I was just curious what thickness shavings I was removing with my planes. I first used a Stanley no. 7 and it was cutting curls about .025" pretty consistently.
Next I took my no. 4 and it was cutting arond .02. These were the thinnest I could get. The no. 7 looks a mess since I never really cleaned it up and that's my next thing to do. It looks like there's varnish on the sole but at least the whole sole is very flat except for the heel.
I've flattened the sole of the no. 4 and it's all cleaned up. Both planes have 25 degree bevels and sharpend to 8000 grit on a water stone.
What do you think about these results? Should I be able to get thinner shavings?
>Two mils (two thousandths of an inch, or .002") is a more reasonable number.
Some anecdotal data:
CJWA had a get-together and BBQ yesterday, at which several competitions were performed. One was to try to get the thinnest shaving from the edge of an 8/4 Atlantic Whitecedar plank. Many different planes with many different blades and many different sharpening methods were used, by several amateur and professional woodworkers. A lot of the results fell in the range you report, some others could only achieve shavings twice that thick, but the best results, about one mil, were obtained by a Lie-Nielsen low angle adjustable mouth block plane with cryogenically treated A-2 blade, with final honing on an 8000 grit waterstone.
So, you are definitely getting there. You might need to go to a better plane, thicker blade, or even a different sharpening method to significantly improve your results, but to what end? Just changing the type of wood you are planing could also change the plane's performance.
I'm totally anal sometimes, and I'm in to thin shavings, but Charlesworth says that a smoothing plane (even a well-tuned inexpensive one) should be able take 1 thou shavings. Less than this is pretty useless, but for a final surface and to reduce tearout (planing against the grain is handy for edge jointing) I go down to around 1 thou. As William said it depends on the wood too. Some woods resist gossamer thin shavings (IME, teak is one). It helps a little to know the thickness of the shavings you are taking to help dimension joints and square up edges, for fine tuning. You don't have to measure all the time; once you've measures a few times on a few woods you can take a pretty educated guess. On pine and maple with my LN blade (a 4 and a 4 1/2) I can get down to around half a thou.
I should explain that the reason I'm doing this is to increase performance of the plane and to make it easier on me when planing. I figured that a thinner cut would result in a better surface and less effort. Make sense?
>I like fine fluffy shavings and enjoy watching them flat to the floor. I usually work with maple and rarely have problems with tearout.
With some experience one can guage how many swipes with the plane it will take to square up an edge or thickness a board. Yes, I have been known to using a digital caliper and swipe 13 times to get the board down to 0.750"
>Dan, Thanks for making me feel normal. I too enjoy using hand tools and feel similar to you. I especially like to see those fluffy light shavings come off the plane.
>If you really want to get anal, you need to analyze measurement methods. A mic is more accurate than a caliper, primarily because of the greater bearing surface on the item to be measured. Further, these instruments need calibrated to ensure accuracy. Finally, you could take a mic and crank on a .002 shaving and have the mic read .001!
Long and the short of it is, is this really necessary? Probably not, but sometimes it is fun just to see the fruits of your labor!
>Hi, my two cents is no, if you are talking about the #7. The 7 is a coarse/medium tool and is not designed for sub thou shavings. That said I was recently at the LN showroom and was able to take 1000 shaving on curly maple with a 7 1/2 low angle which has a hugh mouth opening. According to Chris Schwarz who gave a presentation, the 7 is for coarse/medium work and sole flatness, gossamer shavings are not the goal. More like 6-8,000 shavings with some tearout is the goal. The 5 jack should be used to take up to 12,000 shavings so the work gets done. Only the smoother plane which does the fine work needs to be able to take 1,000 shavings. What I also took away from the presentation is that we are getting away from what the tools were designed to do to the wood and getting hung up on the thin shaving high (which I am a recovering addict). This theme seems to be a recurrent one and I had a AHAA! moment when it was explained this way.
>Hi, my two cents is no, if you are talking about the #7. The 7 is a coarse/medium tool and is not designed for sub thou shavings. That said I was recently at the LN showroom and was able to take 1000 shaving on curly maple with a 7 1/2 low angle which has a hugh mouth opening. According to Chris Schwarz who gave a presentation, the 7 is for coarse/medium work and sole flatness, gossamer shavings are not the goal. More like 6-8,000 shavings with some tearout is the goal. The 5 jack should be used to take up to 12,000 shavings so the work gets done. Only the smoother plane which does the fine work needs to be able to take 1,000 shavings. What I also took away from the presentation is that we are getting away from what the tools were designed to do to the wood and getting hung up on the thin shaving high (which I am a recovering addict). This theme seems to be a recurrent one and I had a AHAA! moment when it was explained this way.
>I talked to David C about the bench bieng flat if you notice in his video he planed the bench flat. He told me it's pretty hard to take super thin shavings without a good flat surface to work on.
>If I run a board over a tailed apprentice before edge jointing by hand, I don't want thick shavings; I want a pretty fine shaving, in the .002 range, to prep the edge for gluing. This is to make the joint the least visible and also to provide better adhesion. Ideally I think if I was jointing entirely by hand I would want a jointer set up to take pretty coarse shavings and then finish the joint with a jointer set up for a finer cut.
>When I was experimenting with shavings I found it fairly easy to get .002 shavings, and I think in reality this is what I use for most of my smoothing work in simple wood. For more difficult woods and to get thinner shavings, the easiest way to improve performance is to upgrade the iron. But without a flat plane bottom your iron won't work quite right, so I suppose you need to make sure the plane is flat first. In my experiments with cherry I ended up wondering what the thinnest possible shaving would be, and guessed around .0003. But to do this you need a way to adjust the plane very positively for both depth of cut and laterally.
>I usually use three planes to take a board from saw cut to final jointing: a Stanley #5 with a cambered iron, a second #5 with a very slightly cambered iron, and a #7 with a slightly cambered iron and a very light cut. The first #5 gets rid of the roughness from the saw cut and gets it close to square. The second #5 takes a lighter cut and refines the squareness of the edge. The #7 takes a very light shaving for a few passes for final prep.
I use a small try square and a straight edge while using the first two planes. Shaving thicknesses are probably 0.010"+ for the first #5, about half that for the second one, and between 0.001" and 0.002" for the #7.
I have found this the most efficient way that I have tried to joint boards directly from a saw cut.
>This has been a great discussion over what may seem anal at first but in actuality has a practical side. I can see taking thicker shavings for all procedures except the final smoothing. Only my LN LA block seems capable of taking 1 thou' shavings. But it's not too practical for large surfaces.
I've got my no.4 tuned up pretty well but want to get a Hock blade for it. This is all toward a goal of minimal or no sanding. Do any of you completely eliminate the sandpaper?
You can get sub-thou shavings from your Stanley planes, or any other plane for that matter, and it is not a great feat. But the fundamentals must be there.
As a suggestion, you might focus on two key things. First, make sure the leading edge of the mouth is sitting hard down on the work. You would make a great investment to get a Grizzly Tools Grade B granite surface plate delivered for probably under $100. You can use this with bluing compound, or with film abrasives, to true your plane soles. It'll change your shop life.
Second suggestion is sharpening. You not only want the blade sharp, but you also want to detail the corners (just a little camber). This will give you a cleaner shaving and surface, and will keep the plane from digging in if the lateral adjust is not perfect.
As to what is 'sharp', everybody uses a little different test, and mine are no better than others', but here's a way to think about it:
Pretty sharp......blade will slice at a right angle into the edge of ordinary paper, at a right angle, with no sawing motion.
Sharp....blade will slice at a right angle into the edge of newsprint, no sawing motion.
Ultrasharp....blade will cut a hair off your arm, 1/4" above the skin.
You can get sub-thou shavings with either pretty sharp or sharp, provided the blade edge is detailed at the corners and the plane's mouth is on the work. Finally, you can get subthou shavings against the grain, provided the chipbreaker is detailed correctly. All of this blade and chipbreaker work does not lend itself to a short discussion, but Mr. Charlesworth has tutorials available which are highly regarded by forum participants.
If you are capable of taking very fine shavings only with your block plane, it sounds to me that the surface you are planing is not flat enough for a plane with a longer sole.
I recall, from several months ago, my response to a query about a sharpening competition, specifically being asked what plane would I (and others) use? My choice was a block plane. The short sole makes itb easier to ride the undulations and is the reason why coffin smoothers traditionally were around 7-1/2" in length.
So the first area to check is the quality of the work you are doing with your jointer.
The other point is that it is the timber that will often dictate the thickness of the shaving, not the plane. Taking very fine shavings (e.g. .001") in some softwoods is a waste of time and energy since you can obtain a smooth finish from a deeper setting (.002+"). Since I work predominantly with hardwood I am after a thinner shaving, but a test cut will quickly determine just how thin this needs to be. Sometimes it needs to be extremely fine as anything more will tear out. At that point you are needing to look at the quality of your plane.
You ask whether one can get away without sanding. Most of the time I do. I do keep sandpaper around. There is no need to be rigid. I also turn to card scrapers. But the very high angle blade settings I use help tremendously in keeping tearout at bay, and my scraper planes and such tend to lie unused for months on end.
>Hi Wiley, That's great information, thanks a lot. I know I can do better with my plane tuning. Heck my no. 7 hasn't even been tuned at all except for the blade. I would be ashamed to show it to anybody. But it can cut at least 2 thou. shavings. Imagine what it could do if tuned!
My #4 has had more care bestowed upon it like flattening the sole. But I'll bet I could do better with your granite plate method. What you said makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks Alan
>Hi Derek, You're probably right about the sub par jointer results. My jointer plane leaves a lot to be desired. I can't believe I'm getting decent results with it in the condition it's in. The sole has some sort of varnish/rust on it which is very hard. How would you recommend cleaning it and flattening the sole of this long plane?
Some months ago I sold my Type 19 #7 after purchasing a Type 11 #7. That Type 19 had been one sweet plane, had a sole as flat as can be, and I could take very, very fine shavings with it when I closed up the mouth. The Type 11 was just awful in the beginning, and I knew that my vanity was going to come at a price - the time put into tuning up the new plane.
Long story cut short - the important element of lapping the sole to make sure that the mouth was cleanly supported by tail and nose really paid off. I also made sure that the blade seated squarely and firmly on the frog, etc, etc. Lapping was done on a metre long 12mm thick sheet of glass supported on 3" of MDF (to ensure that the glass was flat - it is very easy to bend glass over this length), and all this was placed on a flat bench top. To the glass I glued sanding belts, working from 80 upwards (the sole was waayyy out), stopping at 360. I think you probably know this, and the rest, if you have already done your #4. Bottom line - a flat soled jointer = a flat timber surface for smoothing = thinner shavings possible.
>About 25 years ago I was making a small box. After planing I started sanding (probably 220 or 320) and I realized that the sanded side looked worse than the planed side, so I went back and planed over the sanded surface. Since then my planing has improved somewhat and I haven't used any sandpaper. There is nothing special about my planes; sand free work is an attainable goal. If you can make a nice surface with a plane, there is little reason to scuff it up with sandpaper.
>I think perhaps if I had piles of money laying around and wasn't sure what to do with them, I might spend $100 on a granite surface plate and then grind directly on the plate. Being the skinflint type that needs a heavy duty crowbar to open my wallet and two guys to assist, and then usually I find there is nothing in it anyway, I generally use sandpaper on top of my grinding surface so the surface will not wear out of true. I use a 1/2" glass piece on top of a workbench.
