bedding angle on a homemade infill

Lyn, this is right up your street!

kenc

>Depends what you want to do with it. If you're looking for a finish smoother why not try something between 50 and 60 degrees?

The Lee Valley low angle jack that I purchased with the 62degree pitch gives an unbelievable finish on nasty grained wood - if you don't mind the planing effort!

ken

Re: bedding angle on a homemade infill

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Ray

Why not try something completely different - instead of a bevel down plane, how about building a bevel up plane instead? The bed would be 12 degrees, which would combine with a LA bevel for end grain cutting on a shooting board, or a HA bevel for smoothing ... the world is your oyster!

Regards from Perth

Derek

My favorite is

Wiley Horne

>47.5. An excellent British convention. If you're planing North American figured hardwoods, it's all the angle you need, plus a little more. Still easy to push, and it's still pretty easy on the blade edge. I also find that 47.5 will plane a perfect surface on some very gnarly tropical wood, although 50 might be a better choice for those and for Aussie timbers (which are murder).

I am not an expert, but my gut feel is that--for an infill--anything higher than 50, or maybe 52.5, is wasted. But we'll wait for Lyn's report on that matter.

Wiley

Re: bedding angle on a homemade infill

ray

>Thanks guys. Lots of good points there. I think the bevel up idea might have to be my next project as I've already done some machining with the blade bevel down in mind. I think this might have to be a game-time decision. :) I work with mostly north american hardwoods, but occasional play around with exotics. It's strange to me that even though some exotics look pretty straight grained, they wind up causing lots of tearout. I'm currently working one some purpleheart and padauk jewelry boxes. They look pretty normal--no weird grain, but i've tried my wooden 55 degree and my LN LA with an effective 50 degree secondary bevel and I still get tearout.

Now, I'm thinking it'll be a toss up between 47 1/2 deg and something greater than 50 deg. I don't quite understand why anything greater than 52 1/2 or 50 deg on an infill is wasted. I guess having too steep of an angle makes the smoother closer to becoming a scraper.

Thanks again.

Re:Damn, there really aren't....

Lyn J. Mangiameli

>going to be any surprises left. For a Spiers #7 style of infill, the 50 degree angle outperformed (using my surface finish criteria) all others both below and above in angle. It was a meaningful difference that was demonstrated in planes from two manucturers (though for the one manufacturer I didn't have any planes above that angle).

Both these planes had wide and pretty thick blades, which may have affected the results.

FWIW, SMT and I decided on a 49 degree angle for the new Loopy (the original was 47.5), though with its adjustable mouth, I can always back bevel if I want to go higher.

Finally, consider that with a steeper bedding angle, it is easier to accommodate an adjuster and/or longer blade and still have room for hand space or a closed tote.

Re: bedding angle on a homemade infill

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>If I understand you correctly, you're running the LN 62 (LA) as 50 degree total angle? (38 iron + 12 bed) - right?

If so, hop it up to at least 55 or 60. I personally just went to 65 total angle since it just seemed to do the very best on most everything. My "regular" iron is at 37 degrees or so, so that's a total angle of 49-50 degrees.

Going to 60+ really makes a big difference.

I know that's not what you were asking in the OP, but I thought I'd mention it.

Cheers,

Greg

Re: tear out VS surface quality

paul womack

>When Steve Knight was testing bedding angles (which in his planes also means effective cutting angles) he found that the ideal angle is the lowest that reduces tearout to zero - which may be quite high :-)

His observation was that lower angles give better finishes, but may tear.

BugBear

Re: tear out VS surface quality

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>I probably should have been more clear...

The OP responded in a second post about tear-out on his LN (I assume 62). I thought the total angle he was using there was relatively low and was just suggesting he go higher.

As far as the "perfect" angle, I've always said - the lowest angle that produces a surface free of tear-out. In practical terms, for me, that is a jump from around 50 degrees to 65. Perhaps sometime later I'll have something in the middle, but my informal tests/experiments generally found that there wasn't much middle ground that worked perfectly. 55-60 certainly helped but still wasn't perfect. So, I've just stuck at 65 for the high angle one, and 50 for my standard.

Cheers,

Greg