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Ryan Fee
03-07-2011, 2:11 PM
Hi all.

I was wondering if anyone would be able to chime in on the suitability of dogwood for a Krenov style plane. I've been looking to tackle one of these for a while, and had intended on making it from scrap pieces of purpleheart and European steamed beech I've got laying around. I was in Lee Valley today though, and noticed dogwood turning blanks for $0.50 each. I couldn't resist, so i picked up a couple with the intention of laminating on a purpleheart sole. A quick Google search yields a Janka rating of 2150 for dogwood while purpleheart only clocks in at 1860 on most scale I could find, though there was some discrepancy (over 2000 and one scale had it at over 3500) Are these numbers accurate? If so, it would seem that dogwood would actually be more suited to a plane sole.

The only information I could find on dogwood said it was popular amongst turners and that it had historically been used for tool handles and mallet heads. With it's tight grain and the readiness with which is seems to polish, dogwood would seem like a natural choice for a plane. That being said, I haven't worked with it enough to know whether it has stability issues or some other shortcoming that would make it less than desirable.

Anyone care to chime in?

Thanks

Ryan

David Weaver
03-07-2011, 2:18 PM
Are the turning blanks dry? If they are and you can keep them in relatively constant humidity, then it doesn't matter quite as much if the wood is stable.

Ryan Fee
03-07-2011, 2:27 PM
I think the blank is pretty dry, but I'll dig out my Chiwanesse moisture meter and see if I can get a reading. I wouldn't use humid wood for a plane no matter what the species. As for maintaining constant humidity: my hand tools get stored in the basement which is better than a garage but still a far cry from a climate controlled environment. The most the wood will receive in terms of treatment is some BLO, if it gets treated at all, so it'll likely see some moisture changes. I can always store it in a ziplock, but'd be nice to be able to display it.

David Weaver
03-07-2011, 3:08 PM
I don't know how they tell you to orient the wood in a krenov plane, but if you go bark side down (as george calls it) with quartered or rift material, shrinkage or expanding won't cause much to happen.

I don't think you're going to get appreciable wear on a plane of any type other than right at the front of the mouth where the shaving is pulled up (this is where the wear always is on an old beech plane - anything else, like scratches or dings in the middle of the bottom is cosmetic.

I would rather just take a piece of white oak oriented endgrain down, or a piece of brass or something and make an insert in front of the plane mouth as needed than try to make the entire plane something really hard that could be wet, expensive or unstable.

john brenton
03-07-2011, 3:39 PM
David,

I've heard you suggest white oak end grain as a good inlay material several times. Even though I've seen many planes with different inlays, I've always tried to cut a piece of similar wood to the plane, and orient the grain the same way. For example, I have a bunch of planes of different woods that didn't make the cut, but if I have a fruitwood or beech plane that needs an inlay I'll take it from the sole of one of the junkers. As I try to inlay as precise as possible, I always thought there was a danger with different expansions if you inlay with different wood..

Would you say that's over cautious?

I imagine the white oak solution is a Japanese thing...but aren't their planes white oak too?

David Weaver
03-07-2011, 4:14 PM
Actually, the white oak doesn't really have anything to do with japanese planes. Their white oak is miles different from ours, and they make planes with inserts, but I don't have any. I try to rely on sharpness to control tearout with a japanese plane rather than the mouth. I just remember seeing white oak as the suggestion for an inlay because it's common and the end grain is tough.

I'd probably use brass given the choice, because it's easy to work, more durable than wood and you can be precise filing it. You could use rosewood, too, but I wouldn't go to the trouble.

I've noticed that every old plane I've gotten is relatively OK in the sole, but the mouth is beat up. I'm sure other people notice the same thing. Usually the mouth is (far) too big for that to make a difference, but if you're making a krenov plane, that isn't going to be the objective.

If you orient the insert so the movement is consistent with the movement of the body (if the middle of the lamination is quartered, it's going to move to make the plane marginally wider and smaller), I don't think there'd be an issue. Actually, there probably wouldn't be one, anyway. I have had a couple of wooden planes with inserts, and nobody took any care to orient the grain with them, and the inserts weren't an issue. The planes themselves had carefully chosen grain orientation, but the inserts themselves were just pieces of hardwood - some adjustable fitting into a precise slot, and some glued in.

It's one of those things I wouldn't think too hard about unless you find it to be a problem, and then you can just inlay something else. I would use epoxy to put the inlay in and not get too anal retentive about how perfect the job is. Epoxy and hide glue in planemaking are wonderful things. Anyway, the entire plane is a shortcut (to get around learning to cut the mortise and abutments), so there's no reason to worry too much about the bottom being perfectly tidy other than the work done in setting the mouth opening.

I don't have a spectacular opinion about krenov planes, but I recognize they work well and can be really cheap to make, especially if you take advantage of the scads of old woody double irons floating around for $5 a pair.

john brenton
03-07-2011, 10:13 PM
I forgot to mention uneven wear, in addition wood movement like I wrote above, but I think you're right. I have one with ebony ( that I'm about to reluctamtly replace), and its held up for God knows how long. Just being anal I guess. Epoxy is the way to go for inlay, hide glue for ecerything else, absolutely.

george wilson
03-07-2011, 11:05 PM
Just scanning this quickly,I think dogwood would make an excellent plane material. I think beech was used so much because it was plentiful and grew like weeds. It certainly is one of the least stable woods I have ever tried to dry,and making long cooper's jointers out of it was no picnic(keeping the wood straight.) I have an early 19th.C. plane made of slightly curly applewood. It is a beautiful plane. I wish I had more applewood planes.

Mark Baldwin III
03-08-2011, 6:32 AM
I think beech was used so much because it was plentiful and grew like weeds. It certainly is one of the least stable woods I have ever tried to dry,and making long cooper's jointers out of it was no picnic(keeping the wood straight.)

I've been wanting to ask about that. How was it kept straight? I talked to a guy from the local mill and asked him about beech. He said they rarely deal with it because it's such a pain.

Jim Paulson
03-08-2011, 7:19 AM
Nobody has said anything about maple. They cut some maple trees down in front of the church and I hand split some for possible use for moulding planes. I sealed the ends, but checking seems to be an issue with the harder maple. Since Crown Plane uses curly maple, it seems worth trying.

Jim

David Weaver
03-08-2011, 8:25 AM
I've been wanting to ask about that. How was it kept straight? I talked to a guy from the local mill and asked him about beech. He said they rarely deal with it because it's such a pain.

If you read some of the WPINCA books, they mention that planemakers often found a supply of beech that was already dry for several years. If some may have dried their own, I haven't read about it - there'd be no reason for them to take on the burden if they could find someone who already had it to sell. What that amounts to is I would bet that the mills who had dried lumber had blanks that were either well oversize, or they had thick boards and cut them (I don't know what they did back then, but they were probably easier to cut green). If you're going to dry beech now, air dry, I wouldn't assume one billet for one plane, some of the billets might come out junk. Hard to tell, though, because aside from there being gobs of it in ohio, that people burn for firewood, I don't know where else you'll get it.

Hearne said they had it outside (i was there when there was a foot of snow, so no go on looking through the piles), but if it's like the apple, to get some QS, you'll be buying a lot of wood that isn't QS, and unless you're going to make some cheap furniture or pallets, what are you going to do with a bunch of extra flatsawn beech that you already paid a premium for?

What I'm getting at is if I wanted beech, I would find someone who burns it for firewood and save a few 30-36" long rounds and split them into blanks and wait 5 years.

The guy at hearne didn't have a high opinion of beech. He's aware that people want some to make planes, but he still considered it a "utility wood".

David Weaver
03-08-2011, 8:31 AM
Curly maple isn't stable, either. Heritage used curly maple with no laminations on some guitars about 10 (?) years ago - on the necks, which apparently caused problems by its instability because they were regarded as a guitar to avoid and heritage quit making them like that.

If there's curl in a plane, it's used for looks. Good straight grained QS maple makes good planes, but speaking from minimal experience using floats on beech and floats on maple, they are not far off in hardness but maple works as if it's twice as hard. I haven't used soft maple.

For moulding planes, it's something you can get readily (QS hard maple) in 8/4, but you might have to get table leg blanks if you want a piece 4x4 for a long plane, and 4x4 table leg blanks aren't cheap - it ends up being cheaper to find a good quality old wooden jointer than it is to find just the wood to make one. West penn lumber has QS 8/4 maple for just under $10 a bd foot. It's nice stuff if you're having trouble finding something QS that's a little easier to work.

Casey Gooding
03-08-2011, 8:31 AM
Dogwood would be fantastic for planes. I have wanted to make some out of dogwood but have not been able to find pieces big enough.

Frank Drew
03-08-2011, 9:42 AM
Dogwood would be fantastic for planes. I have wanted to make some out of dogwood but have not been able to find pieces big enough.

That's often the issue with dogwood; it's hard to find big trees these days. But their slow growth does make for a wood that's both hard and tough -- as Ryan notes, it was a preferred wood for mallet heads years ago.

Adam Cherubini
03-09-2011, 2:34 AM
I think beech was used so much because it was plentiful and grew like weeds. It certainly is one of the least stable woods I have ever tried to dry,and making long cooper's jointers out of it was no picnic(keeping the wood straight.) I have an early 19th.C. plane made of slightly curly applewood. It is a beautiful plane. I wish I had more applewood planes.

People talk about how hard it is to dry Beech. The part of that sentence that's missing is how hard it is to dry Beech in VIRGINIA. England's climate is not similar to ours. I wonder how Beech would dry in Seattle.

The C&W guys studied the mechanical properties of Beech to see if they could determine WHY it was used in England. I think it was used in England because it was plentiful and cheap. I'm sure it dried just fine in England's humid climate.

We may need to choose a different "utility" wood. We have good Maple, Birch, and Black Cherry. I think all of these would be suitable for planes.

Adam

David Weaver
03-09-2011, 8:35 AM
Maple and cherry have worked fine for me, cherry's a little soft, but if you're using it for moulding planes, no hobbiest should ever kid themselves into thinking that they're going to wear out a cherry moulding plane from actual use. (there is definitely a huge variation in the density of cherry out there, too, I've gotten some boards that I wish were quartered because they were much tighter and more dense than the 8/4 boards I've gotten at hearne to make planes).

quartered birch is harder to find, but as long as it's yellow or black birch, it's fine.

Really, anything that's dried and quartered would be fine.

Frank Drew
03-09-2011, 8:41 AM
How large can birch (not beech) grow? I'm familiar with the wood, but the trees... not so much. The only one I could probably recognize at a distance is paper birch, and I've never seen a particularly big one of those.

David Weaver
03-09-2011, 8:50 AM
Paper birch is too soft for planes, I think.

I have some quartered birch that was sold to me as black birch, but I don't know that that's what it is, it's coming out too light to match the density of black birch now that it's dry...anyway, it's quartered, no sap or pith and some of it is 6 inches wide. Figure that the diameter of a tree that would make that would have to be in the neighborhood of 20 inches or so.

Frank Drew
03-09-2011, 9:33 AM
...the diameter of a tree that would make that would have to be in the neighborhood of 20 inches or so. That's getting to be a fair sized tree; not huge, maybe, but bigger than any dogwood I've seen.

David Weaver
03-09-2011, 9:53 AM
That'd be my guess, too. We had several dozen dogwoods on our property growing up. None of them would've yielded something straight and wide enough to make a plane.

There is a real danger of spending much more time trying to find the ideal wood than making the plane and using it, when in the end, only a few parts of the plane are critical and could be done up in a durable wood. The only part of the plane that I can think of that gets an appreciable amount of wear is the front of the mouth. If someone only edge joints with a plane, they could wear the sole hollow, but it shouldn't be necessary to find a wood suitable for pool cues to make a simple plane that can be tuned if it ever moves or shrinks.

greg Forster
03-09-2011, 10:49 AM
To enlarge on the question wood for planemaking in 19thc; somewhere, at sometime on the internet, I came across some photos showing planemaking billets drying. IIRC, late 1800s and a commercial English planemaking firm.
The billets were squared and of a size for bench planes; stored under cover- I think actually inside a building. I've searched the internet trying to re-find the photos, but no luck yet. My hunch would be commercial planemakers
procurred logs and cut and dried the billets at their factory.

Pam Niedermayer
03-09-2011, 3:40 PM
To enlarge on the question wood for planemaking in 19thc; somewhere, at sometime on the internet, I came across some photos showing planemaking billets drying. IIRC, late 1800s and a commercial English planemaking firm. The billets were squared and of a size for bench planes; stored under cover- I think actually inside a building. I've searched the internet trying to re-find the photos, but no luck yet. My hunch would be commercial planemakers
procurred logs and cut and dried the billets at their factory.

That's what the Japanese dai makers still do. Inomoto-san keeps a blank 5 years or so before he uses it.

Pam

David Weaver
03-09-2011, 4:30 PM
There is some footage of his stash on youtube. He's got a lot of blanks. I'm sure all of the dai makers do.

but they still shrink a bunch more when they come over here! I always have to relieve the sides and scrape the ledge and bed.

Chris Jackson
03-09-2011, 5:30 PM
+1 on softness...I would highly recommend Hard Maple, Osage, or Beech...all fine choices. My last 2 Krenov planes were from 16/4 hard maple...I have a thread here in the forum on one of them.

Federico Mena Quintero
03-09-2011, 5:41 PM
Speaking of wood selection, has anyone tried laminating a hard wood for the sole and softer wood (probably way softer) for the bulk of the body?

I have some very hard Tapirira mexicana (sumac?) that I want to use for a sole on a cedar body. I have no idea how that will behave.

It's possible to build the entire plane out of the Tapirira, but it takes Real Work to work that thing :)

Pam Niedermayer
03-09-2011, 6:50 PM
There is some footage of his stash on youtube. He's got a lot of blanks. I'm sure all of the dai makers do.

but they still shrink a bunch more when they come over here! I always have to relieve the sides and scrape the ledge and bed.

Not necessarily from shrinkage, possibly from their leaving the fit slightly undone. Then if shrinkage does occur, it won't wreck the dai-to-blade relationship.

Pam

Mike Holbrook
03-10-2011, 8:41 AM
I was born & raised in North Carolina, where the Dogwood is the state tree and they grow like weeds. Now I live in Georgia, same thing. I don't know if I have ever found a Dogwood that would be big enough to make planes from. I run a dog park and the whole place is about to turn white from Dogwood blooms. They tend to grow at the edge of woods, partial shade. I find that the older ones tend to get shaded out by the siblings that come up from roots closer to the sun, naturally thinning out older trees.

I have been thinking about ordering a plane kit from Knight Toolworks. He offers Padauk or Purpleheart. He cautions against oily woods, like Ebony, which he has found tend to develop splits from changes in the humidity quite easily. He even suggests letting any wood adjust to the environment they will exist in for one or two weeks before working the wood. It does look like he makes totes & wedges out of maybe Maple.

Knight offers slotted and non slotted mouth blocks, so the plane builder can decide whether or not to make an adjustable mouth or not. I believe a single screw or bolt holds the adjustable mouth in place. I wonder how much use a single screw or bolt can get before it wears out wooden threads? Any thoughts on the best mouth? I know the relative flatness of the mouth in relation to the rest of the plane bottom is critical. On the one hand an adjustable/removable mouth might allow one to tinker with this adjustment, but on the other it might make it less stable too?

Does anyone have experience with Padauk or Purpleheart planes, particular Knight kits or planes?

greg Forster
03-10-2011, 2:13 PM
drawing of David Malloch & Sons plane manufactory showing a log being delivered and more logs visible in the courtyard.

scanned from British Planemakers from 1700 W.L.Goodman 3rd edt by Jane and Mark Rees

185944

greg Forster
03-10-2011, 2:34 PM
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=south+st,+perth,+great+britain&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=South+St,+Perth+PH2,+United+Kingdom&gl=us&ll=56.395112,-3.428174&spn=0,0.006947&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=56.395117,-3.42845&panoid=W7v7yXkLNBg0Xrq3DX0KSg&cbp=12,229.63,,0,-9.94




current Google Street View of the Malloch & Sons plane manufactory shown in drawing above

David Weaver
03-10-2011, 3:00 PM
Pam - definitely shrinkage, especially when I get them directly from japan. I fit them, and then a year or two later, the sides need floated some.

However, as you point out, once you float, chisel or scrape the sides a little, the good fit is still there.

Ryan Fee
03-10-2011, 6:23 PM
Yeah, I never thought of it compared with beech. I guess that makes sense.