Cap iron setback and shaving thickness

Re: Correction

TM Stock

Perhaps you might read the thread, Warren - the gist was that the BU/BD nonsense was a religious war at the time and that we were having too much fun lampooning the combatants. It was a nice reminder that some things never, ever change.

Also - why link to a post that includes not a scintilla of content of mine? Why not actually link to one of my posts? Hmm...

So just in case you missed them (could happen...), here ya go:

Post Title: I BELIEVE...I'll Have a Scotch: The other thing I believe is that there are very few of us that do half as well as Frank Klausz does with a beater #4 with a stock blade. I also suspect that Frank would find all this religious nonsense concerning LABU, HABD or FWBW ( the new clothing line...For Woodworkers By Woodworkers) pretty darned silly."

It gets sillier..IIRC, I was doing flight testing at the time on one of my inventions, and the contrast between craft and science was pretty stark...hence, the comments later in the thread.

So why no tear-stained defense of chip breakers? Pretty simple...just a bad case of hand-tool privilege.

Setting the chipbreaker close for close work and back for coarse work (the sort of cross-grain stuff that every glued up panel needs) was something that I took for granted - sort of at the same level as 'might want to install the lever cap prior to using the plane' - in other words, so excessively simple that no one that had already worked with planes for 25 years would consider it remarkable. Certainly something that every student coming out of 7th grade wood shop in the Clarence Central School system had heard a few hundred times courtesy of a competent instructor.

Beyond that - small pond...big frogs.

Re: Correction

Patrick Chase

I think that Warren's point is that nobody (not you, not anybody else) in that thread demonstrated any understanding of when and why BD planes might be objectively preferable. Lyn was hammering the "objectivity" and "scientific testing" thing every chance he got, so replying with "religion" would be rather odd if you actually knew an objectively valid response. Religion is by definition the domain of subjectivity and unprovable faith, so by invoking that you effectively claimed that there is no objective reason to choose one over the other, i.e. a pure question of preference, and in so doing betrayed your lack of knowledge.

I suspect that Warren picked that post because it's where the thread veered firmly into BU-vs-BD territory, and therefore a logical place for anybody to start when trying to understand the "state of play" at that time, which is what we're discussing here. While I'm sure you'd rather see your name in bright lights, it was a reasonable choice on his part.

My opinion based on looking at your past posts (not just that thread) is that like many people you knew that cap irons were supposed to prevent tearout by breaking chips, but you had nothing approaching the current understanding of what could be achieved or how. The only person I've seen who could elucidate that in the 00s was Warren, full stop.

I don't really have a horse in this race because I wasn't active at all back then, but from looking through those old threads I understand where Warren is coming from. He got beaten up for stating an unpopular opinion. Now that he has been vindicated there are people crawling out of the woodworks claiming they "knew all along", when in fact they were either equivocal (and invoking "religion" is a classically equivocal response) or on the wrong side of the debate.

Re: Correction *LINK*

Patrick Chase

I think that the linked post says it all:

"Given that we cannot even agree on the basic mechanics of how a shaving is produced, most of the postings here should carry a warning... DISCLAIMER: Works for me and might work for you; however, don't get your hopes up."

Those are not the words of somebody who understands how a double iron works.


http://www.woodcentral.com/woodworking/forum/archives_handtools.pl/bid/3105/md/read/id/58109/sbj/religous-nonsense/

No tear stained defense needed..

david weaver

..just a single simple post where someone other than warren said something like:

"you can do what you're mentioning with a single common pitch stanley plane or something of the like, and with less effort and less cost and less complexity. And here's basically how".

It would've sounded something like this:

* set the cap iron as close to the edge as you can, almost right on it

* back it off a tiny bit and try it

* if the chip accordions or fails to form, back the cap iron up a tiny bit, either by loosening it slightly and giving the screw a tap with a light hammer until you see a sliver of blade back similar to the thickness of a sheet of paper, or by moving it manually with some touch

* if the chip doesn't appear different than it does from any other plane and you still have tearout, try moving the cap iron closer by a bit

If it fails to feed and is difficult to push, it's too close. If it fails to prevent tearout, it's too far away.

I never saw a single post like that. Not one. Not even more plain than that with something like "you don't need anything other than a stanley plane to smooth everything you're likely to come across that's not curved, and if you do, you need to learn to use the capabilities of the plane and the cap iron"

"frank can do more with a common stanley..."

That kind of ghee whiz stuff is goofiness. Someone with a couple of months of experience can eliminate tearout with a common stanley 4 for the rest of their woodworking hobby or career.

So, back to the same post that I've made several times - show us. You or anyone else other than Warren. It can't be that hard. I saw two finnish guys say something about it on the UK forum when I did a thorough search, but even the UK board (which tends to be very frugal and sensible) must've been in the throes of the BU wars, because one of the guys said he did it and then did the equivalent of ducking in print "I'm not looking to debate it, it works for me and that's all I'll say"....something along those lines.

Re: The most likely

steve voigt

Dave, "unlikely" is a good word choice. Because one can't prove that there weren't loads of woodworkers, a generation or two ago, killing it with a close-set cap iron, just as one can't prove that there are no chocolate cakes orbiting Jupiter…but both seem pretty unlikely to anyone with a modicum of sense.

Here's something I should've brought up earlier (though I think you and I have discussed it before). To gauge the extent of common knowledge about the cap iron ten or twenty years ago, all we have to do is look at the state of commercial planemaking at the time. There was basically a whole industry built around the belief that a common-pitch plane can't stop tearout. Clark and Williams, HNT Gordon, and Steve Knight built single iron woodies with high angles and/or super-tight mouths. Karl Holtey, Konrad Sauer, Raney Nelson, and Wayne Anderson, built infills with same attributes. The two big companies, LN and LV, introduced bevel up planes, scraper planes, and high angle frogs. They both continued to make common-pitch BD planes, but there is clear evidence that neither considered the cap iron capable of stopping tearout (no need to recap that here).

So, is it really plausible that "everybody" knew how to use the double iron, but none of the planemakers knew, none of the gurus knew, none of the woodworking mags knew? I think we know the answer to that.

This summer, Don Williams stopped by my shop on his way back from DC. As we talked, it became evident that he didn't know how to use the cap iron, so I taught him. It took 10 minutes, tops. A week later he wrote me back to say he was getting straight shavings shooting out of the mouth, and planing ribbon mahogany like never before (he wrote this up on his blog, so I'm not speaking out of school here).

Now, what I know about woodworking is a small fraction of what Don knows, and he's been at it decades longer than I have. Again, is it really plausible that guys like Don didn't know about the cap iron, but somehow all these keyboard warriors did? Once again, I think we know the answer.

Jupiter Cakes

david weaver

I think that would be a fantastic new line any time someone says something that doesn't hold water.

bahh....jupiter cakes.

all of those things you said are the case (none of the gurus, woodworkers who post online, etc. seemed to know anything, and the part that makes that very likely the case is that nobody could be bothered to provide a single brief explanation in a couple of bullet points).

The couple of people I have shown the "party trick" to here locally look like they've seen a ghost when you pull out the curliest piece of something that you can find and then plane it with a 70s stanley plane. One of those is someone who runs a woodworking school focusing largely on hand tools.

I'll have to go track down Don's blog while I wait for the people who knew to show me the posts where they told someone how.

Re: YMMV

david weaver

That saying irks me. It's used too often on woodworking forums to make it sound as if any opinion is valid. I'll bet it drives people like George nuts, just like the whole "all of our opinions are equally valid".

No. If I argue with George about something related to making pretty much anything, my opinion isn't close to being as valid. That's just life!

Re: YMMV

Patrick Chase

I think that YMMV can be a perfectly reasonable reply when it's contextually valid. There are cases where it's factually true. I have a bit of a lead foot, and my mileage literally does vary relative to some other people as a result.

The problem with this context is that it was used to suggest or state a false equivalence, and those are always bad no matter how they're worded :-)

Re: Jupiter Cakes

steve voigt

Don't uh, hold your breath or anything.

Don's site is called the barn on the white run, btw.

Re: The most likely

Bridger

So I'm probably a good example of how knowledge is "lost".

I started working when I was a teenager. The old guys I worked with knew I was interested in craftsmanship, so they steered some hand tools my way, along with some advice. In with all that advice was something to the effect of your terse description of chipbreaker mechanics. Then I was turned loose. In those days my work was more carpentry than fine woodworking and the planes I used were a Jack plane and a block plane. Neither of those offer best case lessons in chipbreaker use. Though I "knew" that the chipbreaker was for preventing tearout I never developed the practical skill. When I needed a refined surface I generally resorted to sandpaper.

Fast forward to me in my thirties. Determined to make good on my reputation as someone interested in craftsmanship, I established myself in a shop and hung a shingle. In a shop environment refined surfaces come in larger volumes, and so does sawdust. Determined to cut down on sawdust production (and inhalation) I started trying to smooth plane in earnest. I got results that were frustratingly inconsistent. I did research on that newfangled internet thing where I found lots of people heavily promoting single iron "low angle" planes- basically oversize block planes. Block planes I knew well but I couldn't make the connection between them and flawless surfaces. So I still finish sanded. Somewhere in there came the k&k studies and their discussion here and elsewhere. Then it clicked- that's what the old guys were trying to tell me.

So to those of you who did the heavy lifting regarding chipbreaker knowledge on that newfangled internet thing, thank you.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

I seem to recall Robert ("Rob") Millard talking about very close cap iron settings on the Knots forum. This would have been in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Ditto Stanley Niemic and perhaps Ray Pine as well. Garrett Hack in his books and articles in FW too, though he does not participate on forums. I'm practically positive that Jeff Headley (Mack Jr.'s brother) discussed close settings on the SAPFM forum a very long time ago.

I have no idea if the Knots forum is still reliably searchable. Others may have a similar recollection though.

Here is Rob's website: http://www.americanfederalperiod.com/

Here is Jeff's website: http://headleyandsons.com/

Even if not setting the cap iron very close, they seem to be making it ok, certainly better than most.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

... otherwise one is to be forgiven for being perplexed about your fascination with the historicity of the discussion of cap iron settings on only woodworking forums, especially when the vast majority of very talented professional woodworkers don't even use forums. You seem to want to draw some sort of conclusion from all of this, but in the end one that would be completely meaningless since you are considering only a very small subset of the population of woodworkers who would have used or are using such a technique.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

... your sample size is too small to project to the population as a whole :-)

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

david weaver

The fascination is that once you sort of get it, it's so easy that you'd want to tell everyone who said they were having difficulty with tearout and "what plane should I buy", that's pretty much it.

As far as being practically sure that it was discussed a lot of places, I'm practically sure I'd like to see them. Not in a repeat of what's been written in texts, but a brief how it's done and an expression something similar to warren's:

"if you can't plane a board from end to end without tearout, then something is wrong".

The complicating thing here is who can work wood by hand profitably in the first place? The finish work is territory for pretty much anything. Using the cap iron is an economy move if it means a single plane in finish work, but it's an economy (of effort) move before that. And a safety move.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

david weaver

It's certainly a large enough sample, but it may not be representative of the population!!

(I'm sure it's not. My grandfather bought a gaggle of local custom woodworking from a guy in Barlow Two-Tavern's, PA. Not cheap, but not expensive by wealthy person standards. By that, I mean the equivalent of perhaps $7500 or something for a nice corner cabinet. He bought this stuff in the 60s - it is very carefully machined by machine - there's very little evidence of hand work on it. This guy was dutchy (that's a local term for any PA german), but not amish. If he wasn't using hand tools, who was?

And who is, now?

(separate and aside, I have always admired Rob Millard's furniture. I've seen a lot of pictures of Garrett Hack with nice furniture, but never got the sense that his core business was other than writing books and teaching classes. I think that may be an economic necessity for most).

In the end, does any of this really matter much? I doubt it. Will it make a difference if a guy is putting most of his wood through a planer and making 80% of his income teaching classes and writing books? Probably not. Is there any real money to be saved or made either making stuff for yourself or making a living woodworking. Also, probably not.

So, it's just curiosity for me. Which gets a whole lot of us to do all kinds of unreasonable things.

Re: Cap iron setback and shaving thickness

david weaver

Not warren, but you can hammer and file cap irons - just do it a little at a time. You can also roll the front edge of a cap iron with a burnisher, so if you're going to radius just a few thousandths, hone the cap a little bit and then roll the front edge with a good burnisher to get a junction (that only works for very small gaps).

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

An announcement in Popular Woodworking from 2011. Graham Blackburn also published a set of woodworking DVDs, in 2005, in which he covered the cap iron at length.

Begin quote:

"Graham Blackburn has joined the list of expert woodworkers instructing at this year’s Woodworking in America Conference (Sept. 30-Oct. 2 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center).

He has kindly agreed to step in at the last minute for David Charlesworth, who, we’re sorry to announce, has been hospitalized for pneumonia. In addition to teaching at the conference, David was planning to shoot a video with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks while he was stateside. We hope he’ll soon be back on his feet and making that trip to Maine, and to a future Woodworking in America Conference.

In his stead, we’re delighted to welcome Graham to Greater Cincinnati, where he’ll be teaching a couple of top-notch hand-tool sessions:

Handplanes for Joinery

Friday, Sept. 30 9 a.m.-11 am. & Saturday, Oct. 1, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

There is a plane for almost every phase of woodworking, especially joinery. Whether it’s making the whole joint or adjusting something with great nicety, an understanding of the following easy-to-find and often inexpensive specialized handplanes can be great fun and improve your joinery. Graham shows you how to evaluate, tune up, sharpen and use rabbet planes, fillisters, dado planes, plow planes and match planes, including many of their relatives and varieties.

Planing for the Perfect Surface

Friday, Sept. 30, 2-4 p.m & Saturday, Oct. 1, 4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.

For the perfect surface you need to be able to plane any piece of wood in any direction, regardless of grain. This is what planes are designed to do. Watch as Graham demonstrates the secrets of the cap iron, a jig-free method of sharpening, and the basic user techniques for guaranteed accuracy in order to turn virtually any bench plane — wooden, Stanley-type, or high-end — into the ultimate finishing tool.

Graham was born and trained in London, and now lives in Woodstock, N.Y., where he built his first house more than 25 years ago. He’s spent decades designing and making custom furniture. Besides serving as contributing editor to Popular Woodworking, editor of Woodwork and contributing editor to Fine Woodworking, Graham has written numerous books on all aspects of woodworking, from home building to cabinetmaking to hand tools. He was the television host of “Secrets of the Master Craftsmen,” and was featured in Maxine Rosenberg’s “Artists of Handcrafted Furniture at Work” and Jane Smiley’s “Artisans of the Catskill Mountains.”

In addition to making furniture, and teaching across the United States, Graham also runs Blackburn Books, which recently published the highly acclaimed “Traditional Woodworking Handtools: A Manual for the Woodworker,” and its sequel, “Traditional Woodworking Techniques.” You can learn more about Graham, his videos, books and appearances at blackburnbooks.com.

And for those of you who were looking forward specifically to David’s class on simple, repeatable and easy sharpening, Christopher Schwarz will be delighted to teach sharpening to anyone who asks – just visit the Lost Art Press booth in the Marketplace. Or ask Deneb Puchalski in the Lie-Nielsen booth (Deneb has a story on sharpening coming in the December issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine).

Both full conference passes and one-day passes are still available for Woodworking in America 2011: Click here for more information and to register."

End quote.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

An excerpt from the Blackburn announcement in PW for emphasis:

Planing for the Perfect Surface

Friday, Sept. 30, 2-4 p.m & Saturday, Oct. 1, 4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.

For the perfect surface you need to be able to plane any piece of wood in any direction, regardless of grain. This is what planes are designed to do. Watch as Graham demonstrates the secrets of the cap iron, a jig-free method of sharpening, and the basic user techniques for guaranteed accuracy in order to turn virtually any bench plane — wooden, Stanley-type, or high-end — into the ultimate finishing tool.

Re: YMMV

david weaver

I didn't explain it very well last night, and maybe I'll still have nothing but a pile of jupiter cakes, but here's hopefully a more accurate thought on YMMV.

It's the kind of thing that's applicable to golf tips and racing lines on a new race track.

But it's used a lot on the forums as a way to pretend there's no need to make accurate statements. It goes something like this:

"Here's all the things I do. (Insert some definitive statement here). But YMMV".

Response from someone else: That's materially incorrect.

"No, I said YMMV. Every answer is OK, YMMV".

That's a bit of a black and white example of it, but it gets on my nerves.

To beat a dead horse, I remember suggesting in a thread to someone back in 2012 that they could use the cap iron on their stanley plane to plane curly maple (that's easy to do, but not quite as easy if you don't know how to set the cap). Someone else followed that with "stanley planes are cheap, coarse tools, and you'll either have to buy a BU plane or move up to something like a brese infill. but YMMV" (and they prefaced it with the obligatory statement of "I know how to set the cap iron, but it doesn't work for everything, especially when you get into "difficult" woods like curly maple).

I quoted Warren, and reiterated the steps to set a cap iron to the original poster in the thread, and suggested to the person who said that Stanley planes weren't suitable for fine work that they should give it a shot, and said something conciliatory and encouraging with it - I don't remember exactly what because that's not usually my first concern! I got another "I already know how to, and sometimes it doesn't work. YMMV".

I think I'm going to coin a new phrase.

"iwdtcctmwvm".

(If we drive the car correctly, the mileage won't vary much).

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

david weaver

That's a good point - I forgot about Blackburn - I remember someone saying that he taught a course and said something like "any plane, any direction". That was somewhere around the same time in 2011 or 2012 (at CW)? (or perhaps he's been giving the same presentation for 20 years).

I never understood why he doesn't get quoted more as early on, I purchased his DVD about making a door by hand, and it was unpretentious and to the point. And competently presented.

Thanks for pointing that out. I need to make a note to myself to track down more of his stuff.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

If searching old forum archives "blackburn" might be worth a search, not that he participated in forums but somebody may have made mention of his videos and cap iron 'theory'. He would have been at least in his mid-50s, and probably older, when he sub'd for David Charlesworth at WIA. He's been at this his whole working life. I am assuming the cap iron stuff did not come to him late in his career but can't say so to an absolute certainty. I tend to think not, logic sort of precludes it, and it was in his videos published in 2005. Who knows how long they were in production or how long he spent writing the content he intended to show in the videos.

Re: Cap iron setback and shaving thickness

Warren in Lancaster, PA

Yes, Bridger, you can expect small gaps at the sides because of the arch of the cap iron. I haven't gotten a new plane since 1983, but I believe I worked the center of the cap iron edge on the corner of a stone. Because of the relief angle and the curvature of the cap iron, this is not quite a flat surface. Cap irons do not wear out like plane irons do.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Warren in Lancaster, PA

I attended Graham Blackburn's lecture at WIA when he substituted for Charlesworth. This was in 2011, after Elliott had introduced the Kato material on this forum and people were talking about the closely set cap iron in disparaging terms.

Blackburn lectured on a closely set cap iron. He claimed that the cap iron needed to be the same distance from the edge of the iron iron as the thickness of the shaving. Like a .001 shaving would need a .001 setback. There was no discussion of the geometrical implications. The resulting surface had no tearout, but it was pitiful nonetheless, scuffed and damaged. Worse than 100 grit sand paper or a dull scraper on pine.

Blackburn also insisted that the cap iron had to be sharpened every time the iron was sharpened. A cap iron would have worn out pretty quickly at that rate. I examined his cap iron and it did not seem to have been sharpened 50 times or anything. He certainly did not seem to have much experience or understanding beyond an extremely crude use.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

That's funny. I've seen his video (part of a series) and it's different than what you describe and certainly the stock he was working looked more than fine.

Re: No tear stained defense needed..

Charlie

Worth a read:

http://swingleydev.com/ot/get/210138/thread/