Course, Medium, Fine DVD

[tablesawtom]

As some of you know  my wife and I have a hobby store that is open once a month. It is in Nashua Iowa and we just happen to be open tomorrow.  It is also general knowledge I deal a lot in hand planes.  But I also deal in used woodworking tools and machinery. And I asked here for a recommendation on a hand plane DVD  to be shown all day long in the room that houses the planes and tools.  I bought the DVD  Coarse, Medium, Fine by Christopher Schwarz. A lot agreed that there were a lot of better DVDs out there but a lot agreed that Chris would be a little more entertaining to the passer by.

I found what he had to say interesting at least.

 First off he used a transitional as a scrub plane. I have a couple setting on the shelf and the one thing that stood out to me is they have a large mouth and it can not be adjusted. I am not a fan of them so I didn't spend a lot of time really looking it over.  I thought why not they are reasonably cheap, I probably have $15 each on the ones I have. He liked jacks and fore planes for this job. I would tend to disagree on the fore plane if it were metal, but it is making good use of a transitional.

He also stated that he uses a lot of power tools, which I totally agree with but that there is a place for both. Sometimes it is faster to use hand tools Which I also totally agree with.
But then we get to the medium plane, and the first words out of his mouth,  is copied word for word, don't skip the jointer plane.  And this is where sole flatness becomes important. You want it as flat as you can get. If you are going to spend a lot of money on a tool, the place I would start to spend it is, I would really look at spending it on a Jointer plane. And I find it almost impossible to get an antique jointer flat. without the help of a specialized machine . And to this I totally agree with this. In fact I have ground so many planes after someone tried to lap them it would astound you.
The one flaw I found in what he had to say is it was filmed in Lie Nielsen's studio and their #7 was used in the DVD. A  LN's #7 really is a large investment.

Anyway I found the DVD interesting. And even though I have been doing metal planes  for several years now I still learned quit a few new things especially looking at it from a different point of view.
So at this point I would like to thank all who responded to my post. I followed the advise given here on this forum and purchased the DVD. It met every need I had of my particular application. I liked the DVD and learned from it

Thanks again,

Tom

[Bill Lyman]

I have it, watched it and learned from it. I found it very useful in the process of  learning effective hand planing. One needs to add honing and placing the chipbreaker on the blade (which was a thread her a few years ago)  and David Charlesworth's DVD's on sharpening.

[BloomingtonMike]

Picked up Chris's handplane book last night and read the first 25 pages. Many of these topics were mentioned. I would now like to see this dvd.

[tablesawtom]

Mike,

I will send it to you to see if you will the shipping cost. I can send it Media and it is about 1/2 price.

Tom

[tablesawtom]

The reason I mentioned, I would tend to disagree on the fore plane if it were metal,is I tend to use it as jointer on shorter work or as pre jointer on larger work. If nothing else it helps to keep the 7 or 8 sharp longer. But transitional are fairly in expensive so one in that size is something I am going to consider.

Tom

[AHill]

While I find Schwarz pretty knowledgeable on hand tools, I also note he often takes a detour from convention every once-in-a-while.  His methods work, but they aren't necessarily what you'll find in text books from back in the day.  It makes you think, and sometimes he challenges conventional wisdom (Anarchist's Tool Chest might be one example).  One thing for sure is he has the concept of coarse, medium, and fine correct.  The best instruction on this I've ever seen was a live class at WIA a few years ago where Jim Tolpin took a board from coarse to medium to fine.  The board was twisted and had a slight cup.  He had it thicknessed and flattened and ready for use in about 10 minutes (minus all the talking in between steps).

[BloomingtonMike]

Yes please Tom! Ill pm you.

[Downwindtracker2]

Tom,I always find your comments both interesting and refreshing,with your insight, more would be appreciated. You see I'm a retired millwright so my view of the world is "A chunk of iron is a chunk of iron".

[Arlin Eastman]

Tom

I am glad you started this post of which I have a few questions

I am thinking this

1.  How important is it to not only have a flat bottom but how about where the blade meets the plane?
2. How important is it to have the chip breaker done right instead of filing or sanding?
3. Also how important is it to actually have the blade flat?

and can you do any of these?

[tablesawtom]

I will try to address some of the comments. But first of all a little of my back ground. I am a retired tool and die maker. Apart from a boring mill, CNC and a lathe I did all of my own machining. I served a 4 your apprenticeship. 750 hours of it was running a boring mill so I can run all of them if I had to. I was trained by several different tool makes over the course of time. So one gets a lot of different ways to do something and the real challenge is finding out what works for you. I found what Chris Schwarz said interesting. The rough medium and fine I do without thinking. But I was very interested in the different radii used on the different operations. Again the real challenge is finding out what works for you.

Yes I do understand where the Millwright is coming from but what he calls iron is actually extruded Steel.  But he sees it through his experiences and he is correct from his point of view. But1020 welds better and easier that 1018, and 1095 which is high carbon steel is not O1.  A2 is not M4 and the  new powered steel is a breed of its own.

 I am going to try and answer Arlin's questions.
I am no expert on the process but just looking at an old Stanley blade and knowing something about the manufacturing process I would say that the blade were hung on a rod in batches  and dipped into a liquid medium hot enough to get them into austenite range and then quenched in water. If I remember right, plain high carbon steel is a water quench. I could be mistaken, didn't work with it much if at all. The blades were to size before heat treatment. And steel can get distorted in the HT process.  Steel also grows in the process. That is why I can sometimes grind the hard area and not grind the softer metal. On the older blades the side that clamps against the frog may be bowed , twisted or both and one can get chatter at the cutting edge. I wrote about it once and liked to get eaten alive. I was asked did I know how much work it was to flatten both the top and bottom. I said about as much work as it takes to flatten the bottom of a cast iron plane.

Lets just say that an iron is sharpened at a 30% angle.  On a 30% angle the side opposite is 1/2 of the HYP. so if the chip breaker is set back 1/16 from the from the cutting edge, the thickness of the metal at that point is 1/32 and the it make not difference if the blade is .085, .095 or .125  the thickness is still .0312.  The chip breaker needs to fit well so that .001 shavings can't get under it and if the top of the blade is lapped flat and smooth for sharpening it helps support the cutting edge.  Depending on how far the blade sticks out before the back of the blade contacts the frog Depends on the frog and where it sets on the body.  And this distance is helped greatly by thickness of the blade. In metal working if I have a +or - 1/16 I just sawed it, rule of thumb don't mill it if you can saw it.  + or - .005 30 mintes were added. Had to mill it.  + or - .001  one hour was added
had to grind it, other geometric tolerances come into play. and  + or - .0001 about 5-6 hours and heat sinking it in a 68 degree room for 24 hours before grinding it to final size.

So my point is, does the application say sanding the chip breaker good enough  or do you have to spend $30? on a machined chip breaker. If one is driving a crossed the country a Caddie would be nice but id you ard driving 2 blocks to the gas station do you really need a Caddie. Need and wants are two different things.

If you want .001 shavings then the bottom needs to be flatter than that. but then cost inters in.

Hopefully know one might understand a little better what really goes into one of my planes What really goes into I just touched up the blade to help in sharpening. The sides are ground to get rid of and to keep any twist from happening. When the bottom is cleaned up that is when it is time to start the finishing . One can't go from the course to medium and forget the finish.

And the thing nobody ever talks about is shoddy stock preparation, it bleeds through in the finish. And one fights it all the way through the build.

I hope I answered some question presented.

Tom