Showing posts with label plane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plane. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Fore Plane Squared
I have been feeling an embarrassment of riches this weekend.
For the last few weeks Ive been spending my free time dipping into the new translation of "Roubo On Marquetry" and enjoying every page. Ive found I cannot burn my way through it very quickly because the things Im reading in there set my synapses alight and I have to digest the ideas before I move forward.
Then Friday I came home from work to find my copy of Joseph Moxons "The Art Of Joinery" had arrived. So paging back and forth between both of these historic tomes is amazing. If I didnt know any better Id say those jokers over at Lost Art Press planned it that way.
Ive tried to read through some .pdf versions of "The Art of Joinery" and the accompanying works in the past and I have to admit, Im not sure I took much away from it in the past, but after Chris Schwarz hammered on it a bit, cleaning up the text and offering his analysis, Im enjoying it much more this go around and learning some interesting things too.
In Section 3 he spends ink talking about the differences in setting the depth of the plane iron for a wooden fore plane. Later in the text Chris writes about the order he planes down rough stock and that often he works from a heavy set fore plane to a fine set fore plane followed by a smoothing plane. In essence, the process uses two fore planes.
The "fore" plane is a more complex thing to the numbered system ushered in by Leonard Bailey and Stanley Tools. In place of the singular fore plane you have the number 5 Jack Plane of appropriate size and the number 6 Fore Plane of appropriate name. I use both of these planes regularly when bringing a stick of lumber down from rough to square and surfaced.
I use the number 5 with a heavily cambered blade to do the heavy lifting. I use it to traverse the board and knock down the high spots to cure wind and cup. Then I follow with my number 6, I have a lighter camber on the blade and I use it set fairly fine to finish out the flattening and erase the tracks left by the number 5. The final touches them come from a number 4 smoothing plane.
Ive found success using that system and Ive stuck with it. Its kind of fun to hear that backed up by both Moxons and Chriss writing.
When I first started making the hand tool transition in my shop and began to put my toes into the vintage plane market I found a great resource in Patrick Leachs "Blood and Gore" resource. I had read through it a dozen times by the time I ran across my number 6 at a flea market and as I picked it up and turned it over in my hands Patricks playful venom about how he dislikes this plane ran through my head. I put it down and almost walked away.
But the plane had already been cleaned up, restored, and the price was so cheep Im embarrassed to repeat it. I picked it up and it brought it home and that plane has managed to touch nearly every project Ive built since. I pride myself on keeping a modest tool collection. Just what I need to work, and maybe a little more. I could get along without the cursed number 6 but it does make things easier.
It really goes to prove one of the things Ive come to love about woodworking. There are a ton of different ways to do every task and, provided they are safe, every single one of them is correct.
Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf
Read More..
For the last few weeks Ive been spending my free time dipping into the new translation of "Roubo On Marquetry" and enjoying every page. Ive found I cannot burn my way through it very quickly because the things Im reading in there set my synapses alight and I have to digest the ideas before I move forward.
Then Friday I came home from work to find my copy of Joseph Moxons "The Art Of Joinery" had arrived. So paging back and forth between both of these historic tomes is amazing. If I didnt know any better Id say those jokers over at Lost Art Press planned it that way.
Ive tried to read through some .pdf versions of "The Art of Joinery" and the accompanying works in the past and I have to admit, Im not sure I took much away from it in the past, but after Chris Schwarz hammered on it a bit, cleaning up the text and offering his analysis, Im enjoying it much more this go around and learning some interesting things too.
In Section 3 he spends ink talking about the differences in setting the depth of the plane iron for a wooden fore plane. Later in the text Chris writes about the order he planes down rough stock and that often he works from a heavy set fore plane to a fine set fore plane followed by a smoothing plane. In essence, the process uses two fore planes.
The "fore" plane is a more complex thing to the numbered system ushered in by Leonard Bailey and Stanley Tools. In place of the singular fore plane you have the number 5 Jack Plane of appropriate size and the number 6 Fore Plane of appropriate name. I use both of these planes regularly when bringing a stick of lumber down from rough to square and surfaced.
I use the number 5 with a heavily cambered blade to do the heavy lifting. I use it to traverse the board and knock down the high spots to cure wind and cup. Then I follow with my number 6, I have a lighter camber on the blade and I use it set fairly fine to finish out the flattening and erase the tracks left by the number 5. The final touches them come from a number 4 smoothing plane.
Ive found success using that system and Ive stuck with it. Its kind of fun to hear that backed up by both Moxons and Chriss writing.
When I first started making the hand tool transition in my shop and began to put my toes into the vintage plane market I found a great resource in Patrick Leachs "Blood and Gore" resource. I had read through it a dozen times by the time I ran across my number 6 at a flea market and as I picked it up and turned it over in my hands Patricks playful venom about how he dislikes this plane ran through my head. I put it down and almost walked away.
But the plane had already been cleaned up, restored, and the price was so cheep Im embarrassed to repeat it. I picked it up and it brought it home and that plane has managed to touch nearly every project Ive built since. I pride myself on keeping a modest tool collection. Just what I need to work, and maybe a little more. I could get along without the cursed number 6 but it does make things easier.
It really goes to prove one of the things Ive come to love about woodworking. There are a ton of different ways to do every task and, provided they are safe, every single one of them is correct.
Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf
Monday, February 10, 2014
A Female For The Dovetail Plane
In the sliding dovetail joint the two elements, male and female slide one into another. The resulting joint is very strong and it is most used when vertical and horizontal parts have to offer more resistance to the traction (the shelves in a bookcase, for example).
The traditional way for this joint needs three tools: saw, chisel and router plane.
Another option is to use dedicate planes, but while for the male element the choice is wide, for the female part of the joint the specialized planes are rare. Japanese tools, instead, have a Ari-Kake-Shakuri-Kanna for this purpose, a grooving plane needing a separate angled fence for its job.
As this joint is mostly cut across the grain, it is necessary scoring the wooden fibers before.
The plane for cutting the female element is a sort of dado plane, indeed, only with angled sole and skewed blade.
Finally I decided to make a self made one and here is the result:
FDT means "Female Dovetail" and 6 is the blade width (6 mm)
The blade is skewed at 20° and the sole is inclined at 78°, the same of male cutting plane. The blade is bedded at 50°.
It has an adjustable depth stop and a double spur for cross grain cuts.
The woods are beech for the body, mahogany for sole and wedges.
The body building is quite simple. I cut a rabbet for the 6 mm bottom part.
I cut rooms for blades and wedges and glued a piece of mahogany to the bottom.
I planed the sole at 78°, controlling the correspondence with the male element.
The critical part of the job is to find the exact correspondences between angled sole and skewed blade and wedge.
For the blade I used an old plane iron, for the nickers a 10 mm spade bit, grinded ad hoc.
Then the side is closed by a piece of beech; it creates the slots for blades and wedges.
The finish is shellac and wax.
The plane is able to cut grooves of which minimal width must be inferior to blade width; in practice is better that such measure was at least 3-4 mm more.
The cut is carried out in two parts (or more, if the dovetail is larger), the last one in opposite direction.
Here is the on the road test:
Cut the male and trace two parallel lines at a distance corresponding to minor width dovetail point. This is the only tracing requested:
The angled fence keeps the plane in the correct position:
The cut begins:
A couple of minutes for the first groove:
The second cut in the opposite direction.The depth stop arrests the plane at wished point:
The router plane has really a poor job to do:
Here is the groove completed....
....and the joint!
In this case I cut beech wood; it will be interesting to observe the plane working on harder woods. Surely, the tool can be improved by a better quality blade. I did only few cuts but I learned that is convenient to keep the groove closer (- 1mm) and finally adjust the male by few other shots.....plane shots of course!
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