Over the past 6 months or so, there have been some great threads on BU vs BD planes. All to pursue the holy grail of reducing or eliminating tear out on difficult woods or when forced to plane against the grain.
Our resident hand plane Guru Derek Cohen, opened my eyes up to the value of a chip breaker. Of course, I got the general premise of what Derek was explaining, but the nitty gritty details were of course, somewhat unclear.... TILL this video !!! This video demonstrates a level of set up precision I never fathomed...
While hard to watch, not being in English, hit the pause button to study the sub titles... this video really demonstrate just HOW critical blade sharpness, shaving thickness and chip breaker angle, and distance Chip B from cutting edge all play a significant role to prevent tear out when going against the grain. And the settings are EXTREMELY fine to achieve success, like .1mm! It took this level of testing and video set up, to SEE the effects of all these variables at work in a live cut. Brilliant and so useful to us who are obsessed with clean cuts.
What I am curious about, are these blade and chip breaker settings at the end of the video (when success is achieved) the magic formula, or is it ONLY the solution for this particular wood being cut? Or not just the wood, but the angle of the gain of the wood vs. the cutting surface, I would think this matters just as much. What really moved me, is just how such tiny changes in the chip breaker to bade edge distance makes such a radical difference in achieving a clean cut, i.e. .1mm change in distance!
I am not sure this will change how many of us work, as it seems the level of precision required in set-up could turn hand planing into a set up project vs. the joy of planning. We still have sand paper as an option.
But what I gained from this video is...
1) blade sharpness is critical - which I already knew and offered on this forum in several of the previous threads. Being obsessed with sharpening overcomes a lot of cutting problems. Of course, blade angle still matters, that hasn't changed.
2) Thickness of cut is ultra critical.. these two factor alone can solve nearly all tear out problems.
3) Chip breakers serve a great role in preventing tear out, but the number of variables involved in the chip breaker angle and distance to edge are VAST... prob. more than I would be willing to deal with, hence why I will put more energy into 1 n 2 above.
I am curious what others who are somewhat obsessed with hand planning get from this video....
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2020...o-stop-tearout