Some wood just doesn't like to be planed

[Warren Mickley]

I have used a rounded bevel on the cap iron for more than forty years. I have never tried a flat bevel.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Thanks for the input gentlemen; I have a Veritas A2 blade and Cap iron in my # 5 that I was using - slightest hint of camber and the factory cap iron ( which fits very well ) set at .006'' using brass shim stock.

Yew has a stringiness that I believe is the culprit, the undulating, swirling grain mocks me at this point. I will do some scraping, but I have a time constraint with this one and will likely succumb to sander / scraper to get things done -

Thanks again;

Dave B

[Tom McMahon]

I believe the factory cap iron is your problem, the modern cap irons as they come from the factory don't work. In order to get an LN to work I had to reshape the leading edge, the LV appears to have the same problem the leading edge needs to be blunted so that it pushes the shaving back towards the surface of the wood. When used sharp as they come they act as a wedge and lift the shaving making the tear out worse. The cap iron needs to hold the shaving down to the surface so the blade has the ability to cut the wood before the shaving is lifted. Also the shavings in your pictures appear a little thick. In my experience the angle on the leading edge of the cap iron is just as important as how close it is to the edge, that distance changes with the thickness of the shaving and the species of wood.

[Steve Voigt]

I have used a rounded bevel on the cap iron for more than forty years. I have never tried a flat bevel.

Warren,
Nonetheless, I imagine you could eyeball the angle of the tangent line at the point where the cap iron meets the blade. I'd be curious to know if that's in the ballpark of 45°, or something steeper.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Add another vote for a bevel up with a toothed blade. I say this for future reference- not expecting you to go buy one just for this. (If your wife is going to be reading this let me know and I will change that to say "Rush out and buy one right away" so you can let her think it is a necessity.)

I use a lot of figured woods. When the going gets tough, the tough get out the toothed blade. I use it in a bevel up jack, followed by the sharpest, most finely tuned LN #4 known to mankind, then a scraper plane or handheld card scraper. I use the #4 just until the "tooth marks" are gone, and then the scraper to finish it off.

[Winton Applegate]

Toothed blade

Malcom,
First off let me preface what I am about to say with : I have not planed all the figured woods you have and so you obviously know better than I do about all those.
Now
my experience with toothed blades was less than stellar as far as speeding along the work and dealing with tearout . . .
in my imagination I am even imagining that stringy wood is going to be perhaps ripped up all the more BECAUSE of the toothed blade.

For what little I have done I found that wetting the wood and going at it diagonal/planing across the grain with a highly cambered, OR AS DAVID CHARLSWORTH RECOMMENDED A NARROW BLADE, was hugely better for taking the surface down to the tearout then plane as normal with the modified BU or the super tuned cap iron set up. Wetting further for the heavier cuts WITH THE GRAIN if needed.
Final planing was always done dry. Wetting was to soften the surface enough to slice off significant depth.

In my view toothed blades are best on heavy end grain planing say for a real butcher block or maybe for preparing a surface for veneering and I am not so sure it is even worth it for that.

You know me; I have to keep the imbalance going here.

[Warren Mickley]

I would say steeper. The bevel of the cap iron should be rounded, and not flat, the way the bevel of the iron is.

[Winton Applegate]

So I went back and looked in David Charlesworth’s book Furniture Making Techniques.
The section on Evolution of a bench.
Thinking back now I believe his comment there on the somewhat unstable nature of Beech was what got me looking at other species of wood for my work bench.

It says the bench tops shown are from Doussie.

I could have sworn I read in his literature some place that his own bench top is made from Yew.
There are references to yew through out the two books.

Mr. Charlesworth,
Is your bench top, or a bench you used at one time made from yew ?
Or did I just flat get that wrong ?

[david charlesworth]

Winton,

A yew bench is an interesting proposition but I have never seen one.

Warren,

It would be most helpful if you could give some approximate guidance as to the angle of the leading edge of your curved cap iron.

Best wishes,
David

[david charlesworth]

Well, I did a little experiment on some difficult Yew and a 70 degree (front edge) cap iron performed much better than a 50 degree one. Front edge set approximately 0.004" from blade edge.

The range of angles given in David Weaver's article on Woodcentral (Setting a cap iron) is 50 to 80 degrees.

The Kato and Kawai research videous appear to suggest that 80 degrees may be the most effective at preventing tearout, but I am keen to hear from anyone who has experience with this technique.

Warren insists on a curve but what angle would we find at the tip of his curve?

best wishes,
David Charlesworth

[Derek Cohen]

Hi David

Are you sure of your measurements? 0.004" is 0.1mm - yes? If I place a chipbreaker that close it will cause the plane to stop cutting.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Stewie Simpson]

http://paulsellers.com/2014/10/custo...up-jack-plane/

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/archive/.../t-82128.html?

[Derek Cohen]

Stewie, could you summarise the content of those links for us? A short précis will suffice.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[david charlesworth]

Derek,

Yes 4 thousandths of an inch and the plane cuts perfectly well with a 2 thou shaving!

David

[Derek Cohen]

David, that is very interesting. When I was experimenting early on with chip breakers on different bed angles, I tended to use at the start the high leading edge angles suggested in the video (the video suggested that the combined angles of the bed and chipbreaker should be between 90-120 degrees). These did work, but I do not now recall how well. I began dropping the angle at the leading edge, partly because I was curious, and partly because others were saying that it worked for them. This has worked well enough. Could it be better? Perhaps it is time to return to the higher angles at the leading edge and find out?

Regards from Perth

Derek