I subscribe to the "A bad carpenter blames their tools" theory. So I tend to take the blame for things not working like they're supposed to, rather than buy new tools. And that's not always right. Case in point:
I have an old Stanley No. 7 jointer plane. I think it's a type 9, if I remember correctly. It's over 100 years old and either has the original iron or a very old replacement in it. And it's worn down. I've got about 1/4" of blade left on it. But whatever, it still works. Or it did.
So I've been building a hard maple workbench recently and doing a lot of planing. When I went to flatten the top with my No. 7, it gave me lots of trouble. Tear out, chatter... either it wouldn't cut or it would cut too deeply, no middle ground. Plus the blade felt like it kept wanting to retract or something, where I'd have to keep advancing the blade to keep it cutting. Lots of reversing grain here, so I knew it would be difficult going in. But what I didn't immediately notice was that my other planes were handling it okay. Partly because with my jack plane, I was always traversing the grain somewhat, and with my smoothing plane, it was setup to shave such a fine shaving, that I just assumed it was the nature of work that I was doing with those planes was the reason I wasn't having problems with them. In the past, I could set the jointer up to take a fine shaving and it worked great. But for whatever reason, that wasn't happening here. So I worked around it and got the top mostly flat and smooth. A couple of tiny spots of tear out, but nothing too bad, and I just called those "grip spots" and moved on. It's workbench, not a museum piece.
Onto the vise chop. It should be easy, as no or very little reversing grain here. It's not. Again, my jack and smoother are going fine, but the jointer just isn't working. So I pull out some pine, and the jointer works fine. Okay. Pull out some red oak, and again the jointer pulls those gossamer shavings. Weird. Go back to the hard maple, and the jointer chatters, tears out, or won't cut anything. Curious. So I start looking at what's left of my iron and start thinking that maybe with so little metal left on the edge, it doesn't have enough support to hold the blade flat. So I put a big downward bend into the cap iron to really pin the blade down, and it works better. Much better, in fact. But still not like I think it should. So this tells me I need a new blade, and my old one has deserved its retirement after 100 years or so of hard work. Which I knew that time was coming when I bought it. I had simply assumed that I could use the iron until the blade's edge met the channel in the middle. I was wrong. Who knew? It's not something I've encountered before or heard people talk about.
So I learned that a good carpenter knows when to blame their tools. Sometimes it IS the tool's fault. And it takes some skill and experience to know that. Which makes me the bad carpenter for not knowing that. Which makes me a little better of a carpenter now, having learned that. Balance, my friends. It's probably not the tool. It's most likely you. But it COULD be the tool. Don't be so humble as to rule it out.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by mike stenson
