November 1930 - 'The Choking Plane - the cause and the cure'

The following article was posted recently on the U.K forum site. It content is pertinent to wooden bodied bench planes. Of particular interest was the 3rd reason given for choking;

Third; yet another cause of choking planes may be the fact that the shaving taken is too wide. This means the plane iron is not ground correctly. The plane iron should never cut at its edges, but should be curved as in fig. 5. If the iron is straight across (as it may be when new) grind it, so that it is curved.

http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/d...4376&mode=view

The real issue then becomes how much "curve/camber" to grind into a straight edge. I just bought an E.C.E 33 mm scrub plane which has serious camber. I was working a split red oak log a few days ago. I roughed out the shape with a heavy adze and then went at it with a LV Custom Jack with a relatively large amount of camber. The movable mouth came in handy to make room for the heavy shavings/chips. Might not have been the optimal way to do the job but I was curious to see how long it would take with more basic hand tools. Would have been nice to have had the ECE Scrub, but it just arrived today. I have been studying on how much camber to put on the blade for my new LV Miter plane too.

Scrubs or heavily cambered blades may not take shavings but something more like chips, which is about all one can get on a very rough surface, anyway. I find: froes, wedges, drawknives, adzes, inshaves ...... can come in handy for rough work too. I am searching for a good hewing axe or two too. There seems to me to be a great deal to learn regarding which tools to use for hand preparing rough wood or logs. I am enjoying working with logs and splits from logs. If one has a good supply of hardwood trees it is tempting to use them.