LN floats

Re: LN floats

Brent Smith in Montreal

>Hi Dean,

You might want to check out C&W's site. They are the designers of the floats. Larry is a really easy guy to talk to and can give you more info.

http://www.planemaker.com/

Brent

Re: LN floats

Donald Pierson

>Dean,

First let me assure you that I do NOT have a reasonable answer, but I recently bought four of the LN floats. I don�t have any plans to make a plane but I have been trying them in the making of twisted dovetail and rising dovetail joints. I am always in search of some magical tool that will compensate for my lack of skill. I find the floats help polish the inside faces of the joints better than chisels, files or knives. Again my decisions do NOT have to make any sense or cents.

Don in overcast 41F Vancouver,WA,USA

Re: LN floats

Paul Kierstead

>So, anyone gonna buck for a "dovetail float", i.e. with sloped sides.

Re: Skewed floats, at least. . .

Dave Mount, warmer this morning (-22 F/-30 C)

>I made some skewed rebates a little while back and though I cheated and sawed the blank open to do the mortising, I was thinking while working on the planes that you'd need skewed floats to do that job. Even the side float would need to be skewed (or at least dovetailed) to avoid buggering the front or back of the mortises. I guess a dovetailed version would do, but I'd think skewed floats (acute and obtuse angled sides instead of both acute) would be even better.

I bet C&W would make one for a price -- probably already have for their own use. Be interesting to know if that's what they use for making their skewed planes.

Best,

Dave

Re: Board Quirk

Paul Kierstead

>Interesting, board stripped a bit of my message which was visible on preview. It was enclosed in gt and lt, properly escaped ala HTML and preview liked it, but the apparently post processing and preview processing are different.

It was supposed to have a "Off to visit the patent office" on the bottom....

Re: LN floats

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>You only need floats when you're making small molding/hollow/round type planes where there's no room to manuever. Even in this case you could use 1.5-3 mm paring chisels.

For this task, you'd need a small edge float(s). The smallest can do the job even if you have a wider opening; but I don't imagine you'd have a blade more than 3/16" thick. So get an edge float or two. Also, if you'll be making wedged planes, a push side float could come in very handy on small bladed planes; but edge floats can do this job with a bit more work.

Pam

I'd say... *LINK*

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Your 1-1/3 steps ahead of me Dean. I havn't even watched the DVD yet.

Look like you only need 2 from the DVD. You can get them at St. James Bay tools. Sorry all the skewed floats all ready exist.


Page to the bottom

Re: float angles

Dave Mount, -27 F this morning

>Thanks for the link Scott, I didn't know St. James had them, especially skews. I wonder what the angle of the St. James float body is. They say they're made to the Herrli pattern, but Herrli makes his planes with a 12 degree wedge angle. Whelan does 10 degree wedge angles on his H&R and I think C&W might even go lower -- I seem to remember reading something from them once about their belief that lower wedge angles are preferable, but I don't remember where or what was behind their viewpoint. Regardless, their web page says that their floats are 8 degrees -- I suspect that means that their H&Rs have an 8 degree wedge. You could use a smaller angle float to work a larger angle mortise but the opposite. . .

I wonder what the skew angle is on their skewed floats.

Best,

Dave

P.S. I just e-mailed St. James to get more specifics on their floats.

Take the lead!

Dean Lapinel

>See...you guys are always ahead. Instead of asking questions can you guys just tell me what to do...after you've done made your mistakes :)

It's better to call them...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>I've never got a responce from emailing them. Also request their catalog it has a lot of stuff not on the web page.

Let us know what you find out about the angles please!

I don't think so...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>I'll wait for you...8^)

Angle as measured from what to what?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Re: Between the two long sides

Dave Mount, still in the deep freeze

>Sorry if I wasn't clear. With regard to the regular floats, the "float angle" I was talking about is the angle formed by the two long sides of the float. I was bringing it up because the angle formed by the float sides can't be larger than the angle of the wedge mortise for the floats to be fully useful. Messr. Herrli uses a larger angle for his wedge mortises than do most others I've read about/seen, which was why I was unsure whether the floats offered by St. James Bay would be limited to 12(+) degree wedge mortises.

With regard to the skew floats one has to consider not only the angle formed by the two long sides, but also what plane skew angle the skew floats are designed to service. Determining this is not as simple as the angle discussed above -- because of the compound angles involved, the angle of the edge of the float to the face of the float is not the same as the plane skew angle as it would be measured on the plane's sole (actually, I guess it would be 90-skew, but the point remains the same).

Best,

Dave

Re: Between the two long sides

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Thanks, Dave. Seems to me the float angle isn't really pertinent for the side floats, unless the float angle of the non-scraping sides causes the float to exceed available width.

Pam

Re: LN floats

ThomD

>"You only need floats when you're making small molding/hollow/round type planes where there's no room to manuever. Even in this case you could use 1.5-3 mm paring chisels."

I've done without them these 30 years, however, it does seem like there ought to be a faster way to fit and give a smooth surface to the bed of a larger plane like a Jack or a Jointer, than is possible with a chisel.

I think these LN tools are way over-priced. I'll not argue at all that they aren't a good value for what it takes for LN to bring them to market, but I trip over pattern making files all day long that cost 3 bucks. Some of them may get ground into shape for this kind of thing. It wasn't that long ago when one could get five planes for that price.

Re: LN floats

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I think I'm going to make a couple of strike through chisels for the next project (plane bodies and/or shoji), probably from spare 1/4" and 1/8" English oval handled mortisers. The ends will essentially be scrapers on all four sides, so I'll be able to use them for both single tooth floats and striking through mortises.

As for bed shaping, I love using the ultra thin Tasai push chisel so much that this is a pleasure. Also, since the beds aren't flat, using a smaller chisel is pretty handy, I find I really need to use one 1/3-1/2 the width of the bed, maybe less in some cases.

Pam