Photo shoot follies [long]
Lyn J. Mangiameli
>Spent the entire afternoon with a FWW editor/photographer in my garage taking photos of planes, and how I use them to go with an article they asked me to write on adjusting smoothing planes. Don't know what of any of it, text or photos, that will survive into print, but when looking back, the experience was disheartening or hilarious depending on my mood.
First off, they shoot what is of interest to them, and not what is necessarily of interest to me. So, probably no photos of either SMT plane will make it, and no photo of the historically interesting and virtually unique Auburn plane (on loan from SMT and a plane he regularly uses) which a hundred years ago offered not only an adjustable mouth but adjustable bedding angle. Also no Knight or Shepherd planes made it into the mix, which I was sad to see left out.
The night before, I prepared some woods I thought would be interesting, a gorgeous large chunk of endgrain Macassar ebony for one. It took me three hours to flatten and smooth it with low angle planes. Wouldn't want to do that one everyday, if you think cutting an engrain Maple cutting board is tough (at least I do), its nothing compared to very old dry Macassar Ebony. There was also a large piece of Thuya burl that took over an hour to carefully flatten but also looked gorgeous as it awaited final smoothing, but come the photo shoot, a plane blade never ended up touching it.
Even before the shooting began, I was politely asked if I could change into a lighter T-shirt for "better exposure" in the photos. Now was it really because black would be hard to shoot against ( but I'm thinking they say that black makes you look slimmer) or was it the "Armed with Pride-NRA" logo emblazed-discreetly-on the front? So I compliantly return with a nice sedate brown top. "Hey, how 'bout waiting a moment so I can do some overhead barbell presses to pump up my triceps and delts."
We started out with some cocobolo for the shoot. Took a moderate sized board and flattened it against the grain with the LV LA Jack at 50 degrees. Flattened quick and easy, with little tearout. Then the smoothing came along. Editor wondered why I reversed the board ("'cause I planed it against the grain--wanted a bit more contrast to show the effects of the smoothers"). Cocobolo planed up nice. Lots of planes used on this one, L-N 4.5 with 50 (FWW wanted lots of L-N shots), new LV LABU super smoother at 50 and then 64 (FWW: "but I thought you said you prefered 63..."), L-N LA Smoother at 37 (an expected disaster that was no fault of the plane, but only the bevel angle), my desperate attempts to get the SMT's into the pics, and the wonderful little 63 degree angle Mujingfang.
There's not much room in my shop, and there's really no room when you add another body and two light umbrellas. And don't let me forget to mention that these light umbrellas focus a lot of heat, as well as light, right onto the subject (me). Oh, and did I say that it was the hottest time of the hottest day of the year, and my garage is not air conditioned. If I look like I was sweating it in the eventually photos, it's cause I was, and it had noting to do with nervousness.
Anyway, the tight quarters and limited angles (my bench is against a wall) made it hard to get nice shots of the planes (FWW: "your hands are still in the way"). So here I am trying to show good planing form, and he tells me to grab the plane from some ridiculous angle so the plane will show ("but you don't preserve high effective cutting angle when you angle a plane"). So really folks, I don't actually use my fingertips to push a 64 degree effective cutting angle plane down the length of a cocobolo board. ("and hey, must you keep including my belly as backdrop for the planing shots").
Oh, and there are a bunch of nice serious photos of a plane held high against the light as I adjust the mouth (LV) or frog (L-N, of course). (FWW: "No, I don't need for you to show us how to adjust THAT" [dissing my one of a kind SMT infill with the $700 extra cost for a screw adjustable mouth]). And again, FWW: "can we have a nice realistic photo of you adjusting the frog but please keep your hands out of the way while you do it" and " you really paid WHAT for that L-N screwdriver just so you could do THAT."
The cocobolo was the highlight. Because I had spent so much time on the M.Ebony and Thuya, I hadn't gotten any of the other boards flattened before hand. But we're running late already (for what turned out to be over 5 hours of photos) and no time to flatten now. I'm told we must have pics of the LA planes on some spalted wood. Now I had a great piece of spalted maple, it had some dense areas, and some great spalting, but some of the areas between the black margins were getting pretty rotten. The original power planing of this board had left some severe tear out, and the basic board is both cupped and twisted. Now you have any idea how hard it is to get a good shaving from a smoothing plane on an unflattened board that is half rotten? It was not a pretty picture. None of the planes were really cooperating, nor should they have. And by now, my body is starting to remind me that it's still not very healthy yet. To no one's great surprise, the board got uglier, the shavings got thicker, and the whole thing was largely a mess. Really my fault, I should have said that only by doing things right would we get decent surfaces, but I let the emphasis be on getting a lot of planes into the photos, rather than preparing the board and planes properly. So a lot planes tortured this board, including at the editor's request, a L-N Low Angle block plane, and a L-N #140 (yah, low angles work great on spalted wood, but skewed blades are usually a disaster, and this was no exception).
The editor wanted examples of failure types. So out came a piece of Ash with prominent grain and a L-N chisel plane (my idea this time) was set to enter against the grain. It digs in immediately and continues to dive as I pound it in with the heel of my hand. Dramatic example, just "not very real world, huh."
Now the request is for fibers being pulled up behind the edge. Now think about this, how am I going to show individual fibers in the act of being pulled up behind a blade edge? X-ray vision with magnification?? I've let the editor down again. So out comes the magnifiers and I show him the shape of tear out that usually occurs behind the blade, and out comes the foam rubber and knife blade example of how this occurs. I don't think either of us were believers after that, though he graciously acted like he was.
I had been trying to avoid it all along, but the editor restated a firm request for me to plane some soft, but not spalted, wood. Now I don't basically hate low density, low figured woods, but unless it's a 2x4 it doesn't tend to get space in my shop. But I must have some, somewhere. So up the ladder into the rafters I go (entering the hottest part of the already hot garage) and back I come with an ugly piece of greenish gray poplar. Not only does the editor want to see me plane it, but he wants me to demonstrate skewing a Bevel Down plane. To make matters, worse, this seem's like a good time to include another L-N plane, " you got a #4." Indeed I do, a aesthetic favorite of mine, the bronze #4. So I twist the plane at an angle and start going sideways. I get furrows instead. Ah, no crown to this blade, its been prepared as straight across as can be (I don't know why, but there was probably a reason when I last used it). So now the planing "expert" looks like he doesn't know a plane from a back hoe. And you know what, I'm so hot and tired and dehydrated and brain dead that I didn't, nor even particularly care. You won't believe this, and I don't believe it now (and I should never admit to it having even occurred)--we both concur, lets just turn over the board to its unplaned/untortured side and stick a shaving in the mouth and just demonstrate how a skewed plane is held. It sounded like a bright idea at the time, but I've got to make sure that photo never gets used.
Somewhere in here were a few more examples of how to make shavings the thickness of formica. I don't care anymore, I just want to keep things moving along and get this thing over with---and if it won't end, maybe we could talk about something else "hey, what do you want to know about woodturning hollowing tools--nothing-- darn, OK, I'll see if I can make another smoother work like a scrub plane."
On to showing how a blade is backbeveled. Ah, sharpening, I can't screw this up, can I? Actually, I didn't, but you know how visually uninteresting it is to demonstrate apply a back bevel? I quickly set up the new Lee Valley honing guide, (proving that it truly makes backbeveling a fool proof process), take about 4 passes on an 8000 stone and it's done (FWW: "That's it" Me: Yep, that's it.").
And then there were the obligatory "smile" shots, (FWW: "Oh, let's take just one more, I still don't have you smiling.") I'm sure there were a many other low points, but memory (or more properly its absence) is already being kind to me.
Now actually the FWW editor was a very nice guy. He brought along an extremely pretty St. James plane he had made and I put the blade in order and made up a brass shim he could use to close up the mouth. He took my wife and me out to dinner afterwards and a rehydrated and now cooler pair could laugh about the planing disasters (FWW: " I would have wondered you were a fraud, but you have no idea some of the things I've seen go wrong when I've been with some professional's.") and tell tales of our encounters with other woodworking luminaries. This guy is an Oxford grad and makes more furniture than some full time professionals.
It should be interesting to see if a silk purse can be made from this sow's ear (the photo shoot) or if much of my prose shall survive the editing process. If he can, I suspect my FWW editor won't get paid nearly enough for his rehabilitative capabilities. Of course with some of the photos he now has of me, he could probably supplement his pay with a little hush money.