Back to the topic here, got something in the mail today. $22 for the iron and cap iron and $11 to ship.

Sweet. Was that from gandmtools, or the other one?

[Winton Applegate]

Stan,
I'm catching up here late in the game.

turning my staid LN No.6 from a family sedan into a nitro-methane dragster.

Finally . . .
I'm not the one causing trouble roundcheer.

What do you think of turning that blade over and going from a family sedan to a mach II fighter ?

Bevel up laminated any one ?
Ohhhh yah.

I think PART of what makes the Japanese planes great is the custom support of the body supporting the bevel down blade nearer the edge than the iron bevel down planes.

A bevel up iron body plane is still heavy but has superior edge support to both wood or iron bevel down.

You get to show off breaking the sound barrier
AND
there are no unwieldy parachutes to repack. Assuming we don't have to bail out.

[Winton Applegate]

I may as well add my own experience with Japanese, high quality but not ultimate high level stuff (see my photo early in this thread).

That plane tore out slightly on purple heart (my everest). I back beveled it (yah I know that is kind of silly and not a desirable thing to keep doing) and it eliminated the tear out.

I was not using the chip breaker for anything but ballast.
You know . . . because it tis there.

I am not choosing sides here.

I have since learned that a Japanese plane body cut to a steeper blade angle would have properly solved the problem. No need to "set" the chip breaker in the Japanese plane in that case. Don't have one for all it does in that extreme case.

I am not going to make one, yet.
I ultimately solved the "problem" by going to a bevel up plane with a wide cutting angle.

Yes the micro setting of the chip breaker on my LN bevel down plane would, probably, have solved the problem as well and would have been ultimately simpler by using an off the shelf plane with no modification to the blade or body.

Live and learn.

[Winton Applegate]

nurse iron of the more modern flavor (1920s era maybe?)

Say . . . now I could get interested in something like that.
I say that because I see the chip breaker is made right with more than two threads to hold the screw from falling out while putting the two together. One of my pet peeves about modern ones is the screw always falls out and rolls under the bench in the wood chips.

[Roderick Gentry]

(figured woods demand an infill, stanley planes are junky, old wooden planes are doorstops, LN chisels are far better than vintage, can't do accurate work without premium tools, anything but premium is a waste of time for a beginner.....There wasn't even the remotest discussion about design elements back then).

that's progress! Look how much better the average saw handle made by a forum user is now than 5 years ago.

That kinda reads like a Newbie's Progress. A lot of that stuff wasn't around when I started out, and I can't remember ever holding any of those opinions. They weren't in the literature either. What remains consistent to some extent is that every few years some new fads pop up, then they lie down. And every few years some newbie prophet pops up and spreads the word, while those who have been around decades just shake their heads. Take old wooden planes are junky. The longest running hand woodworking show on TV the WWS has been pushing wooden planes, literally, for 33 years. Dunbar wrote 2 books on rehabing old tools, and on and on.

[Winton Applegate]

And how's it going with your "one stone" nonsense?

Isn't that kind of harsh ?
Sounds like something I might have said (without the nonsense).

I have to ask because, from what I have seen second hand, aren't many/most serious Japanese blade users sharpening on one or two stones ? Using the "slurry" to make the stone finer as the sharpening progresses ?

Certainly not my way.
I hate slurry, non cutting stuff that acts like ball bearings under the blade, and I wash it away when ever it forms and go to a finer and finer and finer and finer . . . . . .
stone.

I'm just saying.

aren't you two on the same page there ?

[Roderick Gentry]

So far, I have never bought a bad one. Japanese tools are overpriced, not in the sense that there isn't some rationale for the prices, but in the sense that they make many cheap tools we never see and those are better blade, and blade design wise, than any of the western ones. One of my most useful blades was purchased from LV for 13.50, when they sold Japanese tools as a line. Today that would be around 45 dollars. But in fact Japanese tools have not gone up 3x as far as I can tell.

I once got hold of a Japanese tool catalog that had page after tiny type page of plane blades, all really inexpensive compared to what we get actually on offer. I am sure many/all of them would be fine. But Japanese tools are not going to displace western tools, the only real chance was with the saws, and that no longer seems likely either. So what is offered is the heritage level tools, that really few people over here should even touch.

At one time you couldn't buy a chisel plane or saw from even LV that actually worked. But today that is not the case for LV or many other western suppliers. There are too many choices, not too few. And they are all pretty good. So while Japanese tools have an edge, it is nowhere near as large as it used to be. It's reverse SONY. At one time all the Japanese consumer products were cheap, and the US ones were good, but over the years Japan became known for many quality products, they learned. And the same was true in the 70s and 80s, the US did not make good hand tools, but today they do. So it is really difficult to differentiate all the tools out there, but for anyone who wants to try, I have never found a bad Japanese woodworking tool.

[Kees Heiden]

David, you're still wrong about needing subblades/cap irons, and the like with Japanese blades. Sometimes you do, depending on the wood (NOT soft vs hard, btw, more grainy vs smooth), in which case you add a subblade and optionally use a dai with a landing. I normally utilize cherry, walnut, mahogany, mesquite, boxwood, desert ironwood (talk about hard), white or red oak. Tearout would ruin the chatoyance, and therefore is unacceptable. You bore me. I even bore myself having to repeat this time after time after time after time, hoping beyond hope that eventually it will get through your head, at least to the point you stop repeating it. It is impossible for anyone to have used well tuned Japanese planes as they were intended and still moan and groan about tearout. Impossible.

Jack, exactly what mechanism makes the Japanese planes immune to tearout? "Well tuned" is a bit vague. How do you tune it, how do you use it, particularly in respect to tearout problems?

[David Weaver]

David, you're still wrong about needing subblades/cap irons, and the like with Japanese blades. Sometimes you do, depending on the wood (NOT soft vs hard, btw, more grainy vs smooth), in which case you add a subblade and optionally use a dai with a landing. I normally utilize cherry, walnut, mahogany, mesquite, boxwood, desert ironwood (talk about hard), white or red oak. Tearout would ruin the chatoyance, and therefore is unacceptable. You bore me. I even bore myself having to repeat this time after time after time after time, hoping beyond hope that eventually it will get through your head, at least to the point you stop repeating it. It is impossible for anyone to have used well tuned Japanese planes as they were intended and still moan and groan about tearout. Impossible.

And how's it going with your "one stone" nonsense?

Jack, that's just talk. If you add a subblade you're doing exactly what I said I do. It's less convenient than a stanley plane with a cap iron by a large margin. If you say you're planing wood with reversing grain with an 8/10 bu plane, taking 5-10 thousandth thick shavings to hit a final mark and getting no tearout without a subblade, you're not being honest.

If you can't take those types of shavings without tearout, i'm not interested.

The one stone approach works well. It would not be ideal without a cap iron. With a cap iron, it's very useful, and it slides the balance of planing vs. maintaining even further toward planing.

For years, you've contributed to the forums mostly with snark, but no pictures or projects, no videos of what you're doing. I'd like to see a demonstration of planing wood with reversing grain, even if it's mild - 5 to 10 thousandth shavings, hand dimensioned from rough (not wood straight out of a planer), and just a few fine shavings after that to finsh a surface. Not 10 or 20 passes to remove tearout, but 2 or 3 to clean up the surface. It's time for you to demonstrate for real. Snark doesn't teach anyone anything or add to the discussions.

[David Weaver]

Sweet. Was that from gandmtools, or the other one?

It was from a seller named sigee6t4, I can't remember what he calls his spread. Forlorn planes or something else sounding like they are castoffs.

I think this iron is a solid piece of steel instead of a lamination, but that doesn't amount to a whole lot in a more modern iron (whether or not it's laminated). It's probably modern oil hardening steel, i expect it will sharpen like a more modern O1 iron. Just a hunch.

[Steve Voigt]

It was from a seller named sigee6t4, I can't remember what he calls his spread. Forlorn planes or something else sounding like they are castoffs.

Ah yes. From looking at his pictures, I had the impression he was grinding the backs on the side of a grinding wheel, which (as you know) is something certain sellers do that renders the iron more or less worthless. I'm glad to see that wasn't the case for yours.

[Winton Applegate]

"Well tuned" is a bit vague. How do you tune it, how do you use it, particularly in respect to tearout problems?

Good one Kees !
I"m glad you asked that.
I am looking forward to the reply.

[David Weaver]

Ah yes. From looking at his pictures, I had the impression he was grinding the backs on the side of a grinding wheel, which (as you know) is something certain sellers do that renders the iron more or less worthless. I'm glad to see that wasn't the case for yours.

I'm not sure if it's factory fresh the way it is, but it has an ungodly long primary, just like some of the very old planes I've gotten that appear to have been put up from work and never abused. He may have done something to make it look the way it does, but it will be easy to flatten compared to any iron with any pitting. The picture makes it look a lot worse than it is - it's almost mirror with some 200 grit kind of spiderwebbing lines, but the sides of the iron and the bevel have deeper grinding marks in them. No sign of any past heat, though, but bluing can be easily polished off so use will tell.

Same seller has a couple of other irons I wouldn't mind having, but I really don't have use for more irons.