Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

Wow. That is a great report.

Victor P


>Sorry to hear about the car problems. Hope you make/made it home safely.

Regards from Houston

Victor

And Number 5 in the plane-o-thon

Joanne in Pt. Pleasant, PA


>went to moi! Heard some guys grumbling about getting beat by a girl. :-) Sounds like a personal problem to me. I did fairly well with my Bailey #7, but it was not allowing me to get long enough shavings. Mr. Number 1-Robert Tarr was incredibly kind and handed me his LA plane to try. Wow! What a beautiful plane! That did the trick--well, along with my incredible novice skill and luck. lol. My prize(s) were 3 beautiful marking tools made by Dave Anderson. A scratch awl, marking knife, and birdcage awl. Perfect for me, since I'm doing more work with handtools and loving it. And I did not have any awls and my marking knife is terrible. If you haven't seen Dave's work, check out Chestertoolworks.com.

Re: And Number 5 in the plane-o-thon

paul womack


> I did fairly well with my Bailey #7

A long plane is not the plane of choice to make long shavings - surprisingly.

A long plane is intended to make "broken" shaving, by skipping (bridging) over any hollows. Even if the board is "quite flat", this bridging will cause any hollow to thin your shaving, and if you're already taking a 1 thou shavings, the shaving may well break.

To win a planing contest I would recommend tuning (fettling) your plane in the same way as a Japanese smoother.

These perform NO flattening whatsoever, and will take a uniform shaving for (almost...) any surface. They are a dedicated surface quality tool.

http://nika.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/get.phtml?message_id=112166#message

And they don't have to be Japanese, or made of wood; a while ago I made this sole-shape modification to a Stanley #4. Using it is ... interesting, and very different to a conventional #4.

BugBear

Wish I were there. You done good :>)

V Parisian

Great explanation

Joanne Adler in Pt. Pleasant, PA


>Thanks, Paul. As I said, I really am a novice with hand tools. Your explanation is great and clear to me. And the link had an expanded view. Thanks. I didn't really expect even to place in the contest and mostly took that plane in hopes that someone with expertise would help out with the blade. I lucked out there, too.

Re: 'nother detail or two

Mike Hamilton


>Lee posted the scoring on the message board. Seems I had the thinnest average thickness. I remember that all my thick measurements were on the left side of the shaving, all the thin ones were on the right. I thought about fiddling with the lateral adjustment and having another go at it. Hard to say which has more slop, my lateral adjustment lever or my depth adjustment knob. Good that I stopped when I did. Interesting to note that the first 7 finishers had full length shavings and they varied from 58.5 to 63 inches. I know my shaving folded up like a paper fan and couldn't have been stretched any more without breaking.

What a fun time. Many thanks to Lee for running the contest. Did I mention how coooool my new Knight smoother is?

Regards,

Mike Hamilton

Amish country in Ohio, waiting for a call from the Mazda dealer

Re: Great explanation

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>Joanne, please, please, please, stop apologizing for winning/placing in a contest. You did great, and welcome to the forum.

Paul, interesting post. I will comment that the indentation is much more than one plane swipe's worth. It's usually done with a small scraper plane.

Pam

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

Ernie Miller


>Rumer has it Dave Anderson thru the contest to get more newbie to fall off the cliff of hand tools.

Number 5 in the plan-o-thon

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native Now in FL. :~(


>Wow 5th place and still scored some AWESOME goodies. CONGRATS! I don't have any of Waynes' tools, but I've spent plenty of time drooling over them.

Usually by the time the awards of most any contest get down past third place the prizes are pretty skimpy. Just goes to show the quality of The annual 5 Barns gatherings. Good Show to Bill and to Wayne.

Seems to me I recall an event where the Winner was disappointed because s/he wanted to come in second because s/he thought the second place prize was better than the 1st place award.

Todd O.

Re: 'nother detail or two

Steve Kubien


>Wait, you placed 4th and you got a Knight? What did 1 thru 3 get? Nice prize which you will love. I wouldn't give mine up for love nor money. Well, maybe LOTS of money. I'd like to buy the world a Knight, and teach it how to plane. I'd like to buy the world...oh never mind. It's been so long since I've been in my shop. I miss my tools.

Steve Kubien

Re: Great explanation

Joanne in Pt. Pleasant, PA


>Thanks, Pam!

Re: 'nother detail or two

William Duffield, on the Cohansey


>First place winner got 1st choice. He chose a L-N bronze #4. 2nd place chose a Veritas Router plane. 3rd chose a L-N #103 in a leather pouch (might have been a 102). Joanne didn't get a choice, but sure seemed to be pleased that some of the others had made the wrong choices and left her the set of 3 Chester Toolworks marking tools.

Re: Great explanation

paul womack


>Paul, interesting post. I will comment that the indentation is much more than one plane swipe's worth. It's usually done with a small scraper plane.

The article I referred to (By Carl Swensson

(Reprinted from the December 2000 issue of Fine Woodworking with permission of the publisher.)) says:

The depth of the relieved areas should be between 0.025 mm and 0.050 mm.

Converting to thou's that's 1 - 2 thou. That's definitely in single shaving territory.

Although I assume other people may choose to tune differently.

BugBear

Re: Great explanation

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>Sole tuning on Japanese planes is done with a straight edge and scraper plane, plus pencil/graphite and a flat surface, at least according to Inamoto-san's method as taught. Basically iterative trying and adjusting. Of course, Inamoto-san himself doesn't have to do this normally, he's got it dialed in as muscle memory.

Pam

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

Dave Anderson Chester, NH


>I didn't exactly throw the contest Ernie. I decided to use my G-G-G Grandfather's vintage 1876 #3 Stanley. It was absolutely stock with no tuning, no flattening of the bottom, no wax on the sole, and I used the original iron. The iron was sharpened, but there was only 1/2 an inch left up to the slot. It worked, but taking a full width and full length shaving was problematic. The whole point of the exercise was to make the point that you don't need: new, fancy, expensive, supertuned, or even a thick iron. While the shavings weren't thin, the plane left a perfectly smooth surface on the edge of the board. I was tempted to cheat a bit and replace the original iron with the Hock iron I had brought with me, but that would have defeated the purpose of my exercise.

I came in dead last, but it was still fun and more importantly, the board was dead smooth.

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon -Hijack

Mark Nowicki


>Mike

I am buying a new car before the end of this month, either a Honda Civic or a Mazda 3. Would appreciate any comments (in private if you wish.)

TIA

Mark Nowicki

Re: 'nother detail or two

Steve Kubien


>Very cool...Both the selection/awarding process and the loot. A whole pile of gems to be sure.

Cheers,

Steve Kubien

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

VTAndy4


>I'm totally new to all this, so please take my question with a grain of salt in case I'm stating the obvious or saying something that in some way offends, but here goes:

Why aren't there planing contests where the surface of board is judged, rather than the shavings? The shavings contests sound really fun to me, and I love thinking about he skills and strategy involved, but isn't the surface left by the plane more indicative of the user's mastery of the craft? I can understand that it's more difficult to quantify, and that might be the reason why shavings are compared.

Another contest I can imagine would truing, dimensioning, and finishing a board, all timed and with a limited arsenal of tools. At least the time and the squareness could be quantified.

My mother used to participate in a "sheep to shawl" competition at a local agricultural fair. Teams competed, consisting -- if my memory serves me -- of shearers (and sheep of course!), carders, spinners, and weavers. The shawls were completed remarkably quickly. I don't know how the judging occured, but the whole thing was definitely timed. Afterwards I believed the shawls were auctioned off for charities (if I recall correctly).

I wonder what the woodworking equivalent would look like: maybe teams each received a log and have to construct a chair, or a small table, etc.? It's fun to think about.

This is very true, Sir William

Joanne in Pt. Pleasant, PA


>Not that I wouldn't have been thrilled with an LN or Knight plane, but I do have some planes I need to practice using more efficiently. I did not have good marking tools. These are beauts and I am thrilled to have them in my shop.

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

paul womack


>Why aren't there planing contests where the surface of board is judged, rather than the shavings? The shavings contests sound really fun to me, and I love thinking about he skills and strategy involved, but isn't the surface left by the plane more indicative of the user's mastery of the craft? I can understand that it's more difficult to quantify, and that might be the reason why shavings are compared.

You've got one thing right already - quantifying surface quality would be hard, and possibly open to dispute.

More importantly, there is a VERY strong correlation between shaving thin-ness and surface quality.

BugBear

Re: Great explanation

paul womack


>Sole tuning on Japanese planes is done with a straight edge and scraper plane, plus pencil/graphite and a flat surface, at least according to Inamoto-san's method as taught. Basically iterative trying and adjusting. Of course, Inamoto-san himself doesn't have to do this normally, he's got it dialed in as muscle memory.

Er. Ok. How deep is the hollow made by Inamoto-san, which was the point at issue?

BugBear

Re: Number 4 in the plan-o-thon

Ernie Miller


>I was just jurkin you chain from way out here in Ks. I knew there was a method to you madness. And to Andy it would be hard to put a value to the surface of a board as far as judging goes. and a rough cut 4 squair board by hand might take more time than some people would want to spend. and a small project even done by teames would take several benches and alot of prep time. I would be willing to play your game if it were closer to KS. so please take the lead and set it up. We can auction off the projects here on WC and let WC bebefit from it.

Re: Great explanation

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>No one measures this, just look for some visible light from toe to front of mouth. And that was my point, that you want to get away from specifying a specific amount.

Pam

Re: Great explanation

paul womack


>No one measures this...

Carl Swensson does ;-) And anyone working without the privilege of a master's presence may have little choice.

just look for some visible light from toe to front of mouth. And that was my point, that you want to get away from specifying a specific amount.

Err. Why? Is this argument similar to the freehand vs jig for sharpening philosophy, or are there concrete reasons?

BugBear