Are our planes too narrow?

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Dean Lapinel

>That's mighty impressive!!!

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Jim Shaver Oakville, Ont.

>Now that's a Shaving!

Wow....

Take care,

Jim

Brings new meaning to "Full Width Shaving"

Paul Kierstead

>Heh, I guess he doesn't camber the blade much :)

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>Wow...Just look at the cutter! It makes the April fools joke low angle Lee Valley plane not so outrageous. Looks like it is at least .5" or thicker. No Chatter there.JR

There is always a ...

Donald Pierson

>...showoff in the crowd. I wonder how many hotdogs he can eat.

Re: Are our planes too narrow? *LINK*

Dave Burnard

>Here's a photo from Ludo's japanese tool blog showing the same guy going even bigger, at this year's Kezurou Kai in Japan.

Notice the interesting plane in the background where someone has mounted a "flock" of smaller blades in one large dai.


Even Bigger

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Bruce, a MN Galoot

>How on earth do you muscle a plane through a cut that wide? That's one impressive shaving!

bruce

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Do you know this guy, Dave? Incredible stuff that. It's so wide he had to laminate the dai (which, btw, makes less sacrosanct the use of a single piece of wood to make dai for 5" blades). And that honey in the background! Did it work? Was this a 10" match?

Pam

Re: How to sharpen this... Hmmm!

Norman (Metcalfe, Ont.)

>

wood?

bill tindall, E. TN

>what might the wood be? Probably not maple; he doesn't look that strong.

Sitka Spruce maybe?

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>

Re: wood?

steve knight

>the plane is taking such a thin shaving and it takes less effort to plane with a japanese/laminated iron that it is not as hard as it looks.

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>Wow! The Human Super Surfacer!

Or HSS in short :-)

DC

Re: wood?

Dave Burnard

>Probably hinoki, which is an aromatic whitish cedar, similar to port orford or alaska yellow. Highly prized in Japan and used for much of the old wooden building and their modern restorations. These super wide planes are a modern invention - designed specifically for planing seminar/contests like Kezurou Kai. Historically there were wide planes in Japan, but I think they topped out at 5-6". Now you see 10" and up...

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Dave Burnard

>I've not met the gentleman in the photos. I need to go to a Kezurou-Kai in Japan to get the real flavor of those events. It sure would have to be a gi-normous tree to get a 16"(?) slab stable enough for a dai that large. The butcher block approach is interesting. In Inomoto-san's shop he had a very few wide slabs for these super o-kanna's, he said it was exceedingly difficult to find a big enough piece of straight grained white oak - and he's getting most of the prime trees already. A 5" blade is already bigger than most people can actually use for anything other than demonstrations or just plane fun ;) - but if I went to the expense of having a 5" blade made, why skimp on the dai? Just another trip to the money tree out back, right?

I think that "flock of blades" plane was intended as a smoother, but since I wasn't there I can't say for sure. I recall seeing a photo of it in action on someones web site report from one of the recent Kezurou-Kai.

Re: Are our planes too narrow?

Paul M. in San Diego

>Hi Dave and Pam,

I had the fun of going to a Kezuro-Kai in Japan back in 2003. We got to play around with some of these large planes, and this picture is of me using plane that was about 6" wide on a 5" piece of Alaskan Yellow Cedar. The fellow helping me with the shaving is Russ Filbeck, who is a master chair builder and my woodworking teacher at Palomar college.

These planes are really only possible to use on a buttery-soft wood like Alaskan Cedar. The Japanese treasure perfectly clear large pieces of softwood, and these planes allow a perfect finish to be obtained off of a wide plane without any tool marks. Most of the wood they use now is Alaskan, as there are few sizable trees left in Japan for use in large beams as needed for Temple building.

-- Paul M.