Bench plane camber choices vs. working practices

[ian maybury]

There's very little written about this. Lots about how to camber a blade (which isn't a problem), but big differences between writers in terms of what they (admittedly tentatively, and emphasising that personal preferences count for a lot) regard as a typical amount of camber for each plane type. Very little to say about why.

I'm relatively new to the structured use of planes, and have some initial/starting point choices to make.

Pondering the issue suggests that it's perhaps those planning to horse off large amounts of material using hand planes that go for the heavy cambers. Seems to me that as a mixed hand and power tool guy (having put a lot of time into accurately setting up a 16in jointer/thicknessser) that there's going to be far fewer situations where this is appropriate for me. David Charlesworth while not really being all that specific about camber amounts seems by his technique suggestions to use far less than many.

I'm for example thinking of keeping one block plane straight for trimming joints, and the other (wider) one set with a small camber for small area smoothing. Ditto the smoother where removing power planing marks (as an alternative to heavy sanding) is the main task. Also the jointer where board edges are likely to come off the machine pretty straight and require mostly fine tuning. The 1/64th mentioned in some places seems like an awful lot of camber for both these jobs though?

There's a choice to be made between a low angle jack or a bevel down to be kept straight for shooting. Then how much to camber the general use jack given that there's also a scrub plane for straightening wide surfaces. Some of the camber numbers quoted for jacks (1/32 in plus?) seem almost likely to take them into scrub plane territory - but that maybe makes sense in absence of a scrub plane. I'd likewise expect glued up boards to come out of the clamps relatively flat, and feel that a full 1/16in plus may be a lot for the scrub...

What strategies are people using, and what are the rationales?

[Prashun Patel]

My bevel up planes have eased corners; I wouldn't call it camber, though. I think of camber as a curved surface. My BU blades are indeed flat through their width, but eased on the corners only so they don't leave track marks (read, leave smaller track marks).

The trick to using a cambered blade for shooting is to use a concave square when measuring the result.;)

(I don't find that my eased edges affect the shooting accuracy).

[Warren Mickley]

The amount of camber is dependent on the shaving thickness. For each plane you want the camber so that the plane cuts almost full width, but the shaving thins out to nothing at the edges. Just rounding the corners is not the best because the rounded corners will still leave a bit of rounded track at the edges, and worse if the iron is not perfect with the lateral adjustment. A full gentle camber is more forgiving this way.

The sharpening stones will naturally become slightly dished and impart a slight camber. For a smoothing plane we want very little camber so we sharpen the middle of the blade over the left and right edges of the stone in order to keep the camber small and to even out the wear on the stone. For a jack plane we have to lean the iron a little to the left and right in order to keep the camber from flattening out too much from sharpening. So we are constantly managing both the stone surface and the camber.

[David Weaver]

I have never measured the camber on my irons...until a couple of weeks ago. I still don't know what any but the steepest are.

Your smoother should have enough camber or corner relief to not have the corners in the wood on a flat board when you're taking your final pass. What that is, I don't know, but you don't need to know the measure, either - you just need some repetition to figure out a process that doesn't involve measuring or delay that prepares your iron properly (which is exactly what warren has suggested).

I put a little more camber than that on my try plane, barely more on a jointer, and on jack and fore planes, whatever I feel like. My fore is probably set like most peoples' jacks and my jack is set very rank, something like a 4" radius (based on what I measured - out of curiosity because of discussions on ehre) on one. I don't typically use that plane for anything other than actually thicknessing boards.

I don't know what the curvature is on my irons, because I draw something on them by eye and manage them after setting them up by eye. If they seem too steep, then I let them flatten out some, and if the bottom of the iron seems to be getting off center, then I bias it back the other way when grinding it. It is one of the things that is better learned from experience than a spec sheet.

[Jim Koepke]

There's very little written about this. Lots about how to camber a blade (which isn't a problem), but big differences between writers in terms of what they (admittedly tentatively, and emphasising that personal preferences count for a lot) regard as a typical amount of camber for each plane type. Very little to say about why.

Purpose and personal preference is the reason for differing amounts of camber. A scrub plane will likely be the one with the most camber. Some measure in the depth of the camber others measure by the radius. For my few purposely cambered blades I usually just guesstimate. One plane that is purposely cambered is a plane used for scrub work. The camber allows taking a narrow yet fairly thick cross grain shaving without a lot of splintering the wood.



Seems to me that as a mixed hand and power tool guy (having put a lot of time into accurately setting up a 16in jointer/thicknessser) that there's going to be far fewer situations where this is appropriate for me.
[snip]
I'm for example thinking of keeping one block plane straight for trimming joints, and the other (wider) one set with a small camber for small area smoothing. Ditto the smoother where removing power planing marks (as an alternative to heavy sanding) is the main task. Also the jointer where board edges are likely to come off the machine pretty straight and require mostly fine tuning. The 1/64th mentioned in some places seems like an awful lot of camber for both these jobs though?

Though at times I have used a block plane for small area treatment a small bench plane seems to work best for me in this area. I have one block plane where the blade came with the back side worked deeper at the edges.

For smoothing a very light camber is used to make the shaving thin at the edges to help eliminate planing tracks. My tendency is to use a very sharp blade and make as thin a shaving as possible to keep from leaving tracks.

Here is another post about blade cambering:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?158373-My-Camber-Blade-Round-Tuit-Finally-Came


There's a choice to be made between a low angle jack or a bevel down to be kept straight for shooting.

My choice for shooting is a low angle jack. For me this is because it goes through the end grain easier than a bevel down plane. My shoulder was messed up years ago in a cycling accident. Less effort used shooting makes for less discomfort in my shoulder. Also the low angle jack seems to leave a better surface on end grain than a bevel down plane.


Some of the camber numbers quoted for jacks (1/32 in plus?) seem almost likely to take them into scrub plane territory - but that maybe makes sense in absence of a scrub plane. I'd likewise expect glued up boards to come out of the clamps relatively flat, and feel that a full 1/16in plus may be a lot for the scrub...


A scrub plane is mostly used for hand dimensioning of rough sawn wood. If you have machines to do this, a scrub plane isn't as important in your case.

If you can find an inexpensive blade or two for experimentation you will be able to try different cambers to see what may suite your needs.

I am not sure if they stock it in your area but Home Depot here has a blade for a #4 or 5 plane that is inexpensive.

jtk

[Chuck Nickerson]

I am a blended woodworker but I do every fifth project hand-tool only (the small ones), so my hand planes are set for a wide range of tasks.
Also I like having tools so I have not pushed myself towards a small working set of planes.

My scrub blade is on a 3" radius and my jack on an 8" radius, what I read as the traditional numbers. That's quite a gap, so I have a 5-1/4 plane whose blade is a 6" radius and I find that useful enough to keep. Just because I like the radius ideal (and my degree is in math) my fore plane blade is on a 16" radius.

My jointer and smoother just have relieved corners.

[Sean Hughto]

A bevel up plane needs a significant radius to achieve the same effect as a slightly cambered bevel down plane. I have never cambered any of my block or other BU planes. I may knock off the corners a bit, but I don't bother to try to impart a curve.

On pretty much all my BD bench planes - jointers, jacks, and smoothers - I sharpen in a slight camber. This is virtually imperceptible from the back side, but is noticeable from the front because the extra strokes on the stone as I approach the corners from the middle make a bevel that is wider as it mores towards the corners. I like this camber as it minimizes tracks and helps in adjusting so that the blade starts its shaving from the middle. It is so slight that you can't notice any scallop on a panel or anything. My big jack I use for flattening after taking down really high spots with the scrub, has a somewhat more pronounced camber, but nothing like the scrub.

295524

[ian maybury]

Thank you very much guys for coming back in so much detail. As is often the case reading across the posts paints the picture - and it more or less confirms the thinking subject to gaps in my experience. There's definitely some running with heavy camber that seem to be set up to remove a lot of wood by hand - Chuck, and David experimentally. Most others seem to be running quite a bit lighter. As Warren says - it depends on the shaving thickness. Which tends to point me towards running with lighter cambers until needs arise and a working style emerges.

The link is to a nice post showing what a (light) camber shaving looks like Jim. ;) Can't imagine how you can get such performance out of a plane that's not all shiny though….


I think the situations where I could end up needing to remove significant amounts of wood with the scrub or a jack might be on stuff that's either too wide for the planer thicknesser, or rough/dirty enough that it's probably more attractive to risk blunting a re-sharpenable plane blade cleaning it up rather than an expensive set of HSS machine knives.

Sounds like it's the low angle jack for shooting Jim - I can drop another blade in it if it's needed for anything else anyway. Easing the corners is one way of shooting and using it for other stuff too Prashun. My planes just coming into use are all Veritias bevel up Sean - the plan is to run with 25 degree primary bevels, and then hone in any camber and or steeper angle that's required a la Derek Cohen. (plus i have some spare blades)

The Clifton is the exception and was my first 'good' plane, i bought it about 15 years ago and it's done almost everything that's come up in the interval. Sounds like it's heading into a new and rather more finely set up life….

The thinking in putting (just a little) camber on the bigger of the the block planes Jim is just that I have the bigger Veritas model that takes a handle and knob: http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=41715&cat=1,41182,41189&ap=1 The smoother is meanwhile quite big being the wide Veritas bevel up model. I bought a Veritas apron plane ( small block) to have something light and handy for general trimming jobs, and will sharpen that straight...

Thanks again...

[David Weaver]

I think the bottom line, if you experiment, you'll find that you like to have at least one plane set up to run like that (heavy camber) if you dimension by hand. If you don't dimension by hand, there's probably really no reason you'll ever need it as even moderate jack camber will take care (cross grain especially) of high corners or other things of the like that power toolers use as justification for scrub planes (aside from the fact that a scrub plane is an interesting sensation to use).

Doing a lot of dimensioning by hand, it's nice to have a plane with mild camber that can take a thick shaving as well as a plane or two with significant camber.

It's my opinion that you want these planes especially to be easy to sharpen because they will never need to take 1100 feet of one thousandth shavings, and you'll appreciate something like a carbon steel iron (which will be both tough and easy to sharpen, but not as wear resistant as wonder-steel).

But all of that is still best learned by experience. My favorite high camber jack planes are a funjii smoother (a very cheap japanese plane) and a $10 dutch continental smoother with a french iron (french people seemed to like soft tempered steel for some reason - both in knives and tools). I could get by with either, but have both because they're so cheap. They're both extremely easy to sharpen.

One other opinion - bevel down for highly cambered planes. You want a nimble plane for this kind of work, and when I had a jack, it never felt natural with a lot of camber. You can do it, but you have to do more work to the iron and it just seems bizarre using a pattern that was initially designed to smooth butcher block end grain (that's what stanley made the 62 for) to hog out long grain. It feels like you're wearing cast iron frying pan flip flops to play tennis.

[Tom M King]

295526One of my three's is cambered this much. I don't know how much it is, but it looked about right to match some other boards in the 1828 house. They are the entry steps out of several year old air-dried treated pine. I could have measured the thickness of shavings, but it looked fine, so I didn't have any reason to.

I keep a couple of pairs of block planes like you mentioned. I never used them that much as intended, but I fell into great deals on NOS dark blue ones, and bought the Burgandy ones new a while back. I do use them as intended sometimes, but I have to plan ahead as to which one to keep in my toolbelt, and the one that gets used is the one at hand. They are pairs of 9-1/2s and 60-1/2s.

My smoothers have varying amounts of camber, down to the 4-1/2 which is probably less than a thousandth. I have two 6's with different cambers, only because I ended up with two for no good reason. It has actually worked out to be worthwhile to have both of them. I keep a 7 with small camber for surfaces, and an 8 straight for edges-although I'm sure the 7 would work just fine.

The 5 is set up, and used as a Jack is intended. A Scrub is used for scrubbing dirty beams and boards. The scrub will keep cutting even when the blade has a fairly wide flat at the cutting edge.

[Jim Koepke]

Can't imagine how you can get such performance out of a plane that's not all shiny though….

They are merely dressed in grunge camouflage.


The scrub will keep cutting even when the blade has a fairly wide flat at the cutting edge.

+1 on this, my scrub blade is just heavily relieved at the corners.

jtk

[Winton Applegate]

How much camber ?
That is perfectly straight forward . . . literally.
How much junk do you have in the trunk ?

What I mean is IF you have enough weight AND muscle AND traction to push what ever plane blade you want to through the hardest and toughest wood you will ever work at the cutting depth you choose to take off with the blade straight but the corners lightly relieved . . .
well brother
THEN you don’t need no stinkin’ camber.

You see ?

But if you are like some of us and on that big old plank of bubinga where you need to take off an eighth of an inch (I heard what you said about the 16 “ miracle machine but I ain’t got one) and I camber and I get too bogged down to get that plane to hog through the wood and then my floor is that very smooth kind of cement (I have to put down some grit just to get traction)

so I put on more camber, and maybe more camber again
until
finally
I reach an equilibrium where I am able to continue for long periods and take off significant depth
then
I have put on ENOUGH camber.
Purtty simple huh ?

If I am working softer wood and I am flying through the cuts with the greatest of ease with that previous bubinga camber
well
next time I sharpen I am going to straighten ‘er out some so I can get more blade width into the cut.
purtty simple huh ?

That’s about it really.

PS: first photo; bubinga; lots of depth not much width a butt load of camber. LN scrub.
Second and third photo bubinga very wide blade only a couple thou depth straight finish blade (no camber) relived corners. Veritas BU widest smoother.
Fourth photo those bags are almost all hand plane curls packed tight .

[Jim Koepke]

Fourth photo those bags are almost all hand plane curls packed tight .

Hope you know someone with a pet rabbit, hamster or guinea pig.

jtk

[Tom M King]

They are merely dressed in grunge camouflage.



+1 on this, my scrub blade is just heavily relieved at the corners.

jtk

I meant the flat behind the cutting edge when it's dull. It still has about a 1-1/2" radius. It'll still throw shavings three feet in the air even if it's dull since it takes such a big bite. I have to make the guys quit using it to sharpen it.

[ian maybury]

:) Cases where a picture is worth a thousand words! It actually comes as a surprise that a hand plane can strip off so much material. From gentlemanly smoothings to hard labour. Requiring just as wide a range of sharpening options - it certainly explains why writers tend not to be too specific in specifying camber amounts.

You're going to have to get published Winton!

[Winton Applegate]

Ah shucks.
Weren't nothin'
Except a heck of a lot of work or "FUN" as they call it here in Saw Mill.

[Kees Heiden]

Here's a video from me, thicknessing a board with a scrub, removing the ridges with a foreplane and finally using a jointer to make everything flat and staight. The scrub has a very narrow radius and a narrow blade. The foreplane is about 8" radius and the jointer is nearly straight but still has some camber. Feel free to fast forward, because the video is quite long and gets a bit boring of course. It's realtime, no editting to make the job seem easier then it really was.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bWoC2t8jocc

It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The wallnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.

[Bob Jones]

I'm confused why this thread didn't stop with Warren's answer? :)

camber = shaving thickness
its more of a goal than a rigid rule. It's simple.

[Bob Jones]

Ok,
one thing about using cambered blades is not obvious - wear. The center of the camber goes deeper in the wood and has higher pressures and thus wears more quickly than the edges. When sharpening you have to check that the blade still has the right camber. Don't just rehone and go. Without care, your blade will eventually shave on both edges and not the center.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Kees

Thanks for posting your video again. I recall seeing it a year or two ago.

The observation I have is that, on a pretty flat and narrow board such as you are showing, I would rather saw away 1/4" than plane it away. Not only would this be quicker, but it would be more accurate (that is, leave less to flatten once the waste is removed). This is even more relevant with hard woods.

For me, a scrub plane (3" radius) is to remove localised high spots. I'd rather use a jack plane (8" radius) to remove under 1/4" thickness as there is less damage to deal with.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Kees Heiden]

When you have a bandsaw, yes, I would remove it too with the saw. But with a handsaw it would be a toss up which is "better". Later when I had to plane the tabletop I found the scrub plane to be a huge time saver. The jack plane was very slow in comparison. Of course the scrub leaves a mess, but it is relatively quick to clean up that mess with a jack plane. Well at least, that's my experience.

[david charlesworth]

Ian,

I have a rather unusual setup.

A 12" machine planer thicknesser, so the only planing I do is to perfect the results that the machine gives me. Snipe, ripple, wind, movement etc.

Now for about 25 years the only bench plane I had which worked well, (I had done every tuning job I could find), was a 1970's Stanley 5 1/2.

I had this tuned up as a super smoother. Fine mouth, replacement blade, then replacement cap iron etc etc.

For edge planing I like slightly more camber, and for surfaces slightly less, though this is not essential.

For edges, when the blade is held vertical on a straight piece of industrial plastic, I see about 6 to 8 thou" of light at either side. This can be "measured" with sheets of paper, thin card or engineers shim. The timber of course sees less, but my trigonometry is escaping me!

When students are having trouble squaring edges, I almost always know, that they have lost the camber on their blades.

Best wishes,
David

[Augusto Orosco]

It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The walnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.

I really appreciate the video and the fact that you didn't edit it! Last night, I was dimensioning a 36"x7" 8/4 soft maple with a lot of twist and had to remove about 3/8" of the board. I was taking as heavy a cut I could with the scrub and the jack to speed up the process and it wasn't exactly a ballet performance. Seeing someone with your skills attacking the board like that is reassuring and helpful for a newbie like me. It took me way more than 12 minutes, though! :o

[Greg Portland]

Here's a video from me, thicknessing a board with a scrub, removing the ridges with a foreplane and finally using a jointer to make everything flat and staight. The scrub has a very narrow radius and a narrow blade. The foreplane is about 8" radius and the jointer is nearly straight but still has some camber. Feel free to fast forward, because the video is quite long and gets a bit boring of course. It's realtime, no editting to make the job seem easier then it really was.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bWoC2t8jocc

It's always humbling to watch yourself on video. I'm strugling from time to time. The wallnut I had was plenty hard and I should have taken a shallower cut, especially with the jointer plane. But still, 12 minutes isn't too bad to remove a 1/4" of wood and making it nice and straight.
Maybe this is common knowledge to the veterans but I just learned (from your video) to ease the edge of the work to mark the cut depth and to reduce tear out. In hindsight it seems like common sense :). Thanks for the video!

[ian maybury]

:) Makes me tired just looking at the video Kees, but real time is great in that it transmits the reality in a way that set piece video never does. For example - it's certainly not going to be an option to do a lot of that sort of work if the bench height is wrong, or if your work holding arrangement are a bit suspect. Interesting too to see you use a chamfer to prevent tear out and establish the line you wanted to work down to. It's no wonder that half the woodworking world ends terminally confused after production values are applied to videos by the marketing mob.

I didn't intend to overlook Warren's post Bob, it was spot on. What's clear though is that there's a wide range of potential techniques/approaches where camber is useful, and that the actual amount of camber required in each of these may vary very widely depending heavily on the style of working. These continuing posts are illustrating some possibilities very nicely.

I suspect I'm headed for David and Derek territory (too old and too cynical to be heaving off wads of wood with a hand plane) - that's mixing machine and hand tools as makes sense. (to me anyway) I'm hoping that it'll work out that way anyway. I have the luxury of a hefty bandsaw with a carbide blade too...

Thanks for the camber measurement for jointing David, I was re-reading the piece in one of your books on this a few nights ago and trying to figure out the sort of number you might have been using. (that's the write up on hand jointing boards for table tops and the like using camber to correct out of square board edges and produce slightly cupped joints - p. 74 'The Method' in 'Furniture Making Techniques' Vol 2' ) It's actually a bit more camber than I had figured, although the blade angle will reduce its effect.

Guess it may suggest the need for a quick skim with a smoother to clean up any scalloping if the same jointer is used to flatten an external/show surface??

[Kees Heiden]

Well, I'm glad people like the video, in real time even :D. It's just as when I see myself skiing on video, it can feel great while doing it but when I look back it looks pretty awfull. Maybe that's a good reason never to watch a video from yourself. At the other hand, it is a great learning tool. Also for handplaning or sawing. When you want to learn, shoot a video.

After planing with a lightly cambered jointer, the surface is very smooth allready. Those scallops are hardly visible. Even jackplane scallops aren't too obtrusive, because you remove the higher ridges with the overlapping strokes. It's not a bad idea to wait with the smoothing plane until all joinery is finished and you are ready to assemble the piece. Smoothing removes all the dings from handling the piece, marking lines, pencil marks etc. Just watch out that you don't disturb the fit of the joinery.

[Matthew Hills]

Kees,
I like how your lateral supports also serve as your stand for when you put your jointer plane down.

Matt

[ian maybury]

Can't resist posting a shot of the Veritas low angle block plane with an O1 blade sharpened on the waterstones to function as a small smoother with what turned out to be a hint more than 0.001in camber (about 8 strokes on the 1000g Shapton at 30 deg over a 25 deg primary bevel, then polished to 12,000g - it could possibly use a shade more) - and to thank everybody for the help in getting this far. The apron plane is performing similarly, except that it's sharpened straight. Next up the wide smoother, and then on into more robust cambers with the LAJ and the scrub.

Definitely not Japanese competition territory and nothing special, but who'd have thought that a plane would perform like this at first try - seeing it written about doesn't communicate the reality. It's hard to express, but it just feels so nice in use. Even on a bit of old pine. Glides through the cut, and the finish on even that feels like glass. If you have been thinking of getting into careful sharpening with waterstones - then do it!! It's well worth the effort, and is not unduly difficult.

There's a bit of work involved in getting a blade and tool set up first time around, but ongoing sharpening is quick and easy.

To share some impressions:

1. Polishing both faces of the cutting edge seems to be key to performance in very light cuts.
2. Putting on this small degree of camber takes no time (using the Charlesworth method of extra strokes on the 1,000g waterstone with the pressure out towards the corners) - but it is a matter of slowing it right down and being methodical as each stroke on the stone counts.
3. It's quite difficult to tell what you have by way of camber until you try it - it's not visually obvious, and the side to side tilt of the blade has to be spot on too. Taking a shaving off the corner of a strip of wood using first one and then the other end of the blade, and then the middle seems a reasonable test. The (very narrow) shavings from the ends should be of equal thickness, and that from the middle of the blade a bit thicker.
4. The blade in the apron plane is A2, with O1 in the block.
5. Surprised at how similar the different steels felt on the waterstones. I recut the primary bevel at 25 deg in both cases using the honing guide on the top platform of the WorkSharp 3000 - basically to remove any suspect material at the tip. Both sharpened very easily and took a good edge - the only obvious difference was that the A2 had more tendency to develop a heavier wire edge - especially on coarse grits on the WorkSharp.
6. There's i think an argument after grinding the primary bevel and before putting camber on (in the form of a 30 deg micro bevel) in favour of working the finish on it down to a fairly fine grit waterstone - so that the wire edge resulting from the grinding is honed away. (forming a heavy wire edge was unavoidable in this case because the re-grinding reduced the bevel angle very slightly) It may amount to taking unnecessary trouble, but it means that the risk of tearing it off while forming the camber is eliminated.
7. The backs of both blades were impressively flat as received. There was absolutely no need for the ruler trick - they cleaned up in a few minutes on the 1,000 grit stone.
8. It's advisable to use double sided tape to attached a small block of wood to function as a handle when flattening the backs. (don't use too much tape - hot water helps to get it off afterwards) Plane blades with their wider backs seem to have quite a tendency to suck down on to the finer grits of waterstone, and even with lots of water (which gets more or less instantly wiped off) it's very helpful to have a good grip.
9. It feels like polishing (in this case down to 2,000 grit silicon carbide on a granite plate - overkill, but what the hell :p) and especially waxing the sole of the plane helps the action considerably.

ian

295806

[Winton Applegate]

I have to say, after viewing some YouTubes of scrub planing I was dismayed at about everything I saw. It was as if these people NEVER scrub or flatten stock with hand planes and are just demonstrating SORT OF what one would do if one were to ever stoop (so to speak) to the actual activity.

They use benches that are way too high and not conducive to hold the stock, inadequate stock support with the plank teetering back and forth and back and forth, clamps in the way of the plane
and
AND
AND
They completely fail to drive with their legs and whole body. Often driving with the wrong leg back.
Hopelessly off balance , driving arm hooking off as if it had a life of its own wholly out of alignment and unrelated to the body it was dragging along for the ride behind it and failing to drive through with power at the finish of the stroke.

NOW
I was going to emphasize the importance of driving with the same rear leg as the side that is the dominant hand. Right hand on the rear tote means right leg back left leg forward.

I know this works best for hand planing. My man in the video of the slab planer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg0jUWJPweg) changes once in a while but for the most part he is not only low enough to get his legs into the work but drives with the same side leg as the driving hand.

Ha, Ha, Ha
I have to give away a MISTAKE I made in trying to get this post sold to ya all . . .
I went looking for a vid of Bruce Lee’s Famous One Inch Punch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdv_9MhOSoI)to demonstrate my theory of the power one can generate with the same leg back theory.

To my for ever embarrassment He is driving left leg and right fist.
So much for cross training.

Pay attention . . . the punch part is brief. There are other better examples but I thought you might like to see the table tennis with the chucks. The human body is capable of more than most people think.

Since I don’t go around punching people all the time I know nothing of boxing.
I do know scrub plaining and I still stand by my same side theory.

Comments ?

Other than calling me a hopeless pacifist girly boy that is.

[David Weaver]

It's not hard to tell who uses planes a lot and who doesn't (when watching those videos). Same as watching the bit of planing and sawing george does in the CW video. It doesn't look awkward, it doesn't look difficult (though make the wood enough and it can look pretty tough no matter what...because it is).

The difference between awkward and not is a matter of experience. If one can't figure out the path of least resistance combined with most productivity from a significant amount of repetition (when dimensioning wood), then this hobby might not be for them.

Otherwise, I think there are a lot of people on youtube who use planes mostly when they do videos, and use planers and electric jointers when the camera isn't on.

In terms of mechanics, we shouldn't even have to talk about it. When I see someone with bad body mechanics, I just assume they need more experience. One thing that always irked me when I was starting was being too prescriptive about the methods and not with enough discussion about the objective (that may be spending a certain amount of time on a certain sized panel, etc).

[ian maybury]

Those Bruce Lee videos are pretty amazing - especially the table tennis. We with our modern cult of the intellect (we like to theorise, but tend to be slow to practice/get the grunt work done) forget what the body is capable of - perhaps that was one message he was here to deliver. It's only now (for me anyway) that the magic is obvious, as a kid it was just movie special effects or something.

It's the same for most activities involving mind/body co-ordination, it doesn't really start to happen until it's practiced enough to go subconscious.

One of the risks of getting too intellectual is that the thinking (not unconscious) mind often gets in the way. It's a fine balance, and a lot to do with mind state and orientation. It's advisable to become aware of the correct 'form' for any action, but get overly intense/hung up on trying to consciously control it and it just doesn't work. Mix some lightly focused basic intention with enough practice and it tends to sort itself out.....

[ian maybury]

Another PS - this time to the setting up of the mostly Veritas/Lee Valley bevel up planes the cambered blades belong to. Credit needs giving where credit is due. Most are just coming into use.

Been stripping each down, checking the sole (marked up around the mouth and at the ends with a felt pen) with a quick run on fine silicon carbide paper on a lab standard granite surface plate, waxing them up and then fitting the freshly sharpened and cambered blades.

All four bevel up bench planes plus both (different model) blocks and a scraping plane have proved to have dead flat soles (polishing up all over within a few strokes), the mostly A2 but one O1 blade backs have all been so flat that they clean all over in a few minutes on a 1000 grit waterstone, and the jointer, smoother and blocks (with fine/no cambers as applicable) have had no difficulty dialling straight in to take shavings of just under one thou. (didn't try to go finer)

Impressive stuff - a well regarded (but not US made) modern bevel down jack plane by another maker in comparison needed several hours of sole flattening - and one of the sides is about 0.5mm out of vertical.