New experiments

[Kees Heiden]

Ian, a cutting edge with an integral chipbreaker allready exists is woodworking. You can get something like that for these super surfacers. Disposal blades grinded in a special way to povide a chipbreaking function, just like in metal working carbide inserts. That's still a long way of from handtools I guess, but who knows? Warren certainly wouldn't aprove, optimal surface quality needs finetuning of the chipbreaker.

http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.nl/2...e-deal-13.html

[Kees Heiden]

Do be careful, boys. From here it looks as though you are teetering on the brinks of your navel's event horizons. I worry that you may fall in. ;-)

Ooh, I feel so vulnerable!

[Sean Hughto]

More seriously, is this science for science sake, or is there a goal? What problem is being addressed or hypothesis tested?

[Kees Heiden]

For science sake.

And when you decide to read it you will have to make up your own mind if it is usefull for you or not.

[David Weaver]

More seriously, is this science for science sake, or is there a goal? What problem is being addressed or hypothesis tested?

It's an examination of whether the cap iron saves the user physical work over a high angle plane (which includes pushing the plane forward, holding it down once it begins to dull, and potentially how often you have to sharpen).

At least that's what I've gotten from reading it.

[Sean Hughto]

I've decided: I will read "it." Can you direct me to "it?" Danke schoen!

[Sean Hughto]

That sounds interesting, though I think it would be more useful to put it into a real world woodworking context as far as specifying the task being undertaken and specific wood being worked.

[David Weaver]

Cherry, dimensioning from rough, hitting a thickness mark or jointing a face side of a board with the penultimate step (which is where you both try to hit your mark and reduce tearout to something that can be removed with a smoother pass).

That's my real-world situation, and why I am a complete chipbreaker militant (I am dressed like fidel castro every day with a shirt that says leonard on one pocket and bailey on the other). You can jack without it fairly effectively, you can smooth with just about anything, but that interim step really benefits from the cap iron and the ability to work a heavier flat (or close to flat) shaving.

[Sean Hughto]

Is the cherry curly? Kiln or air dried? Flat or quarter sawn? ;-)

Assuming that it is just plain cherry cut through and through, I don't think I would ever think to use a high angle plane for this work. Maybe I've been missing something.

[ian maybury]

Just speculating Sean, but did try to set out one possible objective near the bottom of my last.

I seem to be doing fine David, all three formats of tool. (scraping plane, bevel down and bevel up planes are all performing beautifully - or well enough/on the wood i have to await contact with a real job for finer tuning) What i was getting at was more that there's an awful lot of conflicting views on how to set each up out there, and it takes a fair amount of digging to filter out an option to run with. Several possibilities i guess - either not everybody has the same requirements, or some of these settings are not awfully critical or the only possible solution.

I'd no idea such a machine existed Kees - it doesn't matter what we think somebody has got there already. A quick skim on YouTube brought up this clip of a Marunaka supersurfacing machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmCbqg--Qe0

No doubt it has its pros and cons, but my guess is that we may see more of that ground in chip breaker idea in future - perhaps in varying configurations… (Sorry Warren…)

[David Weaver]

Any, of course, as long as there's no tearout. My cherry (locally here) always has some curl in it, I'd attribute that to the fact that it's poor quality compared to what you'd expect in an area where fabulous cherry grows. I use quartered cherry when I can get it, but that's also not often, usually a local sawyer.

Curly and quartered both do have some ability to tear IME, at dimensioning cuts, and what's downhill can be a bit obscure. (FWIW, I find curly cherry with something like a 7 or 8 thousandth shaving - the penultimate step- to be a bit of a pain in the butt to plane if it's tearing)

Pretty much moot if you use a power jointer and planer, as both handle most cherry pretty well, and anything they leave behind can be removed with any smoother.

I agree that a nice flatsawn board that was sawn straight up the tree (relative to the direction of growth) doesn't take much, sometimes not even if you plane back into the grain.

I guess another realistic application where there is benefit is in maple and beech, where the wood is fairly hard (by our standards) and planes nicely without tearout and is a nuisance if there is tearout.

[Sean Hughto]

Where do you think the fabulous cherry grows? Michigan? Cause I've had a good bit of what I considered excellent quality MI cherry, as well as stuff from PA and elsewhere I thought was top shelf, and pretty much all cherry has reversals even when it looks straight. It's a challenging wood for planes in many cases.

Tear out has only really bugged me with super curly things likes birdeye maple, fiddleback, and quilted sort of plum pudding cherry and mahogany. Sharp blades are half the battle, but toothed blades and scrapers usually come to the rescue if necessary.

[David Weaver]

When you say it bothered you with super curly things, like in smoothing or elsewhere?

I noticed in getting the cap iron set up correctly on my panel plane (a plane where you're really wasting your time if you take thin shavings) that the plane just works much more nicely in a heavy cut (curly maple, cherry, or whatever) if it's not tearing. Every stroke is a smooth one, on the diagonal or straight through from end to end.

Same is true for a stanley plane, I guess.

Cherry that I'd consider to be "good" is stuff that has fairly tight grain, that is from a wide tree and that has what seems like fruitwood density (that's not a very good term, but wood that works very smoothly and the wood itself has a more dense type of texture, like just below what apple has). If I get cherry from a local sawyer here, it often seems a lot like that. My go-to hardwood dealer here has, instead, the pre-sorted type stuff from a mill where the trees appear to be somewhat narrow, there's a fair amount of sap and the boards are all about the same width (due to those coin-sorter type mills that sort boards by width). I guess I'm indicting myself a little bit for being too lazy to arrange something with the local sawyers every time I get wood - my easy source (a guy who delivers) has retired, but there are other local one man operations here who do good work and who will saw a tree through and through.

I don't know, I guess the bottom line of all of it is whether it's beech or maple or cherry (curly or not), you can set your cap iron for the type of work the plane is going to do and just get after it. If you errantly plane back into the grain, of course the stroke isn't as smooth, but little damage is done. You can take off large amounts and hit a depth mark without having to worry about whether or not you'll need to smooth past your mark, and without breaking out things like toothed irons. I like that, it's satisfying.

There's a lot of talk on forums about scrubs/jacking and smoothing, and I guess that's because most people use scrubs/jacks to prepare boards for a jointer or planer, and power-do the in-betweens, but the most satisfying bit of the whole process to me is the try plane, and the cap iron makes the whole bit nearly automatic until you get into the stratospheric really nasty woods that are just really undesirable to plane (like quartered cocobolo or something of the sort). I don't think any of those stratosphere woods are really nice to work with any tools - they are a task to get through.

[Sean Hughto]

When you say it bothered you with super curly things, like in smoothing or elsewhere?

With challenging swirling or reversing grains, tearout happens on most planing operations, but absent deep gouging, I don't care much until smoothing. When thicknessing, I tend to work across or at angles to the grain anyway.

Next time I prep a slab or other wide board where my 12 planer is of no use, maybe I'll make a video so that folks like you can tell me where I might change my habits to make my life easier.

[David Weaver]

maybe I'll make a video so that folks like you can tell me where I might change my habits to make my life easier.

...you know, the first response is going to be "you should get a wider planer"