Plane mortising bevel up

Re: Not sure...

Jérôme

Production fruit trees are usually small specimens, not really interesting for anything else than firewood. Pear and Apple are great firewood, said to be the kings’ favourite for their bright white flames.

As a kid we planted a lot of wild cherry and specific varieties of pear in the cold areas, for wood. I have never seen apple trees planted for wood specifically though.

The old trees we used to pick apples and cherries from to eat weren’t considered good material.

your experience matches ours now...

David Weaver

..that the production fruit trees are small. As far as fruit trees planted for wood, I don't think it was done here - as you suggest, not there, either. I think what was more likely is that companies like disston arranged to buy fruit trees going out of cycle and the process of getting lumber from them created huge amounts of waste (but the resulting handle was worth the effort and cost vs. beech).

one of the three times that I got bits of apple wood, it was usable for saw handles or planes. The few other times that I saw lumber available on racks, it would've been almost impossible to make anything from (twisted, cracked, narrow, etc).

I'm no smoker of meats, so where all of the bags of apple wood chips, etc, come from, I don't know - but probably like places where I grew up (commercial orchards - the orchards never did make much money, so if there was any paying customer of any type for retired trees, i'm sure they'd have sold).

Re: Not sure...

David Weaver

definitely dense - good hardness and durability. Will be interested in what it feels like when you start planing and cutting it. the air dried type felt waxy to me, and the KD felt more like maple, but as mentioned previously, no guarantee that the trees were the same thing.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

Oskar

Apple is hard but very nice to work. The finish of pared/carved surfaces is very nice, so is the feedback when carving. Finish paring the bed is dreamy. It planes well too, but prone to swirly grain with inclusions. Tearout must be prevented.

EDIT: The apple I worked, of course. Was not aware that there might be especially large variations within the fruit woods. I´m in Germany, and I´m not even sure if my blanks were air kiln dried.

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

TomD

"Control the depth of cut by..."

That sounds like the kind of thing a pro would not care about. Why would he be off angle? Since really competent people do it both ways, it seems, it doesn't mater I guess. If you alternate you don't have to switch the chisel around. But then the real pros are hitting with basically a sledge, and the chips are so large, that it is not going to take that long either way.

Re: Both, and a lot more.

TomD

It reduces the tendency to dive if you hit it with the handle angle. I used my 1/2" mortising chisel for most of this kind of stuff, and it has a steep and long bevel, one still gets some dive. I manned up and got the 3/4 and 1", but barely ever use them. When I went to Stanley's his Japanese mater used a wide chisel with a low angle blade, not unlike the blades in the machines. That kind of blade would dive even less.

In fairness to people trying to steer to the angle, the Japanese plane is not cut to the final ramp angle, though the pro's looks like a machine did the job, if one in thinking in modern terms. On the other hand, western practice uses a float, which Japanese planes are fit from a chisel.

About the angle thing, as per usual, the Japanese pros don't have explanations for anything, it is just an observation of mine, but it is true whether they think in those terms or not. A similar thing can be found on the double bevel chisels that have the handle in line. Western chisels. I saw some DVD where a guy used double bevel chisel extensively. Forget the subject, but it is used in the same way ish. You hammer the handle angle, and you ride whichever bevel you prefer, it cuts straight without diving. I think it was used for contouring.

Same concept with an axe. You have two bevels. Some hewing axes have double bevels, or one flat side, and there are all kinds of weird handles to allow you to pick your approach. When hewing with a standard axe angle set up you swing in line, but the tool rides the bevel.

I could be wrong, too..

David Weaver

...given that Apples came here from Europe.

I don't think I've ever worked domestic pearwood (in the states), but have seen plenty of swiss pear (never worked it, but looked over large slabs - large amounts of it - very pretty).

The A.D. apple that I worked for saw handles was as you described - so nice to work that you can miss how hard it is. still breaks off if you drop a saw, though

Re: Plane mortising bevel up

David Weaver

an incannel gouge dives some if you're moving too fast - I suspect that this whole discussion revolves around what's actually being done, but I've only seen two professional carvers demonstrating heavy stock removal and both were using power carvers.

Kind of like talking about guys who do initial scraping work on cast after it's milled and seasoned - I'm guessing they use power scraping tools.

The average hobbyist would get along with tools working well. This whole buffing thing opened my eyes to just how much waste can be removed with paring gouges, far faster and easier than it can be done with flat chisels when the work is severing and not splitting.

Other interesting thing from the videos...

David Weaver

Or a couple of interesting things.

1) all of the work areas seem to be small. I'm sure that in the polishing and grinding operations, there were factories where there were gobs of folks working one next to the other, but even the guys grinding (who appear to have legit orders) are working in relatively small areas.

These kinds of shops used to exist where I grew up in an area of town, but that eventually became a flea market area and now it's become "revitalized" (investors refurbished old mill buildings, etc, to a new type of multi-use).

2) as a man who works in a mess and who just can't seem to stop (The work is always more interesting than organizing), many of those folks are working in what people these days would call a big mess. The die sinker has a giant pile of die sinker's tools just in a big pile.

My dad worked with my mother on a side business for about 750 hours a year for the last 35 years. His couple of work areas look the same, but I cannot discount the fact that if he was idle, he was often working (that sounds like a counter statement, but you get what i mean if you come from old school parents - if you're going to sit and watch a baseball game, go do it in a work area and work at the same time).

My grandfather had a welding and repair area in his farm shop that was a steel welding table and there must've been more than a short ton of wrenches and tools on it in a pile. It got that way over 40 years, but I was always amazed at the pile - too heavy for me to go through as a kid.

Re: I would love to see....

TomD

The Japanese master, got the blade fitted in, maybe, 45 minutes on a 6 inch wide temple carpenter's blade.

And I don't know if he had done one before. Hard to believe he would not have, but he estimated 2 hours, and he was done in half the time. There are other attendees who hang out here, so maybe they could fact check me.

You could buy planes at the workshop, and if you did the master would fit them for you, which as you know is a fairly significant step that includes hitting the final mark, as the blades are not at full depth, and doing a lot of delicate finish set-up. Seemed as though he could knock that out in 5 minutes.

Re: I would love to see....

Steve Voigt

Dave, I have to push back a bit on "since 1800."

One of the interesting things about the videos is that confirm the descriptions given in Armour's article "practical planemaking," written around 1900 and based on Armour's experience as a planemaker in the late 1800s.

Some people--I won't name names--have suggested that Armour wasn't a pro, but almost everything in the Marples videos confirms his account. The difference, of course, is the cutting of corners on all the fine details, a product of a long race to the bottom. Also the bench plane maker drilled some holes on a drill press before the video, but that's trivial--he easily could have done with the gouge he uses at the beginning.

Anyway, there's no reason to think that basic technique changed much between 1770 and 1900 (talking about England here of course; America is whole different story). The planes are basically the same, minus the details, and the care of fitting. As we all know, material got cheaper and labor more expensive throughout the 20th C, and there was a race to the bottom…

What's my point? I guess it's that the videos were showing how it was done for a couple centuries, again minus the care and details at the bitter end (in the 60s).

As to how many planes a day, Ted Ingraham did a lot of research into that and estimated 2-4, but I doubt anyone could make more than two bench planes a day.

Re: Both, and a lot more.

Steve Voigt

On the other hand, western practice uses a float, which Japanese planes are fit from a chisel.

I don't think using a float on the bed of a plane was Western practice before the late 1990s. Armour, who I mentioned in another post, mentions only two floats--the topping float (called an edge float by most folks today) and the side float. I've seen multiple 19th C planemaker tool kits and collections of floats, and I've never seen a bed float.

Like Dave (I think) I use a blunt chisel scraper to finish the bed. I haven't used a bed float for that purpose in a couple years.

It's possible the old planemakers used the blunt chisel scraper--there's no way the physical evidence of that would survive--it would just be taken for a chisel that needed sharpening. But, Armour doesn't mention it, and the videos don't show it. I think they probably just pared. I can do a respectable and perfectly functional bed without the scraper, but prefer to take my time and get it right. I have the luxury of not having to work as fast as those guys did, and I enjoy what I do.

Re: I would love to see....

David Weaver

Yeah, I was guessing at a number. in the WPINCA book, they talk about (Somewhere around 1800-ish) moving to make planes near water to do the roughing work. I didn't go back and read it, I remember the water power for sure, but not clear on just how much of the work the water power did.

I'd figure as soon as they could make some kind of roughing machine or auger, then some of the initial rough work would be taken away.

The parts of that video that make it look faster and easier also do a little bit to gloss over some of the work, as you say -the drilling is done off screen (it wouldn't have looked very hand maker to line all of those planes up in a row and run them through some kind of drilling machine - presumably foot operated), and the handle and wedge come in mostly made, though the handle is probably mostly made with a pin router or overhead router or something similar (like the saw handle making video).

as far as floats and such, I recall asking george about that, and he had one edge floaty thing to use with a broaching attachment when making planes at CW and the rest, he said, was chisel work. I don't really use the bed float for much, either - tried the first couple of planes but it's unproductive compared to the carter-type scraper for most work and the large tooth surface makes it feel like it's always dull or near dull. It's sort of an odd duck - like a surface finishing tool rather than a fitter. I can't imagine floats getting much planemaker's use except to scratch fibers off cross grain or work small mortises where a chisel doesn't fit well.

Re: I would love to see....

David Weaver

Are you referring to inomoto (dai maker?). I remember him saying that it would take about 2 hours to make a good quality well finished ledged dai, but he showed making one in less time (it may have been without a ledge).

As far as fitting, I think I spent about 45 minutes fitting my first iron. Now (it's just a planemaking function at this point, same as fitting any other bed), it's been about 5-10 the last couple of times I've fit a new iron, but it's not something I'd do more than once a year when I come across a deal too good to pass up.

The shame of fitting planes is that making a mortised plane makes fitting other planes a lot easier, but it's not exactly a practical thing to do - make a couple of dozen planes to make fitting a few take a couple of hours less.

Re: I would love to see....

Steve Voigt

Regarding the off-screen part…as far as I can tell from other photos and descriptions, all the planemakers would be in one area, each with their own bench and tools, and the billets would be processed elsewhere. I suspect that was true even before any power tools were used. In the Gabriel inventories before 1800 they had thousands of billets on-site. I think there were workers who just sized the billets, and possibly roughed out the wedges and handles too.

Re: I would love to see....

David Weaver

yes, I think - the less well made version looked like the brown one with the machine cut eyes, just like that. The lighter colored plane that I had was made quickly, and with the wood off of proper orientation, but it had normal eyes and was almost a really wonderful plane.

I think the budget kept it at almost, and it was probably destined (based on when it was made) never to be used much, anyway. It hadn't been used at all yet when I got it (which also contributes to staying nice, light colored and clean).

It worked well when I sold it and the buyer (just a random ebay) was happy.

Thanks for the explanation - that clues me in as to why two seemingly similar-aged planes were made differently.