Veritas spoke shave question..

[Rick Fisher]

I decided to buy a curved mouth spoke shave .. Was going to buy the Lie Nielsen, then Lee Valley had the free shipping.. got to shopping.. rest is history ..

Anyway .. Nice tool but I have a question..

I sharpened up the blade a bit, installed it and noticed it sits so close to the body of the tool that shavings get stuck, its literally incapable of making a 12" swipe without riding up on shavings..

What am I doing wrong ?

Perhaps I need a pic .

[John Coloccia]

Shavings are getting stuck in the mouth? The LV spoke shaves come with a very tight mouth. Take a much lighter cut or file the mouth opening a bit larger.

[Matthew N. Masail]

do you mean these http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=49142&cat=1,50230&ap=1

if so I have the flat one and the mouth opening is fine on mine, it actually comes with inserts to close the mouth up if you need to. maybe you have the shims installed?

[Rick Fisher]

http://i335.photobucket.com/albums/m455/jokerbird_photo/Felder%20Dust%20Collector/P1020317.jpg
http://i335.photobucket.com/albums/m455/jokerbird_photo/Felder%20Dust%20Collector/P1020322.jpg

Shims ?

I will check ..

[Rick Fisher]

Found the shims in a nice little yellow envelope.. I think the thicker shim would actually not work .. too thick .. the blade would not clear the mouth..

What a nicely made little tool. From what I can see playing with it, am I right that the learning curve is lower than a hand plane ?

So I should remove a bit of the mouth with a file ?

Its funny.. I think I ordered the wrong spoke shave, but I really like this so no regrets .. I can see all sorts of uses for it .. I wanted something to clean up long sweeping inside curves, off the bandsaw.. This little fella seems more like a finishing tool... Its surprisingly small..

[Steve Friedman]

I have that shave and mouth opening has never been a problem. Looking at yours, it seems that the blade isn't seated properly because the cap iron (or whatever it's called on a spokeshave) is skewed slightly counterclockwise. Looking at the 2nd picture, the cap (or whatever that black piece is called) is a little high on the right and a little low on the left. Here's what I would do:

1. Loosen the black knob (the piece that says Veritas), remove the cap, and disassemble the shave. If there are plastic shims behind the blade, remove them. Wipe down the parts.
2. Seat the blade without the cap and use the brass adjusters to get the blade where you want it. I use my fingers to feel the blade as it sticks out of the mouth and stop as soon as I can feel a tiny bit of blade sticking out.
3. Hold the blade in place with your fingers and turn the shave over to look at the mouth. You should see plenty of opening.
4. Replace the cap, making sure that the center brass screw is not too tight (or loose). Make sure the cap is seated firmly and evenly across the shave. The top should be flush on both sides. Tighten the black screw.

If that doesn't work, call Lee Valley.

HTH,

Steve

[John Coloccia]

I have the same problem with mine. If I remember correctly, the shims didn't even let the blade extend far enough to take a shaving, and the stock mouth is really tight...though apparently not for everyone. I would love to use it more but haven't because it's annoying to use like this and I haven't taken the time to fiddle with it yet to see what's wrong or what I'm doing wrong. Maybe give LV a call in the morning and see what they think. Maybe they occasionally have a bad run or one slips through that's missed a step or something. Maybe I'll call them myself as I have 5 necks to carve coming up and I'd love to get mine working well for something other than wispy little finishing cuts.

[John Coloccia]

Ok. now you guys have me looking at this thing closely for the first time. The mouth is around .016" to .017". Does that seem tight to you? It seems tight to me. One of the shims closes the mouth .014", leaving me with .003" for a mouth. Now, that can't be right, can it? I would expect to see maybe .030" or .040" for the large opening, and maybe somewhere between .010" and .015" for a really tight mouth...which would jive with the included shims if the original opening was .030" or .040" or so.

What do you think? Does this sound normal?

[Rick Fisher]

Thanks for the replies.. Steve was right .. I had it seated poorly..

I honed the blade to the best of my ability .. its a nice tool.. I am getting a bit of chatter with it .. reduced the depth and it got a bit better.. I can see there is a technique to this .. Lots of patience and practice needed .

[Steve Friedman]

I am getting a bit of chatter with it .. reduced the depth and it got a bit better.. I can see there is a technique to this .. Lots of patience and practice needed .
A few suggestions for eliminating chatter.
1. Your instinct about backing off the depth is spot on - that would be my first move.
2. Next, this may sound simple, but make sure you're shaving with the grain. On any curve, at a minimum, 1/2 will be in one direction and the other 1/2 will be in the opposite direction. Where the grain directions meet, just use a really light touch.
3. Don't hold the shave just by the wooden handles. Your hands need to be much closer together. Make sure that your thumbs (if you're pulling) or index fingers (if you're pushing) are on the metal part of the shave handles. There is a little bend in the metal part of the handles that is perfect place for a finger on either side. This really helps keep the bottom of the shave registered solidly against the wood.
4. Except for the very bottom of the curve, I think flat shaves are better for long gradual inside curves. The radius on the sole of the LV round shave is only 1-3/4", which is pretty small. By contrast, the radius of the Lie-Nielsen curved Boggs shave is 5". I find that the curved shaves are great (and indispensable) where the radius of the sole is close to the radius of the curve in the wood. But, with a long gradual curve, I think the flat shave registers more solidly than the LV curved one. For instance, I just made some Adirondack chair rockers which had an inside curve radius of 37" and the flat shave was much better to use than the curved shave. I did use the curved one near the bottom, but even that was unnecessary.

Steve

[Steve Friedman]

Ok. now you guys have me looking at this thing closely for the first time. The mouth is around .016" to .017". Does that seem tight to you? It seems tight to me. One of the shims closes the mouth .014", leaving me with .003" for a mouth. Now, that can't be right, can it? I would expect to see maybe .030" or .040" for the large opening, and maybe somewhere between .010" and .015" for a really tight mouth...which would jive with the included shims if the original opening was .030" or .040" or so.

What do you think? Does this sound normal?
John,

Based on the LV info, something sounds off. The 2 shims together are supposed to close the mouth by 0.021, so the mouth has to be more than that to start with. That said, I have never used the shims, but then I don't make really fine musical instruments. Have you tried it without the shims? The one thing I find with all the LV shaves is that the mechanism is so simple and forgiving that it's really easy to put it together and not have the blade or cap (or whatever it's called) seated properly. I use all 4 LV spokeshaves (including the really big one) to remove large amounts of wood without any throat opening problems at all. I have never measured the thickness of the shavings, but I can definitely remove more than I do with any hand plane (except a scrub). Not as wide open as an old Stanley or Record, but the mouths are definitely large enough to remove a lot of material very quickly.

Steve

[John Coloccia]

I actually can't find the shims. I may have thrown them out when I realized they closed the mouth much much further than is practical for what I do. I'll look at it again, but it's hard to believe that I've assembled it wrong every single time, especially because it performs so solidly....except that the mouth is teeny tiny.

[Steve Friedman]

I actually can't find the shims. I may have thrown them out when I realized they closed the mouth much much further than is practical for what I do. I'll look at it again, but it's hard to believe that I've assembled it wrong every single time, especially because it performs so solidly....except that the mouth is teeny tiny.
I just measured the mouth on both the round and concave LV shaves (without the blades) and the opening on both was almost exactly 0.24". Without any shims (I don't know where mine are either), 0.022" shavings flew through the mouth easily. When I increased it to 0.025", the mouth felt tight, but still OK. At 0.028", the shavings started to get stuck in the mouth.

Hope that helps.

Steve

[Jim Koepke]

I just measured the mouth on both the round and concave LV shaves (without the blades) and the opening on both was almost exactly 0.24". Without any shims (I don't know where mine are either), 0.022" shavings flew through the mouth easily. When I increased it to 0.025", the mouth felt tight, but still OK. At 0.028", the shavings started to get stuck in the mouth.

Hope that helps.

Steve

I must be the weakest 240 Lb. person around. When my jack plane is cutting heavy, it is hard work for me to get much more than an 0.015" shaving. That is in relatively soft pine.

jtk

[Steve Friedman]

I must be the weakest 240 Lb. person around. When my jack plane is cutting heavy, it is hard work for me to get much more than an 0.015" shaving. That is in relatively soft pine.
And that was before my spokeshave blades have been introduced to my brand new Sigma Power stone collection. Chalk it up to clean living. . .

. . . or not. Not all shavings are created equal. These were only an inch or two long and very narrow, since I was using a leftover piece of 1" oak dowel. Just trying to determine the thickest shaving that would fit through the throat.

Steve

[John Coloccia]

I'll call LV tomorrow. It's not really a big deal for me to widen the mouth, but I'd at least like to know what they intend it to be. I know they do a lot of testing on this sort of thing so it makes sense to try and copy what they intended.