planing question

5/16/05, 5:26 AM #1

chichi
Guest

planing question

chichi

>I am a newbie and get a real thrill when my plane is cutting nice shavings as I attempt to flatten a board or to clean up dovetails after gluing. I find that many times, I have to take several strokes before I get the plane working. My question is this;

1)normal,

2)incorrect technique,

3) plane needs tuning,

4) due to weird grain pattern,

5) blade needs to be more rank.(I thought this would be obvious reason, but the plane adjustment worked the previous time it was used.

I suspect some combination of the above.

I plan to get the videos on planing. Can someone describe the ruler trick for us who have not seen the video.

Thanks,

Bob

Re: planing question

5/16/05, 11:57 AM #2

Jim Reed @Tallahassee
Guest

Many reasons

Jim Reed @Tallahassee

>I find that most of my plane blades need slight adjustment each time they are used. Depends on the plane and the wood to be planed. Having to *sneak up on it* by advancing the blade is not a bad technique. Most newbies are way too aggressive in their cuts. Wispy shavings are the holy grail. Sounds like you are there. Good luck with your woodworking.

Re: planing question

5/16/05, 4:14 PM #3

Tim of Livermore
Guest

Re: planing question

Tim of Livermore

>That is normal in some circumstances. One that is fairly common for myself is if I go to smooth a board a day or few after milling to final dimensions. Wood moves...and even a few mils out of flat can translate into a few passes before you take full length shavings.

"Most newbies are way too aggressive in their cuts. Wispy shavings are the holy grail"

It kinda depends on what you're doing. I don't think my rough work planes appreciate being undervalued by such remarks..... ;- ). After all, without them, the smoothers would only gather dust :- )!

Tim

Re: planing question

5/17/05, 3:30 PM #4

Clay C in Miami
Guest

ruler trick

Clay C in Miami

>Charlesworth's ruler trick -

When flattening the back of a plane iron (or for some, instead of doing the whole back? See the 'Ruler Trick - SS variation' thread just above), at the end of the process DC places a thin metal ruler longways and flat on the waterstone, parallel to and right at one long edge of the stone. He then places the iron on the stone and ruler, with the iron's back-edge resting at the other long-edge of the stone, and the blunt end of the iron resting on the ruler (with long irons and narrow stones, it's actually a point in the middle that rests on the ruler). This gives a very slight back-bevel. (Seeing the thread above, which used a magnet for the same purpose, I was surprised - I would have thought that a magnet would be too thick, but apparently it was not.)

IIRC, he now moves the iron forward-and-back, so the edge goes onto and entirely off of the stone with each stroke, which for me was counterintuitive - I woulda thought that side-to-side (so the back-edge rides along parallel to the long side of the stone) was the way. But, IIRC he made it pretty clear that he now uses forward-and-back - as though he were stabbing something just beyond the stone with the sharp edge. Let me know if anyone think I got this all wrong, OK?

If you did this forward-and-back while contacting more than the last 1/2 - 3/4" of the stone edge (e.g., if you did it 'longways' on the stone instead of 'crossways), this would result in a rounding, and you'd get a convex back-bevel. I expect that, using only a short bit of the stone edge, this would not be a problem.

Hope this helped!

Clay

planing question

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