Toothing plane and toothing scrapers - beyond veneering

[jamie shard]

I'm curious if anyone uses either of these? It what application?

My understanding is...

It seems like a toothed plane might be like a mini scrub plane in application, bringing down complex grained wood to approximate level, to finish off with a high-angle smoother.

I'm not sure what a toothed scraper would do that a toothed plane wouldn't do except maybe be less aggressive, so it seems like the toothed scraper is mostly for veneering.

So it seems like someone like myself who doesn't do veneer work might benefit from a toothed plane blade... if working on very complex grained wood.

Am I close, completely wrong, confused as usual... :) ???

[Jim Belair]

Sounds to me like you've got it pretty well nailed Jamie.

[Kenneth Speed]

I agree, you've just about summed it up. A low angle plane with a toothed blade is the ONLY cutting hand tool I've found that can work on hickory without massive tear out. I also used the same setup yesterday to flatten a piece of very highly figured curly maple.

Ken

[Jack Curtis]

Yep, you've got it. And toothed blades are especially great for working through knots and other grain anomalies. You don't necessarily need a smoother to follow if the teeth are small and close together enough.

[jamie shard]

Yep, you've got it. And toothed blades are especially great for working through knots and other grain anomalies. You don't necessarily need a smoother to follow if the teeth are small and close together enough.

Interesting, Jack. Do they make plane blades that finely toothed? Seems like the finest teeth I've seen have been associated with scraper planes.

[Jack Curtis]

Interesting, Jack. Do they make plane blades that finely toothed? Seems like the finest teeth I've seen have been associated with scraper planes.

This is one of the tasks I still do with the LN LA Jack with the LN toothing blade (occasionally I shoot with this plane with normal blade, not often). I think LV also has a toothed blade for their LA Jack. The problem with trying to smooth knots is that the knots are still there, and the LN gets the area very close to smooth. If I need more, sandpaper is almost always better than a smoother in the knot area, and the blades don't get crunched.

I also have a couple of other toothed blades that are slightly finer than the LN, the blades are thin, one is maybe 1-1.5" wide, one is a normal sized coffin. They are very old woodies from the UK. The full coffin has a gaping mouth, and could in some circles be considered more of a scraping plane since the bedding angle is close to vertical, 80-90°. Which plane I use is dependent on the type of wood involved and is also highly dependent on testing for effect.

Or, whatever works. :)

[Mark Dorman]

Some good toothed plane reading here (http://anthonyhaycabinetmaker.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/the-toothing-plane-a-tool-of-our-time/)

[Jim Belair]

Great read Mark. Thanks for the link.

[russell lusthaus]

I use a toothing plane when gluing bamboo backing to wood bellies when making longbows to get good (roughed) gluing surfaces. Before I had the plane, I would scruff the surfaces with a hack saw blade scraped across, but the plane is superior method by far. I guess this is kind of like veneering - more like laminating.

Russ

[John A. Callaway]

I bought the toothed blade for my LN LAJ..... and I basically tore out and almost ruined a very curly ( and very, very hard ) maple panel of a chest I have currently been working on for several months. It was tearing out on me pretty bad when trying to flatten it with a number 8, so I figured the toothed blade would get it down flat enough to go over it with the smoother.....

You have to be careful.... I had never used a toothed blade before, and there are tons of videos out there. What they dont cover in great depth is.... the depth of cut. You cannot hog away material with a toothed blade. You have to take shallow passes with it, or the teeth will pull the grain up rather crudely, and leave you with a worse condition of surface than what you started with.

In my case, it was not pretty, but it was a lesson learned.

[george wilson]

Of course,small violin planes can be had toothed for working curly maple.

[bridger berdel]

I bought the toothed blade for my LN LAJ..... and I basically tore out and almost ruined a very curly ( and very, very hard ) maple panel of a chest I have currently been working on for several months. It was tearing out on me pretty bad when trying to flatten it with a number 8, so I figured the toothed blade would get it down flat enough to go over it with the smoother.....

You have to be careful.... I had never used a toothed blade before, and there are tons of videos out there. What they dont cover in great depth is.... the depth of cut. You cannot hog away material with a toothed blade. You have to take shallow passes with it, or the teeth will pull the grain up rather crudely, and leave you with a worse condition of surface than what you started with.

In my case, it was not pretty, but it was a lesson learned.

it makes sense to me that the maximum depth of cut would be something a little less than the depth of the serrations of the blade. otherwise you're pulling a full width shaving with completely nicked edge. :)

Bridger

[John A. Callaway]

well, I wasnt cutting that deep, I was still getting a textured cut. You just have to be careful with the depth of cut even while maintaining the ridged finish. In fairness, I had only taken the plane out the box, honed up the blades and went to using it on some scrap cherry, which it behaved like my low angled smoother....and then right to the maple with it. I glued up a fairly wide curly panel out of several boards, and the glue lines had some high spots at a few places along the joints that I wanted to flatten out. I got pretty lucky and found some really pretty, really curly stuff at a lumber dealer outside of Atlanta.... but this stuff was hard ..... like rock maple would be I presume. The curiosity got me when the tear out started, and I tried the plane with the same set up on sapele... which is notorious for being a tough hand tool wood, and the toothed blade did a good job. I just had to go back to a much shallower cut and take many more passes on the curly maple to get it where i needed it. Some of the spots though, I created some nice gouges in the wood that I still havent fixed yet.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Did you try to plane it along the grain? If you plane diagonally or even perpendicular to grain direction, it cuts grain into tiny sections and helps to avoid lifting the grain to cause tear out. Once you cover the surface with diagonal or perpendicular toothing cuts, you can follow up with going along the grain. It shouldn't be able to lift ahead of the grain if your blade isn't bottoming out on previous cuts. Basically you repeat that to reduce the material. In some cases, some wood will still want to tear out and in that case, you just have to tackle it at thinner cuts to have controlled tear out that don't go past your final thickness.

[John A. Callaway]

I started out traversing the grain.... and that is where i started cutting too deep.... trying to hog away material ..... which I quickly stopped doing. Then going with the grain with a shallower cut, some places it still tore out a little, but going back the other way pretty much smoothed that back off.

The glue lines and the high spots I was trying to eliminate are what suffered the most. And truthfully, I haven't touched the panel in two months. we just had a baby, and I havent got back out there yet...... no to mention this Georgia heat is in FULL swing right now. You literally stand outside for five minutes and the humidity has the sweat pouring off.

I can tell ya, the toothed blades work well, and they will flatten a board..... a lot more aggressively than I initially thought!

[jamie shard]

Thanks all, this is starting to make a lot of sense. Especially thanks for those real-world examples.

I'm starting to see how really figured wood (which I haven't worked with much at all) benefits from using a toothed plane essentially as a fore plane. I can see how it makes a lot of sense for dimensioning thing kind of wood.