Square edges on boards but how?

[lowell holmes]

It seems that I read about the iron camber when there was Woodworking magazine. It's an old technique.

[David Weaver]

It seems that I read about the iron camber when there was Woodworking magazine. It's an old technique.

It should be on the jointer and the smoother, similarly (for different reasons - but gentle curve as warren says so that the cut quality isn't affected like it often is if corners are clipped, and so the control of correction with the jointer biasing is there).

Managing a stone, as warren describes it, leaves an iron that way without any additional work. It's another good reason to use (narrower, like 2") oilstones and irons that sharpen well with them. A wider stone is more difficult to manage the gentle curve.

I've never had an issue match planing with an iron that was set up that way, either.

[Derek Cohen]

What works for me ...

The only bench plane blades I have that are straight across are on the jointer. When jointing boards for a panel, my preference is to match plane. A straight blade is more predictable here.

A straight edge also enables the use of a fence, if you wish. Also, it allows for easier use of the jointer as a shooter (on the bench top).

I just find a straight blade on a jointer more versatile.

If simply planing the edge of a panel, such as a table top, it is more important that full shavings are taken than exactly square ones. The side needs to be flat. Slightly out-of-square is difficult to detect. A faceted side is not.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Daniel Rode]

I struggle with this as well but I feel like I'm headed in the right direction. I will often plane a bit of a hump rather than getting the edge perfectly flat. For me, it's easy to detect and easy to fix. It mostly a matter of not applying pressure correctly through the stroke. Practice should fix that issue.

Getting the edge square has been harder for me. I'm always off to one side, then I correct but moving plane to one side or another (lightly cambered iron) to correct but I overshoot and angle off in the opposite direction. It's consistent along the length, so I think some work on my mechanics might do the trick.

This is one of those muscle memory things, IMO and those sort of things are mostly fixed through practice.

[Pat Barry]

a trivial operation like shooting an edge.

This statement makes it sound like getting a perfectly square edge is easy to do. Harumph! I disagree completely with the muscle memory / body position / blah blah b s. This is probably the most difficult thing to do by hand. It may be that once you have done this over the course of a lifetime its trivial but not so for most of us. In fact that is specifically why the LV add-on, the shooting technique, the match planing technique, etc. All those solutions are to make this very difficult task simpler and more predictable. I think we should really question how perfectly square the result needs to be, however. Maybe just close is good enough. Why would it need to be perfect? Certainly the match planing method with a straight blade as Derek suggests solves the edge jointing for a glueup problem pretty well.

[Daniel Rode]

IDK - I'm not particularly graceful or coordinated and I can nearly do it after a small amount of practice. I've learned the way Warren describes using a cambered blade. I think if I were to dedicate an hour per day for a couple of weeks, I'd have it down cold. Even now I can mostly get the edge jointed, it just takes me a while and several re-tries.

If I can do it, anyone can.

Maybe it's not the same for everyone. Some things people describe as easy have been hard for me, other things that I thought would be hard turned out to be easy.

[David Weaver]

This statement makes it sound like getting a perfectly square edge is easy to do. Harumph! I disagree completely with the muscle memory / body position / blah blah b s. This is probably the most difficult thing to do by hand.

It's just a matter of experience and forcing yourself to do it, like many of the things are. Most of the videos don't do enough to stress that the difference between point A and B is experience, and not just knowing a bag full of tricks, though the bag full of tricks can solve issues in some cases.

The fundamental issue of woodworking by hand when you know someone else can do something is to look at the details of your problems, and solve them yourself by experience, and by knowing what you want to get (in terms of results). When you solve the little details on your own, then you own the knowledge of it, and if you have a layoff and don't do something for a while, you can quickly get back to where you were.

[Steve Voigt]

This statement makes it sound like getting a perfectly square edge is easy to do. Harumph! I disagree completely with the muscle memory / body position / blah blah b s. This is probably the most difficult thing to do by hand. It may be that once you have done this over the course of a lifetime its trivial but not so for most of us. In fact that is specifically why the LV add-on, the shooting technique, the match planing technique, etc. All those solutions are to make this very difficult task simpler and more predictable. I think we should really question how perfectly square the result needs to be, however. Maybe just close is good enough. Why would it need to be perfect? Certainly the match planing method with a straight blade as Derek suggests solves the edge jointing for a glueup problem pretty well.

I won't say that it's easy; that's for each person to decide. We all have different abilities. But I would say that it is a fundamental skill that must be mastered if you want to do handwork efficiently. Match planing and long grain shooting have their place, but most of the time, just grabbing the board vertically in a vise and jointing the edge is the most efficient way. Jointing fences are crutches and I would discourage anyone from using them.

I learned to do it the way David and Zach described. I corrected out-of square edges by planing half the edge, as Dave mentioned, or by putting extra pressure on the high side. This works fine. But using camber, as Warren describes, is easier. I wish I had learned that first. It's also more predictable, and easier to adjust in very small increments, which can help if your boards are just barely wide enough.

The stuff about body position is not nonsense. Even if you use a cambered iron, if you don't pay attention to body position, you will always end up with twisted edges, and you will have to plane diagonally to correct them. That's trickier than correcting a consistently out-of-square edge.

I'd even say that most of the problems people have with basic technique are due to issues with body position and movement. If you rigorously observe and critique what you are doing with your body at each moment, your technique will improve almost overnight.

[David Weaver]

I should've clarified the cambered edge that warren mentioned before I said something about the iron cutting evenly on both sides. that evenly on both sides stuff relies on camber, and is why I'd suggested biasing the plane by literally moving it to the left or right. If the iron isn't set with equal cutting depth tapering off on both sides, then you're fighting the plane all the way. If it is evenly set with camber, then moving it not only biases pressure, but it actually cuts deeper on the part of the edge that needs correction. To do that bias without camber is harder and not as productive. I guess it probably works, but my irons are profiled as warrens are, it is a good natural bias in the sharpened edge to introduce into everything.

I've used a straight iron in the past for match planing, but decided that I didn't want to go to the trouble of changing it out and have never noticed any problem with any boards narrow enough to actually match plane (as in boards 5/4 or narrower), so I never use a straight iron - it gets in the way of planing a square edge when you're not matching a joint. I rarely shoot anything, but I'm sure a gradually cambered iron would shoot joints just fine, too.

A fundamental issue here though is specifically measuring what the small problems are and addressing them one at a time, that's part of why experience is more helpful than tutoring. Small improvements are painless, and you "own" them as you make them. Knowledge that you own through experience isn't transient, and it doesn't obligate you to watch videos, read books or pull out outlines to refresh it.

[Reinis Kanders]

I have been using LV addon fence on BU jointer, but find that it can be finicky to setup the fence to have it stay that way because of the bumps and what not and it always needs tweaking if it is re-attached. Because I do not trust it I end up having to check for square anyways.
Lot of these hand tool techniques are about practice and confidence. Not irrational confidence, but there needs to be some. I am a decent (but older) basketball player and once one reaches certain proficiency in a sport or technique then lot of success can stem from how confident one feels when doing a repetitive motion (e.g. shooting free throws / sawing dovetails. etc.).

[Tony Caro]

Thanks for those comments, I suspect that a small adjustment to body position could do the trick but have read about people that can sense squareness with their fingers, I have tried to conceptualise this and even practice it but can't do this. Best I can do is try and detect squareness by sight between the face edge and jointed edge but that I find that difficult, 90 degrees is 90 degrees, it has to be spot on. As I mentioned before I know there are aids and match planing you can use but I'm strictly talking about the skill of hand planing a square edge without any aids.

[Chris Parks]

A couple of things I noted when I was learning this skill. Firstly observation of the shaving is to me paramount, you need to mentally link the shaving width to how far out of square the edge was before you started. next is the height of the work piece to yourself, too high or low will make a big difference to your stance and changing pressure on the plane. It is a skill that requires repetitive practise and apprenticeships were undertaken for a reason, to learn stuff like this.

[Tony Caro]

A couple of things I noted when I was learning this skill. Firstly observation of the shaving is to me paramount, you need to mentally link the shaving width to how far out of square the edge was before you started. next is the height of the work piece to yourself, too high or low will make a big difference to your stance and changing pressure on the plane. It is a skill that requires repetitive practise and apprenticeships were undertaken for a reason, to learn stuff like this.

Agree Chris, height of workpiece is a significant factor in getting this to work properly. Good point regarding the shaving, I have no problem getting a full width shaving but I unconsciously start on an
angle and maintain it so the workpiece is planed flat but it is out of square. Unless you are planing square to the edge initially, that original shaving won't be giving you the correct information.

[Bill Moser]

Don't get me wrong -- being able to plane an edge absolutely true & square to the face, with hand tools, and without jigs, is a good skill to have. But just as a general goal, it seems like it's sort of like wanting to be the fastest tortoise. It seems to me that if you just want to get on with the woodworking, it's important to understand the role of the board in question to the rest of the completed piece of furniture.


If it's part of a table top, then the squareness of the edge is not very important, as long as you match plane. It's also useful if you plane the boards slightly concave lengthwise, so they glue up nicely.


If the board is to be used as part of a dovetail joint, it seems to me that, as long as the ends are parallel with each other, things will work out. The squareness of long edges don't matter that much.


It seems to me that the only place where it really matters is in mortise & tenon joints. You really need the two reference surfaces to be square, so that the joints come together without gaps, and so that the piece you're building comes out square.


So, once you've got the face planed (so that it's a plane, of course), you need to get the edge square to the face. The first thing I do is to use a square and a knife to mark the edge on each end of the board. If the board is short enough (oh, wait, I'm the proud owner of a 6ft Starrett straight edge, so it's always short enough ), I use a straight edge to connect the marks end-to-end. With that, you have more than enough information (mathematically speaking) to define the edge. I'm assuming that you have a square, so that you can always mark each end of the board from the face. If you don't have a long enough straight edge, sighting down the board is an easy way to tell if you're true -- it just doesn't have the same tactile feel as when you get down to the knife line.

[Jim Matthews]

I recommend searching Jim Tolpin on Youtube. He has the technique I use.

I use a jack plane to get close, with a cambered blade.

My jointer is three times the length, with no camber on the blade.

I take a few passes in the center of the board until it "bottoms out" and stops cutting.

Then I take full length passes until I hear continuous cutting.

I watch the shaving as it comes off.

If you are having trouble staying square, an auxiliary fence will help.