Question for Rob Lee - wider hand planes?

[Will Blick]

Rob, I am curious why no plane makers have made 4" wide hand planes? Of course the current ~2" wide planes are great for edge joining, but what about the face of boards? In find wood working, most boards are wider than 2", yet my guess is, most are less than 4" wide. With a finely tuned plane that can easily take .001 - .002" shavings across its width, (possibly a set up jig) I doubt there will be a "force" problem, at least for the avg. size man. How sweet it would be to rid plane tracks.

Have wide hand planes like this ever been made in the past?

Of course, anyone is welcome to respond, I was hoping Rob would offer some insights.....and I am curious if LV ever considered such a plane. It seems all the tools offered today are re-invents of older tools....yet, with modern machining being so precise and cost effective, I would think a tool like this would be very viable, and more importantly, very useful, anyone agree?

[Jason Beam]

Some japanese planes are pretty wide, but i'll bet it's still a force issue.

Pulling a plane is easier since you can put yer weight into it. Pushing a plane is more work because you don't have the advantage of your weight and gravity most of the time. Also, increases in blade width doubtfully have a linear resistance curve - double the width probably means a square of the force required to push it through the wood - light shaving or not. Maybe for very fine smoothing like that of a scraper plane (which do come wide - look at the #12). That's probably because of physics, really.

[Will Blick]

> Also, increases in blade width doubtfully have a linear resistance curve - double the width probably means a square of the force required to push it through the wood - light shaving or not.


hmmmm..... I am struggling with the Square of the force here.... 2x the work = 2x the energy.... no different than two 2" planes side by side...


I looked for #12 plane via google, found a scraper plane 3" long by Stanley, ended production in 1947....is this what you refer to?


And yes, this would ONLY be for smoothers, sorry for not specifying this... Its only the last bit of planing where tracks are annoying.


Also, if the 4" plane is really heavy, maybe slightly heavier than two 2" planes, this will ease the cut resistance...

[Dave Anderson NH]

Will, Jason is suggesting that double the width make the force required to push or pull it 4X the force. I tend to agree. If I can find the photo, I will post a picture of an 8" wide plane used for smoothing the deck planks and the deck beams of wooden square rigged ships. It is about a foot and a half long has a U-shaped handle and is pulled across the plank or beam by a windlass and 2 men.
This plane is moved around on a 2 wheeled dolly since it weighs about 70 pounds and is very awkward.

[Pedro Reyes]

So all the complexities of manufacturing, moving, carrying, and pushing aside...Said plane, would work on surfaces <4", correct? Anything wider and you'll have track issues as well.

How many woodworking projects outside of boxes are made with pieces (glued up or not) that are <4" wide? I mean, I don't use my #4 before glue-ups but afterwards, so while my starting boards may be <4" (usually closer to 6") the pieces I smooth are generally wider.

I really don't think this would be worth the effort. Unless I am doing things wrong by smoothing after glue ups instead of smoothing all my stock prior to any assembly.

just my 0.02

/p

[Dave Anderson NH]

As a point of reference, the top on the Queen Anne handkerchief table I posted some months ago in tiger maple was completely hand planed using a 2 1/4" wide Clark & Williams 55 degree smoother. I never felt the need for anything wider with the iorn set properly.

[Bill Moser]

I know I've read somewhere about wide complex moulding planes made that needed to be pulled by poor apprentices by ropes, as the master held the plane down to the work surface. For my self, there have been times when I've contemplated taking a running leap at a 6ft long board with my #8, just to get the momentum to get the plane from one end to the other without stalling in the middle. Friction will kill you in the end. If death and taxes don't do it first.

[Will Blick]

> Jason is suggesting that double the width make the force required to push or pull it 4X the force.


Being an energy engineer, I surely comprehend Jasons position, I just don't comprehend how the square is coming into play here. Can you explain how you arrive at this?


I would think the work load is linear to the added cut area. I just tested this.... I edge joined a 3/4" thick piece of maple with my LV LA jointer....then I mated a 2nd 3/4" width board to the first, doubling the effective cut area......and continued edge joining.... This seems like a sensible mock up. Of course the friction increases, but it certainly feels more like 2x the force is required, not 4x the force. Or maybe I just have more force in reserve than I think? (some times this can trick us) It's possible.... Give it a try...


As for how applicable such a smoother would be.... its not for everything, just like all fine tools, its a niche for sure, but one I would really like. I still think there is a lot of boards used in fine wood working whose face is greater than 2" wide, but less than 4" wide. Hence my thought. Of course, after 4", I am sure such a manual solution would not be applicable.

[Bill Moser]

Is there a physicist out there who can help? so we don't all sound like idiots? No, well ok , I'll continue in my stupidity: It seems to me that the force (energy?, friction?) required to move the plane from point A to point B is a nonlinear function of the surface area of the tool. So, it's easy when the surface area (as applied to the wood) is smaller, but gets out of control as the contact area increases. So, jointing boards is not a good test. A better test would be to plane a large (wrt the plane sole) surface.

[Doug Shepard]

Somebody had a post on one of the forums a ways back (not sure but I think here) of a Japanese plane with a superwide iron. IIRC it was around 8" wide and made incredibly paper thin gorgeous wide shavings. I seem to recall that it might have been a custom order and some mention of it being used to plane mantels. Cant find the post though.

[Tim Sproul]

(Sharpening skills needed)^n, where n equals iron width in inches. If you have enough skills to get a good edge on a 2 inch wide iron, you need more than a bucket load more to get the same edge quality when sharpening a 4 inch wide iron.

You get rid of plane tracks by putting an ever so slight camber on your smoothing plane iron(s).

[Brad Knabel]

Doug -
I didn't see the post that you're referring to. But, I did see this video on YouTube recently that might refer to the same plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGlEIcotjcg

I don't remember enough of my college physics to tell you how much force is required. But it's awfully funny watching the spectators faces when they take turns pulling this plane across the plank. There are some big guys there and nobody seems to have an easy time of it. They all seem to get nice shavings however.

Also - I agree with Tim - sharpening something like this can't be easy.

[Will Blick]

Tim, cambering the blade will only round the edge of the tracks....if you plane a 4" FLAT board down the middle, the middle will be a few thou lower than the sides....

Great video, amazing find....not much you can think of today, which has not already been built! Although this looks much more like a 6" plane.... AND, the design is not ideal IMO.... as the limitation in bringing your body force into the plane is limited by finger strength....which is why I would prefer a standard plane, just wider.


This push/pull issue must be personal taste. IMO, pushing a plane is much easier, as its more comfortable and natural to lean into the plane. When pulling, you are relying on finger strength for the entire stroke, not natural, and often your finger strength / grip will be the limiting factor. ...... vs. pushing, where the heel of your hand transfers your body mass into the plane. For small planes, this is not much of an issue.


> It seems to me that the force (energy?, friction?) required to move the plane from point A to point B is a nonlinear function of the surface area of the tool.


why non linear? Has the work load more than doubled? If so, how? Its possible, but at first glance, I would suspect its linear.



> So, it's easy when the surface area (as applied to the wood) is smaller, but gets out of control as the contact area increases.


This applies to linear as well.... 2x more force adds up fast.... going from a 1" board to a 4" board is 4x, that's substantial.....

[Joel Goodman]

I saw a thread here that showed a full width shaving from a 4 inch Japanese plane -- can anyone remember it?

[Jason Beam]

Engineering brains are always the toughest to crack, ain't they? Mine always is. I should say in advance that the idea of "square of the force" was just something I pulled outta thin air to illustrate it being significantly more than just 2x. It could be some other exponent - but i do believe it is non-linear.

The best way I can explain how I get to this is that when planing, workload is a tough term to quantify. Some evidence as to width increasing the difficulty in a non-linear fashion is that there's the #4 and then the #4 1/2 - but the #4 1/2 is not 50% wider than a #4 as the name implies. But taking those two planes, set for the same shaving, I can certainly tell a stark difference in the effort required to achieve that shaving. It ain't double - but it's certainly tougher than I thought it'd be given the seemingly minor increase in width.

I don't have a mathematical formula that will prove this, i'm just going by feel.

But if you want math, a similar concept involving pulling a load in a trailer comes to mind for me. A double in weight (workload, right?) on the same trailer requires a square of the force to move it. Similarly, a mass moving at speed x takes y force to stop. 2x the mass takes y^2 to stop.

These are the kinds of physics that lead me to propose that double a plane width would have significantly more than double the resistance. I can only dream to grasp physics well enough to calculate the exact changes, but I do feel pretty confident that this case isn't linear. Someone should put together a force gauge experiment!