I'm convinced, but how do I tell?
James Watriss
>Just spent 4 hours fettling newangles on different blades for the LN LA jack. I wasn't entirely convinced of the virtues of the plane, since I've been able to tune up old stanleys to perform as well as my other LNs, and I had quite a time this summer playing with Japanese hand planes.
I've been having some issues with some mahogany tearing out. It's plain, straight grain, quartersawn mahogany, but some of it clearly had a rough life, as evidenced by wind checking and its general demeanor from spring to summer to now. (And, true to form, New England weather is still behaving badly. It's summer weather in October. Go figure.)
Well, with a blade ground to 43', for a combined angle of 55, well, that mahogany is behaving very, very well. So I've been convinced. Well, sort of.
In the past few months, my paradigms on planes and plane workings have been consistently challenged. How do I know that some of this isn't due to a LOT of sharpening on my part in recent months? While I was bringing those new blades up to snuff, I was also bringing in a new Hock blade for my old sweetheart #3 plane. And it's planing well on that mahogany, too. So how do I really tell?
That said, the LA is still making better work on some monkeywood mahogany one of my classmates has been working with.
(monkeywood... characterized by a fuzzy feeling when bought rough. Grain is all over the place, providing a surface that is part face grain, part end grain, and part in between and ribbon, all inside of a piece that's about 15 inches long.)