For entertainment purposes and holiday stress relief.

[Brian Holcombe]

Of the special sort for our unique variety of weird.

Needed a break from gift wrapping;


http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/SpeedyGoomba/6305CBFA-9FF1-4B8A-8B54-1129916E9EC0_zpsiiwilood.jpg
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/SpeedyGoomba/8DCA322A-DF4B-4486-9A76-FA0EB1F6D255_zpsek2ib4bc.jpg
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/SpeedyGoomba/CA3E5203-9ACB-4D6E-8593-DA88ADAAD264_zps2zz4jgbs.jpghttp://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/SpeedyGoomba/383C8E8A-7F32-4F03-9C7B-3B603EADFB28_zpslt8aq3ts.jpg

[Patrick Chase]

Of the special sort for our unique variety of weird.

Needed a break from gift wrapping;

[snip]



Where's your bathrobe? We were promised a bathrobe dammit!

[David Eisenhauer]

Thanks. What is the iron in the plane? An aside question - what brand of holdfast is that on your bench? I wonder if all holdfasts are pretty much equal or do some hold better than the lower cost "Tools for Woodworking" brand I use?

[Brian Holcombe]

Patrick,

I am wearing my official planing shirt....an oxford collar button down, recently pressed.

David,

Yokoyama Kunio made the blade, it's Tougou-kou steel.

The holdfasts are Lie Nielsen, they're the only variety I've used but work quite well in my experience.

[Jeff Ranck]

Brian:

You always bring in the cheer. Thanks for this. I've always been amazed at the shavings that people can take with Japanese planes. I'm afraid I'd never figure them out. I'm still having trouble with a LV smoother I bought. I still can't seem to get that thing set up correctly, let alone a Kana.

jeff.

[Brian Holcombe]

Jeff,

Anytime!

I love the Kanna, but the #4 remains my go-to for most situations. If you need help with the smoother I'm happy to offer opinion/suggestion.

[Patrick Chase]

Jeff,

Anytime!

I love the Kanna, but the #4 remains my go-to for most situations. If you need help with the smoother I'm happy to offer opinion/suggestion.

As has been said many times - it's usually the archer not the arrow (provided that we consider sharpening to be part of "archer" :-)

Well-smithed white steel takes a ferocious edge, but you can shavings like that with any of LV's blade offerings (O1, A2, PM-V11) as well. The key for me when I was in your boat was to figure out how a truly "sharp" blade looks and feels. Once you have that reference to aim for it's easy enough to figure out how to get there.

[Andrew Hughes]

Oh I see a defect in the shaving,Wait never mind it was a cookie crumb on my iPad screen.😋

[Jim Koepke]

Beautiful shaving.

Did woodworkers of yore use shavings like decorations on their Christmas trees?

jtk

[Graham Haydon]

Thanks for the therapy Brian. Must get around to trying one of those planes!

[Brian Holcombe]

The pleasure is mine, of course, thanks Gents. Happy holidays.

Jim, my wife takes them once in a while for decoration.

[Stanley Covington]

No bathrobe? Perhaps a nice red velvet smoking jacket and blue cravat would finish out your planing sartorial ensemble nicely.

How is your Yokoyama performing? Nice kezurikasu. Good for the soul, I am sure.

I have a Yokoyama plane just like yours. My blade crumbled immediately and badly when new, but after 3 or 4 sharpenings it settled down and hums as it shaves wood.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

[Martin Shupe]

How do you set the blade so fine?

With a hammer?

I am afraid I would tap too hard and have to keep starting over.

I can get the blade sharp, but is there a trick to setting the blade depth?

[Brian Holcombe]

No bathrobe? Perhaps a nice red velvet smoking jacket and blue cravat would finish out your planing satorial ensemble nicely.

How is your Yokoyama performing? Nice kezurikasu. Good for the soul, I am sure.

I have a Yokoyama plane just like yours. My blade crumbled immediately and badly when new, but after 3 or 4 sharpenings it settled down and hums as it shaves wood.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Don't forget the monogrammed slippers. :p

I've had the same experience, it was a little chippy right off bat, but after a couple sharpenings it is awesome. It turns out walnut gorgeously and actually has been the reason for my wanting to do a few projects in tight grained softwoods for built-in type stuff around the house.

This stuff is quite addicting :D Even taking swipes on junk-wood from the local retail giant was enjoyable.

Martin,

I set it with a mallet, you get the hang of it pretty quickly. I just take light taps when I'm getting close and if I set it to far just a few light taps on the back of the dai will lighten the cut. The adjustment can be extremely fine, for novelty I was taking shavings then measuring their thickness with a micrometer (this stuff actually relaxes me, believe it or not) and light taps were worth about .0002"

[Jeff Ranck]

Jeff,

Anytime!

I love the Kanna, but the #4 remains my go-to for most situations. If you need help with the smoother I'm happy to offer opinion/suggestion.

That is a generous offer that I may take you up on. I'm sure it is just user error at this point. The blade is pmv11 which may be giving me a bit of a harder time sharpening (compared to my bevel up A2 irons in my LV jack and jointer). Also I'm having a bit of a hard time getting the cap iron/chip breaker to mate correctly. It is one of the "old" pattern LV smoothers so has the stamped chip breaker that has a lot of "spring" in it as things are tightened down.

One of the weird things about that model is that end of the lever cap pushes on the "hump" in the cap iron when everything is in place. I may be overtightening things and that the lever cap is causing a bit of a gap between the cap iron and the iron when things are tightened down. I don't think so, but it is hard to tell.

I think at this point it is just a bit more time on the stones to get things tuned in correctly. It works better now than it did, but still not there yet. So get the blade sharper, get the chip breaker front flattened correctly at the right angle so it mates to the iron better, and I'm probably there.

If I have trouble I'll let you know.

328092

[Patrick Chase]

That is a generous offer that I may take you up on. I'm sure it is just user error at this point. The blade is pmv11 which may be giving me a bit of a harder time sharpening (compared to my bevel up A2 irons in my LV jack and jointer). Also I'm having a bit of a hard time getting the cap iron/chip breaker to mate correctly. It is one of the "old" pattern LV smoothers so has the stamped chip breaker that has a lot of "spring" in it as things are tightened down.

I have that exact plane and blade - it's my go-to common-angle smoother. I also have the newer Custom #4 with 55-deg frog.

The cap irons on the old-style Veritas #4s are actually easier to set up than the ones on the custom planes (or Lie-Nielsens, or Wood Rivers) in my experience, mostly because they're already close to the ideal ~50-deg angle and overall profile. All you should need to do is polish both faces of the cap iron's leading edge a bit. It should not be possible to open up a gap between the iron and the leading edge of the cap iron as you describe, because those cap irons come with a fairly large clearance angle such that the point-of-contact always remains at the leading edge even when tightened all the way down.

Did you back-bevel the blade somehow, either intentionally or via a "ruler trick gone awry"? Also, did you do anything that might change the clearance angle of the cap iron's leading edge?

If you did do something untoward to the cap iron it isn't a big deal - LV sells replacements for $6 or so (vs $33 or so for the solid A2 cap iron in the custom plane) though they're only available by special order. I bought a couple spares back when I first started experimenting with close high-angle cap iron sets.

[Joe Beaulieu]

Hey Brian,

Just gorgeous. Do you have any Port Orford Cedar around to take a shaving with? Love to see that. Do you end up using the cap iron on your kanna? I attended a Japabese tools class many years ago at Harrelson Stanley's school in Massachusetts about 15 years ago where it was suggested to do away with the cap iron. In fact in the class they had us remove the pin that holds the iron in. Just curious if your experience is similar.

Where do you buy your tools Brian? Are you buying direct from the makers or do you have a kcal broker?

Thanks

[Brian Holcombe]

Jeff,

Patricks suggestion is where my mind was heading as well. His notes are where I would start investigating and out of interest in solving the issues, does the plane catch shavings between the chip breaker and the blade?

Howdy Joe,

I don't have any POC at the moment, I'm likely to have some softwoods around soon since I have some projects coming up. I do use the chip breaker, I tap it forward until I get a chip that comes straight out of the plane without curling.

I buy mainly from So Yamashita, he sourced this Yokoyama for me and recent batches of chisels and sharpening stones.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M1HDwcj2e18 (http://www.solidwoodmachinery.com/supersurfacers.htm)

How's that for stress free cleanup on carpet?

[Brian Holcombe]

Super surfacers are pretty awesome, I'm a long time reader of 'The Carpentry Way' and Chris Hall uses one quite regularly. Awesome to see thin shavings pulled off of large sheets of bubinga.

[Jeff Ranck]

Did you back-bevel the blade somehow, either intentionally or via a "ruler trick gone awry"? Also, did you do anything that might change the clearance angle of the cap iron's leading edge?

If you did do something untoward to the cap iron it isn't a big deal - LV sells replacements for $6 or so (vs $33 or so for the solid A2 cap iron in the custom plane) though they're only available by special order. I bought a couple spares back when I first started experimenting with close high-angle cap iron sets.

I don't use the "ruler trick" but I suppose anything is possible. A little work with a straight edge should tell me quickly. And who knows, I may have done something untoward to the cap iron. With the free shipping at LV, I suppose I might be able to find something to add to a new cap iron. :)

[Brian Holcombe]

I always undercut the bevel on the chip breaker, so that just the leading edge is setting on the iron. My thought is that if it is made flat without undercutting then the edge will lift when the chip breaker is compressed by the assembly.

David Weaver suggested that trick to me, and it works quite well in my experience.

The back of the iron must also be flat in the area that the chip breaker meets up with.

Couple other things;

I microbeveled the chipper and I do so by hand, making sure I keep it straight across (no camber) but I also make it slightly rounded ultimately ending up at about 50 degrees or so.

Set the mouth wide, like 1/16", it just gets in the way if you are setting the chip breaker tight. You can close down on it once you square away the other issues and start making nice shavings....or you may find it doesn't do a whole lot to assist.

[Patrick Chase]

I always undercut the bevel on the chip breaker, so that just the leading edge is setting on the iron. My thought is that if it is made flat without undercutting then the edge will lift when the chip breaker is compressed by the assembly.

David Weaver suggested that trick to me, and it works quite well in my experience.

What Brian calls "undercut bevel" is what I was referring to as "relief angle". Either way the idea is to bevel the bottom face of the cap iron, such that only the leading edge makes contact even when the cap iron is screwed all the way down.

With that said I've never seen an LV/Veritas cap iron, whether for their traditional planes like the one you own or for the customs, that *didn't* have a pretty significant amount of undercut/relief. You would have to actively work at it to mess that up.

[Jeff Ranck]

With that said I've never seen an LV/Veritas cap iron, whether for their traditional planes like the one you own or for the customs, that *didn't* have a pretty significant amount of undercut/relief. You would have to actively work at it to mess that up.

Hey, my motto is that there isn't anything that I can mess up with a little work. In any event, I'll spend some time trying to diagnose what isn't flat/square and check the relief angle/undercut bevel of the cap iron.

I called LV to ask about a replacement cap iron, they sent me to the "machined" ones that they make now (looks like the LN cap irons) and the person I talked to said I couldn't order the stamped "hump" style that came with the plane. I think that's interesting given that the plane still comes with that style. However, I suppose it is possible that they simply don't carry a separate inventory item for that.

[Brian Holcombe]

I have two rounded bevel cap irons and a few from LN and a Japanese, the rounded bevel are the most forgiving in my experience.

[Patrick Chase]

Hey, my motto is that there isn't anything that I can mess up with a little work. In any event, I'll spend some time trying to diagnose what isn't flat/square and check the relief angle/undercut bevel of the cap iron.

I called LV to ask about a replacement cap iron, they sent me to the "machined" ones that they make now (looks like the LN cap irons) and the person I talked to said I couldn't order the stamped "hump" style that came with the plane. I think that's interesting given that the plane still comes with that style. However, I suppose it is possible that they simply don't carry a separate inventory item for that.

The new style machined ones for the custom planes don't work on the older plane designs like yours. Did they point you to those, or to the ones they sell for Stanley planes, which probably would work?

In any case, I suspect that you spoke with the wrong person. They don't have a part number for the stamped-metal cap iron, but when I called they were able to create a special order with a temporary P/N. In case it helps, my order # was 31851249, placed on 2/4/15. The cap irons (both 2" and 2-3/8") are listed as "MISC. SPECIAL ORDER", p/n "SPECORD". They cost $4.25 each for both sizes.

[Jeff Ranck]

The new style machined ones for the custom planes don't work on the older plane designs like yours. Did they point you to those, or to the ones they sell for Stanley planes, which probably would work?

It was the ones they sell for Stanley planes. Thanks for the info on the special order. Maybe that will help pin them down if I need to order a replacement.