Christmas money - help me pick out my new hand plane!!!

[William Fretwell]

Mike just remember if you go classic #4 or 4&1/2 your one blade sharpening system can be done by hand easily. With the thick bevel up you will need a guide ($150) and a second blade ($50) so that's $200 of your budget! There are cheaper guides but mostly for the bevel down. I like the #4 & 1/2 as the extra width means if you round the corners for smoothing big flat surfaces you still have a decent width.
Mastering an old plane is great training you won't regret. You will come back to it all the time.

[Pat Barry]

Mike just remember if you go classic #4 or 4&1/2 your one blade sharpening system can be done by hand easily. With the thick bevel up you will need a guide ($150) and a second blade ($50) so that's $200 of your budget! .

I don't agree with either of these points. For example, I find that the wider bevel makes it easier to register the blade for working the bevel by hand and therefore less dependent on the honing guide. A second blade might be a good investment anyway but its certainly not needed. Perhaps you can elaborate on why you say that you need both the honing guide and the second blade.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

I don't agree with either of these points. For example, I find that the wider bevel makes it easier to register the blade for working the bevel by hand and therefore less dependent on the honing guide. A second blade might be a good investment anyway but its certainly not needed. Perhaps you can elaborate on why you say that you need both the honing guide and the second blade.

I don't know if this is the answer, but I have been contemplating on the BU/BD thing. I find it hard to believe that the BU planes were not more popular 100 years ago simply because the casting/metallurgy technology was not up to today's standards (this is the explanation I have read in a couple of places). The old guys were smart enough to come up with a design that would be durable with the metal they had. That makes me think there is another explanation for why BD was the vastly more common design.

Thinking along those lines, I understand the BU design can be successful with a wide variety of woods, if you hone to the right angle. But honing to 30 as opposed to 25 degrees or 35 degrees by hand is not that easy. And if you are off five or ten degrees with a BU design, it sounds like it might make a difference in the quality of the surface (I have not run some double blind study to confirm this, I don't own any, so this is just thinking out loud). On the other hand, with the BD designs, the exact angle you hone to does not matter as much, as long as the bevel is low enoug that it is the blade is the first contact with the surface, and not the back of the bevel. The cutting angle will be 45 degrees or whatever the frog is, regardless of what exactly the bevel is honed at.

25 degrees as opposed to 35 degrees might make a difference in how long the edge lasts with a BD design, but it does not make that much of a difference as to whether the plane works.

So this is a long way of saying, maybe a honing guide is more important with BU because the exact angle of the bevel is more important.

By the way, I have a honing guide I use sometimes, and it is the $10 one you can still get from Lie Nielsen. You certainly do not need to spend $150 to consistently hone to a precise angle.

[Mike Dowell]

***** HORSE IS DEAD*****

Just ordered the LV LAS. Thank you all for your patience!

[Pat Barry]

I don't know if this is the answer, but I have been contemplating on the BU/BD thing. I find it hard to believe that the BU planes were not more popular 100 years ago simply because the casting/metallurgy technology was not up to today's standards (this is the explanation I have read in a couple of places). The old guys were smart enough to come up with a design that would be durable with the metal they had. That makes me think there is another explanation for why BD was the vastly more common design.

Thinking along those lines, I understand the BU design can be successful with a wide variety of woods, if you hone to the right angle. But honing to 30 as opposed to 25 degrees or 35 degrees by hand is not that easy. And if you are off five or ten degrees with a BU design, it sounds like it might make a difference in the quality of the surface (I have not run some double blind study to confirm this, I don't own any, so this is just thinking out loud). On the other hand, with the BD designs, the exact angle you hone to does not matter as much, as long as the bevel is low enoug that it is the blade is the first contact with the surface, and not the back of the bevel. The cutting angle will be 45 degrees or whatever the frog is, regardless of what exactly the bevel is honed at.

25 degrees as opposed to 35 degrees might make a difference in how long the edge lasts with a BD design, but it does not make that much of a difference as to whether the plane works.

So this is a long way of saying, maybe a honing guide is more important with BU because the exact angle of the bevel is more important.

By the way, I have a honing guide I use sometimes, and it is the $10 one you can still get from Lie Nielsen. You certainly do not need to spend $150 to consistently hone to a precise angle.

Thanks for explaining further. I've found that the wider bevel makes it easier to register the bevel onto the stones by feel. I tend to just use this method to rehone the bevel, not to create an exact bevel from scratch. If the bevel needs to be reestablished then grinding the bevel on the the grinder would be the first step and I would take care to set that angle to meet the primary angle I'm aiming for, then use the hand technique to hone the edge on the stones.

[Patrick Chase]

I appreciate the ambiguity removal. I did in fact know what he meant by LAS, but admittedly, I do get very easily lost in the acronyms once they start flying. ..., SBUS (still haven't figured this one out)

Oh, that's easy. Not sure why people are throwing it about in a discussion about planes, though :-).

(seriously, and as I think you figured out, it's Small Bevel Up Smooth plane)

[Pat Barry]

***** HORSE IS DEAD*****

Just ordered the LV LAS. Thank you all for your patience!

It's fun spending your money!

[Jim Koepke]

***** HORSE IS DEAD*****

Just ordered the LV LAS. Thank you all for your patience!

You are sure to be happy with this plane.

Let us know how you do with it when it arrives.

jtk

[Chris Hachet]

My vote would be for a LV bevel up Jack. Use it for awhile and you will know what you want next. I have 25 or so planes and use most of them regularly, LV Low Angle Jack will be one of my next planes...And get the PMV. 11, you will not regret it.

[William Fretwell]

I don't agree with either of these points. For example, I find that the wider bevel makes it easier to register the blade for working the bevel by hand and therefore less dependent on the honing guide. A second blade might be a good investment anyway but its certainly not needed. Perhaps you can elaborate on why you say that you need both the honing guide and the second blade.

Pat,
This was mostly answered for you already but here is my answer:
The hand reach & push technique will put a lovely convex edge on a blade or chisel (watch Barr Quarton's video). A big flat bevel is not required and actually fights against the movement of your arms. It is of little matter however as the front and back of the bevel will round over eventually.
What will happen is the leading edge angle will change several degrees. If this new angle is what you can work with fine but if you wish to keep the BU designed angle then you need a guide and lots of time!
The second blade gives you a whole new angle for different woods; i.e. for woods that the first angle tears out and destroys! Its really that simple!

[Patrick Chase]

***** HORSE IS DEAD*****

Just ordered the LV LAS. Thank you all for your patience!

I think that's the right choice for your requirements.

it's reasonably compact (same blade width and overall size as a #4), can be adapted to a wide range of uses with multiple blades at different bevels, and is pretty much hone-and-forget. You could get higher smoothing performance with a bevel-down 4, but it's more work to keep it in optimal tune and you'd lose some flexibility.

Only 74 more to go. Don't forget to build your "fettling shrine".

[Mike Dowell]

I think that's the right choice for your requirements.

it's reasonably compact (same blade width and overall size as a #4), can be adapted to a wide range of uses with multiple blades at different bevels, and is pretty much hone-and-forget. You could get higher smoothing performance with a bevel-down 4, but it's more work to keep it in optimal tune and you'd lose some flexibility.

Only 74 more to go. Don't forget to build your "fettling shrine".

Funny thing, I already have a few others. I have the LV Apron plane which I am completely in love with. After that, I've got a Stanley 5 1/4, of which I Refer to as my "wood shop class plane", and I apparently have a wooden jack plane which is usable. I think I'll try to tune up the wood shop class plane next, and really take my time with it, trying to make it nice. I'm sure I'll be all over this place with questions. Also, I'd like to fix up my jack plane and be able to use it.

[John Schtrumpf]

Pat,
This was mostly answered for you already but here is my answer:
The hand reach & push technique will put a lovely convex edge on a blade or chisel (watch Barr Quarton's video). A big flat bevel is not required and actually fights against the movement of your arms. It is of little matter however as the front and back of the bevel will round over eventually...

Ah, but I use more of a Japanese technique like Kiyoto Tanaka. Which is better suited for thick blades to maintain the existing flat bevel. The blade is cocked 60 or more degrees (approaching sideways), this gives a much longer surface to resist rocking.

[Derek Cohen]

The thread is morphing into sharpening blades for BU planes. Here are a few comments from my experience with these planes over a decade of use.

Before the re-emergance of the chipbreaker as a means of controlling tearout, I was an absolute devotee to planes with high cutting angles. Some were high bed woodies, and some were BU metal planes. In my local West Australian woods, a cutting angle of at least 60 degrees was essential to prevent tearout.

Honing blades for high bed woodies was not an issue. They used 30 degree bevels, which is the same as used in Bailey planes today. However, BU planes were another story. A BU plane needs a roughly 50 degree bevel to achieve the desired cutting angle.

There is a simple solution for all issues today, but a decade ago it seemed that honing BU plane blades was an exercise in frustration. For one, the thick blades made it an impractically huge amount of work to camber for smoothing. The solution is to think outside the box and make the blade think it is thinner by only using a 25 degree bevel. Trying to camber a 50 degree bevel is twice the work. I published this article nearly a decade ago, and it made clambering a BU blade a simple affair: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...aneBlades.html

However, that did not change the fact that a honing guide was needed for sharpening. I get so single-minded when building a piece. Sharpening is an intrusion and, when necessary, freehand is the way to go .. grab the blade, swipe it on the media, re-insert, and back to the project. A honing guide requires a little extra time to set up the blade in a guide, and more care is needed the higher the bevel angle ... for example, a 50 degree bevel angle requires pulling the blade backwards and never pushing it forwards. The high angle makes the bevel vulnerable to digging in if pushed forwards.

One of the methods I came up with was the "hybrid" grind: hollow grind halfway into the thickness of the blade, in other words, again trying to fool the blade that it was thinner, and freehand on this thinner section. This effort is written up here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...aneBlades.html

The problem with that method is that holding and freehanding a blade at 50 degrees is tricky. The blade will be guided by the hollow, so it remains accurate, however it is cumbersome to hold at this angle. This makes it an impractical method after a while.

So what is the final solution to honing BU blades? The answer is that one needs to accept that a honing guide is an essential part of the sharpening method. Only hone a secondary microbevel on a 25 degree primary bevel. I have used just about all of the honing guides. The Veritas Mk II is the best all rounder, however an Eclipse type is the quickest to use in this situation, especially if you have just one bevel angle to create (in my case, a secondary of 50 degrees). I now use the LN guide plus a simple stop for blade projection. The original Eclipse is actually quicker to drop a blade into, but the LN hold the blade more securely.

While my first preference is now for BD planes, I continue to use BU planes since they are utterly reliable and easy to use. Why change? Only because I can squeeze a wider range from a BD plane, and the chipbreaker is slightly better at controlling tearout than a high cutting angle.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Tim Cooper Louisiana]

I had my money on the LV BUS, but that you would purchase it tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll still win the pool. Grats!