LV replacement cap irons......

re:  bevel-up

Wiley Horne--So. Calif.

I think Larry was struck by the problems somepeople were having maintaining clearance on BU planes through repeated sharpening. That is, when it was a 12 degree bedded plane. When the bevel-up-as-bench-plane wave was at its height, Larry was attending events where people were bringing in their BU planes complaining they didn’t work right any more. The issue was rounding the blade face during sharpening, so there was very little clearance to work with, even on a freshly sharpened blade. That’s the issue I recall, it didn’t pertain to all BU users, and it wasn’t with the plane per se, it had to do with some not realizing they had to maintain a flat face through repeated sharpening.

Wiley

Re: very interesting article

Patrick Chase

That has to be one of if not the single most thoroughly debunked articles in recent woodworking history.

Larry is great at making what his client (Colonial Williamsburg) has asked him to, but he completely missed the boat w.r.t. the double iron. Unfortunately he's attached his otherwise sterling reputation to that dreck, and thereby misled countless folks who don't know any better.

Re: Breaker, breaker, on mine, clear the pine

Patrick Chase

Just a few nits to pick...

> He is talking about the lay of the land before the good work was done on

> breakers, and some of what he says is dead on."

The only reason the lay of the land was that way is because people like Larry shouted down everybody with a dissenting opinion. I've looked through plenty of threads from back then, and it wasn't pretty.

> Now Larry didn't take the Enlightenment all that well as I recall. But I think

> some of that could be attributed to the overselling it was presented with,

> which in turn was understandable given that the main exponents seemed to

> lack background on some of the issues they dragged in. Some of the critics

> also, it turned out...

The main exponent of the double iron back then was Warren. I don't think that you can fairly say that he "lack[ed] background" or dragged in extraneous issues. He has his limitations as a conversational partner (for example a tendency to make everything personal), but background/knowledge and relevance are very much his strengths.

Of course it doesn't surprise me that folks' memories are unclear, because for the most part they were too busy foaming at the mouth about their own misbegotten opinions to actually hear anything. That was certainly the case for Larry, who did not exactly cover himself in glory.

> It is really a lot simpler than most people let on. North of 90 percent of planes

> don't need breakers,

Really? I could have sworn that I've seen a lot more people than that would suggest complaining about "tearout" or theorizing about how to prevent it...

> and where breakers aren't needed they are a pain and hold you back.

Nonsense. You just set the breaker back from the edge a bit more. That's all there is to it. If you feel they're holding you back then you're doing it wrong.

Re: re:  bevel-up

david weaver

Thanks for providing additional resolution, Wiley. I missed most of the early part of that exchange, and showed up later when Larry pinned a picture of an iron that Konrad Sauer took a picture of. The earlier explanation is pretty simple (the rounding, poor technique).

I'm sure konrad's technique was pretty good, but that doesn't mean that a bevel up iron won't get some marking on it (brent beach's page is a good illustration of how long the wear bevel is). What people don't like to hear is that they can just use a coarser stone to remove that wear and then do a quick polish if they have to ( I never did).

Chasing cosmetics on irons has cost me a lot of time in the past - I quite like my cloudy irons now, and if I had a BU plane still, I wouldn't hesitate to put the wood to the back of it and worry a little bit less about level of polish (that is, of course, to a degree).

The washita has taught me more about sharpening than I'd ever guessed it would (and it makes for pretty jigane, too).