>I was flipping through the japanwoodworker catalog and was intrigued with japanese planes. I'm thinking about making the jump and trying out japanese planes. I recently finished making a few krenov style planes and I guess I'm still bitten by that bug. So I was wondering how a krenov plane would work using a japanese iron. I know japanese irons sometimes use the chipbreaker as the wedge. So I'm thinking on krenov plane I'll have to made some adjustments for this feature or just do without the chipbreaker altogether. I'm curious if anyone has tried experimenting with this yet. Also, does anyone know of any website or place to get a crash course on using japanese planes?
Thanks.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
James Watriss
>-Japanese planes do NOT use the chipbreaker as a wedge, although it does wedge between the pin and the blade. Japanese plane blades are themselves wedge shaped, which is one reason that tuning japanese planes can be so finicky sometimes. You have to fit the dai to the blade, so that the blade wedges in and tightens up at the right point, where there's only just enough blade coming out of the bottom of the plane. One other thing to bear in mind, chip breakers aren't used in all japanese planes, either. Japanese planes rely more on a very tight mouth to break the shaving, and on a very sharp blade to prevent tearout.
(Incidentally, that's one of the reasons that block planes and low-angle/bevel up smoothers are able to work as well as they do... you can close the mouth right up to keep the wood from tearing out. )
-Trying to use both the chip-breaker and the blade from a japanese plane may very well end up being an exercise in frustration. Because the blade wedges into the dai, it slides into slots on either side. That means around 3/16"-1/4" of each side of the blade is buried in the wood. The chip-breaker sits on top of the still-exposed part of the blade after this. The point of that story being that the chip breaker is not even close to being the full width of the blade. You're better off making a new wedge out of wood. You could try to get the blade alone to wedge in place, but the amount of work involved in fine tuning something like that, to me, would negate the value of building a krenov style plane. (ie, ease of construction, as compared to one-piece, non-laminated planes.)
-Don't know about crash courses for japanese planes, but there are a few books out there. Toshio Odate writes well on the topic. And if you have the time, cash, and inclination, John Reed Fox teaches a very good class on care and use of japanese hand tools at The center for furniture craftsmanship up in Maine, I think about once a year. I can say for me that it was definately time well spent. John doesn't use the chip breakers that come with his planes, and after learning from him, neither do I.
-When you're sharpening japanese plane irons, I'd stay away from using a bench grinder, they heat up very fast, and they don't always respond too well to rapid changes in temperature. If you don't trust your hand skills, I'd find a honing jig that you find worthwhile, and give that a try. Just be warned that the sides aren't always exactly parallel, so finding a way to keep it square might be a small challenge.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
ray k
>I hope my idea of using a japanese iron on a krenov style plane won't offend anyone's purist sensibilities. I remember reading one of Pam's posts indicating a krenov plane is more of a student exercise. I'm definitely in the student catagory, so I'm open to all suggestions, criticisms, hints, etc. I really enjoy my krenov style plane. But I'm curious about japanese planes as well. Pam, I know this is probably a silly question, but how difficult is it for a beginner to adequately use a japanese plane as compared to say a krenov style plane? Night and day? Or do-able with a day's practice? Or more than likely, it depends? Thanks in advance.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
>Another person you might try to get a hold of in here would be Steve Knight. I know he makes wedged european style wooden planes, and one option he offers is to have a japanese iron instead of something else. I don't know for sure what his take is on krenov planes, but I don't think it's too far fetched to suggest that he's probably made a few this way.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
>Is is pretty much impossible to do this in the Krenov style, I know because I tried it out there when I was school. Steve Knights planes with the japanese irons are a special chimera as his Japanese irons are custom made/ground to be parallel so they work well in his style of plane. At a certain point your solution is a hybrid dai/abuttmented plane which does not work as well as it should. Eventually, I ended up spending about half a year figuring out how to make a dai for my plane blade. For me, I felt that was appropriate because I was still learning. I bought a pricy blade and sub blade and I really had to earn my know how on the how to use it.
Price wise, if you want a japanese styled plane buy one. The cost of the blade and sub blade alone is not much less than the whole thing dai included. Function wise, even the one I bought with the dai and tuned up does not work a whole lot better than a krenov styled plane overall. However, they work a billion times better when you use them on the woods they are meant to be used on softer to medium hard woods. They work miracles on any domestic softer than walnut as well as any exotic or semi exotic softer than mahogany.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
>I use the krenov idea on all my plance since they are glued up.
a japanese iron makes a grea plane in this style. you need to cut grooves in the sides. I usualy make the first groove at teh angle of the bedding you want. then the second is 2 degrees higher.
then when you glue the plane up you put the iron in and bang on the ends of the sides to get the iron tight evenly on both sides. I go for a iron about 1/2 the way in the body.
check the setup after it is fully clamped to make sure nothing moved.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
>There isn't any point in using a Japanese blade in a Krenov style plane. As others have mentioned, the taper is all wrong. On the other hand, while we don't see them over here much, there are a lot of very good, and very cheap Japanese irons that cost like 10-40 bucks. Some are even high speed steel. Anyone who wants to grind the taper off the side and the thickness, could quickly get something pretty useable for any wood body plane.
Another option would be to buy a Japanese blue steel replacement blade, and trim that as shown in the Krenov book, and then use that in a plane. Those blades are great, and I have them in a bunch of planes, but I don't like thin blades enough to put them in a wooden plane when there are so many other options. Steve Knight did have some purpose built Krenovian/Japanese blades at one point...
I've been using Japanese planes as my mainstay for about 25 years. I like them a lot, but I don't think there is any particular evidence of overall technical superiority. I think blade quality is demonstrably much higher, but that doesn't translate into the work anywhere other than in finishing, and finishing doesn't translate into the finished product most of the time either. Most furniture will still end up coated with something that doesn't care what kind of plane was used. Keeping the overall sharpening and frtizing around load reasonable, and keeping the physical effort of doing a lot of planing manageable is not the clear advantage of any type. I enjoy a bunch of different planes, and I might be one of the few to have done a Japanese western jackplane fusion. Just for experimental funning around purposes. One could do a similar thing in a Krenov style eliminating the need for a wedge or crosspin. Both the wedge and the tapered blade have their advantages, what I like best about the wedge shaped blade is it make reacquiring the blade set so easy after sharpening. But after one is familiar with a given plane, I don't think anything really maters that much, it all works pretty well.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Based on my experience with Krenov style and Japanese style planes, I'd say a night and day difference, with the Japanese style winning hands down. There are so many non-obvious factors present in the Japanese that I strongly recommend buying a good small smoother (Misugi Design, Japan Woodworker, Hida, Hiraide in no particular order), buying a copy of Odate's Japanese Tools book, and trying to tune it. After you get it, look closely at the sole with a straight edge, noticing that normally only the front of the toe and front of the mouth are co-planar. Also notice that the blade bed has been made to follow the contour of the blade precisely and is not flat.
It's not particularly difficult making a Japanese dai. I learned in a three day class with the master, Inamoto-san. However, if you're new to Japanese planes, it's hard to know what to do because the end result looks, to an untrained eye, like a slab of wood with blade inserted.
And while glue is supposed to be stronger than the wood itself, I don't believe that it is, and that Krenov bodies aren't strong enough to hold the Japanese blades. At a minimum that glue stops moisture from moving thoughout the body. So plan on chopping the mortise.
Pam, who's stopping now because she's hopped up on back pain medications and realizes that this may make no sense.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
ray k
>Thanks for everyone's responses. I think I'll probably just get my hands on an inexpensive (well, relatively speaking) japanese handplane just to fiddle around with it. But I'm going to try and post up pix of the latest planes I just finished making over xmas.
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
Re: anyone tried a japanese blade on krenov plane?
tonyr
>funny that you ask, i just watched harrelson's new dvd on japanese planes. it is excellent and i highly recommend it. give him a call at japanesetools.com and i'm sure he'd be happy to help you even if you're not interested in his planes, he's nice a guy. tony.
