+1 ........Originally Posted by Rob Luter
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+1 ........
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
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I have no doubt that Tom is right –– we don't need downward force. I still find myself pressing down hard, but only with my left thumb, in front of the blade. It gives me some confidence that I'm not going to lift the plane up and "miss a spot." I freely admit I am a hand-plane user of little skill, but using the steps I've been shown I get the results I envision nearly every time. So I wax.
I use a squiggle down the sole, from a 5-inch-long block of white wax, about 3/4 x 3/4 square –– about the size of a Snickers bar. It probably came from Ace Hardware 25 years ago, and it seems like it will last forever. I also use it on wood screws before driving them in by hand, and sometimes on the glides of our sliding glass doors.
Last edited by Bob Jones 5443; 01-09-2022 at 3:41 PM.
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Just one question: considering that BLO dries and becomes hard, is this not a problem using it on tools? I imagine that if you put some on the sole of your plane and let it sit around a while, it might start hardening and gum up the sole of your plane. But, that's purely my imagination, not based on experience in any way.
I usually just use mineral oil or beeswax + mineral oil (often sold for cutting board finishes and the like)
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BLO isn't really the best lubricant for a plane sole. It might be okay on wooden planes but it can turn black in time.
Most often my plane soles get swiped with a hunk of candle wax that rests on the bench. Other times my planes are wiped with a rag saturated with Howard's Feed 'N Wax, a blend of beeswax, Brazilian carnauba wax, mineral oil, and orange oil.
There is no affiliation between me and the makers of Howard's wood finishing products. It is a good product in my opinion.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
[OP]
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there is a good chance I misremembered BLO, if you watch the WoodByWright channel, he uses it for everything. I just checked. he uses regular linseed oil, not BLO. still a drying oil...
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For the people who say that waxing the soles of their bench planes didn’t help, I’d be curious to know what kind of wax you used. Beeswax is not exactly slippery. Paraffin canning wax, however, is slippery as heck. I remember when I first applied Gulf wax (from the grocery store canning section in most U.S. stores) to a metal bodied plane and it was shocking how much easier it was to push. Granted, there are certainly operations where it’s not worth the effort to grab the piece of wax from your tool tray or pocket or wherever you store it. But if I need to do a lot of planing, I will always use it on a metal sole. Particularly if I’m tired. I should point out that I’m not a pusher-downer on my hand planes. I’ve never understood these guys bent over in half over their hand planes. My bench height is halfway between my wrist and my elbow and I plane pretty much standing straight up – force comes from how I stand with my legs and feet, not by bearing down.
Most of my bench planes have wooden soles and they also benefit from waxing. It’s not as dramatic of a difference compared to metal soles as wooden planes already have dramatically less friction. But I’ve experimented a lot with paraffin wax on wooden soles and it does make a difference – they go from slippery to a hockey puck on ice. But because the wooden sole grabs onto the wax, you don’t need to do it very often – once a month as opposed to every 5 minutes with a metal sole. That said, I wax my wooden soles more often than that for one good reason: wear. Wooden soles wear with friction and every once in a while they need to be tuned up. Waxing them greatly increases the time between sole flattening sessions. Not that I’m concerned about wearing out my woodies before I die; I just don’t like flattening them.
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I can't imagine getting good results with a hand plane just barely "hovering" over the workpiece such that there's no frictional force between the sole and the workpiece. The sole is the reference surface, after all, and needs some amount of weight on it. Not bearing down hard, just enough for a solid reference.
I use paraffin wax and find that it makes a substantial difference.
Last edited by Christopher Wellington; 01-10-2022 at 12:50 PM.
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My wife gave me some old candles when she switched out to LED's for decorations. I take one and just zigzag down the sole. It makes a noticeable difference in effort. My dovetail saw has very little set and I sometimes hit it with some too. The metal expands a little when it's heating up and the wax really helps it not stick in the cut. I did both for years without it, so it's definitely not needed, but it does help in my experience.
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That's what I call a two cans of spinach job. The weaklings taking whisper thin shavings can just sit over in the corner and cry.
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We have a lot of plain white candles from our wedding (22 years ago). I’ve been using one for a long time and it works well.
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I can't imagine anyone getting good results with a plane hovering over the surface either. The only time any of mine do any hovering is on the backstroke, or for something like straightening, or flattening a board, and then only on the part that you don't want to take any off of. I never said I knew what I'm doing. Maybe in some number of more thousands of square feet of planing, I'll learn. Anyone who can plane while hovering the plane over the surface is better than I am. I'm too lazy to push down enough to get any more work against the plane sole than I have to though, so wax doesn't matter enough to take the trouble.
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Christopher, I'm assuming you were referring to Tom's post? I found that curious also. Tom, maybe you can clarify. It SOUNDS like you are saying that you are actually lifting up on the plane so as to counteract the force of gravity pushing down on the plane. So the plane is touching the board, but the plane is only using a fraction of it's weight (plane down 4lbs, you pulling up 3lbs, net of one pound, for example). Is that correct? I can certainly understand not pushing down, but I always at least let gravity do it's work. It seems like it would be a lot of additional work to also pull up against gravity the whole time planing. Can you explain your technique further?
[EDIT] Tom, looks like you posted at the same time I did. So it sounds like you aren't actually reducing the weight of the plane. You are just not applying any EXTRA downward force. That's what I do most of the time, but I still find that paraffin wax makes a very noticeable difference. But I keep my wax in the tool tray. If I had to pull it out of a drawer or walk over somewhere and get it, I might be far less inclined to use it as much. Or if I was using beeswax, I would feel like it didn't really make a difference because beeswax isn't very slippery.
Last edited by chris carter; 01-10-2022 at 2:16 PM.
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Probably less than one pound. Only touching ever so slightly for a reference. It's not something I think about until someone is asking me while I'm doing it. I don't know at what point this comes though. I've spent more than a few whole working days hand planing boards. Not every week, or even every month, but since the early '70's. I used to use a lot or recycled Heart Pine beams, and wood out of them even when I was building new houses from 1974, to 2007. Since then, I've only been working on historic museum houses.
I don't teach lessons. I get paid to produce work.
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Okay, letting the weight of the plane maintain the reference without adding any additional down force makes sense. That's similar to how I use a plane too.
I suppose whether wax makes a difference to you is a matter of personal feel/preference. Nothing wrong with differences there!
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I'm talking about using Way less than the weight of the plane on the wood.
I thought of a way to simulate what I'm talking about. Put a board on the bench, and back the iron up out of the way, so that only the plane sole will touch the board. Take several passes with the plane like you would normally use it. Are you pushing down? Now take 20 strokes like that. Do you feel like it took effort?
Now do it my way. Holding the plane in your hands, only let it touch the board enough so you know it's in contact. You have all the weight of the plane in your hands, but it's still contacting the board. Take 20 strokes like that with as little down force as you can apply. I'm talking about light enough for that whether the sole had wax on it, or not, should make no difference.
Why do you need to push down harder than that? The iron does not try to rise out of the cut, and now you can put all your effort into the iron cutting, but still have a feel for when you need to lift the plane out of the cut.
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