Official Luthiers Forum!

Ernie, if you're still interested, I have an update on the irons. Yup, plural, I ordered a block plane with the PMV11 iron.

First, the block plane. The blade is tapered so I can't use my side clamp jig, had to use the original Veritas. Been contemplating the mk2 version.

Based on discussion in a private group, I ordered Shapton stones (was going to order King), and went at it again with the 1000 and 8000 ceramics. Huge difference from my diamond stone. Still took a while, but got a nice micro bevel and did the ruler trick. This process was key, meaning, the relapping.

I now understand the meaning of see through wisps, and I don't think I've ever jointed plates so quickly, and cleanly. Hand tools certainly have their place. Note: was able to get a close joint with the block plane on the shooting board. I could probably get it right on if I spent time, but the #6 does it without effort. I know, pics. Maybe later.

Much as I love my big jointer planer sander etc , they do a great job at being my grunts /apprenticeses. AAron glad to hear that you are mastering the path to wispy shavings . Am also fond of japanese and chinese planes each designated for a particular task that they excel a,t or specific species of wood e.g. Chinese planes work way better on dense hardwoods , eir , ebony etc as their planes are geared towards cutting hardwoods as opposed to the japanese planes that are inclined to do a great job on softwoods. But with western markets wanting japanese blades to cut hardwoods some makers are adjusting their schedules to meet the new demand. i did get an older laminated blade from E don the olf forum to replace the 5 1/2 sargent blade.IMHO the 5 1/2 is an excellent all around plane for many luthier tasks . I use the stanley and sargent 6 /s predominately for final edge jointing Thanks for the update Aaron

I'm surprised to hear back bevels still in use!

Have you folks not been reading about the influence of the cap iron in the last few years?
David Weaver has been banging the drum about this for a long time, yet few listen.
Its an absolute game changer for the luthier
No more does grain direction concern me, as a plane that has the cap iron set will not tear out "period"
regardless of figure.
The regular honed iron at 30ish degrees is quicker/easier to sharpen than higher angle bevel.
You can take a much thicker shaving than with a back bevel or tight mouth.
It's less effort to push and the fact that you cant dive off the end
What I mean by that, is the ends wont be thinner while thicknessing stock
Or put in other words, I don't need to take stop shavings anymore as I cant make the ends lower.
It totally changes the way the plane works, nothing to do with leaning or any of that.
It just works.

To get the cap iron to have infulence the double iron plane must be set up like the following....
Just for clarity I will describe the way the Bailey plane needs to be set up, otherwise it wont work out.

1 The mouth needs to be open all the way back, the frog flush with the back of the casting.
2 The leading edge of the cap iron needs to be honed at 50 degrees or thereabouts.
3 A steeper undercut needs to be done to the underside of the cap iron, to exert more pressure than normal.
4 Not more than one hairs camber can the blade have, as the cap iron wont get close enough to have full effect.
That's all there is to it, easy peasy

If you set the cap too close the shaving will concertina, and if you set it right, the shaving will be straight, crinkly and burnished,
full width, and full length too
not curled up anymore.
If you dont overshoot the cap iron, you probably are not close enough,
I haven't noticed any negative effect from overshooting it by accident
It needs to be a single thin hairs distance away from the cutter or it wont work right, only half right.

Here is a Youtube link to the man who has brought this lost technique back to the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAVgfSPMN0

Look at the pictures in the description underneath for more clarity, because the cap iron really does need to be this close for absolutely no tearout.

Sorry if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs
but when I heard back bevel, I thought it would be a good time to bring it up.

It is the ultimate planing setup, period.
Have fun those who have not experienced it yet

Did I remember to say...
NO regards anymore to grain direction, NO tearout, and NO diving off the ends using full length shavings only?


Tomas

I've followed this particular little brush fire for a bit, lurking on several of the hand tool sites which the boss guided me to for both background information and research for the building guide. It appears to me that this is really not a recent thing at all...the 1930's vintage book Planecraft, and more recently (1980's through late 1990's ) Mr. Graham Blackburn's works reiterated what my boss tells me was common knowledge when he learned back in the late 1960's/early 1970's...set the cap iron close for fine work (as close as possible is the guidance in Planecraft and in Blackburn's books and lectures, and that means a glimmer of reflected light from the back of the blade and no more for final smoothing).

Mr. Weaver's contribution appears to be to have rediscovered that when taking a very thick chip (significantly greater than the usual 0.001" or so...0.003" or more), the chip breaker effect becomes the dominant factor in preventing tear-out by fracturing the forming chip before it has the opportunity to telegraph ahead of the cut. This, he theorizes, was something known to double-iron plane users, but forgotten or ignored in recent times. In terms of setting the chip breaker (aka, cap iron), Weaver agrees with older texts such as Woodcraft, as well as more recent texts such as Blackburn, that the cap iron must be set no more than a few thousandths of an inch back from the blade's edge to be effective, and any radius of that edge must be addressed in terms of fitting the cap iron. For luthiers, this is yet another example of beam stiffness relating to the cube of the depth, with the chip as beam and stiffness of the chip (and ability to rive the wood well ahead of the cutting edge) increasing as the cube of the shaving thickness.

This has placed the entire hand plane bevel-up/bevel down debate - which appears to me to have been the luthier's equivalent of arguing the merits of plastic versus hide glues or bridge pin materials - back into the spotlight in recent years, with the two sides once again making claims which might appear to be at odds, but which on closer inspection appear to me to be in violent agreement.

The bevel up plane aficionados - having exhausted their bank accounts on every manner of oddly styled (to my eyes) Lee Valley bevel-up planes and an assortment of blades of different bevel angles - reiterate that there is little difference in performance with a sharp, low angle, bevel up plane with a steep bevel taking a fine chip. The bevel downers - claiming 1930's Stanley #4's are the Acme of plane evolution - also suggest that no combination of tight mouth and blade bevel angle is steep enough to duplicate the effect on chip formation of a closely set cap iron, so dismiss bevel-up planes as unsuitable for fine work. Where both sets of claims align is that there is not much in the way of so called 'chip-breaker' effect with fine chips (under 0.001") in most timbers, so other factors - especially edge sharpness and plane setup - dominant, allowing either design to handle most timbers. Based on experimentation by one of the fellows here, there is a pronounced advantage to a close-set chip breaker with very stout chips, but the effort to drive the plane through the wood is increased by a not insignificant multiple of that seen with more reasonable chip thickness.

My own experience here in the shop has not convinced me that most luthiers have a good reason for demanding that planes remove thick, tear-out free chips. In practice, we are surfacing a small fraction of the stock which a cabinetmaker might see in an average project, and the bulk of the stock removal has already been done either in resaw or by the vendor. Either plane type, sharp and set fine, does the job for most timbers, and if faced with difficult grain than will not yield to a sharp plane (most recently, highly figured bloodwood hardened by baking...ouch), luthiers tend to just move on to a thickness sander and scraper. While that approach might not be suitable for a cabinetmaker faced with a couple hundred square feet of stock to take to final dimension and needing a consistent surface finish, we deal in no more than a dozen or so square feet at a time, and seldom use the minimally protective non-film-forming finishes often see on cabinetry.

Related to this kerfuffle, Lie-Nielsen has been routinely taken to task on what the boss refers to as the 'hand-toolier-than-thou' sites for their 'improved' chip breaker shape as well, but those chip breakers are easily (and routinely) reshaped to approximate the more effective edge profile seen on the older design. This re-profiling is really not much more than what is done on a vintage Stanley plane restoration, and adds perhaps 5 minutes to the job of putting one of their bench planes into service. I spent a bit of the weekend tuning up the shop's newly acquired #3, and was surprised at how quickly the tool was brought to an acceptable level of performance. For those with smaller hands or of more compact build, the #3 is a lighter, smaller alternative for smoothing that I find myself preferring to the #4.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Woodie G
You have not addressed what I would call an important factor
I wont get into vague text from the past, which in my opinion the author has parroted and does not seem
to be familiar enough with the effect, to be writing about it.
That is someone else's fight.
Yes there was some folk like Warren Mickley, but not many, so little folk knew this infact, that early on, Tom had made cap irons
that wouldn't be able to get close enough to the edge to have effect!
This is rendered now though, and I suspect you could just swap an old cap for a new one if you asked, dont know though, just guess/feel he would
because of the excellent customer service standards of Lie-Nielsen tools.

Have you tried this with a longer plane, like a no.5 1/2 or longer?
You will notice what you may not, with your short no.3 plane, and that is diving off the ends.

Can you keep planing and planing an allready flat length, with your longer plane using through shavings, without diving off the ends?
without having to resort to technique like stop shavings ?

I think not.
The longer the plane gets, the more it will dive, and the thinner the ends get on what your planing
You maybe able to scoop the middle out using your no.3 with heavy leaning, but not with a long plane.

The effect of the double iron plane makes full width and length shavings all the time, thus making it faster, and more accurate.

Yer man David has made ridiculous single iron planes before, really steeply pitched, with quarter inch irons and all that,
only to put all those planes aside, in favour for the double iron.
History says it better than anyone though, and you can see the shift people made to using double iron planes
as they would have been substantially more expensive at the time.

Tomas

I'm not quite sure I understand your first paragraph, which may simply be the hazards of a shared mother tongue, but I don't see a need to exchange Lie-Nielsen cap irons - they are easily tweaked to proper shape, just as vintage chip breakers must be fitted and polished. Our first improved cap irons on tools racked in this shop arrived during the last century, so we have some experience with them...reshaping is perhaps 5 minute's work with file and stone. Settling for any manufacturer's notion of either sharp or well-fitted seems to be a route guaranteed to disappoint.



Again, I find myself at a bit of a loss, but yes - we have a range of bench planes (including a #5-1/2), from #2 to #7, as well as boxes of older woodies and specialty tools collected over the shop owner's 50 years of hand plane use. Are you suggesting that your shorter planes cannot be trusted to provide a true surface? I have to say that - despite a fair amount of seemingly pointless hand planing exercises early on here (e.g., square this block; duplicate that test block, etc.) - I have not noticed much of an inability to generate a true surface, but then there is a focus here on proper technique which would preclude the sort of nosedive at the end of a stroke which characterized my first 5 minutes or so of hand plane use when my father was still alive and and I was a teen in love with his shop.



I beg your pardon, but to whom do you refer to when referencing "...Yer man David..." - Mr. Weaver? I can scarcely claim the association if so, and if not, please clarify so that I may address your point.

The modern practice of leaping from one lily pad to the next as something seemingly more attractive appears is not uncommon, but I am not sure the fellows here ever indulged in what I understand was a trend in the early 2000's towards low angle planes as Swiss Army, do everything bench plane. From what I understand, the boss has been a bevel down fellow for at least his adult life - or at least long enough that he does not recall having forgotten how to set and use a cap iron (although he does tend to forget less important tasks, such as refilling the humidifier tanks. We have a few single iron planes in the shop, and when sharp and set, don't seem to lack much in the way of function for much of the work done in a working instrument shop.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Hi again
Regarding the Lie-Nielsen's
From what I've read, the notch for the adjuster tab was too high in the cap iron on the earlier cap irons
thus not being able to get down to the edge.
I don't know when this issue was sorted, just mentioning it.

I cant see why you would want to thickness with a smaller plane, hence my comment about diving off the ends using a larger plane
Much better described by yourself, as nose diving.
I find the longer planes make one have to use more effort to lift them as in stop shavings to counter this
since most of the wood a luthier works with is figured or has some grain that will tear out.

Yes, I was referring to Mr Weaver as, yer man David,
I dont think I'll ever be making a high angle single iron smoother as he is adamant the double iron plane is just so much
better for reasons above.
Maybe there is a good reason for a single iron BU plane, for planing long grain?
I haven't seen a reason where you would want to use one, but I admit I have never worked on spruce with no runout.

I'm only working with African hardwoods hoping to make a fancy bench at the moment, as of now, the only reason I can see for me using a
BU plane would be end grain work.

It seems your boss has been using a BD plane to good effect too
Maybe he/she knows Warren?
[EDIT]
Just looked up Graham Blackburn who knew before majority of the internet became... aware (if that's the right word)
And fair dues to Mr Blackburn as he made good efforts to share this knowledge
Pity no one was paying much attention to it, a bit strange I must say, since I've never heard reference to the man
(myself spending much time, trying to learn as much as I can from the internet)
Thanks for mentioning this man Willard, I definitely will be looking up this guy's work

I find it a game changer to be able to take full width, full length shavings as the cap iron stays in the cut better/totally
instead of taking less productive swipes on figured stock, and needs less checking too.
Once again I'll say I have never worked on runout free softwoods, so
Maybe the plane without the cap iron set, will work the same in this instance?

Thanks
Tom

I believe we are likely in agreement, Mr. Gilgunn - for difficult, challenging woods, we use a double iron plane and set the iron so that just a glimmer of blade shows. That said, much of the time, luthiers are working in far less challenging stuff - spruce, cedar, mahogany, etc., and can pick and choose the orientation of plane to wood to minimize bad behavior. In these cases, it seems like just about any sharp plane - single or double iron - with do what needs doing.

One of the many things I like about instrument building is the emphasis on results...whatever works, works. Luthiers seem not to get overly concerned with the nature of the tools used or purity of process so much as they do the finished product. It's one of the special attractions to the craft that we admire the work of both those shaping necks with a stationary belt sander and with draw knife, rasp, and scraper...provided the work is done well.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Some people seem to think that the cap iron effect was an internet discovery. It was common knowledge where I was training in the late 70's. The cap iron effect is probably as old as . . . well the cap iron itself, I guess.

Haha, I got a bit of a fright when I seen my surname
I forgot how cosy this place is, I've been generally trying to stay anonymous because I have amassed plenty of kit since.
Ireland is certainly not the safest place to have a workshop, so I go by my alias Tom Trees normally.

Its been a while since I've been here, done a lot of lurking when Todd and Filippo was around.
I bought a big bandsaw on advice here, and went down the plane rabbit hole, which led to other rabbit holes, and so on.
All because I heard the name Rob Cosman uttered on a bandsaw video once!
Thank you Steve Maskery! (workshop essentials DVD maker)

Since then I've traded the idea of making making dust for shavings,
Absolutely hooked now, no going back

So hopefully you forgive my ignorance, as I had not realised this technique was under the radar here.
I had the drum sander on my mind last time round, and probably dismissed the plane

I cant wait to jump back in, when a few workshop things are done.
I've been amassing reclaimed African timbers for some time now, and its getting tight in here.
Something well suited needs to be made from these timbers as its getting scarce,
I now consider this to be an obligation, every skip I pass I must look, these resourses shall not be wasted in vein.
Maybe a harp is in order, to lament the takings from the pillaged lands of Africa.

Sorry got a bit side tracked there,
Planning to at least do some work, re-topping some laminate guitars after this Klausz style bench is done
I'll stay lurking from now on, and not clog your forum up with regular woodworking/cap iron rants
Cant wait to get stuck in again
Thanks folks

Tomás

There is another fellow Paul Sellers , who has many videos on hand tools ,hand plane use, set up sharpening etc , there is a wealth of information on his videos . Mostly what I like is his commonsense approach to woodworking and KISS keep it simple stupid

I've watched many of his videos, couldn't agree more.

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

You would never progress hand planing though, if you were to watch his videos only,
as he has never demonstrated the correct setup for the cap iron to have effect, nor even hinted that its another
technique that should be mastered.
I find that quite misleading.


I agree keeping it simple too
There's not many folks that demonstrate this cap iron effect on video, ya know!
Never mind demonstrating it well, as the cap iron can be set half way to have influence, which some people think is "it"
some timbers need to be set closer again, to work.
Here's some dudes I know of, for folks who want some more of the good stuff on youtube.
Youtube usernames for clarity ....


David W (the aforementioned Mr. Weaver)
The English woodworker (Richard Maguire)
Seekelot (Kees Van Der Heiden)
Brian Holcombe

I found a video of this guy Matt Radtke, using the cap iron to half work, meaning you would still get tearout on some woods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0d-lrRSo_c
Skip to 6:08 and you will see its not set close enough for really curly timbers.

I hope this clarify's things for some
There might be some more folks on YT demonstrating the cap iron in full effect on a hand plane
But I haven't seen any, otherwise I more than likely would have watched it, and it would be in the list.

Tomas

Both can work - back bevel vs "the wood from hell' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwDTH1ggAzM

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I can't see why that would be any way preferable to the cap iron Colin
That's taking far too long to plane that piece, never mind the sharpening part!
If you use the cap iron you'll never change.

Those Cliftons are certainly lovely planes, its nice to see one being adjusted in such clarity.
I would rather a normal cap iron though


Tomas

I read the thread again, and I missed the part of back bevels.

Although, for conversation, and Veritas cap irons, they (cap iron) would work on a blade with a mild bevel.

If you're referring to the ruler trick as a back bevel, then yes, I guess I do one, but more to ease sharpening than to change the angle. And yes, the design of the Veritas cap iron can go to the edge of the iron, so I tried it out.

As mentioned, most of the planing I do is jointing (now) or small stuff, but not dimensioning- power tools do that in the milling process.

Simple test jointing a Spruce top that was slightly off on the grain, so I planed/jointed until the grain lines were straight, and I planed AGAINST the grain. Pretty cool, nice ribbons. Since this thread is about the pm v11, its the cap iron that is already set for spacing extremely close. Of course, any iron can be modified.

For those interested in hand planes, setup use , sharpening , fettling etc there is an older book out by scott wynn on using western planes and asian planes, complete with a lot of very useful information that I found extremely helpful in particular how to set up japanese and chinese planes, and or create a one of a kind plane to do a particular task be it luthiery , cabinetmaking etc. Woodworkers guide to hand planes by scott wynn , from your local library or amazon

We used to send students (myself included) to WoodCentral's hand tool forum or Saw Mill Creek's Neanderthal Heaven, but WC has just about dried up and blown away (just a few posts per week), and SMC appears to me to be striving to become the penultimate example of how the Internet echo chamber effect can kill any true debate as Right Think dominates the discussion. In addition to the Planecraft book (which, after the 1950's edits, was primarily a book-length ad for Record Tools) and Mr. Blackburn's works, there are a number of turn of the 20th c. texts that are on my night stand, as well as the usual trawl through the Fine Woodworking archives for articles from their first 20 years of publication. Any others to recommend, gentlemen?

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

There is good information in the article 'Souping up the Block Plane', by Richard S. Newman, which is primarily about Robert Meadow's methods.
The article can be found in the Fine Woodworking compilation 'Fine Woodworking on Planes and Chisels', ISBN 0-918804-28-0.
Meadow does a good brief job of explaining what's happening at the cutting edge. Anything by Meadow is worth reading, IMO.
Chris Hall's recently available book, available for now only as a download, on setting up Japanese planes is first-class.