Hello Luke
Seems you've either been living in a cave, or have been misled regarding setting up your plane.
For this kind of work, or infact any tropcal you name it, curly/flame/interlocked/dense, and so on...
The key is to have two planes for the job, something which can hog off a wee bit of material, and another smoother.
Hone you're cap iron's at 50 or a wee bit more, and learn how effective a well set cap iron works for both those planes.
If you try other things like moving the frog forward to make a tight mouth, you will fail to get the close set cap iron actually set for the wood, as a tight mouth will stop it from working.
All that will happen ,(as with everyone who's been misled) is...
you think you're setting the cap close enough, when infact it will still be too far away, make it closer and the plane will judder about and refuse to take a shaving.
So basically no tight mouths, (the Kato and Kawai video proves you don't need downbearing from ANY mouth for the close set cap iron to work)
Hone a steep cap iron angle like 50 degrees, set it at the very most 1/32" away from the edge for your main plane.
(This might mean you have too much camber, and need reduce it for to get the cap close enough.)
You're smoother should have a cap iron twice as close as the other for half the distance, or even closer if need be, the iron profile/camber should be nearly imperceivable
on the smoother, so there is room to mess about setting the cap iron closer to match the timber, without needing to do any work re-profiling the imperceivable camber.
Providing you are good with knowing how to dimension timber accurately, (as in you've watched Mr Charlesworth)
Then you can follow the advice on folks who do actually
use the cap iron.
This is evident even for a newcomer, as the
straightened shavings, not curls, is what you should be looking at.
If you want to make this easy for yourself... then regarding the setting of your planes
"specifically regarding the setup"
don't follow advice from folks who don't produce the goods, or is trying to sell you something.
Straight shavings is what a newcomer will see straight away, that's
both for a heavy cut and a light one!
Have a look at, Warren Mickley, David Weaver, Derek Cohen's posts for starters,
You have no "privilege" to see photos like myself, so I can show you where to look as you cannot see.
Derek's are hosted on another fancy site, so you can see his posts
(David W) is on youtube, has done so much on making this widely known, (thank's to Warren's efforts)
Some other folks which you will see "the influence of the cap iron" ...(as in actually being used)
are ... (have to look through my subscriptions)
Brian Holcombe, Hernan Costa, Franks workbench, Dusty splinters, Matt Kenny, and straight shavings you will find
You
could say Rob Cosman, and the English woodworker too, but they're not being as clear about this as they should be, for different financial reasons.
Sell you tools, or sell you videos.
Rob Still won't make his steeper, but he's got like 10 kids so will give him a pass,
I wouldn't want to use anyone's methods if they wern't 100% reliable, so I suggest go elsewhere (regarding the use of the cap)
Shouldn't be much more to it, if you've watched Charlesworth's
methodology already (nothing to do with setting the plane up)
Make sure that you don't have you're bevel heel rubbing on the work, as you want the sharp bit in the timber.
Get some candle wax to ease things a bit.
That should be enough for you, David W has just about the most content about this, have a look at his woodcentral article "setting a cap iron"
if you want confirmation on this.
Have fun, and laugh at the thought of all the rest of the gurus trying to mislead people.
It's rife on youtube, so don't be fooled.
Good luck
Tom
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Originally Posted by Tom Trees
