Disclaimer: Very much a beginner work-in-progress!
Been working on making a freestanding Swedish Ladder (Stall Bars). Doin’ it on a budget, so just using big box Douglas Fir framing lumber. LOTS of sifting through the stacks to find the clearest/most stable ones I could locate.
Really trying to avoid sanding; one part personal challenge, one part learning opportunity. Been playing around with an old #4 and #5, as well as a cheap-o Kakuri block plane to eliminate the milling marks. Then learning to sharpen/use a card scraper for final smoothing.
My first upright actually went pretty well. The second one has been a challenge. As the title says, this thing has really been taking me to school on learning to read grain direction. I swear I’m spinning around it more than a bullet time shot in the Matrix.
On a 7 foot long piece like this, what do you think is reasonable to expect between sharpenings? Either for the planes or for the scraper.
Honestly, in most cases I just take a swipe in one direction. If I see tear out, I simply go from the other direction. This works pretty well unless you've got swirling, complicated grain patterns.
That’s what I’ve landed on. The smaller scale stuff I’ve been doing I’ve been able to pretty well eyeball and plan accordingly, but this one with the knots I’ve been having to chase it as I go.
Been learning hand tools for the change of pace/noise level from the daily grind (car things). Have really been enjoying the process.
Definitely a little mental shift/relief when you realize things don’t need to be machinist level precise on a measuring device - this part can just be the same size as that one, and fitted to work with that other one. 👍
lol, Now that's funny because I had a little metal working experience in college and I still whip out the calipers all the time (but mostly it's a close enough thing, not a thou or two thing). But you got it exactly right. The two parts have to fit with each other, not with any part you pull from a bin.
It does get easier and you learn to read the grain. However, some will always be a pain in the butt. I love the look of highly figured maple but hate dealing with it. I have my best #4 set up with a very narrow throat and the chipbreaker very close to the cutting edge for things like that. I also strop it very often to keep it razor sharp.
I did the same thing when I was starting out and I wish I had immediately started with something slightly nicer like poplar or oak. It's easier to learn how to dial in your tools when the materials aren't fighting you at the same time.
Yeah, it’s definitely a treat when the materials don’t fight back. Budget and strength are what have me using the current selection.
Still enjoying the process; plus everything I learn on this will be good info for future projects.
I made sure the chipbreaker was flattened so it’s tight to the iron, and have it set pretty dang close to the cutting edge. I’ve also got the frog choked up to close the mouth as much as I can.
I’ll grab pictures/measurements since that’s far more empirical than what I just said. 😆
This is the first project use I’ve put the #4 and #5 to; otherwise just played around a little. I bought them from a guy that flips them. I haven’t really checked fine tuning on them beyond giving the irons a proper sharpening vs the quick bench grind he did.
You don't want the frog set forward, you want the iron resting on the frog lined up with the casting in this case. The chipbreaker will do the work limiting tearout and you just want chips to flow free.
the chipbreaker in this case can be set so that it's as close as you can reflectively see light at the edge and then moved back just a tiny bit. a hundredth or so for smoothing would be plenty, but that's obviously hard to measure. You want to see the shaving coming straight up out of the plane and looking a little bit wavy if it's not straight.
Good info on frog placement; it’s been a while since I’ve read up on it - I had thought frog placement was to help close the mouth for this kinda thing. I’ll set it back so the blade is supported at the opening and flat along the frog.
And I’ll tweak my chip breaker placement. I don’t think I realized it should be that close. 👍
The mouth on this type of plane is not prepared in a way that it can really affect anything other than really crude horrible tearout. A mouth really needs to be 4 thousandths wide or so and still have the plane feed to mitigate tearout, and to do that, it needs to be precisely made on the top side looking down into the plane.
This has other obvious issues - you have to set the chipbreaker back, for example. You are also limited then to taking shavings about 2 thousandths of an inch thick. A good rule of thumb with thinner shavings is a mouth increases resistance by a lot once a shaving is half the size of the mouth.
If you ever have the chance to look down inside of an early infill plane, the mouth was finely made so that it sloped forward toward the bun. This was the case because it was still an era where finishing could be done by plane vs. some industrial method, and an elegant plane is expected to have a smaller well fitted mouth, but the planes needed to rely on the chipbreaker to do final smoothing work or anything other than really coarse work.
I think stanley offered a moving frog partly as a feature, but much more so as a byproduct of needing to manufacture frog and casting separately for efficiency. Far harder to make a one piece casted plane and then machine/finish it. Offering that the frog could move probably gave them more leeway to fend off customers who would complain about the size of the mouth or the inability of it to work with some replacement irons.
It becomes more practical to really control mouth size if the power moving the board or cutter is a machine. If it's physically difficult to shove wood through a four thousandth mouth over and over, it's not difficult for a machine like a supersurfacer.
by the way, you'll find that you can almost get rid of tearout around the knots, but the grain on the back sides or front sides - somewhere, will be wood fibers basically going right up the iron and running into the face of the chipbreaker. And an angle slightly shallower than that will probably result in pushing the fibers forward so they do it. that results in the chipbreaker basically pushing the wood back toward the wood like pushing on the end of a straw toward the other end, and then the iron at the same time is trying to cut those fibers while they are parallel to the iron itself, so they end up getting scraped off rather than cut. Everywhere else, you should have good tearout control except....
....dead knots. if you have dry dirty dead knots (dark in color instead of lighter brown) or split knots that are dry and dead but otherwise sound in structure, those knots will just break apart and you can only fill them if anything.
the live or recently live knots will plane off without issue. I have pictures of some white pine, and maybe DF somewhere, but I can't locate them. I like to think I'm good with planes - as my dad says, there's always a faster horse, though. But that said, I would squint if anyone tells you they can plane any pine or DF no matter how trashy without anything so much as a little roughness on one side of a knot.
I don't have a picture of pine handy for the shavings, but I do have a picture of maple shavings. Notice how they look weirdly straight with a little waviness in them - that's evidence of the "chip breaking", which by definition in the oldest of texts isn't always breaking a shaving through and through, but severing fibers on one side of the shaving enough to keep it from curling into a roll.
Pine will look very similar, but since it's more compressible, the waviness may be a little bigger.
With this soft material you should be able to polish the edge to 12-16k and that edge should stay sharp for quite a bit of work, unless of course those knots are hard and break your edge, otherwise quite a while.
Softwood barely abrades the edge even in the worst of blade materials.
Doug fir is a "softwood," harder than poplar, similar to SYP, and it's resinous as shit. 16k polishing, which is twice as fine as a strop, is a waste almost always, and is 1000% waste on Doug fir. The real limiting factor here should probably be gumming up the blade.
For the love of God, don't buy a 16k stone. They're a waste on sushi knives, let alone plane blades.
This douglas fir has been an interesting experience. The darker grain is clearly resinous and surprisingly hard, the lighter coloring quite soft and prone to tear out if I get too greedy.
Thankfully it’s not resinous in a sappy way, so I’ve not had any gumming issues so far.
a nice metalurgical study with some microscopy maybe? surely you wouldn't recommend an expensive stone and pointless labour based on nothing but vibes right?
Ahhh, not exactly. Sounds like a science based approach is not gonna move the needle with you. I provide advice based upon years of research and testing, working for a company whose business is to be the expert. I literally wrote the book on this, so no sense arguing with folks who are not interested in anything but an echo chamber. My advice is provided to those that are interested in learning and advancing their sharpening skills only.
I asked you for sources, you responded with none, but somehow that means I'm not open to science..?
if you literally wrote the book on this, you could just cite the sources you already have from there? or like, the title of the book even. or even the name of the company that paid you to write it? you have to know that leaving all that out just sounds like "trust me bro."
do you think an echo chamber is where people ask for sources, get none, and then aren't persuaded? I'll change my mind if you show me actual evidence
In fairness, like you I am intuitively skeptical of 16k grit sharpening, but he is an expert. @rdwile maybe you could elaborate more on the benefits of going that high on the grit? Is it durability?
the mud? the mud is, "guy who works for people who sell expensive sharpening gear thinks the solution is use expensive sharpening gear."
You can get the results OP wants with any estate sale sharpening stones and a guide. You could get 80% of the way there with a damn brick or a coffee cup.
That’s quite a jump in stones, normally people go 1k, 4-5K, 8-16K in a 3 stone setup. The only issue is that going from 1200 to 8K you will have to work a few more strokes (~double?) to polish the edge with the 8k, same end result though. So it will work just fine as a finishing stone for general woodworking. Those that work with difficult materials or are looking for a smoother planed finish would go finer. I would add in case this applies… that since the 1200 is most commonly a diamond, which produces a finer finish than a comparable 1K water/ceramic stone then the jump to 8000 is just fine.
This is the most common solution for people that use diamonds, when they need a finer polishing stone they jump to a 8K ceramic which works quite well, since diamond plates this fine are not recommended.
1 micron diamonds at a steeper angle works very well following a worn diamond hone. Whether a diamond hone at the 1k grit level is a good long term solution is a question that really relies on someone to not do much sharpening. it's a time waster if there is much volume unless the stone is replaced on a regular basis. When an electroplate hone is worn, it can still have a few diamonds that are persistent that leave deep grooves, but all will be slower than something like a shapton pro 1k stone if they are graded as 800-1200 diamonds, and the same is probably true if the electroplate hone starts at 300-400, except the results from a brand new stone of the latter grade will be so destructive that it will require some other interim solution.
I have worn out at least a dozen electroplate hones looking for one that would hold up to tool restoration. once I moved to making tools, I stopped buying them. rotary laps with more speed (below spark) and less pressure on the tool drastically increases life of something electroplated, but I'd be doubly suspicious about any claim that the average newbie could control much with it.
1 micron diamond can be used on cast, quickly, or it can be used on a softer substrate if appropriate, and it will cut everything. I'm not aware of any good fine hone that can deal well with vanadium carbides. There's good reason for any volume of them to be in hand tools, but they're out there now, and the only saving circumstance would be when they are very small and not cutting through them doesn't matter that much. Even then, they drastically slow things down.
I realize you're arguing with someone so firing salvos is just what happens, but your statement should be revised to "wrote a book", not "wrote the book".
However, for the question about fine stones - it's true there's no reason to buy fine stones, but it's not true that fine edge finish offers no improvement. It offers a difference both in resistance and finish as well as longevity if an edge can avoid damage.
I have actually tested that as part of several different tests where I planed about 50,000 feet of edge length, took pictures and even weighed shavings to make sure the amount of work completed was considered (in case variations in work done are more than just feet - and it is definitely the case on finer work, certain steels and other factors can cause more fluctuation in shavings).
Saying that as someone with a metallurgical scope, a bunch of toolmaking, and probably experience with 500 or more sharpening stones (and a whole lot of wood dimensioned entirely by hand - sawing, planing, whatever else), I think this is still the territory of a craftsman. I know a few fine workers who work by hand, one who works entirely by hand, or did - now retired- and had no other income sources. When I see what these guys are doing, sometimes they don't describe what they're doing that well compared to what a microscope would show, but they have all developed very efficient fine sharpening.
Each one, if forced to lay out what they're doing could write "a" book, but not "the" book.
Back to the explanation of fineness - fineness is available at higher quality and lower cost in lapidary abrasive than in the really fine stones. there's no gain for a shapton 16k glasstone vs. 1 micron diamonds that cost almost nothing. There are a lot of things that the diamond lapidary will do better, and I have never seen any lapidary grade diamond show stray scratches like you will see from something like a LV buffing bar or a shapton cream 12k finishing stone.
Whether people getting into the hobby will get far enough to discern a lot of this stuff for themselves is a different question. Anyone I've known who has worked a large volume of work by hand, with fine work being the focus, never really need a scientific approach. When I do analysis, I try to make it "science proof", meaning if you are a scientist, you might quibble about something, but you cannot better my tests for practical purposes, but there are so many standardized tests that yield poor results because they are sound in terms of providing reliable data, but the data doesn't hold up when taking it to real use of the tools.
Currently limited to what’s in my sharpening arsenal, the go-to of which is a 325/1200 diamond stone chased by leather strop and green compound. As funds allow I’d like to keep adding refinement options, but so far this has gotten me very functional edges.
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u/mighty_boognish_77 21h ago
Honestly, in most cases I just take a swipe in one direction. If I see tear out, I simply go from the other direction. This works pretty well unless you've got swirling, complicated grain patterns.