Really stupid newbie question

[Carl Beckett]

Ok, this is a stupid question, and maybe one of those 'duh' ones.

Is it called a 'smoother' - because its used to 'smooth' boards?

Ive been working on a batch of chairs. Hard maple. And given I dont like sanding, decided I would go over everything with planes and scrapers. I tried a number of different planes (a different story all together - and the LV low angle jack was NOT the one that worked best). In the end I got a pretty good workout, and no chipout and glass smooth surfaces (and no sanding, yay!). (dang hard maple.... lots of swearing when working with this stuff). I started by spending some time sharpening EVERYTHING.

Then the light went off - thats why they call them 'smoothing' planes? (which begs the next question - what is it about the smoothing setup that makes it a smoother, vs some other function?

I tried:

LV Low angle jack
#5 Record, with Pinnacle blade
#4 Record, stock blade (purchased new some years ago)
#5 Bailey with stock blade (yard sale item)
#2C with stock blade (given by wifes family)
Card scraper
Stanley #80 Scraper
LN 112 scraper plane
LV skew block
Old cheapie Stanley block plane

These all worked differently. Some worked better than others. There were two that worked the best. Note that the boards were a maximum of 3.5" wide, with most surfaces under 2" width (made it easy to get a full shaving each pass)

Ok, I only got one set of chair parts prepped, but had some pretty fun time making shavings.

[Greg Wease]

A smoother is relatively short, 9" long or less, so it can follow minor undulations in the surface of the wood. It has a tight mouth and set for fine shavings, .002" or so. The blade usually has a slight camber rather than being sharpened straight across.

Which of your planes worked best for you?

[Brian Kent]

I agree with everything Greg said, and I have the same question - which worked best for you on your hard maple?
And was it pretty straight grain or did you have a lot of grain direction changes to deal with?

After hearing a lot of preferences on smooth planes, I like Steve Knight's commentary best,
"…the best plane is one you have learned and tuned to it's max."

Once they are tuned up, I still find a randomness in which will work best this time, with this particular piece of wood.

[Carl Beckett]

Thanks guys. For this project the surfaces were all flat, so I could use the longer length plane and be ok. The bulk of the work was done with the record with the pinnacle blade. I think when I filed the mouth to take the thicker blade, I kept it pretty tight (maybe .010" for the setting i was using). It does have me wondering if I shouldn't have an adjustable mouth bench in the arsenal.

The other one that worked really well was the 2C. I don't know why, but it cuts like crazy and always does well.

There was 'some' grain reversal, which requires coming at it from different angles until I got it. And of course the scrapers ( the plain card scraper was pretty sharp and taking good cuts ). Will try to post a pic or two.

[Steve Friedman]

It does have me wondering if I shouldn't have an adjustable mouth bench in the arsenal.

You already do - the LV LAJ. All the bevel down planes have adjustable mouths - you just need to move the frog. The mechanism on the LAJ is much easier, but only because there's no frog that you can move. Not sure if there are bevel down bench planes made with mouth adjusting mechanisms like the ones on low angle planes.

Steve

[Jim Koepke]

Then the light went off - thats why they call them 'smoothing' planes? (which begs the next question - what is it about the smoothing setup that makes it a smoother, vs some other function?

What Greg said about the size puts a plane in the area of smoothing out any roughness or marks left by the previous planes.

The smoother is the one to tune up to take the thinnest possible shaving. This lowers the likelihood of tear out. It requires a sharp blade and leaves as smooth a surface as is possible with a plane, hence a smoother.

It is nice to have a jointer able to take .001" shavings, but a waste of time trying to square an edge or flatten a surface. If the blade is a little dull on a scrub or a jointer, it isn't as much a hinderance as when you are working on the final surfacing.

With multiple #5s it is convenient to have one set up with a wide mouth to clean up rough stock and then another to smooth the surface. With short pieces, the plane doesn't have as many contours to follow and a longer plane can actually do the smoothing work.

#2C with stock blade (given by wifes family)

Sweet, I like my #2 set super fine for local areas of changing grain.

jtk

[Sam Takeuchi]

All in all, smoother doesn't cut any better than larger bench planes. They all work the same, but as previously stated, length affects how it follows the surface. If your board is really flat, you can smooth a board with a jointer and it would leave a surface as good as done by a smoother. That is if all bench planes are well tuned and fettled.

Did you try to tackle maple with stock 25 degree bevel blade with your LA jack? If it didn't work well, that's most likely the cause. For general planing, use a blade with bevel angle (or microbevel angle) in the range of 33 to 38 degrees. Normally 38 degree blade is used for the general planing tasks to create 50 degree cutting angle. 25 degree blade are suitable for shooting, plaining end grain and soft, well behaving wood, but anything more than that, it can really dig up fiber off the surface. Try giving the blade higher angle micro bevel and plane the same wood, you should be able to achieve great result.

[Carl Beckett]

You already do - the LV LAJ. All the bevel down planes have adjustable mouths - you just need to move the frog. The mechanism on the LAJ is much easier, but only because there's no frog that you can move. Not sure if there are bevel down bench planes made with mouth adjusting mechanisms like the ones on low angle planes.
Steve

Yes, I understand this and reduced the mouth to be 'pretty tight'. Maybe .015" . The same for the skew block plane (a skew plane, but has adjustable mouth). I was surprised that the skew block plane didnt work better because its one of my favorites and I try it on almost anything (and it very often succeeds!)

Which brings me to:

Did you try to tackle maple with stock 25 degree bevel blade with your LA jack? If it didn't work well, that's most likely the cause. For general planing, use a blade with bevel angle (or microbevel angle) in the range of 33 to 38 degrees. Normally 38 degree blade is used for the general planing tasks to create 50 degree cutting angle. 25 degree blade are suitable for shooting, plaining end grain and soft, well behaving wood, but anything more than that, it can really dig up fiber off the surface. Try giving the blade higher angle micro bevel and plane the same wood, you should be able to achieve great result.

This may be the direction to go. Yes, I used the stock 25 degree bevel. Although I will have to decide if I want to change the blade angle, or just keep with whats working using the other planes (although I have a shooter.... so maybe its its ok to bump the angle on the LV up and leave it that way). The really low angles didnt work that great (such as the skew block and regular block planes). Higher angles, even the card scraper worked better. Here is what I was getting with the scraper:

IMG_1079.jpgIMG_1080.jpg

Not that bad for hard maple (this piece is curved on every side so couldnt be planned).

With the planes I was able to get some nice full width thin shavings (for the most part however thin I wanted to dial in - I kept it low - as in see-through (no calipers handy at the moment). Will snap some pics next round.

The good news is that I have 5 more sets to go, so plenty of time for more practice. And.... less sanding is a good thing.

[Jim Neeley]

I'm going to toss in my own $0.02 here...

I'm in with all of the others talking about the sharpness of the blade, camber (even if only a few thou of relieved edges), etc. but IMO, there's still a place where the shorter planes excel.

To simplify the explanation, let's just consider 3 tools... a #8 jointer, a #4 smoother and a card scraper. Also remember that, with the blade of a plane sticking down below the sole, a plane inherantly creates a dished surface. The longer the sole of the plane and the shallower the cut, the less the dish. Through proper use of the plane we compensate for that.

Properly used, the jointer will do a great job of bringing the surface into a single flat "plane". Properly tuned and sufficiently sharp, this will provide all of the "smoothing" for most single-grain-direction wood. The issue arises when you have particularly gnarly wood with changing grain direction and get tear-out. You'll see that sometimes on domestics but extensively in burls and many tropicals. For some of these woods, (and arguments start here) certain areas of the board need to be planed from a different angle (as in from the South, rather than the North) from the majority of the board. Enter the smoothers..

With a smoother used this way, we forego a wee bit of flatness to smooth the surface of the localized area. This is the choice of a few thou of dish over a distance to get the surface smooth.

The short body of the smoother permits the size of the "rim of the" dish to be small and its shallow cut makes the dip generally unnoticeable.

As an alternative, or inaddition to, the smoother, a card scraper will do this on an even more localized area. It's hook angle is generally tearout resistant although it's very prone to dishing.

In reality, even without considering specialty planes, they go from #1 to #8 and to a great degree it's a matter of personal preference. While there may be some who methodically go "by the numbers", I suspect most are like me that have several that are our go-to planes and we move between just a few for 90% of our work.

For me it's my L-N #8 BD Jointer, L-N #6 BD Fore, LV BU Jack and my L-N 140 (skew) block plane. There's another dozen or so that get on for specialized service or when one of these isn't working as well as I'd like but these are my own personal choice for workhorses.

Working with wood is a balancing act and a lot of it is personal preference. Hence the heated discussions.

Kind of like the best sharpening method, which we all know is... <ducking>

[Zach Dillinger]

If I were you, I wouldn't be using that 2C. It is worth quite a bit of money, and any smoother can take its place in your user arsenal.

[Carl Beckett]

Kind of like the best sharpening method, which we all know is... <ducking>

I have already have perfected a superior sharpening method.....