Jointing

Re: Jointing

Ted Owen, Pittsburgh

>Surprising how a jointer still tends to produce a slight crown. Fortunately, it's real easy to eliminate.

If I understand correctly, your crown is from end to end, right? What you want is the opposite, a slight concavity. To achieve it, just take a couple short swipes in the middle, then a couple more a little longer. Then try to take one final swipe from end to end completely.

Best, Ted

Re: Jointing

Dan Donaldson

>Someone that knows more than me will probably chime in, but my guess is that the board is already crowned and the ratio of the plane length to the board length is not enough to get it out. When this happens to me, I take some shavings from just the center of the board so that, if anything, it is just slightly concave, then do it full length. I can usually get rid of the crowning by doing this.

Re: Jointing

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Ted and Dan are right. You will catch on really quick if you watch and listen to a pro like Adam do it, even if he uses a wooden jointer.

Another technique that helps to minimize a crown is to start the cut with downward pressure on the knob only and end the cut with downward pressure on the tote only.

In fact, you want to leave just a little concavity in the middle, to form a spring joint, so once you get one continuous shaving, stop and check the joint. If it's not sprung, take an extra couple of shavings from the center before extending your stroke towards both ends. If you still can't get enough off the center to make a spring joint, because the plane is too long in relation to the length of the board, make the plane a bit shorter by skewing it, so the front and back ends are hanging off opposite sides of the board.

Re: Jointing

Dale Lenz-Tahlequah, OK

>As a 20+ year vet of hand planing, I still have bad days, not as often as years ago, : ' >. I'd go with the advise Dan and Ted gave you. Williams method has some valid merit but since you are a beginner, keep it simple. After you have master straight edge jointing, then you can practice the sprung joint.

Enjoy you new plane,

Dale

Re: Jointing

Michael Recchione

>I think the information is in the previous responses, but just to make it clear for your immediate problem: To fix the crowning you have in these boards, start from a couple of inches from the center of the board on the end closer to you and take a swipe with the plane, going only to about the same distance from the center on the other side. Repeat this until the plane won't take a shaving. (That means the crown is out of the centermost bit). Take the next swipe starting an inch or two closer to your end and going the same distance past the center. Repeat the previous drill, continuing to plane that central section until the plane won't take a shaving. The next set of swipes will start a little closer to you and go about the same distance past the center. Keep checking with a straight edge (doesn't have to be a Starrett - just anything that is basically straight) until you get rid of the crown altogether.

In general (and I learned this from Adam), this is the best way to edge joint boards - start in the middle and work your way out to the ends. If you want a sprung edge, you take a few extra swipes in the middle AFTER you get the board straight.

Hope this helps.

- Mike

Re: Jointing

Adam Cherubini

>I actually don't use a straight edge. I do exactly what Mike has described except: After you plane the hollow in as Mike has described, I either leave it like that and clamp up the spring, or if I want a truly straight edge, I take full length passes, listening to the plane cutting the end (high spots) sip.....sip. Next pass, sssip...ssip. Next pass ssssssssip.ssssssssip. Then one more pass sssssssssssssp. Done. That board will be straight (or straight enough for me.

I used to do this quickly. So those strokes would be bang bang bang, as fast as I could go. The whole process would be just a few minutes. But Paul lent me some Rob Cosman videos so now I lift the plane after every stroke and dramatically fling out the shavings, admiring the surface before the next masterful stroke. It takes longer, but the sound of applause in my head after every stroke has made my woodworking much more enjoyable!

Adam

woodworking diva

Re: Jointing

Dean J in MN

>Someone slipping something good into Adam's coffee?

He has sound advise, that being -- listen to your plane. It speaks!

-Dean

Re: Jointing

William Claspy in Cleveland

>woodworking diva

Guy gets a couple of costume photos in a magazine and he goes all Paris Hilton on us.

:-)

Bill

Re: Jointing

Paul Kierstead

>Well, to be fair Adam, a novice watching you *at full speed* would probably not learn much. Teaching technique is meant to instill the principles, not necessarily do everything as you would for yourself. It is then upto the student to find their own methods from basic principles. Perhaps where some go wrong is a dogmatic following of some teacher/master/whatever.

Now I fully expect you know all this, but it just struck me as excessively harsh.

Re: Jointing

Dan Clermont in Burnaby

>Do what Ted and Dan recommended. If you are comfortable with the results try the spring joint method Willian recommends. It only take a couple of extra swipes.

Hope that helps

Dan CLermont

Re: Jointing

GolfSteve in Calgary

>Adam, I've seen Rob work with a plane and even if Rob did pull every shaving out of the throat on every stroke, I'm sure he would be faster than both you and I working together. He's good, and he's very fast.

What you're describing is when Rob is taking the final few passes, trying to get a perfect finish straight from the plane, often on a difficult wood such as birdseye maple. I know you accept tearout and flaws as signs of "handtool work", but Rob doesn't. He's aiming for a perfect suface - no tearout and no plane tracks. One of the ways you monitor your planing progress is by observing the shavings - are they full width and tapering to nothing on both sides? He's also got his plane mouth set so fine (actually unbelievably fine), than if you didn't keep the throat clear, you might risk clogging up the mouth.

When Rob is roughing out a board, you can bet he works much faster than when he's taking the final 1000ths of an inch to get a perfect surface.

In any case, it's fun to pull the angel hair shavings out of the throat and fling them into the air - if you can! When the shavings get really fine, they want to stick to you instead of succumbing to the force of gravity :)

Back to the subject of jointing...one thing I do when approaching a rough board is to determine if the edge is convex to start with. It's hard, even with proper planing technique, to straighten a convex edge. On the other hand, with a concave edge the jointer naturally bridges the gaps and you easily end up with a straight edge. With a convex edge, the plane tends to follow the hump instead of straightening it out.

So, if my board starts with a convex edge, I'll hog out the hump until the edge is slightly concave. Then I'll set the plane for a fine shaving and take five our six swipes until I'm getting nice full width, full length shavings.

I guess I disagree

Adam Cherubini

>First, it was just a joke. I've seen two R.C. dvd's and liked them both. I learned allot watching them and I'm really glad he was willing to make them. Insofar as you think I was harsh, I'm happy to apologize for that.

To a large extent, your reaction to the way I wrote it makes sense to me, and I agree with any sense of chastizing me over it. So the sentiment I agree with, but (and not that it matters) I don't agree with anything else, and you raise several excellent points:

Well, to be fair Adam, a novice watching you *at full speed* would probably not learn much.

If he learned that you can be productive with hand tools, I think that would be allot. And this is a message I don't see anywhere. And i don't think its because people just aren't interested in it.

Wherever I look, I see the fussy whisper shavings and starret squares. I don't see gobs of products. Fussiness is important but so is productivity. If you were convinced you could build a nice chest in a weekend with flea market tools, you might be willing to seek out the techniques you need. Its a different approach I grant you.

Teaching technique is meant to instill the principles, not necessarily do everything as you would for yourself. It is then upto the student to find their own methods from basic principles. Perhaps where some go wrong is a dogmatic following of some teacher/master/whatever.

I wish I had a master to give me tools and techniques that worked. I'd love to follow blindly. I don't want to sort thru the market place of ideas. I just want to know how to hold and use a hand saw. Is that too much to ask? I don't want to hear the sound of my planes gliding through the wood, or smell the smells of freshly sawn mahogany. I want the chest finished and in my bedroom and I want it to look like I just stole it from the art museum. Is that too much to ask?

So the point I'm trying to make (and I don't think I'm doing a good job)is that there is a values thing here. I want folks to know that some of the discussions we have make stuff sound more complicated than it is in practice. This is not to diminish the conversation, but to add a dimension little discussed. You can't spend an hour straightening an edge or planing the side of a carcass and expect to build more than a few things in your lifetime. Moreover, if that's how long it takes you, you may be missing some trick or technique. Okay? Anyway, that was what I was getting at.

Adam

Sorry for the long argumentative post. Your point is well taken. I don't need to disparage Rob Cosman, to make my point. He was just a convenient tethered goat.

Re: Jointing

Stephen Kirk in Quakertown PA

>I must say I agree with Adam here. I'm still relatively new, but I enjoy the handtool work. However, I was a little disappointed when it seemed I would have to spend hours per week just on sharpening, and I'd have to purchase lots of very expensive sharpening equipment and practice for years before I could something even partially decent. But then I decided to just try anyway - you don't get anywhere by worrying all day long. So, my technique may not be great, maybe my planes and chisels aren't as sharp or square or flat or microbeveled as they could be, but they cut wood, produce an OK shaving, and leave a decent surface. I don't want tearout, so if I reach a point where it's problem, I'll probably spend some extra time making sure it doesn't happen.

To help better my skills, I'm taking Paul Anthony's class on tuning and using handplanes tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

Right now I do admire my planing on every pass, but that's because it's such a novel thing to me.

Re: Jointing

Dan Clermont in Burnaby

>Adam.

Hate to tell ya but I remove each shaving from the mouth of my plane when edge jointing and final smoothing as well. Caught myself doing it on my last project. I need to know where the shavings are coming from and if I am edge jointing a board I know where my high spots are and monitor each individual shaving to ensure I am removing the high spots and not the low spots.

When it comes to final smoothing I like to monitor the width of the shaving and where it is coming from as well. A mouth full of shavings doesn't tell me whether or not I am getting full length shavinfs on my board or still have high or low spots. Also find if I start slapping the plane down and frantically attempt to smooth fine shavings get stuck underneath the sole

I ain't Rob Cosman and probably never will be but I try hard to do a progessional job on my projects

Re: Jointing

Dean J in MN

>

So, if my board starts with a convex edge, I'll hog out the hump until the edge is slightly concave. Then I'll set the plane for a fine shaving and take five our six swipes until I'm getting nice full width, full length shavings.

And this hogging is real fast with a nice sharp hatchet.

-Dean

Re: We agree much more then it would appear

Paul Kierstead

>In fact, I mostly agree with you in principle, and strongly agree w.r.t. fussiness. It was indeed the tethered goat that I caught a little. Actually, Rob does deserve a little rough treatment when it comes to flattening the faces of boards. I was truly horrified at the level of fussiness. But I still learned something from it in terms of technique, I just thought he was quite mad at the extent he took it.

Now lets see just a little of what I have learned from Mr. Cherubini:

- All sides of a box do not need to be perfectly the same width.

- All faces of a board do not have to be perfectly finished

- Edges do not have to be perfectly square in many, many cases. This is one of your greatest lessons. People spend so much time trying to nail that 90 degree edge when it didn't matter anyway.

*These* things save huge amounts of times; don't be trying to do with handtools the same techniques as powertools. You have these things so dead on and have saved me personally many many hours of my time and -- most important to me -- made using hand-tools a more 'organic' experience (if I may use an awful cliche), and thus more enjoyable.

Let a person joint a hundred boards and they will learn to be fast. But they may never learn that they didn't have to perfectly joint them in the first place, especially if they read endless articles about aligning your TS to 0.001", etc.

And lets not even get started on sensible techniques which let you 'get away' with more, like beading board edges to cover imperfections. These techniques have been used for 100's of years yet seem forgotten in a decade.

I am meandering; in short, I actually agree strongly that people worry far too much microprecision and not nearly enough about making something. I would love to hear the voice of reason more often.

And yes, it is too much To Ask :)

PK

Oh good!

Adam Cherubini

>I'm glad you get my point. For the record, I don't regard mine as "the voice of reason" only a point of view not often ennuciated. And I still like Rob Cosman. But his is just one point of view too!

Adam

Re: Jointing

Alice Frampton, UK

>Dan, if you're not afraid to "come out", neither am I. What's happening at the mouth of the plane tells me a lot, and I can't see zip if there are a load of shavings in the way. No, I don't always do it, but for jointing with a cambered blade I find it very helpful. It doesn't take any extra time; I just whip out the shaving as I take the plane back to the beginning of the stroke. Sound isn't as much use to me as a rule, as I tend to plug myself into a iPod more often than not.

The rumour that I fling the shavings up in the air and laugh hysterically as they float slowly down to the floor simply isn't true.

Not every time anyway...

As Steve says a little higher up the thread; it all depends what you want from the end result I suppose.

Cheers, Alf

training wheels

mike recchione

>I learned the lesson well, Master. My plane is all the straight edge I need to do this job. But sometimes a fellow just needs to inch up to the point where he can really just trust The Force and do without the straightedges, digital calipers, micro-adjusting wheel marking guages, laser-equipped dodads, etc. Eventually, after you've edge jointed a few boards, you realize that checking with the straightedge doesn't add value, wastes time and effort, and you stop doing it. But sometimes you just need to learn with some training wheels. :-)

- Mike

P.S. I don't believe a word of this. I put training wheels on my older son's bicycle, and he became so dependent on them that it took him two years to learn to ride without them. I skipped the training wheels for my younger son and he was riding a two-wheeler in less than 15 minutes. In fact, the only thing that pushed my older son into losing the training wheels was seeing his little brother riding without them, so it became a macho pride thing.

Skip the straightedge. Trust your plane, your eyes and your hands.

P.P.S. If all you're doing is lifting the plane, clearing shavings and admiring the surface between strokes, you're still missing the point. Don't you remove the iron from the plane after each stroke, soak it in organic solvents to remove any oils that may have stuck to it since the last stroke, and take it up to 40,000,000 grit on your waterstones, (starting at 50 and increasing by 10 grit with each iteration, always checking the edge with your electron microscope) before muttering a prayer of thanksgiving to the appropriate woodworking deities in Japanese before moving on to the next stroke? You should try it - I find it really improves my productivity in the shop!

I'm a closet shaving clearer too

Frank D. in Montreal

>I don't clear shavings all the time, but as other shaving clearers have mentioned, shavings can give you useful feedback which actually help you do the job at hand. How do I know that my board is jointed along the length? I look at the shaving and if there are any holes or missing portions it means that there are still some depressions along the edge (and I can tell axactly where they are too). How do I know when I've finished jointing? If it's not a critical dimension and all I need is flat, a full shaving lets me know I can stop right there. IF I'm correcting a slanted edge, the first full-width shaving also tells me there's no more crown left along the width. Etc. The main point is that it doesn't take time to clear shavings. Us shaving clearers usually don't PUT the shaving down, nor do we actually stop to take them out.

Actually, so am I

mike recchione

>But only when I'm working with a really fine mouth on the plane. The mouth clogs up if you don't clear them, which is really annoying. And I do look at them to make sure about the width, etc, when I'm edge jointing. I don't usually bother otherwise.

You're right, I'm wrong

Adam Cherubini

>I do check plane shavings. Paul�s post is about match planning with a jointer. I think you need that jointer to cut full width on both boards. Sometimes the jointer cuts a full width shaving on only one of the boards. Since you�re probably not going to be able to hear the difference, you have to look at the shaving.

a bit more on the subject of match planing...

And if you really want to know, I�ve struggled with test fitting then realigning those boards in the vise/face of the bench. If the boards are different widths, you�ll have to clamp them together at least. At that, the clamps may slip during the planing, making the process really frustrating. In the past, I have screwed or dowelled the two boards together (and sawn off the bitter ends where the holes were later).

When straightening a single board�s edge, I tend to listen, but I do look at the ribbon of wood stream from the plane�s mouth to see if its full width or not. But you can�t be too fussy about this since you only get a few swipes to �fix� an area (after you�ve gotten full length shavings) before the snipe comes back. So in this case, you have no choice but go fast. Tease out one spot too much and you�ll have to start over.

I want to argue with the fussiness (and I want to be funny) but not at the expense of (what I consider to be) careful joinery. The joints in my dining room table are absolutely invisible (8� long 6/4 walnut) and they probably took longer than I�d like to admit. It may have been 15-20 minutes from a rough hand saw operation to clamps. And I remember the rip alone talking a good 20 minutes, so that was pretty hard work. I think ripping is comparable to running.

So just to eliminate confusion:

I look at shavings to ensure I have full cuts when I need them to be so. But I tend not to clear a plane's throat as a matter of course unless the plane requires this to function(I have this bead plane...)

This thread was about match planing which I do with a straight bladed jointer plane. Straightening or squaring an edge with a try plane is the same but different.

There. That ought to clear things up.

Adam

Re: production

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>Good day, Adam. I laughed out loud at your initial post. Now after reading this response, I would offer my expertise at assisting you in becoming productive. If you drop by some afternoon we can rip out a chest of drawers on the table saw, perhaps out of melamine covered particle board, and we'll fire up the air compressor and pull out the stapler and put some drawers in it. I am positive it could be built in a couple hours.

Just so there is no misunderstanding, the point where I am aiming my inexpert literary inaptitude is that we are after more than just production when we are working wood for a hobby.

I find myself in situations more often every week where a hand tool would take about the same amount of time and would also be more fun, but because I am not used to using it or it isn't sharp, I end up just flipping the switch instead and churning through a few more electrons.

Re: production

Steve Kubien

>I, unfortunately, find myself in similar situations all of the time. Sometimes time/speed is important and I am often quicker with my power tools. I do not enjoy the work as much but with my lack of handtool skill, it is a necessary evil (MHO). When time permits, I prefer to go slower and hone my abilities with handtools. I would like to see the day when I can rid myself of my electron-eaters, but I fear it is a long way off.

Regards,

Steve Kubien

P.S. I always read Adam's posts with an open mind, seeing as though he possesses a similar sense of humour as me....warped and twisted.