Plane mortising bevel up

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Steve Voigt

Hi Oskar,

I think it was here on WC that I wrote about using an incannel gouge. I've also mortised the way you describe, bevel up with a chisel, and it works very well, as you've discovered!

The main issues are control and accuracy. Bevel up, it's easy to lose control and cut too deep, because you can't correct as easily as you can with the bevel down. It's also easier to judge the angle accurately with the bevel down, because the correct position of the chisel is close to vertical, and it's easier to feel vertical than it is to feel 45° (or whatever the bed angle is).

With all that said, there is no doubt that you can be more aggressive and chop faster with the bevel up, so if it's working for you, do it.

These days, I do most of the rough removal on a drill press, but if I'm making a skew plane, I do it all by hand, and I don't really chop bevel down at all. I chop with the incannel gouge, and then go to paring with a chisel, bevel up.

Re: Both, and a lot more.

TomD

For me I often do the bed with the bevel up and the breast with the bevel down. That way I can work the two "ramps" by just rotating my wrist slightly. I think I did it that way from day one which was about 40 years ago. I seem to recall that the Japanese expert whose workshop I attended used the bevel up for both cuts, and just rapidly flipped the plane.

I use Japanese mortising chisels, for the most part, they were the first I acquired, though I have bought others since, out of curiosity. As people may know, Japanese chisels are designed so that the back can be placed flat to a surface. The obvious advantage is when doing something like trimming to a surface, as the blade is flush to the surface, and the handle has clearance. But the real advantage is that if you align the back to your expected resulting surface, and your mallet to the the handle, you have two vectors that are not in line and they keep the chisel from diving somewhat better than the conventional arrangement we see in most chisels. Unlike a variety of weird features of Japanese tools, this is one that manufacturers could adapt to western tools without any manufacturing difficulty, or likely customer resistance.

The matter of getting the correct angle to the blade bed on Japanese planes is pretty trivial. Japanese blades have to be somewhat accurately fitted, though far less so is necessary than one might imagine. It is a bit like acquiring "points" when scraping a machine surface. You need a gaggle of fitted points, but not the whole surface. The angle is acquired by working from both ends of the bed, so you can make it more laborious by missing the mark from the outset, but it is not technically difficult to get into plane at the correct angle. To boot, the sawn abutments do most of the work. The bed is brought gradually into line as the bed angle is initially set to have the blade well withdrawn, and the blade is gradually fitted into lower and lower position. The bed actually has a transverse arc, as does the blade, and that mild curvature makes the ramp easy to fit with a pairing chisel. Everyone got the right result on the first go, at the workshop. And western plane beds are even easier as the wedge can provide a lot of cover.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Jérôme

I find beech soft enough that going gradually bevel up is ok.

When using traditional «� Cormier� » (sorb, peer like), the hardness and density makes me uncomfortable going bevel up. It’s all about the feedback from the tool.

I don’t have much «� Cormier� » stock for blanks, when I can get beech or hornbeam by the metric ton at the lumberyard next door. I guess that feeling of preciousness also makes me a bit more cautious.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Steve Voigt

Thanks for the link Rafael--didn't know it was there.

I have to laugh: a few years ago, that museum charged me 50 pounds for a copy of the Albert Bock video, and they made me promise not to share with anyone. I guess times have changed!

In every case, it's inspiring...

David Weaver

..the way those guys move. I had one of those late marples planes - it didn't feed brand new - owed to the fact that it had to be made in a hurry and was made fast.

It was a coffin smoother. Strangely, the grain was oriented 90 degrees from normal, too, but the plane was otherwise very crisply made. You could tell that it was made with skill and the fact that it didn't feed was a matter of budget/time.

I don't know if anyone in the current world would have the fortitude to work like the guys in those videos for what was probably the end of the line for all of them (thus not flush with cash and praise). I remember some mostly manual farmers from when I was a kid who worked like that physically all day, but they've been phased out now for decades.

Re: Old plane making video in french

David Weaver

I think I've seen the same thing - at the end of the video, the maker sets the cap iron on the plane and shoots a big shaving straight up out of it.

Re: Old plane making video in french

Steve Voigt

Here you go.

https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/la-suisse-au-fil-du-temps/video/les-outils-de-bois?urn=urn:rts:video:3464421&id=3464421

That chamferring gouge

Wiley Horne

At about 13:57 or so, he’s putting the vertical chamfers on the front of the try plane he’s making. He uses what looks like an in-cannel gouge that’s had the middle of the blade cut away for about 3/4”—presumably before hardening—leaving 2 outer ‘fingers’ as guides to set the depth of chamfer and to maintain alignment right from the start of the cut.

Never heard tell of any tool like this! Did you planemakers tske note?

Wiley

Re: In every case, it's inspiring...

Steve Voigt

Agreed, Dave. I've seen those late Marples planes, and they are…not pretty. Certainly there is no comparison with good 19th c. British planes.

At the same time, as you say, the makers' confidence is inspiring. And there's no such thing as a jig in that shop. There are templates for marking, and fixtures for holding, but there is never anything to guide the craftsman's hand, other than his eye and experience.

Between that and the moulding plane video..

David Weaver

...there's a gaggle of stuff I never considered, but steve tipped me off about making skew chisels (big ones) to neatly cut into the cheeks in the front. They're a delight to use.

One of the things I always liked better about early planes than the ones like I'm actually copying is the strong facets. All of my double iron planes, even the nice earlier ones, have had a roundover on the sides. Given there's no cost cuts on them, I'd assume that someone considered it functionally better.

Interesting that the guy has a chisel that he uses as a shoulder chisel, but never felt it necessary to set himself up with a way that it doesn't literally create a nodule in his body to face against it.

I see the way he's fitting the iron in the plane (very tight) and if he was in fact the maker of my coffin smoother, I can see why it needed to be opened up just slightly (Which i don't consider to be a bad thing). Until I saw the speed of his work, I wondered how marples could make a plane like that and sell it wholesale for what it brought retail at the time (not much). There wasn't really anything to be faulted in the workmanship given the price - that guy could single handedly ruin the boutique plane making market these days!

Re: Between that and the moulding plane video..

Wiley Horne

If that was his actual real-life sharpening regime, it was fast. Spinning grinder and then one stone.

Wiley

Re: Between that and the moulding plane video..

David Weaver

Especially with the swiftness that he moves through the wood.

I'd be curious to know if that wood is a bit less dry than what we're dealing with at retail over here as I can't be quite that rough with it (especially american beech).

A friend's dad was a lifetime joiner in England. He had a washita stone and a silicon carbide stone. With the brute force that the makers in these videos are using, it seems unlikely that they'd stop and sharpen for 5 minutes.

Re: Between that and the moulding plane video..

TomD

Yeah, it is hard to get people who are hand tool types to use grinders. If my house burnt down. I would make all the replacement tools out of 01 and just grind the edges Having built in a huge stock of Japanese tools, I pretty much sharpen by hand when it comes to hand tools. Some things like axes are easier to grind. Funny when making tools to remove about two chicletes worth of steel in a few seconds then spend the rest of the tool's life slaving over a brick.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Oskar

ah, that explains why I didnt find it. Never seem to find interesting old posts here... Thanks Steve!

Actually, I found it easier to judge the angle bevel up, as the direction of the chisel is easy to match to the layout lines. But I see your point, if bed angle and chisel honing angle add upp to about 90 this is a good indicator.

Still gonna keep my eyes open for a suitable gouge to regrind into an incannel one. Never seen a incannel gouge out in the wild, but normal ones pops up on the flea markets once in a while.

Re: Both, and a lot more.

Oskar

Thanks Tom for your thoughts.

Never thought about that the offset handle angle counters the tendency to dive. I´m using jap. chisels as well.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Oskar

Thanks Jerome for adding your experience.

Would love to use Cormier at some point. I have used both pear and apple so far.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Oskar

Thanks Rafael,

good link!

I would love to see.... *LINK*

David Weaver

The early planes being made. I'm sure lots of things I do by hand (don't want to comment on your process as you're a pro, now and you probably do things more reliably, accurately and repeatably than I do) haven't been done by hand since 1800.

The volume is a curiosity to me. If I had unending nearly dry stock and could just pound and pare with reckless abandon, how fast could things be done? Same with standardized irons - I don't have them, but I don't think that's too much of the time issue - it's probably an extra half hour to get things opened to a particular iron rather than to a pattern.

The boggling part to me is that I've had two of those later marples planes. One was still bright white with the sticker on the side (the one with the grain off 90 degrees -same one that wouldn't feed because it was never fully opened, but I gladly will take a plane like that as you and I can open them up just so from there rather than staring at a wide open mouth and a wear at the wrong angle).

The other was brown and had those machine cut semi-eyes like shown in this video. It had fat shorter wedge fingers and was less refined. The white-ish one, though, everything was cut crisply, one wedge finger was a little bigger than the other, but everything *almost* looked like an older plane other than the obvious lack of attention to symmetrical proportion (and the later marples iron that's a bit soft) - the lack of ideal symmetry due just to speed in opening things. The plane was painfully close to being much nicer, but probably a couple of strokes of the budget pencil away.

This is what the less attractive brownish one looked like (optimistic ask by the seller here).

(I can't find a picture of the one that I'm referring to as more "White", but it had the characteristic colorful marples sticker on it and maybe my thoughts that it was around the same age aren't quite right - the brightness of the wood could've been just due to the plane sitting without being handled).

Curiosity on productivity, though, with bench planes in 1840 or whatever the golden era would've been for double iron planes ... could a workman and apprentice make 5 a day? I've never read much to catalog those kinds of things. I'm sure the day wouldn't have been 8 hours back then with 3 tea breaks.

Over on the UK forum, they did suggest that Hawley had some of those demonstrations done and the speed that the workers were moving may have been a bit more than typical for show. It sounded like the moulding plane maker wasn't working full time by then due to lack of orders and may have had other responsibilities at marples.


brown blocky marples

Not sure...

David Weaver

..if oskar is in the US. Fruitwoods can be somewhat different in different parts of the world.

If you got domestic apple that's kiln dried, it's generally pretty hard - but I can't say for sure that it's the kiln drying that makes the difference. I've had apple from three different places and generally, apple trees (unless wild) are root/stem stock with branches grafted on (even trees grown on private land).

I've had some that feels and works like hard maple, and others that was air dried that felt more like beech. only the really hard dry stuff was particularly stable.

Rick Hearne told me that fruit growing in europe hasn't all gone to small stem trees like we have here, and the last time I was there, they had some large (european) fruitwood slabs that wouldn't be found around here.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Warren in Lancaster, PA

The term "incannel gouge" is relatively recent, maybe late 20th century. The more traditional terms for this are scribing gouge and paring gouge, which reflect the traditional usage.

For roughing work we generally use gouges and chisels riding on the bevel. The reason is because we can control the depth of cut by subtle changes of angle. This is not something we really think about, but after long usage we do it rather unconsciously. Using a paring gouge for bulk removal is kind of clumsy.