Frustrated!!!

[jmaichel]

I have only hand tools and trying to learn how to use them properly is starting to frustrate me beyond explanation. I have read book, am an active member of the hand tool school and have continued to practice but for the life of me I cannot mill a board flat to save my life and it is literally driving me nuts! I have destroyed countless board feet of walnut, white oak, maple, poplar with no success and I think I am finally at my breaking point. I am really starting to regret going all hand tools instead of getting power tools. Anyone interested in LN and veritas planes and saws they might show up in the marketplace very soon! Sorry but I had to vent!

James

[PaulMarcel]

I have great success using my hand to toss the board into the planer. just kidding.

Okay, some of those woods require different technique, but you are likely getting that in the class (e.g., maple, for me, requires a high angle... I use 55º)

To figure out the problem, what was the last wood you tried and what where the specific problems? Which plane and attack angle?

I'll send you my mailing address for the saws though

[jhl.verona]

Give up James, all is lost! Sorry, just kidding...

All those books, magazines, videos, phone calls, chats, emails, etc., can't transmit experience unfortunately. Can't get it in pill form at the Chemist's either. It's a damn shame, really.

The simple fact is that an expert will make something difficult look easy. But it is still difficult. Frustration is part of the learning curve, so accept it. If things are really going badly, I find it useful to do something else that I can do better for a while - it helps psychologically.

One of the best 'tricks' I've seen for flattening a board (Rob Cosman) is to flip the board and rub it vigorously on the bench, then flip again. The high spots will be burnished - flattening the concave side of course. Trying to flatten the convex side is a loosing proposition, I fear.

Just think, this time next year you'll be flattening boards like a pro - and another James will be hitting the frustration barrier. What can you do? Send him a small packet of experience?

Good luck,

John

[superdav]

How long of a length are you trying to flatten? Remember your scrub and jack planes do most of that work. Once you go to the joiners and smoothing planes, you are only removing a 1/6 to a 1/10 of the material. You can work yourself to death. I know I have the blisters to prove it. Do you mark all the surface of the board? Do you use winding sticks? Swartz has a great video on Course Medium and Fine. And it is geared on planing lumber.

[jmaichel]

I have great success using my hand to toss the board into the planer. just kidding.

Okay, some of those woods require different technique, but you are likely getting that in the class (e.g., maple, for me, requires a high angle... I use 55º)

To figure out the problem, what was the last wood you tried and what where the specific problems? Which plane and attack angle?

I'll send you my mailing address for the saws though

Not really using any crazy woods. Last woods used were walnut and white oak with scrub and jointer plane. Seriously I might end up sending you my saws. I should went the festool route instead, at least I would be building stuff

James

[wilburpan]

Your avatar says you're from San Diego. There are a couple of woodworking clubs in your area. Go to them, and find the hand tool nut. (Every club has one, and believe it or not, in our club it's not me.) Get them to show you in person how to flatten a board by hand.

The internet is great, but there is such a thing as tactile knowledge, which is information that you can only get in person with a live human being. For many aspects of woodworking, sometimes you need that tactile knowledge, despite all the information that's out there on the internet. In case anyone thinks I'm dissing the Hand Tool School, I'm not. I signed up for two semesters, and it's worth every penny, and more.

Of course, you can still keep posting questions, or ask Shannon. Since you are a HTS member, I'm sure he'll help you out. What exactly are you having problems with?

[jmaichel]

Your avatar says you're from San Diego. There are a couple of woodworking clubs in your area. Go to them, and find the hand tool nut. (Every club has one, and believe it or not, in our club it's not me.) Get them to show you in person how to flatten a board by hand.

Actually, I need to update my location. I just moved to Washington state a couple months ago.

The internet is great, but there is such a thing as tactile knowledge, which is information that you can only get in person with a live human being. For many aspects of woodworking, sometimes you need that tactile knowledge, despite all the information that's out there on the internet. In case anyone thinks I'm dissing the Hand Tool School, I'm not. I signed up for two semesters, and it's worth every penny, and more.

Of course, you can still keep posting questions, or ask Shannon. Since you are a HTS member, I'm sure he'll help you out. What exactly are you having problems with?

Shannon and I have skyped and he did offer some good assistance and practice exercises but there is just something that I am missing or not understanding. For the life of me I cannot mill a board, seriously they would look better if I just left them in a rough state.

[Vic]

Shannon and I have skyped and he did offer some good assistance and practice exercises but there is just something that I am missing or not understanding. For the life of me I cannot mill a board, seriously they would look better if I just left them in a rough state.

Get back with Shannon. He'll help you out. Hand tooling has a bigger learning curve because you need to learn to feel more of what's going on. But, you can do it. Just keep doing it.

[wilburpan]

Shannon and I have skyped and he did offer some good assistance and practice exercises but there is just something that I am missing or not understanding. For the life of me I cannot mill a board, seriously they would look better if I just left them in a rough state.

One other thing to remember is that milling a board with hand tools has different goals than milling a board with machines. I'm in the process of making a new stand for my drill press. It's nothing fancy -- just a box with a shelf in the middle. But I'm doing this with hand tools, even though gluing and screwing plywood would have been faster, for the practice of putting together a carcasse, which I haven't tried on this scale yet (my drill press stand will be 30" H x 24" W x 22" deep).

During this process I was pretty careful to keep track of my reference face and edge, which is something that I don't always do. My reference faces are the insides of the sides, and the bottom faces of the top, the bottom, and the middle shelf. Those faces are flat, but I have some tearout that I didn't bother to get rid of, because no one is going to see it because of the orientation of the boards. The other sides are the show sides, the parts that you can see, and I'm putting a beautifully planed surface on those surfaces. But those sides are not absolutely flat, and they don't have to be. That's one of the great things about using hand tools and solid wood.

If you want to figure out what is going on with your milling, I'll suggest again to find someone local to show you in person. My feeling from what you're saying is that you've already gotten all that you can get from the internet and from folks at a distance. There's nothing wrong with that. I would never know what a well set up plane can do regardless of all the YouTube videos and websites out there if my back door neighbor hadn't shown me what his planes were capable of.

And it may come down to that you just don't like milling boards by hand, even if you master the process, which is fine, too. I think I'm pretty good at sawing a board. I still would rather use my bandsaw for longer cuts. There's no reason you couldn't use a planer for the initial step for milling a board and hit it with your jointer and smoothing planes afterwards.

[cormier33]

I hear you James,

I find myself in a similar situation right now actually. I am making a toybox for my son and I got a good quantity of soft maple / alder boards from a guy for a pretty good deal. About 50% of the boards are slightly cupped or twisted, I used my router to get perfect edges for jointing at least but I am using my hand planes to deal with the cupping and twisting. I use winding sticks to assist me with this process and also a wheel marking gauge to assist with knowing how much I am taking off. My problem right now? I end up working a high point to make my winding sticks even and show a "flat" surface, and then I have a board that is 1/16" to 1/8" thinner than the other end of the same board.

I guess I need to work that reference side first and then plane the other side until its not cupped or twisted and still even width all around.......I have been taking breaks as suggested above to work on other projects to ensure I don't get frustrated enough to want to take a break away from the shop.

[jmk89]

Have you got a really sharp edge on your planes,James? I know that sounds obvious, but about 99.99% of my planing problems can be isolated to the blade being duller than necessary for the task.

Next, tell us about the chips and shavings you are getting from your sharp blades - that will make diagnosis easier.

The magic spot is not hard to find, but can be hidden by dull edges.

One final point from bitter experience - once you feel that you have hit the sweet spot, you will know it and all you have to do thereafter is repeat the experience.

[Bob Rozaieski]

The first thing you need to do is put the tools down, take a step back and assess what is happening. I did a podcast on flattening a board with hand tools some time back. It might help you to watch it, but you also need to assess what is going on with your particular boards so we can help you to get on track. If you can, let us know exactly what problem you are having. It's hard to help fix the situation when the only information we have to go on is that you can't flatten the board. Are you planing twist into it? Are you not able to remove the cup? Is it flat across the width but not along the length? There are a lot of things that could be causing you grief, so narrowing it down to what problems you are specifically having will help us help you.

Here are a couple of generic suggestions simply based on problems I've seen in the past:

1. Figure out which side is the cupped side using one of your winding sticks. Every board is going to have a cupped side and a crowned side. Start on the cupped side planing directly across the grain to remove the cup.
   
2. Flatten the width first (i.e. remove the cup as noted in #1). Only once you have the width flattened do you move on to flattening the length.
   
3. Put your scrub plane away. It's not the correct tool for this job and is going to make it harder to flatten the board. It alone may be causing your frustration because you can make the board worse than it started out very quickly with a scrub plane. The scrub plane is too short to do the job effeciently. Do you have a jack plane? If so, camber the iron and use it as your first plane. Then switch to your jointer. If all you have is the scrub and the jointer, just use the jointer. It will take you a little longer, but you will still have an easier time than starting with the scrub. I repeat...NO SCRUB PLANE !
   
4. Is the surface you are planing on (i.e. your workbench top) relatively flat? The topography of your bench top is going to transfer to your board. If you have a long dip in the length of the bench, the board will bow into the dip as you plane, so you will plane the ends thinner than the middle. Similarly, if your bench top is cupped, you will plane the edges thinner than the center, in essence creating a crown across the width.
   
5. Use a pencil and put lines across the board every 1/2" to 1". These lines will help you gauge where you have planed. This can help when you are trying to focus only on certain areas of the board, like trying to remove twist.
   
6. Choose your stock carefully. I can't stress this enough. Using hand tools to process boards starts at the lumber yard. Learn to read the boards there instead of dealing with the difficulties of bad stock when you get back to your shop. Start out with the flattest stock you can find and you will be much happier. If you buy boards that are already twisted and badly cupped, you may be in for a big surprise at home as these boards often have reaction wood in them that will continue to move as you plane. This makes you think you are doing something wrong, when in fact it's just the reaction wood moving as you relieve the tension by planing. Sometimes it is the wood.
   

That should get you started, but like I said, if you can be more specific about the exact difficulties you are running in to, it will help use provide better, more specific advice.

[outofstepper]

James,

I'm by far no expert.. in fact I think we probably started at about the same time.. in Shannon's HTS too and only

bought my kit a few lectures in.

Was frustrating for me too.. went through quite a few nice cherry boards that ended up in the fireplace. Don't know

how, but one day it just kind of "clicked".. and I haven't had anyone around to show me how its done other than

Shannon's HTS and the internet. I suppose its the circumstances? Dumb luck? I'm not sure.

Though I'm sure you've been through this.. how about sharing whats going on? Do you have the ability/desire to do

a short video of how you're going about it? I couldn't walk you through how to do it right (I'm sure other could!)

but I could tell you how we're doing things different -- from a beginners point of view at least.

I'll be honest with you, once I got the hang of it is a good time .. would I use a power jointer/planer if I had one?

Dman straight. It's a lot of work. Its nice though being able to get through it by hand, satisfying; -- I'm sure my boards

aren't perfect.. and I probably stop a few strokes shy of where I should -- but so far so good.. the tables are still

standing and the drawers still open.

-Tony

[nateswoodworks]

As always you have gotten a lot of good advice here and as always Wilbur and Bob nailed it with their responses. It took me a while but I have gotten to the point where I can mill boards by hand but honestly unless it is a small amount I go to my jointer and planer. I really enjoy using hand tools but milling is just not fun for me. You may need to walk away for a bit, cool down, and come back and take a fresh look. I remember doing that several yrs ago when I was learning, I came back to it and either had seen where I was going wrong or it was no problem now. The only thing I can think of for the latter was I was just too frustrated to see or feel the problem. I really hope things start going better for you-if not send all your tools to me, I'll even be a pal and pay the shipping! Keep us posted and your head up-you'll be fine.

Nate

[schafersound]

James,

I have a similar story, and I put the planes away for a month. When I went back to try again I started with wood that was already completely dimensioned.

What?

Well, I went to the big box, bought a 1 x 4, a 1 x 6, and a 1 x 8 pine boards and cut them into 12 and 18 inch lengths . Sure they were 3/4" thick, guarenteed, but they cupped as soon as they were cut, and if you leave them dry for a few days you will get some twist starting too. The pine was easy to work with, cheap ($15, construction grade), and it took some of the variables out so I could concentrate on developing technique working out the cup and crowns and get some confidence back.

Please pay heed to Master Bob, I did find a dip in the middle of my bench as soon as I put a factory milled board on it. If one of the Veritas planes you have is the BU Jack, use it for the exercise, it worked great for me. Always mark the board with pencil lines, with the soft pine, any errors you make show very quickly; for me, it showed I was tapering the exit end, I wasn't transferring my weight properly. After I got comfortable with a single board, I glued up 2 1x6's in a panel and worked that, a bit more complex but the next logical progression.

James, I feel your pain. Making a bunch of fire wood out of some really cheap pine helped me rebuild my enthusiasm for my planes and fixed some of the problems I was having getting to a flat board. I'm glad I didn't give up, and you will be too.

Cheers,

Garth

[jmaichel]

Thank you all for the words of encouragement.

The first thing you need to do is put the tools down, take a step back and assess what is happening. I did a podcast on flattening a board with hand tools some time back. It might help you to watch it, but you also need to assess what is going on with your particular boards so we can help you to get on track. If you can, let us know exactly what problem you are having. It's hard to help fix the situation when the only information we have to go on is that you can't flatten the board. Are you planing twist into it? Are you not able to remove the cup? Is it flat across the width but not along the length? There are a lot of things that could be causing you grief, so narrowing it down to what problems you are specifically having will help us help you.

I actually watched your video for the second time last night. I also watched one of Shannon's first video's from the HTS. I realized that my assestment of a board is not correct so I am introducing error right away.

Here are a couple of generic suggestions simply based on problems I've seen in the past:

[*]Figure out which side is the cupped side using one of your winding sticks. Every board is going to have a cupped side and a crowned side. Start on the cupped side planing directly across the grain to remove the cup.

[*]Flatten the width first (i.e. remove the cup as noted in #1). Only once you have the width flattened do you move on to flattening the length.

[*]Put your scrub plane away. It's not the correct tool for this job and is going to make it harder to flatten the board. It alone may be causing your frustration because you can make the board worse than it started out very quickly with a scrub plane. The scrub plane is too short to do the job effeciently. Do you have a jack plane? If so, camber the iron and use it as your first plane. Then switch to your jointer. If all you have is the scrub and the jointer, just use the jointer. It will take you a little longer, but you will still have an easier time than starting with the scrub. I repeat...NO SCRUB PLANE !

[*]Is the surface you are planing on (i.e. your workbench top) relatively flat? The topography of your bench top is going to transfer to your board. If you have a long dip in the length of the bench, the board will bow into the dip as you plane, so you will plane the ends thinner than the middle. Similarly, if your bench top is cupped, you will plane the edges thinner than the center, in essence creating a crown across the width.

I do have an old miller falls jack plane that I could use but I have not put a camber on the iron and no sure how to do it without a grinder.

[*]Use a pencil and put lines across the board every 1/2" to 1". These lines will help you gauge where you have planed. This can help when you are trying to focus only on certain areas of the board, like trying to remove twist.

Bob thanks for the great advice I will reassess what I am doing wrong and try to move forward.

James

[muthrie]

Thank you all for the words of encouragement.

One other thought. BEFORE I started with the Handtool School, I took a class at the Port Townsend School of Woodworkig (http://www.ptwoodschool.com/2011WoodCourses.html). There is also personal instruction available, I believe, at Puget Sound Woodworking (http://www.pugetsoundwoodworking.com/), by Derick who I met a couple of weeks about. I'm taking a class from him next week, Making a Wooden Handplane. He's starting up his school and I bet he'd work with you.

Taking a class was really helpful for ME. Having someone there to give me instant feed back really helped. Just an idea.

PS. Don't tell, but I still can't saw a straight line.

[jmaichel]

I went out the shop set up my droid video camera and started planning and recording (so I thought) after 2 hours of sweating it out and planning my butt of I looked at the video and there was nothing there which really sucks because I did not have great success and I am sure the forum would have caught my mistakes. After 2 frustrating hours I was dead tired and did not want to go back out an shoot another video. I heard they have these things called planers...hmmm I think I am going to have to get one Thanks everyone for their help

James

[joestyles]

I feel your pain James. When I started it didn't take long to stop using the hand tools and since you have kept at it you are a better man than me. The others here have given you very sound advice. My advice came from two fellows who between them had over 100 yrs experience in wood working. Now there is just the one of them and he is a treasure. Bill was the wood shop teacher in the local high school for about 40 yrs and has had a lifetime love of the craft. He currently volunteers his time to the shop I run. I read and watch videos ad nosium :)but for many things there is nothing like being shown. It is funny though last week I picked up a plane and went about flattening a stool top that had been sanded by one of my clients and had many dips in it. The top is 3/4" SPF ply I was going to try to sand out the defects but realized I would burn through the veneer or just make it worse some how. I almost through it away but just went and grabbed the plane. In about 10 mins that top was flat and smooth two minutes with a light sanding and it is good as new. Thing is I hardly ever touch the hand planes and I was surprised by how easy it was. The difference after I thought about it was I new exactly what I was trying to do and what the tool would do in my hands. So I knew how to do it and more importantly when to stop in short I knew the process so much better than when I first started. I dunno if that makes much sense to you but for me it has opened up a new desire to master some of these tools.

[RenaissanceWW]

James,

I have been thinking about this a lot since our Skype session. I also saw your post on the WTO forum. That was a great idea because as you saw there is a lot of information to be gleaned from that. I may post some of this there too. I wouldn't want the public to think I'm not helping a student eh?

So first your easy questions. A fore plane may help you. The greater mass and longer sole may fix some of your issues when missing the leading edge of the board. I don't think you are tapering the board, but rather missing the stroke at the beginning. If you do remove wood at the start of the stroke it is much less than what you are taking on the back half. Really leaning on the front knob and engaging the blade firmly before the stroke begins will help with this. The added weight and sole length in front of the blade on a Jack or Fore may help with this. Follow Bob's advice and use the Scrub only for your edges when removing stock to close to the line. I really regretting including the Scrub in the first semester tool kit. My intention was to use it as more of a utility plane since it works so well and trimming a board to width as well. It may be that the learning curve is higher for milling with the scrub than the Fore.

So don't go out and buy another plane yet. You have spent enough. Use your Millers Falls Jack. You can camber an iron using low grit sandpaper. Cut the camber profile into a thick block then clamp the iron to it so the iron is vertical. Now use the sandpaper to shape down to the profile. You will be creating a flat edge but you will work much faster this way than trying to grind back the curve on a bevel. Of course a grinder will be faster but you can quickly burn an edge if you don't have much experience with it. If you like, you can send the blade to me and I'll grind it for you and send it back. From there you hone it like normal on your stones by rolling the blade across the stone from corner to corner on the pull stroke. It takes some practice to get used to it, but remember the whole blade won't necessarily be doing the cutting and you will only be honing a microbevel so you don't need to spend a lot of time doing it.

So now back to the planing issues. One of the things I like most about hand tools is that you can remove very little wood or a lot of wood with them. This flexibility allow you to be very methodical. ie: find the high spot, plane only that spot, check again with a straight edge.

So this being said, I know you have some concerns about your straight edge, so making a new one or just buying one you can trust may be your next step. Since you are having trouble flattening and edge too, buying a straight edge may be the best solution. I think it would be a fun project in next semester to make a really nice one but that is the future. Now armed with this straight edge you need to diagnose the shape of the board. Grab some pine from Home Depot so you don't worry about the cost. Mark your high spots that create the twist. Usually opposite corners. Mark them in pencil exactly where they begin. Now use your Jack plane to remove the pencil marks. Check again. Mark again if there is still wood to remove and repeat. The same could be said about the high edges present with a cup. Mark where the start and end and plane away your pencil lines. Repeat until the straight edge registers flat.

I think you may be sticking to a planing process too much and not breaking it out into elements that you can apply to an actual board. The processes you read about and see are borne out of experience planing many boards, but it will vary from board to board and sticking rigidly to that dogma might be hindering you. Here is what I mean. I have said to traverse the board to remove cup, then work diagonally to remove twist up and back. Now go with the grain to remove scallops and flatten out the bow. Ta da flat board!

I can almost guarantee if you do only this each time not every board will come out flat. Some boards have wicked twist and require planing only the hight spots first, some have a bow so back you can't take lengthwise passes until you tackle only the ends. Some boards have a concave and convex spot on the same face! Bob is right a lot of this starts by picking good boards. A board with wicked deformations is deformed because of something "wrong" with the tree. Reaction wood or god forbid it was improperly dried. You can never get them flat because they will always move.

How about you get a good straight edge and we get back on Skype this weekend and diagnose some boards together?

Shannon

PS: has anyone ever told you that your avatar makes you look really mad? You are too nice a guy to look that mad

[RenaissanceWW]

PS. Don't tell, but I still can't saw a straight line.

I heard that. Do we need to talk young lady? Straight sawing is easy, did you watch lesson 2? Did you do your practice exercises?

[outofstepper]

I heard that. Do we need to talk young lady? Straight sawing is easy, did you watch lesson 2? Did you do your practice exercises?

from personal experience, 9 out of 10 times i get a straighter cut this way, than if i try to do it "the traditional way".

1. this is important: don't clamp your workpiece down.. just let it float on your workbench

2. if (1) doesn't get you a straight line, try closing your eyes.

3. if (1) and (2) get you close, but not perfect, I've found that one of those black cat / lucky 7

magic candles in the shop does wonders. don't wax your saw with it.. just dim the lights and light it.

put it in a corner somewhere, you don't want it to become a fire hazard.

remember: your saw wants to cut straight, and you want to cut straight.. its just physics that gets in the way.

-Tony

[muthrie]

I heard that. Do we need to talk young lady? Straight sawing is easy, did you watch lesson 2? Did you do your practice exercises?

Ha! I like Tony's solution ..

3. if (1) and (2) get you close, but not perfect, I've found that one of those black cat / lucky 7

magic candles in the shop does wonders. don't wax your saw with it.. just dim the lights and light it.

put it in a corner somewhere, you don't want it to become a fire hazard.

remember: your saw wants to cut straight, and you want to cut straight.. its just physics that gets in the way.

-Tony

Afterwards, when I've achieve saw nirvana, I could take my majic candle with me to take a bubble bath.

[ChrisG]

One thing that hasn't been brought up in this post is the questions "how flat is flat enough?". Obviously, we always shoot for perfection, but I rarely have a board that won't allow some light to poke through when I hold a straight edge to it. In my limited experience, I've learned that sometimes I'm better off allowing for some imperfection rather than planing my board down to nothing. I always make sure all of the twist is out of it but if it remains a little (and I mean a little) convex/cocave in one direction I don't find it too be that big of a deal. Even if you do plane the board perfectly it will redevelop some cupping in less then a day anyhow. I can't help but wonder if James is doing a better job then he realizes.

I'm always working to get better and over time I'm improving, but prepping stock by hand is a skill that develops over time, and no lesson on planing/sawing will completely replace experience (although it can/will certainly shorten the learning curve). I'd say do your best to get some boards flat and square, and when their as good as you think you can get them, build something. This is what will teach where/when/how much flatness matters. A lot of us spend way to much time trying to perfect specific skills before we attempt a project. If you want to build something by hand, build something by hand. If you want to make something with dovetails, M&Ts, or any other joints, than make something with those joints. It won't be perfect, that's ok. Practicing techniques is great, but at some point you just need try them in a project. This will teach you far more then any amount of practice on scraps.

Another thing worth noting is that thin boards (1/2" or under) are harder to get flat then thicker boards, since they will flex a bit under the plane. Using stops instead of clamping between dogs can help this but i still get some flex. This is where a flat bench top becomes especially important. Of course, because thinner boards flex you can get away with a little more imperfection, even on joinery surfaces.

Finally, in hand work we cut our joints to match each others mate individually, and thus are able to compensate for other imperfections as we build.

I hope you haven't yet sold your planes James. Even if you get a thickness planer and power jointer those will be useful tools to own, and being able to flatten boards by hand will be a useful ability. I wish the best of luck and the utmost enjoyment in whatever methods of woodworking you choose.

[bglenden]

Would anyone care to venture any rules of thumb for how constant the thickness should be and how flat the board for normal purposes? Obviously at the highest levels practitioners strive for perfection, but for the rest of us what is a number that on the one hand is good enough that we won't just be transferring our problems to assembly, and on the other hand is not so exact that we haven't wasted a lot of time truing stock beyond a practical need.

Cheers,

Brian