Camber on your blades?

Re: Camber on your blades?

mikew

>Hi Denis,

I camber all of my smoothers. More than eased corners, but less than a continuous radius, not matter how shallow. This applies to my block planes as well.

I camber all but a couple of the other bench planes. I do not camber one jack and one #6. Even my 8s are cambered.

The amount of camber, for me, depends on expected usage. Planes I use for heavier cuts, such as the 8s, have a more pronounced radii. Less as I get to the smoothers.

btw, Charlesworth joints edges with a cambered iron. He uses it in order to make adjustments to any tilt on the edge, rather than making adjustments to just the lateral lever.

For pure shooting, I use a LN #9 and it does not have any camber. Same goes for my joint making planes (shoulder, skew block, rabbet, moving fillester, etc).

Mike

Re: Camber on your blades?

Dan Clermont in Burnaby

>Bonjour Denis,

If your not getting plane tracks your blade is cambered.

I camber the blades on my smoothers ever so slightly to get a shaving 80% the width of the blade. THis will prevent plane tracks jumping out at you when you apply your finish.

On a jointer plane I prefer to use a camber as well and am a firm believer in the David Charlesworth method where you use the cambered blade to remove the high spots on your jointed edge.

jack plane, rough jacks and scrub planes get heavy cambered blades to remove more material.

Rabbet planes, shoulder planes get an uncambered blade.

Just my opinion.

Dan Clermont

Re: Camber on your blades?

Adam Cherubini

>Bonjour Denis!

I think its important to seperate the planes that work wide surfaces smooth and flat from planes that make joints. In my shop all of the planes in the former category (leveling planes)have curved irons. All of the planes from the latter category (fitting planes) get straight irons.

I don't know of any tricks to creating camber. I put the blade edge on to a grinding wheel or coarse stone and shape the edge first, Then produce the bezel as ever before. My smoothing planes have very little curvature, my 28" try plane has more (to do exactly what DC describes), and my jack plane gets the most.

Adam

Re: Camber on your blades?

paul womack

>I don't know of any tricks to creating camber.

I don't know about "tricks", but some of the stages of my jack-to-scrub conversion muight be partially relevant, or at least interesting.

Conversion write up

BugBear

Re: Camber on your blades?

Dean J in MN

>I'm in the same camp as Adam and the gang with cambered blades.

All my surface planes have camber, jack/scrub with the most, smoothers the least.

Joint planes have straight irons, well, at least as straight as I can get them. :)

Cheers

-Dean

Re: Camber on your blades?

Frank D. in Montreal

>Adam,

If I understood your last article in PW correctly, you consider an edge jointer as a fitting plane, thus you don't put a camber on an edge jointer's blade. Is this correct? I ask because until now I haven't put a camber on my edge jointer either, but most people seem to follow DC's method of jointing with a slight camber. In fact I've spoken to some people who have trouble believing that you CAN edge joint easily with a straight blade...

Thanks,

Frank

Re: Camber on your blades? Edge Jointing

Ted Shuck, Centennial, CO

>Edge jointing is entirely possible without cambering the blade. You should get as slightly flatter surface to the edge if the blade is not cambered, but the effect is so slight that it should not matter much.

I used to joint edges with a flat blade, using the lateral adjust to take more from one side or the other of an edge.

I use a slightly cambered blade in my jointer now. I find it much easier to just slide the plane to one side or the other to true the edge. It makes it *much* easier to handle those nasty situations where the edge bevels left at the start and right at the end of a board.

Ted

Re: Camber on your blades?

Tim of Livermore

>"In fact I've spoken to some people who have trouble believing that you CAN edge joint easily with a straight blade... "

I used to believe this also. And found that the slight bit of camber - really negligible - I could reproduce using flat stones was ineffective.

Then I had Steve Knight make me a couple 'real' jointer planes at ~32 inches length with 3 inch wide irons. They edge joint material that is 3/4 inch to 2 1/2 inches pretty much automatically. I think the combination of large mass (more than 10 #'s per plane), long total sole length and longer than typical metal bodied plane nose make for an easier-to-use jointer plane.

I camber smoother irons....if you can call it that. On final polishing stone, I take 3 or 4 passes with extra pressure towards the edge of the iron. 3 or 4 passes on each edge. This normally gives me enough 'camber' to alleviate tracking though I have to leave the smoother set for a very fine cut.

Tim

Re: Camber on your blades?

Dean J in MN

>Frank --

I'm not Adam, but I'll give you my 2 cents.

Really there are two issues here. By edge jointing, do you mean preparing an edge for a glue joint, or do you mean bringing an edge 90 degrees to the face? In my mind they are different steps.

If I want to glue two edges they need not be edge jointed to 90 degrees, it makes no difference what the angles are. I simply match plane the two boards. Clamp them face to face, and use my square ironed joynter (a joint making plane) to make the pair of edges flat in length or as I usually do, sprung a bit. No need to hit 90 degrees, make no difference.

If your goal is to make an edge 90, then I use a try plane which has a cambered edge. Then again, I can't think of very many reasons an edge need be dead on 90 degrees, so this operation is quick as well.

-Dean

Re: Camber on your blades?

Ted Shuck, Centennial, CO

>I have tried this approach of jointing two boards at the same time, based on the theory that as long as they are jointed with the same angle, the angle difference from 90 degrees will cancel when they are joined. I found that if I was out very far from 90 degrees, the boards would slip at the joint when clamping pressure is applied. If you joint this way, you still need to get very close to a 90 degree joint in order for the boards to be glued and joined without them slipping all over the place.

Ted

Re: Camber on your blades?

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>All you need to do to keep them from slipping is put a couple of grains of coarse sand in the middle of the glue. But, I don't do that, as I've never found it necesssary. As the clamps are tightened, bit by bit, and clamp by clamp, and I'm adjusting the boards to bring the surfaces flush, the glue gets tackier and tackier, and the slippage gets less and less. Sometimes, I get to a point that I wish there were a little more slip. Since there is always a bit of warp in the boards, and a bit more induced by the clamps, this technique is needed whether or not the faces are at exactly 90°. So, as Dean recommends, I just don't bother to try to get them at exactly 90°. It's a real waste of time. All that is necessary is flat surfaces, complementary angles, and a little spring. Fiddling during glue-up to get as flush a surface on each joint as possible, however, is a real time saver later on when smoothing the glueed up surface. Just remember which surface is going to be the show surface :^) Whether the inside or bottom surface is flush or smooth, or has matching figure is usually immaterial.

Re: Camber on your blades?

Dean J in MN

>

All that is necessary is flat surfaces, complementary angles, and a little spring.

Yep!

-Dean

Re: Camber on your blades?

Frank D. in Montreal

>Thanks for your thoughts everyone,

I don't have problems edge jointing with a straight blade (by edge jointing I mean preparing edges to be glued together). I had just started to wonder a little about my technique seeing all those who use a cambered blade. I never touch the lateral adjuster once the blade is set square, I just take partial-width (using my fingers as a fence and pressing down with my thumb) and stopped shavings to knock off high sides or corners before running the whole length. Starting with stopped shavings in the middle of the board and gradually getting closer to the ends also helps. I slap two boards together when it's handy also. It only takes me a minute or two per edge.

Re: Camber on your blades?

Norman (Ottawa, Ont.)

>"camber smoother irons....if you can call it that. On final polishing stone, I take 3 or 4 passes with extra pressure towards the edge of the iron. 3 or 4 passes on each edge. This normally gives me enough 'camber' to alleviate tracking though I have to leave the smoother set for a very fine cut. "

This is also the only camber I introduce to a blade, regardless

if it is a smoother, jack, jointer plane. I use all these plane on the face of a board at some point so the miniscule honed camber keeps the plane tracks at bay.

Are we referring to pronounced, ground camber or subtle, honed camber as above?

Norman

Don't forget

Greg B

>the other indispensible technique taught by David Charlesworth. Use a small piece of scrap to see and feel exactly where the iron extends through the mouth.

For instance, take a matchbook-sized bit of scrap in the fingertips of the right hand. Grasp the plane's knob with the left hand and stand it on end on the bench, as if sighting down the sole from the nose to "see" how much blade is protruding (I could never sight satisfactorily). Stroke the scrap across the mouth of the stationary plane and feel exactly where the blade is.

This is the best way to center a cambered iron. I don't use straight irons, but would imagine this technique could be used to do ones best at making a straight iron protrude as evenly as possible.

I use this method before tackling any actual workpiece, wide or narrow.

Cheers,

Greg