What's a good shaving?

[Jim Stastny]

I've been playing around with an old Stanley/Bailey #4 I inhereited from my father. I've flattened the sole, scary sharpened the iron, and cleaned it up as best as possible. The other day I tried to get the thinnest shavings possible from pieces of scrap cherry, pine,oak, and maple. With all types of wood I was able to get shavings under 0.001" is that good enough or should I strive for thinner?

[Alan Hamilton]

Jim,

Before I get started, yes, a .001 shaving is good. But... I'm going to start sounding like a broken record (will the children of today know what that expression means?) what your shaving should look like depends on what you're going to use the plane to do.

A #4 is usually known as a "smoothing" plane. IME a smoothing plane iron should be honed with a little arc or crown on the edge. That way the shaving it produces will be thicker in the middle and, with the iron set correctly, will taper away to nothing at its edges. Generally you don't want a full-width shaving from a smoothing plane. If you take a full width shaving the plane will leave a little trench with verticle ridges on each side that will later have to be scraped or (gasp!) sanded off. A smoother with an acred iron will leave the gentle undulations that are the mark of hand planed wood.

About the only bench plane that should have the iron dead straight is a jointer--though some will disagree with that. David Charlesworth, for example, hones all of his plane irons with a crown. I don't see the sense of that, but his work speaks for itself, and is much better than mine.

Alan

[Howard Barlow]

Originally posted by Alan Hamilton

A #4 is usually known as a "smoothing" plane. IME a smoothing plane iron should be honed with a little arc or crown on the edge. That way the shaving it produces will be thicker in the middle and, with the iron set correctly, will taper away to nothing at its edges. Generally you don't want a full-width shaving from a smoothing plane. If you take a full width shaving the plane will leave a little trench with verticle ridges on each side that will later have to be scraped or (gasp!) sanded off. A smoother with an acred iron will leave the gentle undulations that are the mark of hand planed wood.


Alan

?????

Alan,

I am plane ignorant. And plain ignorant. Why would you possibly want a wavy surface?

If you don't want small ridges to sand out, why do you want bigger ripples?

Howard

[Rob Glynn]

The best shaving is the last shaving at the end of a planing job. I will never understand why they don't make timber the sizes I want and save me all that pain.

[Alan Hamilton]

Howard,

This may be just a matter of definition. Using a plane with the iron honed with a little crown will not produce what I think you mean by "wavy." The crown is so small--usually no more than 1/32"--that you cannot see the undulations. The only way you'll know they are there is by runnung your hand across the board. Even so, the undualtions will feel smooth without any hard edges or abrupt transitions, and the wood will still have the superior finish left by a plane. Again, this is the hallmark of hand finished wood; machines make panels that are flat as glass. Sanding out the undulations would ruin the hand-planed look and feel--which is much of the reason to use a plane in the first place.

A plane with a straight edge on the iron will leave a trench the width of the iron (or narrower if the plane was skewed) with hard vertical ridges on the sides. You will be able to see these trenches because the ridges will cast shadows. If you run your hand across such a panel the ridges are a jarring transition from the bottom of the trench. A surface like that looks and feels unfinished; it looks and feels like a mistake--and it is.

Alan

[Tom Stovell]

Alan,
That is pretty much the effects I expect from my planes as well. I put a slight crown in the blade and transfer that to my work surface. Almost every antique I have ever encountered had some 'furrows' in the hidden surfaces. I scrape the visible surfaces to remove the plane marks, leaving the evidence of hand tooling on the undersides and backs.

Tom

[Captbill3]

To Alan Hamilton:
I tend to question your anology that the smoother plane blade should have a rocker as great as 1/32".
This would leave a very deep gouge in any surface. My preference is to have a rocker on the blade cutting edge of less than 1/64" and closer to 10/1000 inch. I want a very smooth surface without any grreat "grooves" tha tend to give the surface a undulating face.
Bill Kirk

[Alan Hamilton]

CaptBill,

I did say "no more than 1/32."

But even if it is as much as 1/32" I don't think that would leave an unacceptable surface. Certainly no one could see the undulations, and perhaps not everyone could feel them. But I do try to leave undulations that can be felt. Machines make perfect, glass-smooth surfaces; I neither aspire, nor desire to have my hand work confused with the work of a machine.

Besides, I work only with hand tools. I wouldn't know how to go about putting in a crown of the size you do--or a crown of any particular size, for that matter. I do it all by eye (and my eyes aren't all that good right now). I set the edge of the iron on a flat piece of something, and when I see the right wedge of light under both corners, I stop. I have no idea what the actual measurements are. I've never put on too much arc--but I have put on too little.

(It's interesting that some cabinet manufacturers now hand plane their doors--though not to get it smooth--they have machines that do that. They use a plane that has a rather large arc in its iron to create undulations such that anyone could feel them. They do this just so their products will have the feel of hand crafted work.)

Alan

[Roger Nixon]

A 1/32" camber in a blade would take the plane out of the "smoother" category. That is what I put in some of my #5's & #5 1/2's to follow a scrub. Graham Blackburn recommends about .002" camber in a smoother blade and I find that works pretty well. This will make the shaving nearly blade width and leave a burnished looking surface on most woods.

[Angus Barclay]

The important thing is what used to be underneath the shaving and is revealed by your efforts with the smoother.

Do you use a smoother to make shavings or do you use it to smooth a surface? Is the surface you have planed pleasing to the hand and eye? If it is, then surely the shaving is a mere byproduct.

Shavings are the same as chips from a chisel and dust from a saw. The only thing that would make them "good" would be if they swept themselves off my bench and floor into the trash can.

regards,
Angus

[Andrew Fairbank]

Hi Angus,

I do something to help this happen.

I stick an apple box on the floor where the shavings are landing. I spent two hours squaring up stock for a coffee table yesterday and probably took 3-4 boxloads of shavings to the bin, and the cleanup each time was a double handful of shavings. Cleanup takes about 20 sec.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Angus Barclay]

Hello Andrew,

my workshop is so small (13ft x 10ft) that finding room for an apple box would be a major achievement. The upside is that it doesn't take more than a minute to sweep the bench and floor.

cheers,
Angus

[Andrew Fairbank]

Hi Angus,

I have a bit more space, approx 3m x 6m, so I know your issues.

I was talking the cardboard box that they use in a supermarket, not the 4' x 4' x 3' crates they use when picking.

Also found that a scrap of lino on the shop floor (my neighbour's a floor installer) makes cleanup so much easier.

Cheers,

Andrew