floating a file?

Re: floating a file?

roger lance

I've not learned to show a "link" as yet on a computer, but see Lee Valleys site for Japanese milled-tooth plane-maker's floats 62W30.96 & 62W30.98....this maybe what you are talking about.

Re: floating a file?

eliotandmax

Thanks, I'll take a look. So it's apparently not a method but a type of file.

Re: floating a file?

roger lance

Yes....its a type of file....LIe Nielsen also carries a number of these floats as well.

Re: floating a file?

eliotandmax

That must be exactly what I read about. They are a bit pricey at around $50 each. $50 -something was the cost of the iron. Can the job be done as well with something else. How about a sharp chisel?

Re: floating a file?

Chris Friesen

If you're careful you could chisel to start with then finish up with a file to flatten everything out.

Re: floating a file?

david weaver

You can do it with a large mill file, but I'd tape either the plane or the faces of the file (I'd do the file) so that it only cuts with the edge.

I say large because a large mill file will have larger teeth on it. There's no real rule to it, though, as long as you cut where you expect to cut and do a tidy job.

Chisels are fine if you know what you want to do with them and can do it.

YES!

Re: floating a file?

TomD

I wouldn't adjust a mouth with a float that has the heavy teeth, so you can toss that expense. The Japanese ones might be excellent, but anything will work. Sandpaper on a stick. I use mill bastard files, or the ones with the cross shaped teeth that cut faster. I use a chisel if I need to open the mouth a lot. If one is doing a resaw/glue type plane I mill to finished surfaces, dry assemble and pin, then I glue it up. That will get me to where a file will work. Remember that most planes work better with an open mouth. All planes work better with the most open mouth possible.

The reason floats are used in plane making, reamers are used in hole making, etc... Is there comes a point where the amount of material that needs to be removed is sub what a more free cutting tool can easily accept. In addition these tools "mold" whole surfaces. So a plus 1 thou reamer will ream a whole hole to that dimension, a float will level a whole surface. For a mouth a file is just dandy.

Hey Pam or Dave, had either of you heard of Japanese floats? In thirty years of making and reading and watching everything on Japanese planes, and attending two master's seminars, I never saw or heard of a float for those planes. That would have made stuff a whole lot easier. In fact, with the right float, there would be little reason to scrape the sole for the wave pattern.

Re: floating a file?

TomD

Remember it is just woodworking. If I gave you a pointy stick (like the mouth of a plane), and told you to take a few thou off, you wouldn't immediately run for the LN catalog to buy a 50 dollar tool, same here.

Re: floating a file? *LINK*

Pam Niedermayer

Not until a couple of weeks ago when LV introduced a couple made by Iwasaki, whose files I like a lot. Follow the link below.

I agree completely that floats aren't necessary to making planes, but they don't hurt anything either.

Pam


LV/Iwasaki floats

Re: floating a file?

Guillaume Dery

I will echo what everyone here says. You do not need a float for this. Specially considering what you want to do. Just use a mill file with a safe edge and you will be done in a few minutes anyways.

Me, too..

david weaver

... those are the only ones I've seen.

Inomoto finishes with chisels, and someone else I know (over on this side of the ocean) who has made a lot of western planes said he never used anything with chisels. I don't see any evidence of floats on my nimura dais either.

I guess it depends how good you are with chisels. I've only made one dai, I did use floats a little bit, I would've been just as well off to stick to the 2nd cut coarse files that I was using and pare the final surface to a clean look.

I think I would have trouble making a coffin smoother without floats...especially given that I have trouble making a coffin smoother with floats.

Re: floating a file?

Neal in San Jose

Agree with everything said here. However (always a however!), you don't know how handy a float is until you begin to use one. I have a pair that I bought from Saint James Bay Tool Co and use them for cleaning up joints, too - think mortise. If the floats are laying on the bench, and the rasp is WAY over on the other side of the shop, guess which one I grab! Sometimes the narrow tapered shape fits where the rasp wouldn't, and they are also easier to control than a chisel - well, in my hands, anyway.

The next skill you will develop is sharpening floats. DAMHIKT, LOL

Re: Me, too..

Pam Niedermayer

Inomoto-san definitely used chisels, saw (small for the abutments), table saw (to rough out the dai), drill press to start the mouth, jigged hand drill for the pin, big hammer, dai blank to the iron, graphite/pencil and a straight edge. Tom, did I forget something?

I've never used floats, but I did make a scraper/1-tooth float from a bottom flattening chisel that I've used occasionally.

Maybe the floats are getting in your way on the coffin smoothers? What areas do you use floats for?

Pam

Re: Me, too..

David Weaver

The mouth and the abutments.

What really got in my way with them is inexperience and in both cases, unexpected chipout or breakage.

I think if I built 10 of them, I could get one neat and tidy and equal to the performance of a professionally made plane. It's not really worth the trouble.

Re: Me, too..

Pam Niedermayer

If/when you decide it matters, yell, and I can tell you precisely how I did the mouth and abutments without floats, first time with Inomoto-san's help, no need to make 10 to get it right.

Pam

Yelling

wilbur

I'd like to know how you do it.

Re: Yelling

Pam Niedermayer

Wow, I'm flattered; but I also just realized that the full story requires photos or video . I'm thinking of making a tiny boxwood coffin smoother for that plane build off over on Neanderthal Haven, but I'd just as soon build it and document it here instead. I also still owe Ellis a Japanese smoother. So let me think it through a bit.

In brief, for the mouth you have to have laid out where it will start and end on both top and bottom, highly dependent on the blade size. (If you do a Japanese blade, be sure and mark an approximation of the ura as the back boundary, leaving it more forward than you think you'll need. But, you say, the ura's on the opposite side of the blade from the bevel; to which I reply, there's a small ura on the bevel side, too, but you wouldn't notice it until you tried to fit the blade to a flat bed.)

Then with a drill (press), start from the bottom, on the line, and drill straight up, it helps to drill through to the top. (This could also be done with a mortising chisel, probably very narrow, but it's easier and less messy to use a drill.) Then chop out the full mortise following the lines, the chisel will typically be a wide mortiser/chutaki. The holes you drilled will help guide you.

Then saw the edges of the abutments with a small saw and clean them out using a 3mm (1/8") paring/bench chisel, adjusting the depth by fitting the blade. I try to use it bevel down where possible. Also, making a 3mm single tooth float/scraper helps to make them level, but you really don't have to use this since pencil on the blade edges will mark the high spots.

I use a large ultra thin paring chisel to fit the bed, again using a pencil on the blade to mark high spots.

Tom, what did I miss?

Pam

Re: floating a file?

TomD

Those are the ones that inspired the question, we get our circulars fast up here. Too bad they are not in the shops where an irresistible impulse could hit one. I was just wondering whether someone asked that maker to make floats, or whether there is a long Japanese tradition of using them. That I haven't seen.

Re: Me, too..

TomD

"I've never used floats, but I did make a scraper/1-tooth float from a bottom flattening chisel that I've used occasionally."

Me too! I just did an engraver type profile on the end of a file I had around. Works well, but is slow.

Re: Yelling

TomD

"In brief, for the mouth you have to have laid out where it will start and end on both top and bottom, highly dependent on the blade size. (If you do a Japanese blade, be sure and mark an approximation of the ura as the back boundary, leaving it more forward than you think you'll need. But, you say, the ura's on the opposite side of the blade from the bevel; to which I reply, there's a small ura on the bevel side, too, but you wouldn't notice it until you tried to fit the blade to a flat bed.)"

I'm sure you didn't "miss" anything, I've seen your work, but I would add:

The blade needs to be marked 1/3rd withdrawn. It is a huge amount compared to what I had thought. As Pam says, there is a lateral concavity on the plane blade, so even if one were not planning to ease up on the blade position the blade is actually thinner than the edge one is marking from would suggest. Thin in the middle thicker on the sides. My deduction is that the lateral convexity is at least in part there to make chiseling the ramp easier since one is fitting to a curved surface, in the ramp's case laterally convex, which means the chisel is always cutting to a high point which means the chisel can take the fine shavings one wants without the problems that would normally present itself when making very fine shavings across a wide expanse. This mean you do not need a wide chisel either for tuning. None of this applies to western planes where I do feel the float is a good deal, and I made two. I plan on making a lot more before converting my Beech.

"Then with a drill (press), start from the bottom, on the line, and drill straight up, it helps to drill through to the top. (This could also be done with a mortising chisel, probably very narrow, but it's easier and less messy to use a drill.) Then chop out the full mortise following the lines, the chisel will typically be a wide mortiser/chutaki. The holes you drilled will help guide you."

So depending on the type of plane some will have near vertical mouths, and others are angled back. So one accommodates for that with the drilling. In most cases the accuracy of the drilling is not that critical since it there is plenty of space. One gift of fat blades. Some planes have fancy ramps that contour to the bevels. This is much more difficult to do because the mouth is then miniscule. It sounds impossible to make a ramp by hand to say 43 degrees, but it is easy, because one simply joins cuts from the to, with ones from the bottom, when the blade is then blacked in, it will be pretty much perfect. The small mouth makes that impossible, so it is a lot more work. It would be pretty difficult to cut in the closed down mouth with a float, since it doesn't have anywhere to go. I mostly don't drill I usually do it all with the chisel just for practice. But as Pam says, one could even use a mortising machine, and I keep intending to get around to it.

"Then saw the edges of the abutments with a small saw and clean them out using a 3mm (1/8") paring/bench chisel, adjusting the depth by fitting the blade. I try to use it bevel down where possible. Also, making a 3mm single tooth float/scraper helps to make them level, but you really don't have to use this since pencil on the blade edges will mark the high spots."

I try to saw these abutments perfect from the saw. I invested in a saw for that, but actually had good success using the LV flush ryoba which is a very clever little saw with lots of unexpected uses. I got a lot of feedback on that saw when I was doing Toronto seminars, they really should let it out more in the catalog. Because it is flush it will simply float off the mouth, and it can be tensioned to the abutment top point marked on the block. It pretty much just lays the saw line in there. The abutment saw is better as much as anything because it is a little better dimensioned for the work. If you don't come right off the saw, then you can run into one of those table leg type situations chasing both side to the same level, and then the ramp is too loose. Of course if your chiseling is real good you don't have to worry. But the cut from the top is against the grain, and one can't cut from the bottom with the tight mouth. So if one can get the line from the saw, it makes it easier.

BY the way. I was looking at Scott Wynn's very handsome book on planes. And the diagrams he has in there are not the way I was taught, or like the tools I have bought. They could conform to other brands. That said it is all just plane making. The first Japanese plane I made, I still use and it was just terrible compared to what they say one should do. Works great.

Re: Yelling

TomD

Oh, I would add, that a real good thing to do as an exercise is cut a piece of wood to your bedding angle, then mark a line around it, say 1/16" lower, then take at it with a chisel and lower it down to a flat surface the 1/16th lower. That will teach a lot about using the chisel without the clutter or pressure of working on a plane.

Abutment planes such as Japanese, or otherwise can be sawn out. It is missing out on some great chisel exercise, but I have done it and it is a lot easier in certain respects. Rip, rip, 45, 85, 55, two rebates, and glue her back up. Make the rebates so that the blade only fits down 2/3rd. When it is all back together, say five minutes later, you basically have a pre-made dai, that just needs final fitting. If nothing else you would have a good thing to practice your fitting on. You can saw the sides off and re-use the center bits over and over. One can make an excellent Japanese plane with white oak, or beech. One can make a less excellent one with maple or red oak. Apparently live oak is very good, never seen it myself. red oak would probably be OK if one just saturated the mouth with epoxy.

Re: floating a file?

Pam Niedermayer

I was just wondering whether someone asked that maker to make floats, or whether there is a long Japanese tradition of using them. That I haven't seen.

If I had to guess, which I do since Rob hasn't confided, I'd say that the Iwasaki files have sold so well at LV, that Rob and Iwasaki looked around for something else to sell.

Pam

Simple all-purpose tool

Bob Hackett

A well known plane maker showed me how to make floats. They`re not that hard to make and if you`re just making one or two planes you don`t even have to harden and temper them.

He also showed me a far more useful tool he called a "float or scraper chisel". Just grind a bench chisel to a 90 degree nose, hone it like you would any other chisel and it`ll work like both a scraper and a float. The cutting angle keeps it from digging in and allows very small amounts to be shaved off while the back of the blade jigs it just like a paring chisel.

The one I have and use most was left hard and not tempered (if I dropped it on the floor it`d probably break). The reason we left it that way is so it could be used to scrape metal as well as wood.

One tool to fit both the metal and wood parts on any plane, real handy that. Just don`t drop it.