Question for plane gurus: woodie build single blade or blade + chipbreaker?

[Mike Allen1010]

Inspired by Leigh's "Woodie build off" thread, I am contemplating building a wooden jack plane and I could use some help from the experts here in the Cave.

Most of the planes I have are metal -- I have a couple Japanese wooden body planes, but all of these (except for the LV bevel Up) have a bevel down blade and a companion metal chip breaker. However, it seems to me all of the high end infill planes I lust after but could never afford, only have a single bevel down blade and no chip breaker.

I thought the idea of the chipbreaker was to curl back the shaving just as it comes through the mouth to prevent tear out. Yet as I understand it, one of the chief virtues of these high-end infill planes without chip breakers is their ability to take clean shavings with no tear out even in highly figured woods -- what gives? I have an old Morris infill with a very tight mouth and it has a chip breaker - which only adds to my confusion.

I would like to understand the concept/theory, but my practical question is: if I'm planning to build a wooden jack plane, with a cambered blade for initial surfacing of rough stock, should I get a combination Blade and Chip breaker, or just a single blade? Does the single blade concept only work with infill smoothers with really tight mouths?

I have had great results with Hock blades and chipbreakers in my rehabilitated Stanley metal planes, and that's probably what I would use for the Woodie if I go the blade plus chip breaker route. If I go with a single blade, is there a particular brand/style/thickness of blade I should use?

I very much appreciate the advice and expertise of everyone here. I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere. I've read lots of related threads here but this is still confusing to me.

BTW, attached are some pictures of my first shop built Woodie as sort of a test. I am surprised/thrilled even works! Thanks to Derek Cohen for his tutorial which was very helpful.

All the best, Mike



225975225976225977225974225978225979

[Zach Dillinger]

Check out what Bill Clark and Larry Williams have to say on the subject. http://planemaker.com/articles_single_v_double.html

I prefer single irons. They have fewer things to tune and fewer chances to catch the shavings, clogging the mouth.

Very nice plane, by the way :)

[David Weaver]

To make the decision, you have to decide whether or not you use a double iron (an iron with a chipbreaker) in a way that actually breaks chips. If the chipbreaker is more than a razor thin margin from the blade (like 3 or 4 thousandths or something), then it's not going to be breaking thin smoother chips as effectively as it should, or not at all.

There are a lot of double iron infill planes. I think most are double iron (raney, holtey, sauer and steiner , wayne anderson - they all as far as I know will make both double and single iron planes, but a lot of the spiers and norris planes that were bevel down were double irons.

If you're early on, I think you'll have more luck with a single iron and a tight mouth if you want a decent smoother to use because of what Zach said.

[Chris Griggs]

As you know Mike, I'm not a plane making guru by any means, but one of my motivations for wanting to build my own planes is to have bevel down planes w/o chipbreakers. As far as I'm concerned, if you have a good thick, sharp blade, a chipbreaker is just one more thing to mess with when honing and one more thing to potentially cause problems. I always thought it would be cool if someone introduced a Bailey-ish bevel down plane with a single iron. Seems to me that there is a certain Canadian plane maker out there who puts a Norris adjuster on their bench planes anyway so I don't imagine this would be that big of a stretch. I could be way off base though, and more and more am learning that when something that seems like a good idea isn't being done it probably means its been tried and didn't work.

Anwyay, I really want to buy some of the leftover HNT irons that Highland and Craftman studio still have in stock - they single irons that range from 4mm thick to 6mm thick depending on the blade size/purpose. They aren't particularly long, but that appeals to me as the plane designs I have been thinking thru/sketching out are lower profile anyway (more like the HNT/chinese/taiwan style). Of course, by saying this I probably just shot myself in the foot, and other folks will buy them out now (not that I presume to have any influence) and now when I get around to trying to buy them I'll need to pay more to get them from Australia.

[Mike Holbrook]

Check out my Jack made from Steve Knight parts. It uses a 1/4" single iron and a simple adjustable mouth.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16891057@N05/6297648074/in/photostream/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16891057@N05/6297120323/in/photostream/lightbox/

I have a dozen of Steve's left over iron stock, all 1/4' thick. Only problem is many of them are kinda short. I believe Stu at Tools from Japan has something along these lines in a Japanese blade. I keep meaning to send him an email and find out what sizes he has.

[Tony Shea]

Mike Allen, I like your first shop made plane a lot. I am curious about the abutements used to hold the wedge in place. I can't really tell from the pics if they taper out down near the edge of the blade, but how does this setup work in practise. Do you get clogging of the shavings from the abutements being in the way? I personally have no experience with making a plane that uses the abutements to hold a wedge in place but have been very interested in trying out a coffin style smoother out of one peice of wood. I love the looks of coffin smoothers and Larry Williams makes their version look amazing.

[Mike Holbrook]

Never mind about the HNT Gordon blades at Highland, soon as I read this I called them up and bought the only 2"x1/4"x 3 3/4" they had. Looks like they are not carrying HNT planes any more, or he stopped making them or....

It was a great call though because I asked them when they would be doing a hand saw sharpening class. They said tomorrow morning ;-) Guess what I am doing tomorrow....

[Chris Griggs]

Never mind about the HNT Gordon blades at Highland, soon as I read this I called them up and bought the only 2"x1/4"x 3 3/4" they had. Looks like they are not carrying HNT planes any more, or he stopped making them or....

It was a great call though because I asked them when they would be doing a hand saw sharpening class. They said tomorrow morning ;-) Guess what I am doing tomorrow....

Wow!I mention a product one time and now its sold out - I'm turning into the Schwarz :D

In all seriousness though, craftmanstudio stopped carrying them too. I called craftsman studio a while back to ask about the HNT shoulder planes. Guy said that what they have listed online is all that is left and that they presently did not plan to stock them anymore because with the exchange rates as they are the would now have to sell them for quite a bit more than previously. Said he loved the planes though and if they can afforably stock them again some day they will.

Too bad, I really like the specs on those irons - and the planes seem mighty nice too.

[Bob Strawn]

There are a lot of odd opinions on top irons used as chip breakers, and I find that I am in disagreement with some craftsmen that are far beyond me in skill. I love chip breakers.

I started out with no opinion, and fell in love with high angle and low angle planes. Since high angle planes don't have much use for chip breakers, and bevel up planes have no use for chip breakers, I became strongly in the camp that felt that chip breakers are an added complexity and hardly worth the time. They increase your adjustment complexity, tune up complexity and they can promote jamming.

Reading a heated argument about chip breakers where one brave and brilliant woodworker was defending them against all comers, I realized that I had strong bias, but those biases were developed before I became good at tuning and adjusting planes. About the same time I obtained a few relatively inexpensive Japanese planes with chip breakers. These planes will work just fine without the chip breaker. The thick tapered blades wedge to the wood and need no stabilization from a top iron.

So I decided to do a nice solid test so that I was not just repeating the chip data that research, photos, and brilliant arguments that all agreed that chip breakers were barely useful and a big pain. So I tuned up a blade and chip breaker. If you are able to make a flat surface, then you can match a chip breaker and blade so that splinters never wedge between them. This solves the first issue I had with them. If the surfaces are smooth and you match them up and clean them up properly, jams are not caused by them either. So if you can tune a plane, a chip breaker does not cause a lot of problems.

A top iron is not hard to line up exactly with a bottom iron. On a Western Plane, you loosen the screw that holds them together, rest them edge down on some wood, and tighten the screw. To get the bottom iron a touch forward of the bottom iron, you just lean then a bit and then tighten the screw. Seriously how hard is that? On a Japanese Plane you have to tap it into place, but once you develop the knack, it is much more convenient than doing adjustments on a Western Plane. I can do all this with ease, and I am not in the same league with a lot of the folk here. So fine adjustment, once you are reasonably skilled, is not a problem either.

Another problem with top irons used as chip breakers is that they do not work well with back bevels. I can't argue with this. If you use back bevels, and plan to always use back bevels, then God bless you, don't use top irons as chip breakers, get a fleet of single iron planes and don't read any further into this post.

So the problems that chip breakers create are close to negligible for a skilled craftsman. While they are not horrible, what good are they? They reduce back wear on the blade. Wear on the back of the blade, is what eats blades fastest. By lifting the shaving off the bottom iron, wear is reduced. Oddly enough, by having the right clearance angle over the blade, in some cases the edge will start the cut and then only occasionally actually touch wood. So in some cases, the edge life of a blade can make a leap off the chart while still making a glass smooth cut. So first and foremost, a chip breaker can reduce your time sharpening and increase your blade life.

Another advantage of a chip breaker requires fine adjustment. As the blade edge on the top iron is moved closer to the blade edge on the bottom iron, the plane begins to act more and more like a high angle plane. If they are quite close to even the plane becomes a high angle plane. This means that with very fine adjustment, you can in fact choose the behavior of your plane. A lot of folk talk about keeping the top irons edge within a thirty-second of an inch from the edge of the bottom iron or it does nothing. That is not entirely true, but for the sake of argument, that's close to three hundredths of an inch. If you can't make settings finer than that, then setting the blade on a smoother or adjusting the mouth on a plane are both going to be hit or miss exorcises. Anyone with a chip in this argument can easily adjust and tune a plane to a hundredth of an inch. A thirty-second of an inch might be fine tuning for a table saw, but on a smoother a thirty-second of an inch is a nice thick chip.

Because of the reduced wear on the bottom iron, and the ability to adjust the effective blade pitch of the plane, A jack plane with a well tuned set of irons, can act as a multitude of single blade planes while needing less sharpening. This is not a minor advantage. Additionally the top iron can be moved back to where it does not have any effect at all apart from increasing the weight of the plane and perhaps reducing chatter. Often the top iron is not hardened the way a bottom iron is, so the combination of the two irons can in fact reduce vibration and make a smoother cut than might otherwise be made.

For an occasional craftsman who dreads taking a blade out or adjusting a plane, a top iron is horrid. For a craftsman who has a hundred planes on the wall, a top iron may be just another thing to fiddle with while trying to do work. For a craftsman with less than a dozen planes, or a craftsman who carries his tools, I believe that it is well worth his time to learn how to use a double iron.

Bob

[Mike Holbrook]

It is not easy to find blades like that and I know HNT had great ones. I went and measured the blades I had and the HNT is just enough longer to work well on the four planes I have from Steve Knight parts. Blades that size work great with planes made from two pieces of 8/4 wood. Back to the OP post though, I like the thick blades, especially since I invested in coarser sharpening stones. I like the less is more approach to woodworking these days.

So do we call you Schwarz Griggs or Chris Schwarz? Do you want us to think you are related???

[David Weaver]

I'm not sure that there are any experienced users who don't think a double iron works, but there is more to discuss here than whether or not the iron functions.

I think people will have more feed issues with them than without them when they're making simple planes.

Everyone probably has different ways that they set a double iron. I usually get mine close to tight with the iron and very close to the edge, and then tap it the rest of the way home with a screwdriver (on the back of the chipbreaker). Probably takes 5 or 10 seconds until I can just barely see any edge at all.

Warren is the champion of double irons.

I can see the discussion either way, but for someone who refuses to use a grinder, there is a lot of virtue in a thin iron with a chipbreaker. I just can't find that many places, though, where I see that the double iron is a real advantage. It's a nice novelty, and it does leave a shinier surface than a 55 degree single iron plane, but i don't do any unfinished stuff and the first coat of shellac or wax removes any difference to my eye.

I do think for most people new to making planes, it's better off to start with single irons no matter what, though, to make a plane that feeds easier and is simpler to make successfully.

I never use a chipbreaker on my japanese planes, unless I have a pin and I'm just using it to eject chips and keep them from getting caught on the pin. It's too hard to see the end of the iron well enough to set it close enough to make a difference.

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks to everyone for your feedback it was really helpful!


Zack, your link to Bill Clark and Larry Williams discussion of one Blade versus Blade plus chip breaker was especially insightful. I found their logic persuasive regarding why early planes utilize chip breakers but why they may not be critical given the superior steel/blades currently available.

Tony, The abutments and the wedge do to taper from the top of the plane to the mouth. I am the farthest thing from an expert, but the shavings from the little smoother I made, come out fairly easily, but there is a little jamming occasionally. I'm pretty sure I can eliminate it altogether with a little more adjustment to the abutments and wedge (now I see why people say those planemakers floats are so cool!).

Here's the link to The tutorial from Derek Cohen that I followed (Thanks to Chris Griggs for sharing it!):

http://inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/BuildingAJackPlane.html


Based on the feedback here, I am persuaded that I'd like to use a single blade (goodness knows I'm all for simple and easier to execute!). However, it seems that a "thick" blade is optimal for this kind of use. Uunfortunately, I really don't know how "thick" a blade I need and where I should get it?

The mention of the Gordon HNT blades doesn't really help because it sounds like they're not available. Therefore, the options as I see it are:

* Lee Valley has 3/16" thick A2 blades for wooden planes -- solid steel no slot.

* They also offer Hock blades that are "20% thicker than standard blades" with the slot.

* Stu offers the "blue steel" Tsunesaburo "replacement blades" with slots -- if I'm reading the website correctly it says they are 2.2 mm or 0.86" thick-- can that be right? I have to confess I love the blue steel Japanese plane blades I have now -- very sharp and durable.

* Finally, The Best Things has Hock "parallel iron blades", I think intended as replacements for old infill planes -- that are 3/16" thick, however these are around $70 -- $90 as compared to about ~$40 for the other options listed above. From my perspective, Cost isn't insignificant but not my primary concern.

I very much respect and appreciate all these toolmakers. Given that however, I would really appreciate recommendations from all of you with first-hand experience about what plane blade would be most appropriate for a wooden, bevel down Jack plane?

There is a solid chance I'm going to hose it up in the building anyway and I can really use any advantage I can get! It would be really helpful to at least start with the blade that is best suited for the job.

Many thanks for all the help!

Mike

[Chris Griggs]

The mention of the Gordon HNT blades doesn't really help because it sounds like they're not available. Therefore, the options as I see it are:



If they interest you Craftsman studio still has them listed on their site but they are listed with the HNT smoothing plane not in the section with other plane blades

http://www.craftsmanstudio.com/html_p/G124.htm

[David Weaver]

2.2mm is probably right for the tsunesaburo. I just got one in the mail, they are thin like stock irons.

I wouldn't buy an iron designed for a metal plane when making a woody. Get an old tapered iron or one of the new irons designed for wooden planes.

[Chris Griggs]

Minor hijack. What about using the hock krenov-woody blades w/o their chipbreaker. They are 3/16 on their own, isn't that thick enough to go bare back?

[Mike Holbrook]

Mike,
Highland called me back this PM and said they found another HNT iron, so there may be another one like the one I bought there. I told them I would check out the second one tomorrow, not wanting to buy two site unseen. I will report back tomorrow after I check them out. Feel free to jump on the second one if you wish.

One other place that carries this variety of plane blades is Galoot Tools. They make laminated blades for wooden planes. Some guys here have used them & like them, they are not cheap. The middle priced one is the one I have heard about others using.

[Trevor Walsh]

From what I've gathered of cap irons on blades it's mostly marketing hype to quell concern over thinner (cheaper) blades. One guys tests, mentioned previously shows some help in chip breaker function when a breaker is impossibly close to the cutting edge. Worth the effort? I think with the availability of blades that are thicker skipping the cap iron all together is a good idea.

The thin jointer I built Krenov style has a single iron and a small mouth. I can take really thin shavings with it, it's blade is a LV replacement block plane blade, far from the thickest available and more than up to the task. Understanding the bedding or an iron and care in fitting all of the pieces is critical I think.

[Mike Holbrook]

The work that surprised me the most in building wooden planes was making the wedges. The job requires some exacting hand work. Building a wedge that holds the iron without bottoming out in the slot takes a fair amount of hand fitting, no one can tell you the dimensions the wedge needs to be. The wedge has to be fit in all dimensions, not bottom out in its slot, hold the iron in place and be easily adjusted...some tough assignments for a small wedge of wood.

[Zach Dillinger]

I can see the discussion either way, but for someone who refuses to use a grinder, there is a lot of virtue in a thin iron with a chipbreaker. I just can't find that many places, though, where I see that the double iron is a real advantage. It's a nice novelty, and it does leave a shinier surface than a 55 degree single iron plane, but i don't do any unfinished stuff and the first coat of shellac or wax removes any difference to my eye.

I'm curious what the bed angle of the double plane. The shinyness of the surface has little to do with the double iron. I suspect the double iron plane is bedded lower than your 55, as 55 deg. is pretty high and is more of a scraping cut. As you know, scraping creates a fairly dull surface.

[Larry Williams]

Steve Elliot has done a lot of work in looking at cap iron performance and also has Professor Chutaro Kato's study on line. It's certainly worth reading.

Steve's examination of the topic:
http://planetuning.infillplane.com/

and his page with Kato's study:
http://planetuning.infillplane.com/html/chipbreaker_study.html

[David Weaver]

I'm curious what the bed angle of the double plane. The shinyness of the surface has little to do with the double iron. I suspect the double iron plane is bedded lower than your 55, as 55 deg. is pretty high and is more of a scraping cut. As you know, scraping creates a fairly dull surface.

Right , the double iron is bedded somewhere around 45 degrees. I think a nice single iron smoother is 50 degrees, and for hardwoods only, 55.

The double iron plane I'm talking about (the one I use) is an $11 millers falls #9. So, 45. I can't think of a good reason to bed a double iron plane past 45 degrees or so, because you're already going to be bulling the chip if you set the chipbreaker right up to the cutting edge, but you will not be able to get in trouble with the iron set right.

A 55 degree infill is a "do anything" plane. The cut is not quite as bright as a 45 degree bench plane, but you don't fool with a second iron and you can't get into real trouble on anything.

From what I've seen of most double irons, whoever the last person was to put them away, they didn't have the second iron in a condition such that it would actually be able to be used productively. There are also a lot of inferior planes that have clearance issues if the mouth is tight and the double iron set, anyway, so it's one or the other with those, or plane modification.

The bed angle controls the shine on the cut, as far as I know. So there's no virtue in the second iron in that shine itself, except that you can use a double ironed plane at the shallow bed angle in woods where a single iron plane will tear out. I gather from discussions/arguments with warren mickley that he places high value on the ability to get a 45 degree surface in trouble woods. I can't see much benefit, because the surface from a 55 degree infill that's sharp will still be reflective (not so much if it's not as sharp), and with any finish at all, i don't know if the surface would be distinguishable.

I don't know anything about japanese woodworking, despite being a pig for the tools, but I suspect the fascination with surface quality has to do with making unfinished furniture and structural parts for buildings.

[Stuart Tierney]

In my opinion, a chip breaker is not essential for a well functioning plane but it is most certainly a valuable asset in some circumstances.

Take a look at what Larry linked to, and you'll get a pretty good edumacation of when and where a chipbreaker is useful.


In the case of an infill, or indeed any 'finishing' plane, the shaving is typically very thin, the shaving doesn't have the structural integrity to tear up grain before it's cut and the need for a chipbreaker is often reduced or eliminated.

*Note, I said chipbreaker, not 'cap iron'. There is a difference, even though a single piece of metal may serve both purposes at the same time.

Good luck,

Stu.

[Roderick Gentry]

I think the breaker discussion is interesting, but not really relevant to jack planes. The cambered blade and planing approach pretty much eliminate the concern for tear out. Also, when talking tear out I worry people are going to come out with some narrow mouthed finish plane, when a Jack should rip wood off like an axe. A plane that really breaks boards down is a lot of fun.