The Lie Nielsen Face Joinery Float - Reviewed

How do you hold the dreadnought in the vise?

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>thinking of it here in the naval connotation of the term, that is.

Re: Look at it this way

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>"hefty," "large," or "adult-sized" might have worked.

English is, indeed, filled with traps...

Re: Hysterical Practice

MikeW

>All questions are fair, I suppose. Even when they are written more as challenges.

For instance, to challenge your assertions that:

"the two most common ways of tuning a tenon - with a wide shoulder plane, and with a chisel" would be how do you know those are the two most common ways to true a tenon? I mean, are there records which state more people used shoulder planes versus floats or, my favorite means, files and or rasps? Where is it written more shops and the individuals who worked in them all had and used shoulder planes?

With all due respect to Derek, where I differ is in calling this output a review regardless of the good information it contains and conversation it generates.

It really is, to me, a demonstration of a tool with slightly comparative points of interest. Mere words that do not amount to much coming from me, so take my view for what it's worth.

The point was that it is near impossible to do a "review" which will satisfy all or possibly even a significant number of folks. So I take these posts for what I see them as...simply someone who has gotten a tool and chooses to write about it.

I think there is good reason why more folks do not attempt to write about tools they find interesting. It becomes subject to a pseudo-peer review. To me, that detracts from the thread in question.

Like I mentioned, I'm in a poor mood today. So take anything I write with a grain of salt.

Take care, Mike

Re: It's all in the wrist

MikeW

>I suspect citric would work.

It only takes a minute or two to use a file, though. At least following the first time.

Take care, Mike

Re: This review convinces me that

Peter Evans in Sydney

>Mike, I like the idea of a firmer "scraper" (as in metal scraper). Must regrind one of mine; for weight a wide mortise chisel might also work well.

Cheers Peter

OK, Mike, I'll ask, why are you in a poor mood?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Re: Look at it this way

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Funny, I can't imagine that anyone thought boy vs woman, but not to worry. I always remark on these things because to let them go with impunity would be too slack; but I'm far beyond being personally wounded by this sort of discourse.

Pam

Re: It's all in the wrist

Paul Kierstead

>Since I have handled (and continue to do so frequently) the results of your file/rasp work, I have no doubt whatsoever that you know you way around them and can really tune up a tenon tout de suite with them.

I wonder (seriously, not rhetorically) though, how many woodworks do know. I tried a couple of times with a rasp to tenon, and ended up with a rounded tenon. Oddly enough, when I try to round something with a rasp, I don't succeed in any pleasing sort of way. In essence, I suck with a rasp or file. The question is: Am I the norm or the exception? I rarely see anything produced that isn't a uniform router-based profile (ok, almost never actually), so I suspect I might be the norm. Maybe we all need rasp lessons.

Re: I'm curious

Larry Williams

>I'd enjoy seeing a photo of your floats, Mike. They've been a passion of mine for a long time.

I took a photo of a few files I have around. It's at the bottom of this post

Let's start with the bottom file and work our way up.

At the bottom is a Magicut file. These are for wood and leave a nice finish. The teeth are coarse for a file but they're not all that aggressive. Probably the least aggressive of those pictured.

Next up is an aluminum file by Nicholson. These are nice to have for working aluminum and do okay in wood. They're double cut and leave a poor finish but are more aggressive than the Magicut.

Next are a couple file type floats, a flat and half round. These aren't available anymore as far as I've been able to find. They're as aggressive as the aluminum file and leave a nice finish. I got these from Slav Jelesijevich in Chicago. He haunts old hardware stores and industrial supply houses looking for new old stock. He's a good person to know if you're into files.

The file second from the top is a "Vixen" or, more accurately, a milled tooth file. This one is a cheap import from India and not worth the money I paid for it. I have played around with other milled tooth flat files and they seem a little better than this one. They could be like the half round milled tooth file on top. It was made by C.O. �berg & Co, Eskiltuna, Sweden. As far as cutting wood, this is the best of the bunch. It also has about 8 tpi. I don't have a lot of use for a 12" half round milled tooth file but I've used it some, enough that it could stand to be sharpened. I'd send it to Boggs if I had more use for it.

I've had that Swedish file for a long time. When we started working on a design for machine made floats I believe I made five different tooth pitches. Because the Swedish file worked so well I made one with the same cutting geometry and two one each side in four degree increments. I tried them in a variety of situations and ended up making one pattern for cross-grain work and one for working parallel to the grain. I soon figured out the cross-grain profile actually worked better parallel to the grain because the one intended for that tended to grab the stock a lot.

I had hand filed a number of floats before that and the one I liked the most was at 5 tpi but it was also the one I had done the best job of filing on. I thought more teeth would be better and wanted to try 15 tpi. I couldn't do that because the radius on the edge of a taper file is too big. At 10 tpi we could just barely get the radius of the file's edge completely inside the gullet of the teeth.

The floats had 60 teeth each at 10 tpi. It took a long time to sharpen our floats and it was very easy to lose the cutting geometry with such small teeth. I still used that 5 tpi hand filed float a lot and we wanted to make the floats easier to sharpen and easier to maintain the cutting geometry. The way we had the machine set up 6 2/3 was easy to do without having to add a bunch of decimals for each cut. We switched to 6 2/3 tpi and I really like those floats. I still use mine.

We started getting feedback from people that they found the floats difficult to use. The problem is that the coarse teeth are hard to learn to use. I didn't recognize that and just kept trying to explain to people that touch was everything.

Because of the Rube Goldberg system I started with, I had it in my mind we had a choice of tooth spacing at either .100" or .150". I didn't want to hear it when Thomas Lie-Nielsen suggested .125". Fortunately he's a patient guy and convinced me it would be a good way to go. At .125" (8 tpi) they're still easy to sharpen, it's easy to maintain the cutting geometry and they're easier to use.

Lie-Nielsen has a lot of development into turning the prototypes we sent into very good tools that can be sold at a reasonable price. It's been a lot of fun being involved in this and it's been more than 15 years since we started trying to make floats on a machine. During the early part of that, I made my living doing cabinet work and finish carpentry. Once I had some decent floats, I used them on the job a lot. I would have loved to have had the joiners floats available.

Re: This review convinces me that

MikeW

>I'll take a picture of one of the ones I recently ground if there is interest. Reall, I simply grind it blunt. We use them to pare the insides of every saw's back mortise because they pare equally well with/across/against the grain.

I use the grinder or belt sander to refresh the edge and leave the resultant slight hook produced, which lasts for several saws.

Take care, Mike

What's a back mortice?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

Re: I'm curious

MikeW

>Hi Larry, they are in one of the crammed in boxes in the attic space above the shop. The boxes are several deep from the back of the space to the hatch. That would take quite an effort to find, seeing how I cannot find some of the things I've needed.

How about I make one up next Saturday and take a couple pictures. I don't go for absolute spacing, so they are a little variabley spaced. I use three square files, hence the gullets are quite sharp and they can have better depth than using a saw file for a given tpi.

The last one I made was out of one of those flat Wonder Bar pry bars. It's great steel, easy to anneal and reharden. I suspect I have one in the shed out of my carpentry bags I can steal. Much easier to get to than the attic. I also have some bars of O1, but I don't think they are wider than 3/4".

Heck, I can probably make a holder for the Foley to deepen the teeth once I get them established.

Take care, Mike

Re: What's a back mortice?

MikeW

>Hi Pam, a western-style backsaw has a mortise in the handle (open top) the brass or steel back slips into. So on one side, it gets pared with the grain, the other into the run out of the grain (against it). Paring often take a bit of cross grain (down into the mortise from the top) as well.

Take care, Mike

...back to the shop...

Thanks, Mike.

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>

So you wonder how many of us use a

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Wide shoulder plane? I do. I use a Stanley 94, Record 073 and a 311 to trim tenons all the time. For large ones I like the LN 60-1/2R better than the 140 because it goes both ways.

Re: How do you hold the dreadnought in the vise?

Angus Barclay, in New Zealand

>Dreadnought being a British term, you would attempt to hold one in a vice, but not in a vise.

regards

Angus Barclay