Yet it seems some folks are still in the woods regarding the use of the cap iron for taking thicker shavings.
I will give two reasons why...
Not having honed ones cap iron steep enough, I like 50, or just over it to be sure, say maybe 52 degrees, I find this to be the minimum steepness I can get away with,
should I be working on a batch of lesser dense timbers, its nice to have camber, I've kind of settled for slightly less nowadays.
I can see why some might be worried about this being sacrilege, possibly de-valuing ones premium plane?
can't help you there... apart from suggesting to seek the right folks who tout the use of the cap iron.
Having the idea of the mouth playing a part when using the cap iron,
That is the big give away when someone mentions being familiar with using the cap iron, and goes hand in hand with the impression that the cap iron is only for smoothing.
That goes back to the first "hurdle" of being willing to hone the cap iron slightly steeper than most "gurus" suggest.
One won't be able to have the mouth close if they hone such an angle,
If they choose to try, they will be taking tissue shavings only, or have a half working scenario which is
extremely difficult to push, and not really working regarding tearout.
But ya'know, perhaps my iroko, sapelle sipo/utile,meranti,and so on, is just tame stuff or whatever you wish to believe,
I would call this productive working on this particularly dense batch of iroko
Try taking heavier shavings like below, whilst ignoring the outlined will result in...
A, Not getting influenced shavings,
If they're curling, then you'll be going to the stones every ten mins, and that's the best case scenario, not the worst (tearing out)
B, If one remains sceptical about having the frog back , flush with the castings that is, and keeps a tightish mouth...
Eventually something will come along and the cap iron will not be able to give the necessary influence required,
and those folks will be adamant that they have tried everything, yet they've never experienced the cap iron working to its real potential,
why, because they couldn't set it any closer.
And it goes full circle.
All thanks to Warren Mickley for informing those willing to listen, it got David to make multiple articles on the subject about a decade ago.
Plenty of folks like Derek have wrote much about this aswell,
Easy to spot a half working cap iron (wimpy shaving) compared to one working stout straight shavings which jump out of the plane.
Hope that might explain things.
Until the next time
All the best
Tom
SAM_3411.JPG