smoother purchase advice

Re: I don't think so *LINK*

Jonathan Peck - N.Y.

>Hi Bill,

I started thinking about a building that I was the core and shell super on in 2001. I thought of this building because it was the most complicated thing that I have ever worked on. The lower levels of the theater were isolated from the rest of the structure, and the structure itself was suported on four columns on top of piles driven into swamp land. The structure incorporated large trusses, braced frames and two way slab construction, not to mention the change over from structural steel to HSS tube steel to make the Mansard roof and solarium. There was a mini tversion of the lower level theater, a two story lecture hall on the 4th and 5th floors that was also isolated and used the same vibration isolation principals except with different execution in materials.

Anyway, a quick search produced this website containing pictures from the dig, to occupancy. For anyony who has never built a building, this might be interesting as the pictures are sequenced weekly from the start on construction.


Click Me

That's me

Jonathan Peck - N.Y.

>That's me in the red shirt on the right. My project exec. forgot to get a tree for the topping out party. He wanted to send a potted evergreen plant up on the topping out beam. I grabbed smart Joe's truck and at the last minute found this evergreen tree at a highend nursery on the west side. The tree cost me $600- and my exec refused to reimburse me, having spent too much money on it. Tradition and a symbol of good luck were well worth it to me

What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

Roger Nixon

>Or Japanese, Chinese, or TaiWan styles? I didn't realize you were so underequpped! :)

Re: Mass

Jonathan Peck - N.Y.

>Wow, great post! This explains alot. If I can sum up - A tight mouth, more mass, higher cutting angle, sharp thick blade with thick cap iron, and the damping of a stuffed plane is what you want when the grain dips down. The only plane that I can think of that has ALL of these attributes is the infill.

Hmmm...sounds like a company offering a high end infill at an affordable price might be a real asset to us hobby WW's on a budget. Anybody know of a company like that?

Re: Mass

joel

>"Hmmm...sounds like a company offering a high end infill at an affordable price might be a real asset to us hobby WW's on a budget. Anybody know of a company like that? "

Ray Iles - of course.

However of course the only problem with the theory is that THe C+W smoothers are also incredible performers - wthout the mass. I think the extra mass helps as you say get through tough variations in tough wood - and in general evens out the stroke, but with a sharp blade and tight mouth and superb blade bedding you get amazing performance at mass isn't that much of an issue.

in both planes you also get the short body which is also very important

Re: Break stride

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>That is so kewl!

The coincidences are also curious. I worked on three different custom kitchen and library cabinet jobs, and installed them within a few blocks of the Kimmel Center. (Of course, oscillation isn't an important issue in a kitchen.) Also, I've got an invite to a Philadelphia Orchestra concert next week, but I think they perform at the Mann Center in the summer. The last time I was at one of their concerts, they were still in the Academy of Music, and Eugene Ormondy was still the conductor. More recently, when I was designing telephone networks, a customers' engineers, with whom I enjoyed working, had offices not too far away.

Re: I don't think so

David Linnabary

>I didn't mention wood, but I do agree that it does dampen more effectively than metal.

You do make a good point about how relatively small vibrations can resonate through massive sturctures. This made me to rethink how I understood resonance and what I knew but didn't say is that the advantage of a heavy plane isn't that it eliminates vibration but that it keeps the tool mated to the work surface so vibration can resonate through both harmonically.

Learning woodworking through aircraft mechanics gives you some unique insights to joinery between dissimlar materials. :)

David

Re: What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Yeah, Dave! There are only two ways you are going to get an adjustable mouth smoother, unless you want to begrudgingly take a break from the creation of ephemeral shavings to tweak your frog, whenever you run into some particularly gnarly figure, and the only other viable alternative is purported to set you back about $2700.

OTOH, I supose one could make the necessary adjustments to an appropriately executed wooden bodied plane with an appropriately executed brass headed hammer.

Re: Mass

Greg Sloop

>We'll have to wait and see what Lyn's study has to say in detail, but in his older studies, there is no correlation between finish and the mass of the plane.

High(er) mass of the plane may be a personal preferance, but I don't think there's any real technical reasons why a heavier (more massive) plane is particularly better than a lighter (less massive) one.

Greg

(Disclaimer: I'm the swiss army plane guy - the one accused of only making shelving from dimensioned pine. However numerical and demonstrated technical merit have a lot more weight with me than old-wives-tales.)

Hey Roger, I can't remember everything

Dave Anderson Chester,NH

>I did the list from work and forgot about the Lee Valley low angle smoother on the ramp of the plane till. As for the Far Eastern stuff, I just haven't gone that way.....yet.

Re: What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

Dave Anderson Chester,NH

>Well Sir William, the Knight coffin smother I'm ordering will have an adjustable mouth so I should be covered there. For the really nasty and knarly stuff like burl I almost always grab the 55 degree Clark & Williams, it hasn't failed me yet. It just did a great job for me on some lacewood.

Re: I don't think so

TMStock

>I'm an aero, but seems to me that damping of vibration was related to unit mass as well as damping coefficient. As to steel versus iron, they are very different materials as far as vibration goes.

Falling off the edge of reality

Bob Hackett

>Cast iron is in fact a very different animal than structural steel.Cast damps vibration far better than say mild steel.Wood will damp vibration better than cast as evidenced by the QS DF bed on my Conover lathe.The one thing that has them all beat is concrete,and I don`t believe I`ve ever seen a handplane made from it.

My vote is with fit and finish.For what we`re talking about here mated surfaces are a must.Just my .02.

Mainely,Bob

Re: What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Somehow it had escaped me that Steve builds an adjustale mouth block into many of his planes. Could you or Steve give some deeper explanation into how it works? My rather naive impression was that it is tapered, and is intended to be lowered to close the mouth, but then the portion of the block that protrudes from the bottom of the plane must be trimmed flush. My impression was also that it is intended to reclose the mouth after removing material from the bottom to reflatten it. If this is correct, while it is a useful, and even necessary feature for the long term maintenance of a tight mouthed wooden smoother, it does not provide the versatility of the adjustable mouth as implemented on some exemplary metal planes. The metal plane's mouth can be opened up immediately, and at will, whenever it is necessary to set the blade lower for a more agressive cut and thicker shaving. This is a feature of the Stanley #62, #164 and derivitives from LN and LV, the Auburn Metalic, many shoulder planes including LN, LV, Record and Preston models, most adjustable mouth block planes, and the SMT infill smoothers. (Excuse me if I have missed some). However, I have never seen an analogous feature on any wooden plane.

Re: Falling off the edge of reality

TMStock

>Cast iron (gray) is about 100 times more eficient in damping internal vibs than steel, while ductile iron is perhaps 3-4 times more efficient re: steel. The form that the excess carbon takes results in the differences, but let's not get started.

Wood has very high internal coefficent of friction, but varies according to humidity, grain direction, and species. I don't recall the comparison (Bruhn has figures), but has to be significantly greater than iron.

That said, the discontinuities (e.g., blade/body boundary, stuffing/body boundary, and frog/body boundary) and total mass available probably has at least as much effect on vibration as materials.

So older cast iron planes should have greater ability to damp vibs as compared to ductile iron tools, but in practical terms, blade thickness and overall mass seem to have much more impact.

Fit and finish

joel

>the way the bed of a plane is cut in a wooden plane - and consider the traidtional wooden plane used QS lumber - the bed would be very stable. It might change a bit in Angle but overall stay flat on the bed plane. And considering how sublimely excellent a wellmade wooden plane can be that's demonstratable proof that mass might be an important criteria but it isn't overwhelming.

Re: What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

RichD

>ECE makes an adjustable mouth smoother.

Re: smoother purchase advice

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>Yes, and the Lie-Nielsen #5-1/2 can be ordered with the same high-angle frog as the #4-1/2, and the special chip-breaker.

Pam, Joel & R.J. -

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>Didn't he write that he already has a Knight Toolworks 47-degree wooden smoother?

What is high-end? What is affordable?

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>

Re: What?? NO Low Angle Smoother?

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Yes they do, it is the ECE Primus #711 Smoothing Plane. I apologize for the oversight. Now I know because Iooked it up, and it appears to be a bargain. For example, it is offered in the U.S.A. by The Best Things. Lyn also tested it in his classic High Angle Smoother review.

Concrete

Robin Frierson

>Funny you should mention concrete, I recently read about a high end jointer, 24in wide, in which the base was filled with concrete.

Re: What is high-end? What is affordable?

joel

>High end is the more expensive plane your friend has and affordable is the plane you have.

LOL!

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>

Re: Pam, Joel & R.J. -

R.J.Whelan

>Don ... you're right - didn't read the question closely enough ... rj