Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Thanks Sir William

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native in FL. Exile :~(

>You're claification was most excellent!

Joel,quit using big words. ;~)

Just to add nothing, or not much to the conversation, I have bought many a plane and chisel at the flea markets, and I have yet to find one that had a flattened/polished back. Also, so far, I have found only one edge that was hollow ground and that was n fact one a older #5, everything else has been flat. Sooooooooo, either the craftsmen of Yore didn't hollow grind, or the hollow was all worn away when they last finished with the tool. I'm tending to beleive that they didn't hollow grind.

Now I have to go back and re-read Joel's message to see what he said about the tools found in Provenounce tool chests. I find this thread to be quite interesting. I know several "old-timers" from my job at the college that I intend to speak with on this subject as well.

Todd O.

Re: Clarification

paul womack

>The question here is how did they make curved edges and did they used dished stones to achieve them?

I read what Rose said as meaning "they" were NOT trying to make curved edges; au contraire, he's detailing the techniques used to avoid them.

BugBear

Re: junky sharpening equipment

paul womack

>They must have had sharp tools to do what they did, yet their sharpening media was junk by modern standards.

RIchard Wilson's transcription

BugBear

Re: larger transcription

paul womack

>That Richard Wilson's a handy chap:

More from Walter Rose

BugBear

Re: Old Timers

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>quit using big words I think what you want to say is "eschew obfuscation."

Remember that there were lots of different kinds of old timers out there, those that worked mainly in shops, where they may have had a large wheel in a water bath, and others who worked on site, or in small barns and sheds, and who could only justify the cost or the weight of a small, flat stone. You are much more likely to find the tools of the latter types at yard sales and flea markets. The formers' tools, which were a lot rarer, are more likely to have ended up in one of those provolone :^) boxes, and are now in the hands of a serious collector or a museum.

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>The new "stones" that DC is hawking are diamond on a metal substrate. They have a very slight and very precisely controlled concavity. The curve does not change with use, and they cannot be reflattened.

Interesting marketing ploy, since it seems that now we may feel a need for a separate set of diamond stones for every bench plane in the arsenal, since the camber of a scrub is different than the camber of a jack, is different than the camber of a fore and different again than the camber of a smoother. I almost wonder if the dilettante will need a different set of these stones for each width of smoother blade and for each different cutting angle?

Some details of Odate article ..

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>The article was in Woodwork magazine, April 2005.

Toshio first describes how DMT made up for him a diamond plate with a slight concave. He then goes on to report that "this very slight concavity allows you to create a very shallow crown to quite a deep one .... you can then use any flat stone .... to evenly match the slightly convex bevel ... until the final finishing stone is reached and the blade is polished".

Incidentally, this particular publication has a great article on making wooden spoons. It came out at the same time as the spoon competition here, and just served to frustrate me even more!

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Joel

>It's not DC who is an advocate of the crowning plate. It's Toshio Odate and the article was a sidebar to show other new methods of crowning. The crowing plate is a really interesting idea, very fast, consistent, and certainly bears examination. But it's not the only way

(and in the interests of full disclosure - we stock them)

Re: Old Timers

Dan Donaldson

>Love malaprops;-)

Re: Old Timers

Luke Herzberg

>When using the old, large hand (or foot) cranked stones, the edge may not appear to have a hollow, or the hollow may disappear in honing. With a 20" stone, or whatever diameter they typically were, the hollow could be a few thousandths on a chisel and almost nonexistent on a plane iron.

Does anybody use one of these large diameter stones in their shop today?

- Luke

Re: Clown Suits

Dean in Burlington

>Steve,

Was that Star wars episode 1 or 6 :)

Come on.....DV is not even the best bad guy in the Star Wars movies never mind of all time. The Emperour (sp?) is a better bad guy. He has the best quotes "I've been waiting a long time for this my little green friend!!!" or "We're quite safe here from your pitiful band of friends!!!"

Re: Old Timers

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>I have a 20" sandstone wheel in my shop. There is a drip reservoir which keeps the wheel wet and cool. The large diameter also helps keep it cool. It is true that the wheel gives a very shallow hollow grind, not at all what people think of today. I'm not sure there were small diameter wheels before the 19th century. Although I like the feel of the sandstone I only use it occasionally. I sharpen my chisels, plane irons, etc. on bench stones only.

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Greg B

>Again, I haven't seen the article, but it's doubtful DC is "hawking" anything. He does offer teaching aids such as his books and videos/dvd's, and I must admit to having purchased them all. They're very good. I guess my original question remains: who inserted the aside to the diamond plate?

Re: philosophical question

Greg B

>I think you're right, Mike. People make due. (ask anyone who has ever received any of my work!) Given the choice, though, I think most would prefer a well tuned Steinway over a skip-toothed honky-tonk model which has demonstrated an equal aptitude as a platform for drunken debauchery.

This said, I also think we all have a "that's good enough" level of precision in our work, even if, as Jim Kingshott reportedly said, "Anyone who says, 'That's good enough' has just admitted it isn't."

It's just that David's precision level is extremely high and his genius in teaching inexperienced students seems to have yielded such techniques as he employs in sharpening plane irons and chisels.

Having reached these conclusions, I just thought it odd that he would have suggested the use of anything but a perfectly flat stone and a honing guide. (along with a small, inexpensive ruler for his simple, precise, repeatable anyone-can-do-it "ruler trick") So I'm just guessing he didn't. Would be interesting to know, though.

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>I found the information in the latest Popular Woodworking with the article by David Charlesworth. I do not know if it was added by the editorial staff or not. It wasn't clear to me if David endorses the diamond plate.JR

Clarification...

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>The information about the diamond plate was included with Davids article in the latest PW. I do not know if he endorses it and presume he does not. It seems to me that the editorial staff added it.JR

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Sorry, I stand corrected. David was not hawking this devise. The by-line of the "aside" is Chris Schwarz, himself, so he must have decided it is interesting. He also explains that like a flat stone, the camber it imparts is not automatic, but makes it a lot easier and more consistent, if you are having trouble with DC's mostly manual methods.

Further, it appears that PW is not hawking this stone, per se, because neither DMT nor Powell Mfg. Co. are currently listed among their advertizers.

Re: Clarification

Joel

>THe only stones in the Seaton chest are unused turkey slipstones. A probably large turnkey stone listed on the inventory is missing from the chest.

The popular stones of professional cabinetmakers of the 18th and early 19th century were turkey stones, Cherney forest stones amongst others. However all of these stones are dead soft and trivial to flatten. Similar to the advice Odate recommends for Japanese waterstones - a cement sidewalk will do nicely. Flattening those stones (even without a cement sidewalk at hand is pretty easy. My own Cherney Forest stone - which took me years to locate is about 12" long and IIRC (it's buried somewhere in a toolbox) pretty darn flat. Almost every old stone I have is pretty darn flat.

Top of line line translucent Arkansas stones are darn hard and very hard to flatten unless you really want to but a cabinetmaker in say - 1870 (about the earliest time you could get one nationally - maybe a little too early even) would treat the stone very carefully - it was expensive, free hand sharpen - jigs weren't readily avialable then and that would even out the wear - and the stone would have at least a decade or two of real use before any dishing would be worth correcting.

Washita stones dish, hard arkansas comes in qualities, the overwhelming number of old stones are not top quality stones for cabinetmakers. Catalogs at the time routinely suggest washita stones for regular sharpening because of the cost. I collect old sharpening stones but only ones in idenitifable condition. The dished stones I see are clearly not translucent or black arkansas - but I see a lot of dished washita and lower grades of arkansas that are dished.

Interestingly Holtzaffell writing in 1849 (I think it's 1840 something) condemns washita stones as being too soft and not worth the trouble (parapharsing and I am too tired to check the book and quote) but in the later addition by his son John - Arkansas stones had hit the market and the son waxes euphoric about them ( Todd: euphoric = very enthuisastic but "euphoric" is a shorter word which I figured you would appreiciate rather than the longer "enthuisastic").

Moxon BTW mentions that tools should be hollow ground and then when the hollow is honed flat - hollow ground again.

Re: philosophical question

mike recchione

>Greg, I certainly apply the "good enough" principle to my work (by necessity - I'd be a really unhappy camper and probably would have stopped woodworking by now if I were a perfectionist :-) ). But what I was talking about here was something different.

The end goal in our work may be perfection, whatever we define it to be. How we get there is another story. It's not the difference between a Steinway and a barroom upright that's been used as an ashtray I'm talking about, it's the difference between a Steinway that was tuned yesterday and a Baldwin that was tuned two months ago. Both are capable of being played in such a way that they make beautiful music, but they feel different.

I don't think any craftsman in his right mind would turn down a perfect tool that feels exactly the same every time he picks it up. On the other hand, no craftsman worth his salt would blame his inability to produce good results on a slightly less than perfectly consistent tool. If the camber is slightly different this time than it was last time, it should make no more difference to a skilled craftsman than the difference between one piece of wood and another - he adjusts to the difference.

Given this capacity for adjustment of technique in real time (which you could almost work into a pretty reasonable definition of "skill"), why go nuts trying to make the camber exactly the same each time? I guess that's my question. You pick up your plane, take a stroke, see what it does, and take the next stroke based on what it did on the first stroke. And so on.

Maybe I'm missing something. David Charlesworth certainly does wonderful work, much better than I will ever do. But I wonder how much of that depends on getting his tools just so, versus how much of it depends on paying the same close attention to detail that he lavishes on tool preparation to every other aspect of his work. I suspect it's more of the latter.

Re: philosophical question

Greg B

>I think we agree, Mike. And I think David is a perfectionist in all things, which is evident in his work, as you suggest. He has a couple of hand-made pieces to demonstrate a rule joint and a knuckle joint. They are so perfect you just laugh out loud (and feel a good deal of inward humility).

I believe his real genius, however, is in teaching. How do you teach a relative beginner how to achieve a desired result efficiently, predictably and with a minimum of frustration? (why do we frequently jig our work?) Why do we do better with a well sharpened LN smoother than a contemporary out-of-the-box Stanley? One avoids tool frustration and leads to our desired result and the other doesn't move much past tool frustration (and may even lead to...power tools!).

But you are right, David does lavish the same attention to detail on his work as on his tools, which is why we have them in the first place, right?

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Greg B

>That makes sense. But now you've made me wonder... wasn't there a fairly recent article in "Woodwork" which describes George Nakashima's experimentation with such plates? I seem to remember one featuring his shop, now operated by his daughter. Will have to go look.

Re: Cambered irons and hollowed stones...

Joel

>THe article in woodwork was by Odate, the Nakishima article was a different article

Re: philosophical question

mike recchione

> "Why do we do better with a well sharpened LN smoother than a contemporary out-of-the-box Stanley?"

I've never owned or used either, which may be why I put a lot less emphasis on the tools. Maybe if I were to try a plane so good that it almost did the work for me, or one so bad that it wouldn't do the job no matter what I did, I'd feel differently. My tools have always been in the somewhere in between range. But I don't do David Charlesworth caliber work, either.

Yet I agree with you, as a teaching technique, taking the extra degree of freedom resulting from inconsistently prepared tools out of the equation is probably valuable.

Re: philosophical question

Greg B

>I've done both. One is pleasurable and lets you think about the work, while the other isn't and inspires a new, but not improved, vocabulary for the tool. Guess which?

Thank you

Greg B

>