Wooden Planes


G S Haydon

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I could only think of one to add, you might like it Terry  :). I'll see if I can think of any others http://www.toolemera.com/bkpdf/MarplesCat1938.pdfYou could still buy single Irons only which does indeed suggest they were used into the 20th Century. However as for wooden planes for sale the only single iron option was a roughing tool. 

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Here is the link to the 1901 Preston catalog.  At that point, many models are available in single- and double-, including smoothers.  

 

http://www.handplane.com/100/edward-preston-sons-1901-catalog/

 

My guess is that the heyday of the double-iron woodie was much shorter in the Americas.  C Shaffer's point about the surviving examples is very much the case, lots of single iron wood planes.  The displacement of traditional single iron types in America may have been more a function of industrialization and the mass availability of metal or transitional types.  There was probably much more of a period where single-iron wood, double iron wood, and early metal (transitional or otherwise) coexisted.

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"My guess is that the heyday of the double-iron woodie was much shorter in the Americas.  C Shaffer's point about the surviving examples is very much the case, lots of single iron wood planes.  The displacement of traditional single iron types in America may have been more a function of industrialization and the mass availability of metal or transitional types.  There was probably much more of a period where single-iron wood, double iron wood, and early metal (transitional or otherwise) coexisted."

 

Yep, seems a really sensible position to take. The US was the home of the volume and fantastic Bailey pattern plane. It's likely that we were slower to adopt it. I have trade manuals from the late 1960's with sections on wooden planes, suggestive that they were still part of some workshops into the later part of the 20th Century.

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I'm sure that I have at times had the cap iron backed off enough that it basically had no effect.  A few times it has slipped into that state on a plane or two. I don't recall anything disastrous happening.  I don't believe that I even noticed until time to hone.

 

Anybody with an ECE smoother can test the theory - they're bedded higher.  Just back off the capiron to a fat sixteenth or so and plane away.  Betcha don't notice much of a change in surface quality.

 

That said, they can be helpful at times especially on plane pitched at 45*.  Higher pitched planes may not need them.  Probably don't, given what was built with them in the past.

 

Pendulums can overswing.  Reality and truth rarely found at the margins of opinion.

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Yebbut I haven't given up my scraper and never would.  Don't always need it but when I do there is no replacement.

 

I don't personally have a stake in the 'it must be finished right of the plane' debate.  I think it's foolish.  One can argue about when the double-iron supplanted single-iron plane but the one constant that has never left us is the scraper. 

 

There are some old hands floating around on the forums that say they never have to scrape and that may be true but it's equally trued that they probably never build anything with a curve, either.

 

A little tearout sends some guys on a lost weekend of plane tuning and head-scratching.  I just reach for a scraper and move on.  There is no  human being on Earth that could tell the difference, either.  Of this, I'm sure.

 

I halfway relish having to use one since it takes far more skill to get one ready to use, and actually use, than it does to click "buy" on a premium plane maker's website.

 

Cheers.

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Ahhh, the burr on a scraper is a much more nuanced thing than a plane iron's edge.  Teeny-tiny burr that polishes more than anything else, to a stout and scratchy thing capable of taking a rank and greedy shaving by comparison.

 

I know you aren't one of them, but I always just chuckle at those who sniff the air when scrapers are brought up.

 

They haven't a clue in the world.... not one.

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what a great thread...

I'll just add that getting a scraper, struggling for the first time (less later) to get a decent burr on it, and then discovering just what this tool can do is one of the biggest "wow" moments I've had in this craft.  I will also have to play around a bit with my plane cap iron, I just set the cap at about a 32nd and go to town, didn't really realize that moving a bit here and there depending on the wood changes the performance... again, great info here.

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That's great to hear stb! Exactly why forums can work really well. Charles, yeah, scrapers are really essential. When I watched my father and a another guy who worked for us making Georgian wreathed handrails you realise how versatile a scraper is especially beyond the rectangle form. I like my scrapers a little soft, just hard enough so they yield to the back of a gouge. I'm far too tight to buy a burnisher!

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Time spent experimenting with a scraper will pay far more dividends than futzing around with planes whose characteristics, and certainly geometry, are mostly fixed.

 

The burr on a scraper presents and infinite number of "settings." 

 

I love my Cliffy burnisher.  Very well-spent money.  You wouldn't play a Stradivarius with a third-rate bow.  A scraper is one's Strad.  Really.

 

My eyes were opened to its possibilities when I read my first Frid book in which he discussed scraping lacquer between coats.  This is a tool capable of very delicate and precise work. 

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I love my Cliffy burnisher.  Very well-spent money.  You wouldn't play a Stradivarius with a third-rate bow.  A scraper is one's Strad.  Really.. 

 

As a third-rate violinist I'm not sure the analogy really holds.

 

A fiddler friend of mine once decided to treat himself and buy a better bow. So he went to the local shop and the luthier presented him with a choice of six different bows, and asked him to play with them and decide which he liked best. When he was finished, he said he wasn't quite sure which he preferred. At which point the luthier put all the bows away and said that he already had a better bow than he needed: as one of the six was no better that what he currently had and cost about $200, while another was the luthiers personal bow valued at $10,000 - if he was ready for a new bow the difference should have been obvious.

 

When it comes to violins, third-rate players get third-rate results with either third-rate tools or first-rate tools. A strad in my hands will still squawk like a parrot, same as my battered old fiddle.

 

If the same is true of scrapers, then it's my third-rate woodwork skills that stop me from getting the burr I want not my burnisher - optimistically I recently bought a Veritas variable burnisher in the hope that a better tool will produce better results. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

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I am a proponent of a purpose-made burnisher with a comfortable handle and a well machined and consistently hardened piece of steel.  That's the point I was trying to make rather than providing the forum a totally rigorous analogy (if there's even such a thing at all), though I think most people got my meaning.

 

Even with a great burnisher and a couple decent scrapers one has easily less than $75 tied up in this bit of kit and the larger takeaway is that you get an extraordinarily large amount of bang for the buck.

 

There isn't a cutting edge in the shop with more potential  in it than the burr of a scraper.

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Scrapers are also one of the most satisfying tools to use, in the same way as a spokeshave or a good rasp.  As intimate and boiled down as it gets...the essence of woodworking.  A piece of metal, a piece of wood, a human and a creative vision.  No guides, no fences, no templates, no training wheels.  Only hands and eyes.

 

It took me a long time to fully grasp how to turn a proper burr and what a scraper is capable of, but once you do...pure ecstasy for the reptile brain.  The way survivalists must feel when they kill their dinner with an atlatl or make a fire with sticks.

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My home made burnisher is the shank of a tap in a T handle. It cuts threads in stainless, it is plenty hard. What makes a purpose made burnisher better? Is it the ability to draw the length of the rod while moving along the card?

 

Correct length, balance, comfortable handle, feedback from the scraper.  It just feels right, not necessarily quantifiable.  

 

Love the Cliffy, could be my favorite tool.  

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Just getting back to wooden planes I've just seen an advertisement in the latest Furniture and Cabinet Maker magazine (February 2015) for a Veritas wooden plane hardware kit. This is just the metal parts used in the plane with the Norris adjuster. You supply the wood and make that yourself to your own specifications. There are plans in the kit. They are selling from GBP £46.96 at Axminster in the UK http://www.axminster.co.uk/veritas-wooden-plane-hardware-kit with a choice of blade.

 

I'm not sure how much they are selling in the rest of the world but for anybody considering making a wooden plane with Veritas parts it looks good. I'm going to get one for a little fun.

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