Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>A couple of suggestions: First, get the LV MKII honing guide. It will make sure the bevel is square, and you will waste a lot less time getting the bevel angle set consistently, thus wasting a lot less metal and honing time.

You have to make sure the mouth opening and blade depth are the the same all the way across. Otherwise, you will clog the mouth on the tight side or get tearout on the open side. IMHO, cambered blades on go-to smoothers don't make much sense for the same reasons. They clog in the middle, or they tear out on both sides, or you have to significantly increase the cutting angle.

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>Hi Felix

I planed Cherry in my BUS review at a 45 degree cutting angle (33 degree bevel) and did not get tearout. The Stanley #4 1/2 (OK, it was highly tuned and used a 1/8" Clifton blade and Cap Iron) also had no difficulty. It was too easy to test the planes on. You should not be getting tearout either.

Is your blade sharp enough? Probably not - not if you are only going as far as 4000 waterstone. I suggest 6000 as a minimum. Still, I don't think that this is the whole story.

You also wrote, "mouth was not completely parallel to the edge of the blade". I also don't see that as the culprit - either the blade was not honed perfectly square, or the bed is slightly out (rare but it can happen).

You say that the plane's sole is out by "maybe 0.005"-0.007"", with high points at opposing ends of the plane. In other words, the mouth is lower than those areas. If this is the case, then the mouth is unsupported and you are likely to experience tearout. Consider than a minimum decent shaving from a smoothing plane is about .002" and, preferably .001" is achieved. (I was getting under .0005" in my review). Your plane would be impossible to plane flat to this level of performance.

Either you must lap the sole of the plane, or you must return it to LV. I'd do the latter - it is rare to get a less-than-perfect LV. Perhaps they have a special trophy shelf for the few.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Can we see these tear outs?

Ed Snow

>It might be possible that there just are small tearouts that you have to hit with some 150 then 220. This happens. It says nothing about your ability to use the plane.

There are many explanations that are not related to your plane. Your stock may be from the outside of the tree making it very stringy and straight, there could be miniscule shake in the stock, there could be figure, you never know.

Did I say that?!

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>You said, the mouth is out by "maybe 0.005"-0.007"", and I said "Your plane would be impossible to plane flat to this level of performance". Good grief, that was a bit enthusiastic.

What I meant to say was that would likely prevent the plane reaching its full potential (tearout-free planing), but .005" (albeit the thickness of a moderate shaving) is not the end of the world.

Probably your tearout is due to the collective effects of the three areas I named earlier.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

Brad in Ottawa

>How accurate is a 12" Starret combination square for use as a straight edge?

Although it is a Starret, a straight edge or even better a surface plate will provide more precision when measuring your sole for flatness.

Like Ed said... it could be a multitude of factors not related to the plane, especially with Cherry.

Brad

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

ThomD

>What I do to remove skew is scribe a square line on the edge, and grind back to that line either by hand or power. I do this with the blade square to the device so that it will be blunted on the high side, then I regrind the bevel. The whole process might take a minute to do, on the outside, with light power tools. I would not try to use a jig to grind the out of squareness out, it can be done, but it is laborius and essentially and eyeball exercise anyway, so why not use your EBs to do it right.

In fact a perfectly square blade could cause tearout since the edges aren't curved back. However those tracks are pretty obvious, and would not exist if you were planing narrow enough stock.

I agree that it is impossible to guarantee that tearout won't occur. One technique you might try is to moisten the wood, no more water than is required to spread the least amount over the surface, then take a shaving, it should all come up with one pass. This technique goes right to the source of the likely problem, bad wood.

There are any number of books that describe the evolution of tools to this day. One of the major governing features for hand tool design has been the change in the quality of wood. I tended to think of this as an issue only in current days, but it was critical throughout the last 2000 years also.

My collective responce

Felix B.

>Ok, I'll answer what I can now.

To William:

LV MKII honing guide is next on the list. I was not planning on getting it for awhile, but sounds that it's the way to go if I want to do it right.

To Derek:

Because of your excellent review that I read twice I am not giving up and hope to find the solution to achieve a tear-free results! I must say that I was never able to get tear-free finish on cherry regardless how sharp I got my Hock blade for Stanley 4.5 (also tuned up to the best of MY knowledge)... I was able to get it pretty small but not completely eliminated.

You also recommend using higher grit stones (>4000). Well, I won't dispute it, but I'll leave it as a last resort, after I workout other issues.

To Ed (can we see the tear-outs?):

I'll try to post a picture of the tear-outs tonight.

To Brad (How accurate is a 12" Starret combination square for use as a straight edge?):

Well, it's Starret, the best of measuring tools I got. I suppose I can put it flat on the marble plate and check the light is passing through between the plate and the soul of the plane? But I am pretty confident the Starret is OK. I'll post a picture of it tonight, too.

To ThomD:

I do agree that honing it by hand should be just fine since others do it. Plus, the blade being as thick as it is, should provide with plenty of support for honing by hand. I'll try to square it by hand first.

Moisten the wood - that's a great idea. I do that occasionally as surface prep for the planer but never thought about doing it for the hand plane... I'll give it a shot.

I'll post the pictures tonight; may be they will point something obvious I am missing or overlooking? Thanks guys, I truly appreciate the collective input!

Felix

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>Several notes.

My plane has the "non-square" mouth in relation to the iron. (I generally use the short-cut of moving the mouth very close to the iron and then adjusting (carefully) the iron so it's square.)

However on the smoother I have, I notice that when I did this, the iron wasn't really square to the sole.

Here's what may be related to the issue. If the bed - which is set at 12 degrees, isn't exactly flat (left to right) in relation to the sole, it will take just a few or less thousandths to put the mouth slightly out of square. This will cause the "toe" to also have skew in relation to the bed and thus the iron. (I am also working on a post/review on this topic. I think this is one of the more interesting issues, and probably explains why the 62 and 164 we're very popular. The tolerances were very tight to produce a great plane, and I suspect it was tough to do this in an age of non CNC at a reasonable price.)

You could fix this by regrinding the toe to match the bed skew. But, IMHO and initial testing, this simply isn't going to be much of an issue.

I have a long post I'm working on in relation to mouth size and tear-out and frankly, I don't believe that a small mouth stops the conditions that cause tear-out. It simply reduces the length of the tear-out.

I think you may need a higher angle or a better hone on the iron.

Here's a preview of the post that's coming - the part that relevent.

---



I recently decided to revisit the cut angle thing. I took a skip planed board and prepped it to perfection using the 53's I normally use for this stuff. (That's a ~53 degree iron, bedded at 12 degrees for a total cut angle of about 65 degrees)

I had sharpened the 53 deg iron in the middle. It had made 20-30 light to medium cut passes down the board already.

Then I went in and sharpened the 39-40 degree iron using the same method. [Duosharp (diamond) 300 grit, 1200 grit (9 micron) and 8000 norton.] (51-52 degrees total cut angle.)

Then I closed the mouth down super small. I took the lightest cut possible and made a pass down the sapwood section. I could immediately feel the tear-out happening. Made 3-4 passes adjacent to each other. Each pass produced tear out where high figure was. (The board I was working went from sapwood with lots of figure on one side to heart-wood and virtually no figure on the other.)

Took the 53 degree iron and dropped it into the smoother and opened the mouth at least 3 times as open. I took a much heavier cut too. Even with the additional 20-30 passes on the iron, it still removed all the tear-out in single pass over each section

So, if you're still getting tear-out. Try several things.

First: Reverse the direction on the work. I expect you've done this, but try it - carefully and gently.

Second: Move up in angle. I have my high angle set at 65 degrees total angle. From what I've heard from Lyn and Derek, almost nothing will require more angle. (53 degree bevel on the iron + 12 bed = 65 total)

Third. Make sure the iron is really sharp. On the most delecate stuff it does lose it's sharpness quickly and then will leave tear-out.

Fourth: Make sure it's actually causing tear-out, and that you're not just going over, but not removing the old tear-out. Often tear out can be a lot deeper than one imagines and while you think you're still causing it, it's just that you've not gotten it all out yet.

Fifth: Don't stress about mouth size too much. Get it small - that will help so you don't flex things and take too heavy of a cut, but with the proper angle, tear out shouldn't exist with any reasonable mouth size.

Sixth: Very light cuts. It sounds like you're already doing this, but thought I'd repeat it. (Make sure the iron is parallel to the sole of the plane, not the toe!)

Hope that helps.

More if I get a chance later.

Cheers,

Greg

Typo correction

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>and probably explains why the 62 and 164 we're [not] very popular.

Wait, wait, maybe I'm missing

Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA

>something that has been said, but this sounds like a very simple lateral adjust matter. Yeah, I must have missed something. But just check whether a simple lateral adjust will even the blade's attack.

BTW, you don't need a Starrett square to check lateral adjust. Get a piece of wood in the vise, and set the lateral adjust so that you're getting the same thickness shaving off right and left side of the blade. At that point, it should take a full width shaving off the work.

Wiley

That's right, I did not mention

Felix B.

>that I did make necessary lateral adjustments to insure that shaving from the left side are the same as shaving from the right side.

You did not miss anything, but I skipped this step as "the most obvious before trying anything else" :)

That's how I asked myself: if the blade is adjusted properly (left-to-tight), why is the mouth opening is larger on one side? That's when i got the Starret out...

Good catch :)

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I guess I better make a couple of clarifications on the advise I gave above, based on what you said. First, the sharpening jig is only to keep the bevel square, not to get it square if it is way out. I agree, your method is the way to bring it back to square. Second, when I suggest not putting camber on a smoothing blade, I do not recommend leaving the corners sharp. They have to be relieved. Tracks are just about as bad to fix as tearout. At the stone, a couple strokes with pressure right on each corner is usually enough to back the corners up above the sole, especially if you are shooting for sub-.001 shavings. The shape you are looking for is the Mona Lisa smile, not the Chesire Cat smile :^)

Felix, I went back and checked

Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA

>your original post, and a lightbulb went on. Starrett says that the mouth on your plane is slightly in the air. Bear in mind that, as my wife says, 'light is little', and it doesn't take much of a gap to let some through. The plane is probably still within spec, it's just that if the allowable tolerance is occurring at the front of the mouth, you'll want to correct it.

In my experience, a very frequent cause of tearout in otherwise perfect planes is when the front of the mouth is not sitting down hard on the work. You want the front of the mouth positively holding the shaving down--if it's not, then your mouth gap is effectively infinity, not the few thousandths that you thought you had, and that LV provided for in the plane design.

Suggest recheck whether the front of the mouth is lying in the same plane as heel and toe (with blade slightly retracted, but lever cap tension maintained). If it's not, you will need further advice on how to get it so. Opinions vary among members of this forum. How you do it will depend on what kind of reference surface you have available.

Wiley

P. S. One of the main reasons that the Japanese provide subtle hollows in the sole of their smoothers, is so that the very narrow (less than 1/8") flat at the front of the mouth will positively compress the wood ahead of the blade. This is why you sometimes see the shaving coming off a Japanese plane blade in a reverse curl. It's important to get the front of the mouth of the plane sitting down on the work.

Correcting a nit

Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA

>If the front of the mouth is not sitting down on the work, then the mouth gap is effectively the length of the plane (not infinity). Still way big, though.

Wiley

Re: Follow up on LV BUS and tear-outs (long)

Dan CLermont in Burnaby

>Hi Felix,

Sorry to hear about the grief with the new BUS. Like Derek mentioned you should be able to plane that wood with a blade at 45 degrees. Going up to 65 degrees is a bit extreme IMO.

Like WIley mentioned check to make sure the toe piece is putting good firm pressure on the fibres before the cutter. Take your Starrett and confirm you don't see any light when you hold the Starrett right in front of the mouth and confirm it is making contact.

As far as the blade projecting more on one side then the other confirm you iron is square to the sides otherwise it sounds like one side of the blade bed is "dipping" allowing only shavings on that side. With this config you will always end up with plane tracks on the low side unless you camber the blade significantly.

Personally, if it were me I would send it back cause when you pay that kind of money you need to know you are getting a good tool

Cheers

Dan CLermont

Re: Typo correction

Dan CLermont in Burnaby

>Hi Greg,

Can you expand on how LN is milling their planes if they are not using CNC?

I believe hristopher Schwarz did an article several years ago regarding the LN 62 and the versatility with various blade angles on how you could make this plane a Low hangle, high angle or scraper plane. I can dig the issue out and send it to you if you wish?

I believe the most popular LN planes are the LN 4.5, LN 5.5 and the LN 62. Matter of fact LN recommends the LN 62 for beginners.

I have several friends who own the LN 62 and quite like them. Wouldn't trade them for the world. None of these guys actually prefer it over the LN 4.5 or 5.5's they own for final smoothing

Cheers

Dan CLermont

Re: Typo correction

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I think Greg was referring to the original Stanleys. L-N does have CNC machines. Unlike some of my bevel up Stanleys, I have not detected nor read of any problem with the geometry of the blade bed vs. the soles of the L-Ns. Nor have I experienced or heard of any problems with this parameter in the Veritas planes. Of course, my sample space is very small.

There may be other reasons the original Stanleys were not popular. They used thin blades, right off the blade assembly lines, just like their Bailey design planes, but did not have the Bailey's advantage of the cap iron to stiffen them. Also, I don't think Stanley ever got the idea of grinding a high cutting angle on their #62 or #164, and instead promoted them for end grain work. Why would you need the annoyance of an adjustable mouth for end grain? Go figure. Since they didn't have internet woodworker forums with really serious amateurs like Lyn, and ALF, and Derek to discuss these issues and pass helpful advise on to the rest of their market, they suffered for their ignorance.

Re: Typo correction

Dan CLermont in Burnaby

>Ah yes, Just re-read the post and agree with Greg on the older stnaleys possibly having issues.

I do have the LN 62 and have never had an issue with the blade cutting on the left or right all of the time

My Apologies,

Dan CLermont

My findings (pictures included)

Felix B.

>Good evening everyone,

Most of the evening I spent in the shop trying, checking, measuring... Here's what I have so far:

1. The soul of the plane is flat as you can see on the image below:

2. I am not sure how I measured it yesterday, but when I checked the blade today, the cutting edge is true to its sides... Did someone say measure twice? So, the possibility of blade being out of square is not an issue.

3. I followed Derek's advice: I doubted myself and re-sharpened the 38° blade. I honed it to the mirror finish. I adjusted the depth of cut to get shavings between 0.001 and 0.002"; I adjusted the mouth (somewhere between 1/64" and 1/32")... It's a miracle! It sounds like this: WOOSH, WHOOSH... no tear-outs! I went against the grain... whoosh, whoosh... very tiny tear-outs when planing against the grain; they are barely noticeable.

However, I think the plane has a small defect. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was unable to have the mouth parallel to the edge of the blade. Here's what it looks like � looking from the top of the plane:



And close-up of view from the bottom:

Based on the pictures you see above, I am concluding that the bed where the blade rests is not machined properly. I can't think of anything else since to the naked eye it looks fine and flat. I even tried to play with set screws, but that did not solve anything.

Only when the blade is in the "skewed" position, I am able to get the shaving that start across the entire blade-width or in the middle. Otherwise it begins at the left edge. As you can see from the picture the difference is significant; the gap is a bit less then 1/32" but greater then 1/64" and I don't think it's acceptable.

Other then this - the plane is absolutely amazing and performs great even with this minor flaw.

Thank you everyone for all your help, your ideas, and your expertise.

Felix.

Re: Typo correction

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>Hi William

I also took Greg to mean the original Stanley #62 and #164. A couple of points for interest:

My belief is that they did not take off because of the relative fragility of the cast iron around the mouth. This would chip. It does not affect performance (my own Stanley #62 was chipped - now filed - but otherwise performs well).

The other factor is that the bevel up design is a lot harder to get right than a bevel down design. Rob Lee was describing this the other day (another forum). It is not uncommon to find Stanley planes with skewed beds. For example, this was one of the factors behind my article of restoring and tuning a Stanley #140. I do not know the figures for either LN or LV but I would be surprised if they did not get returns because of blades that are canted slightly more than they should be. Of 5 bevel up LV planes I have, one was slightly skewed - probably no more than (at a guess from memory) .001" - but it was enough to cause a minute skew at the mouth (the problem was really more that of my obsessional nature - the plane worked fine). It took me about a hour to very carefully file down (in reality not much metal to remove). I am in awe at the workmanship and tolerances that go into the LV planes, but the fact remains that it is a tough design to execute (at least you have more to tweek on a BD frog).

The other point is about the Stanley blades for the #62/164. Actually they were pretty good, much thicker than standard. I think either 1/8" or close to it. I have a LN blade in my #62, but also continue to use the original Stanley with satisfaction.

Last point - for Felix - it would be appropriate to actually measure the "gap" at the mouth rather than guessing. The figure you gave (around the .005" mark) is actually larger than it sounds and quite unlikely to be the case (most unlikely that something like that would slip out of quality control). Curious minds want to know.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Typo correction

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>You still don't understand the original post.

In short. the bed must be *EXACTLY* in the same X plane as the sole. (i.e. on the X axis, it must be parallel to the sole of the plane) (Y being front to back, X being side to side and Z being top to bottom.)

If the bed is out of parallel only a very, very small amount on the X axis, then it will "skew" in relation to the sole and since the bedding angle is quite low, the skew will get extreme if the bed is out of parallel on the X axis by any significant amount.

Thus, the issue is NOT that the blade cuts on one side or the other. With the very excellent LV adjuster, making a small skew adjustment is simple. But, since the back of the toe will always be 90 degree square to the bed, any bed skew will make it impossible to set the "square-ness" of the iron by measuring the gap to the back of the adjustable toe.

When you have bed skew and look at this "gap" to the toe from the tip of the iron - especially as it's gets very small - you'll notice an obvious difference from one side (left to right) to the other in gap spacing.

While this isn't a problem, it is odd to see and can take some getting used to.

Further, if one focuses on mouth opening to be the end-all of tear-out removal, it will be a problem since getting the gap really close will be impossible until the toe piece is hand fettled so that the skew on it matches that of the bed.

While I never had any problem with my LN 62, having easily and widely adjustable skew on the blade is quite nice and a big step up for the LV Bevel up planes. (The adjuster is head and shoulders above that on any of the LN planes.) The LN isn't going to be able to easily adjust for any bed skew as the 62 and 164 only have minimal lateral/skew adjust. I suppose you could file down the stops on the plane body or narrow the iron down, but both are sub-par solutions, IMHO. Again I�ll note that for me, lateral adjust wasn�t much of an issue but it is nice having it sometimes.

These reasons and many more, are why I sold my LN 62 (and a raft of irons) on the bay to purchase the LV 62.5. Both are nice planes. But if I had to pick, even at substantially higher cost, I would be getting the LV. The same goes for the 164. LV has a product I greatly prefer, and it is cheaper too. The adjusters are much more technically proficient along with the mouth adjust screw. And both the 62.5, Heavy BUS and jointer all use the same irons.

Cheers,

Greg

Re: My findings (pictures included)

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>See this post.

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/handtools.pl?noframes;read=77581

and the follow-up.

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/handtools.pl?noframes;read=77646

Your issue is almost certainly bed skew, given how you describe it. This, IMHO, is "normal." You can hand fettle the toe piece to match the skew in the bed, but I probably wouldn't bother.

Using the right angles will make the "crutch" of needing the tightest mouth possible, unnecessary.

Cheers,

Greg

Re: Typo correction *LINK*

Dan CLermont in Burnaby

>HI Greg,

I hear ya on the X, Y and Z no worries about that but some of us prefer a tight mouth with solid contact where the blade and toe piece almost meet rather then a higher blade angle such as 62 degrees or 65 degrees which sounds abosutely insane to me.

Guys like Charlesworth teach you to file a camber profile on the the toe in front of the mouth to prevent tearout.

Ian posted a thread down b was able to plane aomw Aussie quilted/tiger/fiddle back maple with a low angle smoother bedded at 47 degrees total.

Here is the thread in case you missed it

Cheers

Dan Clermont


Ian and his Quilted/tiger/fiddleback maple

Blade skew *LINK*

Felix B.

>Hi Derek,

You were able to notice the 0.001" skew? I gues with the mouth touching the blade it would be possible.

The skew in my case is a bit larger. When I closed the mouth completely, it measured almost 1/32". Check it out:




A link to a short report I posted last night