Lee Valley Mujingfang

[Tim Put]

Just a note.

I picked up one of the small high-angle smoothers (the one with the 22mm blade) and a spare blade.

The plane is not quite as pictured on the website, while my larger LV Mujingfang (48mm) is as pictured with a steel cross pin and steel wedge, this little one is not. Instead of the cross pin it has more traditional triangular side abutments and wooden wedge. More importantly, the blades don't match. They're basically the same length and width, but the replacement blade has the top corners knocked off, is more finely ground all around, and is (mouth clogingly) 0.65mm thicker, basically a full one-quarter thicker.

Maybe one was old stock and the other a newer model?

One the upside, after scraping the slightly concave sole flat, bedding the iron and fitting the wedge (all things I expected to do on a plane shipped from east asia to dry cold central alberta), the plane with its original blade works very well.

[Justin Cavender]

Yes I have the bigger one and it works like a dream!!!!!!!!! It took all of five minutes to tune up and I was making super thin shavings and leaving a smooth as glass surface on curly maple. Did I mention I love mine.

[David Gendron]

i'm glade to hear that Justin, cause I got one coming my way!

[Glen Evans]

+ 1 on this recommendation--the 63 degree bed angle seems to tame curly and bird's eye maple pretty well. This is one of my "go-to" smoothers for tough wood. I've also used the replacement blades for my own plane making--hard to beat the price of those too. Both the Hong Kong style blades and the replacement for this one are dirt cheap for experimenting with hand made planes.

Enjoy
Glen

[Bob Strawn]

Flattening the slightly concave sole might not have been the ideal choice. The Japanese plane purists are now screaming to themselves, Tim. You might as well have painted a saw or cleaned all the Japaning off of an old plane. The slightly concave sole allows it to function despite weather shift, and allows for a bit of 'english' to be done as you plane. ;)

Bob

[Chris Padilla]

Can you provide a link to what you have?

[Justin Cavender]

http://www.japanwoodworker.com/product.asp?s=JapanWoodworker&pf_id=98%2E107%2E2155&dept_id=13602
That is the one I got they also sell them at lee valley I love mine.

[Tim Put]

Flattening the slightly concave sole might not have been the ideal choice. The Japanese plane purists are now screaming to themselves, Tim. You might as well have painted a saw or cleaned all the Japaning off of an old plane. The slightly concave sole allows it to function despite weather shift, and allows for a bit of 'english' to be done as you plane. ;)

Bob

Frankly speaking: No, that's not right.

Japanese planes (one of which this is technically not) are NOT concave across the entire length of the sole. They are often concave between bearing points. There is always one bearing point immediately in front of the blade and one near the toe, often there is also one at the heel, and on larger planes there may be more between these three.

This plane as received was concave across the entire length, the only two bearing points when placed on a flat surface were the very end of the toe and the very end of the heel. No plane works properly without a bearing point just in front of the blade. That's what a narrow mouth refers to, having a bearing point very close to the blade. As received this plane had, in effect, a 2" mouth in front of a blade cantilevered off into space with its nearest support more than an inch away in either direction. I might as well have used a chisel as a plane.
If you must know, my larger woodies are not scraped flat, but scraped with three or four bearing points as described above.

[Tim Put]

This is what a traditional Japanese plane sole should look like
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com.au/showthread.php?t=45651&highlight=japanese+sole

Not concave, but flat, with three bearing point all in one perfectly flat plane (in the geometric sense), with concavities only between these three (or two or four...) geometric plane defining regions.

[Brian Kent]

I am so glad that more people are finding this plane. I really find mine helpful.

[Bob Strawn]

You are correct, Tim, you had me worried there for a moment. There is some variation in layout at back of the plane blade.

I try to examine closely these planes when I find examples, but I have not found much better info than Scott Wynn put in his article 'The Making of a Japanese-style Plane' in Woodwork Magazine #15.

He has the front of all the planes to have a slightly dished front. The short section behind the blade however shows variations. A rough plane he shows to be flat, and about 1/64" back from the level established by the front of the plane. A middle finish he has dished and level, like the front, but slightly back from the plane established by the front. His finish plane has the very end of the heel even further recessed but not as far as the rough plane.

I am always looking for layout diagrams for dai, but so far, apart from my own measurements of physical examples, and diagrams for your typical straight plane, I have not found much.

Bob

[Tim Put]

Okay, good. I do see that my first post was a little ambiguous.

Japanese apprenticeship traditions are annoyingly closed and secretive. There are, as you note, very few good written works on most issues of Japanese tooling and work methods.

[Bob Strawn]

At one time Smalser and Wenzloff had a fairly hot debate over saws. That discussion doubled my knowledge about saws.

I don't rate myself up with Smalser and Wenzloff, but I think we did a good enough job of presenting some good information on Japanese plane conditioning. ;)

I should have noticed that you said scraped instead of sanded or ground. A Western Machinist might have chosen to scrape, but just about everyone else without knowledge of Japanese Planes would have gone for sandpaper on glass or some such decision.


Bob

[Tim Put]

Before I knew any better, I used to use the sandpaper on glass method, both for wooden and metal planes. It's one of those amazing techniques that manages to be slower, messier, and more expensive while usually giving poorer (convex) results. ;)

[Sam Takeuchi]

Japanese tradition of apprenticeship and tool maintenance/conditioning isn't really secretive. It's just that even if you apprentice under a mentor, they don't teach you much. You just have to learn by watching your mentor, so there are a lot of things on Japanese carpentry that's not really written down simply because most of them don't bother to and this mentality that "don't ask questions, just watch and learn" certainly doesn't help with publishing information on what they do. Besides, so-called masters are very good at what they do, but that's what they've been doing all their lives, probably they don't consider publishing books on their trade as one of priorities.

Interestingly, there are quite informative bunch of books on Japanese tools in Japanese however. Those that are available, perhaps the publishers don't feel that there is enough demand to have them translated to be published elsewhere. Japanese tools are still niche outside of Japan as a whole.