convex vs flat bevel experiment

[Daniel Rode]

I'd been playing around occasionally sharpening some chisels using the convex bevel Paul Sellers teaches. Most of my chisels were sharpened using a flat ground primary at 25 degrees with a secondary a few degrees higher. By and large they were sharpened using a the Veritas MKII jig but I'd sometime try to resharpen or touch up an edge freehand.

What I noticed initially was that I seemed to be getting a sharper edge with less time and effort with a convex bevel. (comparing 2 1/2" chisels on pine end grain) The time and effort savings are not due to the style of the bevel. It's faster and easier because there are no jigs. David Weaver suggested that the flat bevel was not sharpened properly if it was less sharp and I suspected he was right.

I don't setup and run scientific experiments. If I try something, it's usuallyin the process of working on a project. This weekend I need to make a number of large through M&T joints in white pine. Slicing white pine end grain is where sharpness stand out for me. As luck would have it, I dropped a chisel and damaged a corner pretty good. So I decided to try a hollow grind and then free hand the secondary. The grinder is fairly new, and I've never tried to sharpen a chisel this way. I don't believe a hollow grind is any better or worse. However, not that I have a grinder (8") and I want to sharpen freehand, it's much faster to use a hollow grind. I While I was at it, I check the chisel back. I'd flattened it several years ago. Sure enough, it needed a little work.

With a flat and polished back and a nice square 25 degree hollow grind, I went to the 5k for a few strokes until I felt a burr and then 25 or so strokes on the 15k to polish. Total time about 5 minutes. At the same time, I re-honed 2 other flat ground chisels the same way (leaving the flat primary). The backs were dead flat, so the resharpen of these took maybe 30 seconds each. All 3 were as sharp as I anything I've ever used. I chopped with the 1" all day, resharpening once. Then cleaned it up again and used if for paring the shoulders and the tenons.

It seems that I get better results freehand with either method that with a jig. I've been moving away from jigs and trying more and more freehand sharpening and I think I just finally got in enough practice to start getting reliable results. That the convex bevel seemed sharper appears not to be the result of a poor comparison. I can and did get the flat and hollow ground chisels every bit as sharp.

The good news for me is that sharpening is getting easier and faster AND I'm getting sharper edges more consistently.

[Prashun Patel]

Daniel-
This is extremely interesting to me. I've been following Paul's video's recently. I am going to try this convex bevel method too. I have long felt that my results using the MKII have been good but not quite great. I have also had poor luck hollow grinding.

Thanks.

[Cliff Polubinsky]

Daniel,

Wouldn't a hollow grind be a concave bevel )/? A convex bevel would be a bump out (/.


Cliff

[Jim Koepke]

Daniel,

Congrats on working on sharpening without the wheels.


As luck would have it, I dropped a chisel and damaged a corner pretty good. So I decided to try a hollow grind and then free hand the secondary.

Great that you can turn misfortune into luck.


With a flat and polished back and a nice square 25 degree hollow grind, I went to the 5k for a few strokes until I felt a burr and then 25 or so strokes on the 15k to polish. Total time about 5 minutes. At the same time, I re-honed 2 other flat ground chisels the same way (leaving the flat primary). The backs were dead flat, so the resharpen of these took maybe 30 seconds each. All 3 were as sharp as I anything I've ever used. I chopped with the 1" all day, resharpening once. Then cleaned it up again and used if for paring the shoulders and the tenons.

It seems that I get better results freehand with either method that with a jig. I've been moving away from jigs and trying more and more freehand sharpening and I think I just finally got in enough practice to start getting reliable results. That the convex bevel seemed sharper appears not to be the result of a poor comparison. I can and did get the flat and hollow ground chisels every bit as sharp.

I may be missing something here. The hollow ground chisel would be concave. I see nothing in the above mentioning your making a convex bevel. (maybe it was in your opening statement)

There is nothing about a hollow grind that will inherently make an edge sharper. Its big help is in how it feels against a stone when hand sharpening.

With a flat bevel it is a little tricky to "get the feel" of the bevel on a stone. My suspicion is even though my intent is to keep a flat bevel, my blade's bevels may have more of a slightly convex shape. When it gets to a point where a rounding or even much of a secondary bevel is noticed I tend to go to my power equipment and reestablish a truly flat bevel. Sometimes this is done by hand using wheels on coarse sandpaper.

My recollection is someone mentioned in one of the many sharpening threads that a convexly beveled edge (Seller's method) is nothing more than an edge with an infinite number of secondary bevels. Heck, if one secondary bevel works, why not a whole lot more?

My thoughts on this is a lot of the biases on display in sharpening threads is fortified by what we have learned and read over our lifetimes. "It worked for my grandfather and my father... End of discussion."

Over the years it has been my pleasure to buy a lot of second hand tools. From what has come my way it appears there were many different approaches to getting a tool to work. There are a lot of folks from days gone by who agree with Paul Sellers' idea that 250 grit may be enough. I have personally worked with people who felt all that was needed to sharpen a tool was a bench grinder. For rough carpentry who needs to make 0.001" shavings? In that world it may be just knock off a bit of wood so the door closes with enough gap to allow for painting, next stop sandpaper.

Maybe the people who did the chip breaker videos could produce a similar video with all the different bevel possibilities and put the debate to rest.

One can hope.

jtk

[Daniel Rode]

I was working with a convex bevel (al la Paul Sellers) last weekend. This weekend, I worked with a flat and hollow (concave) grind to see if I could get the same or better results freehand.

Wouldn't a hollow grind be a concave bevel )/? A convex bevel would be a bump out (/.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, from my perspective a flat primary bevel and hollow ground bevel are the same when it comes to the cutting edge. Previously all my chisels were flat ground because I didn't own a grinder. Now that I have one, the hollow grind works well with freehand sharpening.

[David Weaver]

In terms of the methods, if the final bevel is similar, then they will be similar in sharpness. It does fall into one of those categories where it's of note when you're selecting a method, but once you get something that works, you can occupy your mind elsewhere until you have to sharpen something new (especially something like moulding plane irons or carving gouges).

I know winton hates the rounded bevel, but I don't have any real disregard for it as long as clearance is maintained. The reason people chase a rounded bevel steeper and steeper is just because they don't discipline themselves to not lift their edges past a certain point. If you catch yourself lifting an edge past a certain point, it's time to go back down to a coarser stone, that's pretty much it.

I'm sure my washita edges have some roundness to them, I'm just limiting it by keeping the grind close to the edge so that I don't have to do much work with the stone. The one nice thing about doing that and sharpening with a single stone (so long as the single stone does an edge that you can accept) is that there is one wire edge. If I raise the wire edge appropriately, there is no second stone where I have an urge to try to chase the bevel a little steeper to ensure that it gets to the edge. If you're accurate, the second stone doesn't amount to much steepening, but in an effort to be "safe" and make sure you sharpen an edge enough, if you lift for a few strokes, you're limiting clearance a little - which is why I think I'm not seeing any increase in durability with a stock stanley iron in fairly coarse work where the real issue that leads to perceived dullness is clearance after an edge wears, and not the fineness of the edge.

The story might be different in a plane that's intended to take 500 shavings a thousandth of an inch thick, but if you're working wood from rough by hand, you don't take many strokes like that.

I know winton loves mirrors, too - none of the stones I've been using recently make mirrors, but I did get something in the mail that winton would just adore (a gokumyo 20k). I just don't intend to use it on tools.

And one more aside since I'm totally off track - there was an excellent post showing the wire edge being removed from a razor edge under an electron microscope on straight razor place, but I can't link it here because TOS doesn't allow linking to other forums. The only gripe is that the person taking the images did not strop an edge until the entire wire edge was removed, only part of it and then they measured the width of the edge (which was half as wide after stropping as it was before - and the before was a 2 micron stone).

What I'm getting at in circles is that whatever method you use, if the final geometry at the cutting edge is similar, and the wire edge has been evicted, you'll have something that feels familiar regardless of method. If it doesn't, something's not right. You might even be tempted to start choosing levels of sharpness - for example, in the whole washita experiment, I've found that I like a paring chisel with good geometry that is slightly less sharp than the current generation of wonderstones create. A washita with a lot of stropping (clean leather afterward), or with a little bit of attention on a jasper (which is just another way of removing the wire edge and doing a little bit of polishing without heavy cutting like a waterstone would do) creates a nice edge that pares cleanly, but that is very controllable. It would be tempting to hone a parer with the gokumyo, but it creates an edge that overcuts a mark across endgrain very easily, and one where you can drive yourself nutty because every single tiny imperfection that you get while working shows up against the brightly polished edge.

[David Weaver]

UPDATE: Just to be clear, from my perspective a flat primary bevel and hollow ground bevel are the same when it comes to the cutting edge. Previously all my chisels were flat ground because I didn't own a grinder. Now that I have one, the hollow grind works well with freehand sharpening.

It's just my opinion, and it doesn't matter how anyone chooses to do it I guess, but just my opinion that to use the grinder and then to use slower cutting stones and work only the very edge (which is sort of halfway between what sellers does and halfway to what someone who hones a hollow ground chisel right on both flats) is the fastest way to go, and doesn't compromise anything, and even if you want to work with a medium stone and a super polisher, there's no danger of chasing a bevel steeper - there just isn't enough of a stone bevel there.

Slower cutting stones can mean biasing toward finer stones in regular sharpening if the stones one uses are of the fast cutting ceramic type. I just hate to sharpen off useful steel in droves, but maybe that's because my favorite irons are a hundred or a couple of hundred years old.

[Jim Matthews]

The slow part of grinding and honing convex bevels is at the "heel" of the iron.
You've got to get steel "out of the way" or the attack angle gets progressively steep.

When honing freehand, I take the same number of strokes on all stones, over all parts of the bevel.

This is particularly important with plane irons.

The upsell is that shavings slide over the polished surface, but I think that's neither here nor there.

"Life, as in Golf, is all about following through."
- Stephen Stills

I surmise that the full sweep of a convex bevel means that I have what amounts to one continuous bevel,
which encourages me to get as close to a zero radius as I am able.

[Daniel Rode]

I think that if one is diligent in working the entire bevel, the angle will stay constant. From my limited experience, it seemed easier to learn to sharpen the convex bevel freehand but after doing it here and there for a little while, switching to a flat micro bevel was was effortless.

One advantage of the convex bevel over a hollow ground is in cutting mortises. The convex can easily pry on the mortise wall below the surface. To a somewhat lesser extent a flat grind does this as well. The hollow, especially on a mortise chisel is not well suited to this. I used a hollow grind for my 1/4" mortise chisel and I'm not sure I like it. I think I'll go back to a flat or convex bevel for it.

For my bench chisels, both methods give me the edge I need quickly. As silly as it sounds, I like the way the polished convex bevel looks.

[Jim Koepke]

One advantage of the convex bevel over a hollow ground is in cutting mortises.

My pig stickers, mortise chisels, is one place where a convex bevel with a secondary bevel seems to be the best way to go.

jtk

[David Barnett]

I was working with a convex bevel (al la Paul Sellers) last weekend. This weekend, I worked with a flat and hollow (convex) grind to see if I could get the same or better results freehand.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, from my perspective a flat primary bevel and hollow ground bevel are the same when it comes to the cutting edge. Previously all my chisels were flat ground because I didn't own a grinder. Now that I have one, the hollow grind works well with freehand sharpening.

Dan, as you know, a grinder cuts a hollow determined by the radius of the grinding wheel. It seems, however, you're confused with nomenclature and as a result, have confused readers. The wheel hollows out a 'cave', hence concave, concavity. Your freehand secondary bevel may indeed have some convexity, though, and slice quite nicely, but your primary bevel from the wheel is a hollow or concave bevel or grind. I strop hollow-ground bevels when establishing a fresh edge and also to refresh edges and under my microscope I often see a convexity develop after repeated refreshenings.

[Prashun Patel]

David, while Daniel may be using convex wrongly with respect to hollow grinding, the method Paul Sellers shows is truly convex - not hollow ground.

[David Barnett]

Yes, I know. I think Daniel was speaking about a convex secondary bevel rather than the primary hollow bevel, as well, furthering the confusion. Perhaps it's best to distinguish the primary bevel from the secondary in such cases, as a concave/hollow grind (primary bevel) may indeed have either a flat or convex secondary, and in the case of freehand honing the secondary may develop a convexity from rounding over the flat.

Or am I just further confusing the issue? Either way, I'm just glad Daniel got a sharp edge.

[Daniel Rode]

Perhaps I am using the wrong terminology? Maybe I just ramble too much and confused things.

To me, Hollow ground is a concave primary bevel as opposed to a flat primary bevel or a convex single bevel. In both non-convex instances, I form the cutting edge using a flat secondary bevel. For my purposes, hollow ground and flat ground are interchangeable but the hollow ground is faster to establish and re-establish when the secondary becomes too wide or damaged.

In both cases, the secondary bevel is as flat I can make it.

I hope the clarifies things a bit.

[Harold Burrell]

FWIW...

My reasonings for using a concave primary bevel as opposed to a convex is solely based on my cheapness. With the concave, less metal is being worked on my waterstones...which cost me a lot of money. :D

[David Barnett]

In both cases, the secondary bevel is as flat I can make it.

I hope the clarifies things a bit.

It does. Thanks. Your previous statement: "This weekend, I worked with a flat and hollow (convex) grind" is where any confusion arose. I think you simply misspoke.

[Daniel Rode]

I didn't notice the typo. Thanks!
It does. Thanks. Your previous statement: "This weekend, I worked with a flat and hollow (convex) grind" is where any confusion arose. I think you simply misspoke.

[Winton Applegate]

Gee. I am really disappointed.
First off for chisels, other than maybe the pry bar mortis, it doesn't matter much convex, flat even some stropping. What ever.
I was hoping there was going to be a head to head of identical planes with identical blades, say two LN #4s.
that's what I used (among a few others over time).
Try both roundy and flat secondary bevels (you can even round over the primary on both if that really turns your crank.

Start with something easy like an eight foot by ten inch plank of oak and plane it for flat and smooth with zero tear out and zero chatter marks until the blade begins to chatter and then soon after skate and skip. Stop planing, do not advance the blade, and take note of how much work was achieved.
after both blades on that oak . .
Resharpen
oh before I get too far ahead of my self lets define sharp : both blades must shave at least one micro curl off one of the hairs on your arm with both sides of the blade ( yah well . . . good luck doing that with Mr. Roundy but I bet you can convince your self you saw it happen ) . . .

So next we move on to a nice big slab of highly figured walnut you know crotch stuff.
Do the same planing until failure as above. Note how much fun you had there with both blades.
OK now you are warmed up.

Resharpen both (no cheating) one of the blades gets the flat secondary using the sharpening jig and to at least 6000; preferably 8000.
Pull out a plank of purple heart, or if you are feeling brave an eight footer by ten of bubinga.
Oh so now you are saying there is no reason to do that. You don't use that ugly heavy old stuff any way so why bother?
Why in deed . . . If you have great edges you WILL be able to plane it.
And if you don't have an excellent edge . . .
well . . .
this is going to demonstrate that fact. (why not always have an excellent edge ? You will always get more work done per sharpening than with a slap dash).

The acid test.

So . . . go on . . . lets see another thread . . .
Bevel down PLANE blade convex secondary vs flat jig sharpened secondary . . . for the whole face of the planks . . .till failure

Oh yah baby.

[Tony Zaffuto]

Yo Winton: I gots me a huge issue! I finished a changing table for my second grandson and I may very well have to reclaim it and redo the top! The problem? I don't think I sharpened my plane iron correctly. Ya, the top looks really nice, and in fact looks dayam nice. But I cannot state emphatically what the bevel looked like, nor can I tell you what degree the angle was. Concave? Convex? Flat? Even worse, I gots me the same questions about the stone I used!

Advice would be greatly appreciated, and in the mean time, I got me a grandson that has been holding back what will eventually become a huge explosion.

[David Weaver]

Gee. I am really disappointed.
First off for chisels, other than maybe the pry bar mortis, it doesn't matter much convex, flat even some stropping. What ever.
I was hoping there was going to be a head to head of identical planes with identical blades, say two LN #4s.
that's what I used (among a few others over time).
Try both roundy and flat secondary bevels (you can even round over the primary on both if that really turns your crank.

Start with something easy like an eight foot by ten inch plank of oak and plane it for flat and smooth with zero tear out and zero chatter marks until the blade begins to chatter and then soon after skate and skip. Stop planing, do not advance the blade, and take note of how much work was achieved.
after both blades on that oak . .
Resharpen
oh before I get too far ahead of my self lets define sharp : both blades must shave at least one micro curl off one of the hairs on your arm with both sides of the blade ( yah well . . . good luck doing that with Mr. Roundy but I bet you can convince your self you saw it happen ) . . .

So next we move on to a nice big slab of highly figured walnut you know crotch stuff.
Do the same planing until failure as above. Note how much fun you had there with both blades.
OK now you are warmed up.

Resharpen both (no cheating) one of the blades gets the flat secondary using the sharpening jig and to at least 6000; preferably 8000.
Pull out a plank of purple heart, or if you are feeling brave an eight footer by ten of bubinga.
Oh so now you are saying there is no reason to do that. You don't use that ugly heavy old stuff any way so why bother?
Why in deed . . . If you have great edges you WILL be able to plane it.
And if you don't have an excellent edge . . .
well . . .
this is going to demonstrate that fact. (why not always have an excellent edge ? You will always get more work done per sharpening than with a slap dash).

The acid test.

So . . . go on . . . lets see another thread . . .
Bevel down PLANE blade convex secondary vs flat jig sharpened secondary . . . for the whole face of the planks . . .till failure

Oh yah baby.

I think I could plane the bubinga and the purpleheart just fine using a washita stone, though cutting across their endgrain would be a pain in the butt without going a little finer.

I'd be using a double iron, though. What I used to think was nasty planing (cocobolo with a basic stanley or millers falls plane) is tamed pretty easily once the cap iron is set properly, and it can be planed with an iron that is fairly dull compared to what a fresh super hard japanese iron would be off of something like a 1 micron stone. Though dull, still able to shave hair and still with good geometry.

I have a stone that I think you'd be nutty over, but I can't remember what your last stone is. Do you use the shapton 30k as a final step?

[ian maybury]

It's hard not to think that (as David mentioned) no matter how free and easy the whole round bevel deal appears (and on first sharpening cutting performance will not be much influenced by reasonable variations in bevel angles) that re-sharpening absolutely requires either reproducing precisely the same honing bevel angle as first time around (the ideal), or one that is a tiny shade steeper in order to get right to the cutting edge without needing to remove an inordinate amount of metal. (which latter angle if precisely controlled should be fine for several reshapenings as with a micro bevel, but it must eventually lead to a pogressive steepening or increased humping of the bevel)

i.e. the rub is perhaps that no more than any other sharpening method it doesn't actually deliver any escape from the requirement to precisely hold the angle of the honing bevel. It's perhaps more demanding in this regard than some other methods - presuming that re-sharpening is as with most other methods a matter of lightly touching up just the cutting edge, and not of re-working the entire bevel. This because a humped bevel would lift the cutting edge free of the stone or strop if the honing angle was reduced even slightly - and force the removal of much more metal to get back to a wire edge. Also because there is no clearly defined reference plane to work from.

Another caution may relate to the high sharpening pressures applied to the chisels in the video. It presumably brings the benefit of rapid metal removal when required (as before i'd no idea that stropping for example could remove so much - and it's perhaps the re-working of most of the bevel at almost every sharpening that is the antidote to the above issue), but without high skill levels it seems likely that a moment's inattention could do quite a lot of harm to a finely formed edge...

[David Weaver]

I think most people will lift an iron to cheat and finish an edge, but the method would work fine as long as you get a feel for about where you want the steepness to stop (in a plane iron for me that'd be no steeper than 35 no matter what, and probably 30 in a chisel) and train yourself to go back to a coarser stone if you can't finish an iron or chisel without lifting the edge more.

Human nature is going to cause a lot of people who know they can lift another 5 degrees to do that to finish an edge in a couple of strokes - because going to a coarser stone and then back to the fine again will take a lot more time.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I enjoy tests such as this.... And that, my friends, is why I want to party with Winton! (and because he has those cool pieces of wood on which to perform the tests).

[Winton Applegate]

I think I could plane the bubinga and the purpleheart just fine using a washita stone

David,

I was thinking of you (in a positive way) when I wrote my post that you quoted . I originally wrote : buss out the high angle frog for the purp. and bub. but then I deleted it.

You have got everybody here up to speed (except me)(maybe I will try it some day) . . . setting the cap nose/bevel angle and the cap to edge so you don’t need the high angle frog or a back bevel.

AND of course you sharpen right,
(I was going to say that I agree with what all you wrote earlier in this thread)

no big roundy, so of couarse I know you could plane it. I can’t prevent my self from typing : you MIGHT get a touch of chatter because of the bevel down vs my bevel up.

It’s them soft cheep strops (Sellers) and the massive rounding that scares me.


Nutty
Well I’m a bit nutty with out that but . ..
Yes your new 20,000 sounds fun for the razors.
No I haven’t “pulled the trigger” on the 30,000. Maybe for Christmas.
The Shapton glass 30,000 I have not removed from my Amazon shopping cart list and it occasionally drops to a “mere” $230 or so. I will probably get a Pro from Stu


Right now when I sharpen “normally” I use the Shapton 8,000 Pro but when I am out of my head and abandoning all sense of rationality I go and use the Shapton 15,000 for no other reason than : I can.

[Winton Applegate]

cool pieces of wood on which to perform the tests

I had the large purple heart to make my work bench. I won't be using eight foot purp. for much else.
Purp is what got me started down the road to madness though.
First off purple heart is cheep and plentiful. Bubinga is a whole other story. Not cheep and not plentiful at least not the really pretty stuff and I am not even talking water fall etc.

Way back when I bought a little stick of purp. and just fooling around I took my new LN #4 to it. Hand sharpened and latter tried again resharpened and stropped.

I tried every which away and I ALWAYS got some chipping. Tear out. Soon after I got chatter as the blade dulled.

This was a little plank like four or five inches wide and a foot and a half long. Plane Jane absolutely no figure to it or rowed grain. Just purple tame looking wood.

Chip, chip, chip.
sharpen, test, chip, sharpen, test, chip, sharpen, test, chip,

Finally I WON !
I used a sharpening jig (the older Varitas) that made a HUGE difference !
and I still had to back bevel the blade to gain mastery over purple heart and be totally tear out free.
It sure seems like I tried every which a way with the chip breaker from right on the edge to way back out of the way.
With the back bevel . . . I found keeping the chip breaker way back out of the way was just fine.
I gave up on chip breakers that day and still find them pointless (as long as I have my steep bedded woodies or my bevel up planes.
I hate making back bevels on bevel down plane blades. That was why I went looking for something better and first found bevel up and THEN steep beds (thank you Larry Williams).

[David Weaver]

David,

I was thinking of you (in a positive way) when I wrote my post that you quoted . I originally wrote : buss out the high angle frog for the purp. and bub. but then I deleted it.

You have got everybody here up to speed (except me)(maybe I will try it some day) . . . setting the cap nose/bevel angle and the cap to edge so you don’t need the high angle frog or a back bevel.

AND of course you sharpen right,
(I was going to say that I agree with what all you wrote earlier in this thread)

no big roundy, so of couarse I know you could plane it. I can’t prevent my self from typing : you MIGHT get a touch of chatter because of the bevel down vs my bevel up.

It’s them soft cheep strops (Sellers) and the massive rounding that scares me.


Well I’m a bit nutty with out that but . ..
Yes your new 20,000 sounds fun for the razors.
No I haven’t “pulled the trigger” on the 30,000. Maybe for Christmas.
The Shapton glass 30,000 I have not removed from my Amazon shopping cart list and it occasionally drops to a “mere” $230 or so. I will probably get a Pro from Stu


Right now when I sharpen “normally” I use the Shapton 8,000 Pro but when I am out of my head and abandoning all sense of rationality I go and use the Shapton 15,000 for no other reason than : I can.

I like the 15k pro. If I were still using stones of that type, I'd use a 1k and 15k and that'd be it, but you know how little metal I like to work.

Far as the washita would go, it would work fine for smoothing, and wouldn't chatter with stock iron and cap iron on bubinga, but the heavier cuts like fore plane type cuts would probably chatter a little bit - gives you just a bit of a zzzzzzzzzzzipppp feeling when you use them, and i can't tell any difference in tearout when that occurs because the chatters are close together.

If the cut wasn't started properly, though, someone could get some skipping from the plane until it engages in the cut.

The biggest difference with washita sharpness and something like shapton 15k pro sharpness is what the very thin shavings look like on more compliant wood. On the ceramics, those very thin shavings are very waxy and they stay together a little better. I suppose the practical limit of thin-ness (.3 thousandth or something in a wood like cherry) is pretty easily obtained with those stones, and a washita won't go down to that and have a shaving that easily stays together - it probably won't go down to it at all - you'd never be able to tell if you could because the shaving is no longer an organized shaving. The harder the wood, the bigger the difference on those thin shavings.

Far as the fine stones go, the gok is at least as fine as the shapton 30k (which I have used, I still haven't used the gok, but the razor folks have discarded the 30k in favor of the gok), and it costs about the same as the glasstone, but you get several multiples more abrasive. I noticed very little between the 30k shapton glass and the 16k shapton glass (a friend bought the entire range, including the 30k, mostly because "it was there").

[Jim Koepke]

fore plane type cuts would probably chatter a little bit - gives you just a bit of a zzzzzzzzzzzipppp feeling when you use them, and i can't tell any difference in tearout when that occurs because the chatters are close together.

Though I have no way to document this I think there are two different types of zzzzzzzzzippp that can occur. One is with a lighter cut and the sound is produced by the chip breaking against the chip breaker. The second is actually chatter and there are visible 'zipper marks' on the surface.

Just my

294296
294297

jtk

[David Weaver]

Yeah, I'm talking about the second zip that leaves a surface with what looks like tiny ribs.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Although I don't think that it was your intent, there is a lot of good information in that post!

[Winton Applegate]

:confused: Disclamer : you guys know I have to do this at least once a week or I don't feel my self (I mean don't feel like my self) you won't take it to heart but those new here may think I am being bad.
I just enjoy the humor in it all. :p


different zzzzzzzzzzps

Ha, ha
Being way over here, on the other side of the fence, and up here in the cheep seats (though some how I spent a whole lot of money on a whole lot of different planes, jigs, stones, books, wood AND a whole lot of TIME , to get this seat) . . .

I must say that TO ME discussing different zzzzzps is vaguely like two auto mechanics discussing the different QUALITYs (timbre, pitch, volume) of automobile engine back firing and agreeing that one or another is to be expected.

The important thing is that the car get you where you are going.
Right ?

he, he, he, he

Once a BU snob always a BU snob . . . except David. He has repented his temporary albeit legendarily lusty visit to the evil boudoir of the BU and returned . . . teaching those who have ears to hear (oh wait skip that bit) and eyes to see that the true calling of a man (women aren’t going to buy this) . . . anyway . . .that the true calling of a man lies not in enjoying the pleasure of the smooth and sensuous planing experience; lies not in the peace in quiet work . . . those are the temptings of the devil and must be ignored as booty traps that lure the weak and undisciplined.
The One True Way (who was it that said "Capital letters were always the best way of deal with things you didn't have a good answer to." . . .

The One True Way lies not in this lustrous, luring, quiet but in grappling with the ineffable chip breaker to see if once and for all if we may not, TODAY, eff it after all.

You are a man who is truly devout to his faith. Unshakable no matter the blusterous tempests and TREMORS that surround you.

he, he, he, he
:)

[Winton Applegate]

Although I don't think that it was your intent, there is a lot of good information in that post!

Yes that was an oversight . . . I hope to delve to the bottom of this and have the person, or persons, responsible up against the wall before sundown.

[Brian Holcombe]

Winton have you tried planning wenge? I've had little to no luck in doing so.

[Winton Applegate]

No I haven't. I'm not drawn to it. I have heard it is stringy. I can't imagine having a problem with a BU with the throat open a moderate amount.
What sort of problems do you run into ?

[Graham Haydon]

294470

I have next to no experience with it although I had a chunk of worktop sample that was sent to us. I messed about with it while trying out a Stanley SW 62. Not that nice but it was ok (both the plane and the wood), normal methods of sharp enough, tight mouth etc seemed enough enough to get a decent finish.