Bench plane camber choices vs. working practices

[Winton Applegate]

Ah shucks.
Weren't nothin'
Except a heck of a lot of work or "FUN" as they call it here in Saw Mill.

[Kees Heiden]

Here's a video from me, thicknessing a board with a scrub, removing the ridges with a foreplane and finally using a jointer to make everything flat and staight. The scrub has a very narrow radius and a narrow blade. The foreplane is about 8" radius and the jointer is nearly straight but still has some camber. Feel free to fast forward, because the video is quite long and gets a bit boring of course. It's realtime, no editting to make the job seem easier then it really was.



It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The wallnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.

[Bob Jones]

I'm confused why this thread didn't stop with Warren's answer?

camber = shaving thickness
its more of a goal than a rigid rule. It's simple.

[Bob Jones]

Ok,
one thing about using cambered blades is not obvious - wear. The center of the camber goes deeper in the wood and has higher pressures and thus wears more quickly than the edges. When sharpening you have to check that the blade still has the right camber. Don't just rehone and go. Without care, your blade will eventually shave on both edges and not the center.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Kees

Thanks for posting your video again. I recall seeing it a year or two ago.

The observation I have is that, on a pretty flat and narrow board such as you are showing, I would rather saw away 1/4" than plane it away. Not only would this be quicker, but it would be more accurate (that is, leave less to flatten once the waste is removed). This is even more relevant with hard woods.

For me, a scrub plane (3" radius) is to remove localised high spots. I'd rather use a jack plane (8" radius) to remove under 1/4" thickness as there is less damage to deal with.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Kees Heiden]

When you have a bandsaw, yes, I would remove it too with the saw. But with a handsaw it would be a toss up which is "better". Later when I had to plane the tabletop I found the scrub plane to be a huge time saver. The jack plane was very slow in comparison. Of course the scrub leaves a mess, but it is relatively quick to clean up that mess with a jack plane. Well at least, that's my experience.

[david charlesworth]

Ian,

I have a rather unusual setup.

A 12" machine planer thicknesser, so the only planing I do is to perfect the results that the machine gives me. Snipe, ripple, wind, movement etc.

Now for about 25 years the only bench plane I had which worked well, (I had done every tuning job I could find), was a 1970's Stanley 5 1/2.

I had this tuned up as a super smoother. Fine mouth, replacement blade, then replacement cap iron etc etc.

For edge planing I like slightly more camber, and for surfaces slightly less, though this is not essential.

For edges, when the blade is held vertical on a straight piece of industrial plastic, I see about 6 to 8 thou" of light at either side. This can be "measured" with sheets of paper, thin card or engineers shim. The timber of course sees less, but my trigonometry is escaping me!

When students are having trouble squaring edges, I almost always know, that they have lost the camber on their blades.

Best wishes,
David

[Augusto Orosco]

It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The walnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.

I really appreciate the video and the fact that you didn't edit it! Last night, I was dimensioning a 36"x7" 8/4 soft maple with a lot of twist and had to remove about 3/8" of the board. I was taking as heavy a cut I could with the scrub and the jack to speed up the process and it wasn't exactly a ballet performance. Seeing someone with your skills attacking the board like that is reassuring and helpful for a newbie like me. It took me way more than 12 minutes, though!

[Greg Portland]

Here's a video from me, thicknessing a board with a scrub, removing the ridges with a foreplane and finally using a jointer to make everything flat and staight. The scrub has a very narrow radius and a narrow blade. The foreplane is about 8" radius and the jointer is nearly straight but still has some camber. Feel free to fast forward, because the video is quite long and gets a bit boring of course. It's realtime, no editting to make the job seem easier then it really was.



It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The wallnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.

Maybe this is common knowledge to the veterans but I just learned (from your video) to ease the edge of the work to mark the cut depth and to reduce tear out. In hindsight it seems like common sense . Thanks for the video!

[ian maybury]

Makes me tired just looking at the video Kees, but real time is great in that it transmits the reality in a way that set piece video never does. For example - it's certainly not going to be an option to do a lot of that sort of work if the bench height is wrong, or if your work holding arrangement are a bit suspect. Interesting too to see you use a chamfer to prevent tear out and establish the line you wanted to work down to. It's no wonder that half the woodworking world ends terminally confused after production values are applied to videos by the marketing mob.

I didn't intend to overlook Warren's post Bob, it was spot on. What's clear though is that there's a wide range of potential techniques/approaches where camber is useful, and that the actual amount of camber required in each of these may vary very widely depending heavily on the style of working. These continuing posts are illustrating some possibilities very nicely.

I suspect I'm headed for David and Derek territory (too old and too cynical to be heaving off wads of wood with a hand plane) - that's mixing machine and hand tools as makes sense. (to me anyway) I'm hoping that it'll work out that way anyway. I have the luxury of a hefty bandsaw with a carbide blade too...

Thanks for the camber measurement for jointing David, I was re-reading the piece in one of your books on this a few nights ago and trying to figure out the sort of number you might have been using. (that's the write up on hand jointing boards for table tops and the like using camber to correct out of square board edges and produce slightly cupped joints - p. 74 'The Method' in 'Furniture Making Techniques' Vol 2' ) It's actually a bit more camber than I had figured, although the blade angle will reduce its effect.

Guess it may suggest the need for a quick skim with a smoother to clean up any scalloping if the same jointer is used to flatten an external/show surface??

[Kees Heiden]

Well, I'm glad people like the video, in real time even . It's just as when I see myself skiing on video, it can feel great while doing it but when I look back it looks pretty awfull. Maybe that's a good reason never to watch a video from yourself. At the other hand, it is a great learning tool. Also for handplaning or sawing. When you want to learn, shoot a video.

After planing with a lightly cambered jointer, the surface is very smooth allready. Those scallops are hardly visible. Even jackplane scallops aren't too obtrusive, because you remove the higher ridges with the overlapping strokes. It's not a bad idea to wait with the smoothing plane until all joinery is finished and you are ready to assemble the piece. Smoothing removes all the dings from handling the piece, marking lines, pencil marks etc. Just watch out that you don't disturb the fit of the joinery.

[Matthew Hills]

Kees,
I like how your lateral supports also serve as your stand for when you put your jointer plane down.

Matt

[ian maybury]

Can't resist posting a shot of the Veritas low angle block plane with an O1 blade sharpened on the waterstones to function as a small smoother with what turned out to be a hint more than 0.001in camber (about 8 strokes on the 1000g Shapton at 30 deg over a 25 deg primary bevel, then polished to 12,000g - it could possibly use a shade more) - and to thank everybody for the help in getting this far. The apron plane is performing similarly, except that it's sharpened straight. Next up the wide smoother, and then on into more robust cambers with the LAJ and the scrub.

Definitely not Japanese competition territory and nothing special, but who'd have thought that a plane would perform like this at first try - seeing it written about doesn't communicate the reality. It's hard to express, but it just feels so nice in use. Even on a bit of old pine. Glides through the cut, and the finish on even that feels like glass. If you have been thinking of getting into careful sharpening with waterstones - then do it!! It's well worth the effort, and is not unduly difficult.

There's a bit of work involved in getting a blade and tool set up first time around, but ongoing sharpening is quick and easy.

To share some impressions:

1. Polishing both faces of the cutting edge seems to be key to performance in very light cuts.
2. Putting on this small degree of camber takes no time (using the Charlesworth method of extra strokes on the 1,000g waterstone with the pressure out towards the corners) - but it is a matter of slowing it right down and being methodical as each stroke on the stone counts.
3. It's quite difficult to tell what you have by way of camber until you try it - it's not visually obvious, and the side to side tilt of the blade has to be spot on too. Taking a shaving off the corner of a strip of wood using first one and then the other end of the blade, and then the middle seems a reasonable test. The (very narrow) shavings from the ends should be of equal thickness, and that from the middle of the blade a bit thicker.
4. The blade in the apron plane is A2, with O1 in the block.
5. Surprised at how similar the different steels felt on the waterstones. I recut the primary bevel at 25 deg in both cases using the honing guide on the top platform of the WorkSharp 3000 - basically to remove any suspect material at the tip. Both sharpened very easily and took a good edge - the only obvious difference was that the A2 had more tendency to develop a heavier wire edge - especially on coarse grits on the WorkSharp.
6. There's i think an argument after grinding the primary bevel and before putting camber on (in the form of a 30 deg micro bevel) in favour of working the finish on it down to a fairly fine grit waterstone - so that the wire edge resulting from the grinding is honed away. (forming a heavy wire edge was unavoidable in this case because the re-grinding reduced the bevel angle very slightly) It may amount to taking unnecessary trouble, but it means that the risk of tearing it off while forming the camber is eliminated.
7. The backs of both blades were impressively flat as received. There was absolutely no need for the ruler trick - they cleaned up in a few minutes on the 1,000 grit stone.
8. It's advisable to use double sided tape to attached a small block of wood to function as a handle when flattening the backs. (don't use too much tape - hot water helps to get it off afterwards) Plane blades with their wider backs seem to have quite a tendency to suck down on to the finer grits of waterstone, and even with lots of water (which gets more or less instantly wiped off) it's very helpful to have a good grip.
9. It feels like polishing (in this case down to 2,000 grit silicon carbide on a granite plate - overkill, but what the hell ) and especially waxing the sole of the plane helps the action considerably.

ian

veritas low angle 0.001in camber:8 strokes on 1000g 30-8-14.jpg

[Winton Applegate]

I have to say, after viewing some YouTubes of scrub planing I was dismayed at about everything I saw. It was as if these people NEVER scrub or flatten stock with hand planes and are just demonstrating SORT OF what one would do if one were to ever stoop (so to speak) to the actual activity.

They use benches that are way too high and not conducive to hold the stock, inadequate stock support with the plank teetering back and forth and back and forth, clamps in the way of the plane
and
AND
AND
They completely fail to drive with their legs and whole body. Often driving with the wrong leg back.
Hopelessly off balance , driving arm hooking off as if it had a life of its own wholly out of alignment and unrelated to the body it was dragging along for the ride behind it and failing to drive through with power at the finish of the stroke.

NOW
I was going to emphasize the importance of driving with the same rear leg as the side that is the dominant hand. Right hand on the rear tote means right leg back left leg forward.

I know this works best for hand planing. My man in the video of the slab planer changes once in a while but for the most part he is not only low enough to get his legs into the work but drives with the same side leg as the driving hand.

Ha, Ha, Ha
I have to give away a MISTAKE I made in trying to get this post sold to ya all . . .
I went looking for a vid of Bruce Lee’s Famous One Inch Punch to demonstrate my theory of the power one can generate with the same leg back theory.

To my for ever embarrassment He is driving left leg and right fist.
So much for cross training.

Pay attention . . . the punch part is brief. There are other better examples but I thought you might like to see the table tennis with the chucks. The human body is capable of more than most people think.

Since I don’t go around punching people all the time I know nothing of boxing.
I do know scrub plaining and I still stand by my same side theory.

Comments ?

Other than calling me a hopeless pacifist girly boy that is.

[David Weaver]

It's not hard to tell who uses planes a lot and who doesn't (when watching those videos). Same as watching the bit of planing and sawing george does in the CW video. It doesn't look awkward, it doesn't look difficult (though make the wood enough and it can look pretty tough no matter what...because it is).

The difference between awkward and not is a matter of experience. If one can't figure out the path of least resistance combined with most productivity from a significant amount of repetition (when dimensioning wood), then this hobby might not be for them.

Otherwise, I think there are a lot of people on youtube who use planes mostly when they do videos, and use planers and electric jointers when the camera isn't on.

In terms of mechanics, we shouldn't even have to talk about it. When I see someone with bad body mechanics, I just assume they need more experience. One thing that always irked me when I was starting was being too prescriptive about the methods and not with enough discussion about the objective (that may be spending a certain amount of time on a certain sized panel, etc).