how do you hold a wooden jack plane?

[mrgrimsdale]

May 5, 2008 19:02:06 GMT Scrit said:

May 5, 2008 18:22:56 GMT woodyew said:

Vaseline? nah, far too slippery (ooh er Matron) Us soft southerners 'used' to use Fullers Earth cream.

If you've never shaken the hand of a sheep shearer you may be surprised if you ever do because they have really soft skin
snip
Scrit

Hmm, no, never had that pleasure
Bin a sheep shearer's assistant briefly when I lived in Wales i.e. catching an rolling. Didn't shake hands or anything, or have much to do with the sheep honest.
As for appropriate dress - old Grayson Perry is a sharp little mover - if it works for him, well who knows. Nobbut seriously - I have been quite impressed by GP's comments on arts & crafts.

[woodyew]

May 5, 2008 19:02:06 GMT Scrit said:

If you've never shaken the hand of a sheep shearer you may be surprised if you ever do because they have really soft skin

The next soft hand I shake I shall ask the owner if he's into sheep. ;D

May 5, 2008 19:02:06 GMT Scrit said:

Could have been the colour, or possibly the frilly bits round the edges, mind.........

Scrit

OK I'll lose the frilly bits. That just leaves the colour.. hmmmm? what's 'in' this year?

[Head clansman]

Hi scrit

nothing wrong with wearing a apron , the one like the old feller is wearing i wore them for nearly 21 yrs, are's were made in the dockyards in our upholstery shop and only the joiners were allowed to where them, god help any one else caught wearing them , wish i could get hold of one now , made from really strong materials, cant find them like that any more.

[Scrit]

May 6, 2008 8:42:29 GMT Head clansman said:

...are's were made in the dockyards in our upholstery shop and only the joiners were allowed to where them, god help any one else caught wearing them , wish i could get hold of one now , made from really strong materials, cant find them like that any more.

I also recall different colours, the bench hands wore unbleached cotton drill aprons, French polishers wore brown aprons and the removers/installers wore dark red ones. Machinists got brown coats instead.

Try John Maden and Son Ltd, Throstle Mill, Market Street, Bacup, Lancashire, OL13 0AU and ask for a joiners apron in the heaviest cotton drill they have. Maden's make uniforms and work wear and their stuff is generally much less flimsy than the cheap far east tat we see most places. prices aren't bad either.

Scrit

[Head clansman]

hi
scrit thanks for that.

[mrgrimsdale]

May 5, 2008 12:27:50 GMT Keith said:

Of course if they had had Tormeks and waterstones in those days, they would have been able to modify their grip, as the blades would have been a lot sharper.



Keith, trying not to bite his tongue, which is firmly in cheek, as he ducks for cover ;D

Yebbut the odd thing is that, since the glory days of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, G gibbons etc,the quality of woodwork has declined steadily - roughly in proportion to the availability of sharpening and other gadgets that the old chaps never had
Improve your woodwork in one bound: throw away a gadget today! ; praps start with your tormeks ;D ;D (whatever they are :

cheers Jacob
PS I just had another fiddle with the plane and it planes really well. I think the revised hand position helps; max downwards pressure needed because the planted-on sole is loose and I can't tighten the rusty screws.

[Keith]

Hmm

perhaps it is more to do with the availability of woodworking machinery in general

It is never a good idea to have too many bits and bobs to fiddle with

Keith

[engineerone]

i think jacob you mistake the work practices of the time.

in the days of the so called masters, the artisans had little or no time to play around with gadgets. indeed i am pretty sure that in most cases tools were sent out to be sharpened elswhere since there was little or no time for the man doing the work to do it.

wages were always piece work, so sharpening and non productive tasks were always subbed, even if only to the trainee.

it is only since the introduction of more mechanised tasks that the craftsman has had more time to investigate new methods and systems.

paul

[mrgrimsdale]

I think it's extremely unlikely that tools were sent out to be sharpened; first because it'd hold up the job very frequently unless they had duplicates for everything, second because sharpening freehand with an oilstone in the old fashioned way is quick, easy and effective. There wouldn't be the need.
There'd be little or no time for the man doing the work to do it - if he was a committed crazy sharpener, in the modern fashion. Instead of a major fiddly process he'd be doing it a little and often - more time working with sharp tools and no need or inclination to postpone sharpening as much less time and kit involved.
Sure I expect he'd pass stuff to his apprentice but most woodworkers were pretty self sufficient, and would be particularly bothered about getting their sharpening right by doing it themselves.

cheers
Jacb

[Scrit]

May 6, 2008 15:55:17 GMT engineerone said:

i am pretty sure that in most cases tools were sent out to be sharpened elswhere since there was little or no time for the man doing the work to do it.

I think I should take up cudgels in Jacob's defence. Firstly the trade of saw or tool sharpener is relatively new and is quite probably an American import. As regards America I think what you are saying was probably very true. But the cost of ordinary steel was running at somewhere between £40 and £50/ton until the widespread introduction of the Bessemer steelmaking process in the mid to late 1850s which resulted in basic steel costs dropping to under £10 by the early 1870s. So at the time of the great masters tool steel was expensive and thus something you'd think twice about letting another man use or sharpen lest he waste some. In addition when working on site, and many of the fittings (e.g. panelling, doors, windows, etc) in the great houses of the 17th, 18th and early 19th Century were made entirely on site, there would be no easy access to the outside world, let alon#e sharpeners, meaning that the site carpenters and joiners needs must were completely self-sufficient. Today you'll still find that despite the widespread introduction of power tools a typical site chippie can and will sharpen most of his hand tools (with the obvious exception of the ubiquitous hard point saw). And like his forebear he won't readily loan edge tools to anyone else.

As to mechanised methods, the big pushes into mechanisation came with the introduction of machines for furniture makers (1870s), the mechanisation of medium-sized shops with the shortage of manpower after WWI, and again smaller shops after WWII. All quite a bit later than the "great" period

Scrit

[engineerone]

i bow to your greater knowledge and information, however i base some of my comments on reading the books about
grinling gibbons who ran a big studio, and of course at the end did little work himself. rather like rembrandt his name attracted the work for his acolytes.

in addition the stone mason was for many years where you looked for a great deal of finished decoration and although my father had his little mole wheel, a do remember him subbing the sharpening. so i put forward the thought.

i just think that we have little or no knowledge these days of how pressured these workshops were and how little time there was for not doing the "paid" work.

if you remember your brunel and the invention of the block for sails, and the way in which his machine dramatically improved output.

paul

[mrgrimsdale]

May 6, 2008 19:08:24 GMT engineerone said:

snip
i just think that we have little or no knowledge these days of how pressured these workshops were and how little time there was for not doing the "paid" work. snip

What makes you think it's any different today, strewth, what with Mrs G on me back all the time, no peace for the wicked!
Anyway sharpening is just an essential part of the paid production process, not a luxury on the side. Sharpening a chisel or saw is part of using ditto.
If you were doing all by hand then planing would probably take up 1/4 of your working life, sometimes for days at a time (hence the well used plane above - how many thousand hours?). If you sent out to sharpen you'd need a relay team with half a dozen planes in transit, or the work would come to a halt.

cheers
Jacob

cheers
Jacob

[Head clansman]

Hi all

well i find it very hard to believe that any self respecting tradman would let any other person touch his tools let alone sharpen them , when i was an apprentice right from the start one of the first thing we had to learn was how to sharpen your tools which included setting and sharpening all your own saws as well , its was a recognised thing that was pass down through the ages from tradesman to apprentice and then on again at a later date when you were fully trained.

[engineerone]

thing that actually interests me most is what happened before norton or arkansas or carborundum stones what did they use?

as far as i know norton or similar are only about 100 years old so what was the "stone" of choice??

recently reading a book about the american west, the indians knew about oil for years before the white guys figured out what to do with it, but of course had no idea of marketing

paul

[Scrit]

Paul

I don't know about Grinling Gibbons but I have worked with enough stone masons (I live in a "stone district") to know that they need to sharpen their tools much more often than any chippy, or at least they did before the introduction of carbide-tipped tools. I've also noted that they don't carry a large variety of tools, but they often carry multiples possibly because the nature of the work is such that they break tools a bit more often than we wood butchers

May 6, 2008 19:08:24 GMT engineerone said:

i just think that we have little or no knowledge these days of how pressured these workshops were and how little time there was for not doing the "paid" work.

I don't think that modern workshops are really that much better, it's just that we use loads more power tools and machines.

May 6, 2008 19:22:44 GMT mrgrimsdale said:

If you sent out to sharpen you'd need a relay team with half a dozen planes in transit, or the work would come to a halt.

In fact if you think about the process of having circular sawblades sharpened (normally a 7 day turnaround) that's exactly what happens - you need three of any blade to be productive

May 6, 2008 19:42:06 GMT engineerone said:

as far as i know norton or similar are only about 100 years old so what was the "stone" of choice??

Before man-made (Norton and Carborundum) stones natural stones had been used for centuries. Many workshops in Europe had the big hand-cranked grinders which used a natural sandstone wheel. This inevitably meant you could get a good one or a bad one. Prior to the introduction of the superior Washita (or Lillywhite) and Arkansas stones to the UK in the mid to late 19th century British woodworkers had utilised locally produced stones from diverse sources including Charnley Forest (in Leicestershire) and Wales (slate stones, although these often won't work on modern hard steels). I've also come across Tam o'Shanters and Turkey stones (the latter from central Turkey, obviously), but I'm sure there must have been others. Alf would probably be the one to know. Of course the biggest advantages of man-made stones is that they are extremely consistent (which natural stones aren't) and that they are a lot harder to break (a big bonus if carrying to site)

Scrit

[engineerone]

scrit i think you have as it were hit the nail on the head.

stone masons tend to have a number of their favourite chisels
to hand and i would think that many early woodworkers had the same to ensure that in fact they could rapidly move.

i well remember spending hours with my dad in for instance weybridge cemetery whilst he engraved a stone. no time there to sharpen on site. (found my way to brooklands from there in the old days before it became a museum ::)not sure that vickers would have been too happy with the schoolboy on the banking :

whilst i agree i may be totally wrong, it is i think interesting to explore the combination of knowledge that we have.

paul

[jmk89]

Just got around to reading this thread. I checked with B. E. Jones (The Practical Woodworker) and on page 100 he shows the same grip with the left hand "backwards" and palm facing across the plane towards the worker.

His pictures always show the worker in collar, tie, waiscoat and apron, but being from the early part of the 20th century, the worker has shorter, brilliantined hair and a natty moustache.

As for my own workshop attire, I often do 20 or 30 minutes in the workshop when I come home from the office - so off come the jacket and on goes the apron (a dark red drill one) over the top of the collared shirt and tie (goes really well with the blue Record respirator.....)

[Alf]

iirc there's a bit in The Village Carpenter on oilstones and how once prized examples of British stones were overnight left in the dust with the introduction of a Washita. So maybe woodworkers getting excited about the latest sharpening thing isn't so new! I'll see what I can dig up later - the joys of the supermarket beckon now. Sigh.

Cheers, Alf

[mrspanton]

In say 1760 what did the joiners and carpenters use to sharpen saws? I realise it must of ben files but where did they get them from, presumabaly no factory produced ones were available. Did they have fine hand stitched(?) ones?

[engineerone]

it is interesting the different ideas people have about apprentice programmes.

there is still a debate about whether the first proper locomotive engineer of the great northern railway Archibald Sturrock was fired because of overcharging so called premium apprentices. he seems to have made more money from that than from his wages

but the point is that the wide scale use of apprentices tends to date from around the beginning of railways. earlier they were used locally and in each area different skills were applied. the railways really introduced the apprenticeship scheme that those of us over 50 seem to think has been around for ages.

it was still the practice after the war in many trades for the apprentice to pay a premium to get the job.

anyway that is even more ot than normal. however i think we have a kind of rosy spectacle view of the apprenticeship schemes before about 1825. and more importantly before the railways it was pretty difficult and expensive to get things locally so you relied on years of local experience. tools were not really mass produced and what we consider sharpness was maybe not the same.

i can remember helping my grandad in the late 50''s hedge and ditch and sharpen his scythe. i often felt that what we were mainly doing was knocking the long grass over and bruising it so it kind of tore off rather than cleanly as now.

like most people who lived and worked in the country after the war, i noticed many old tools which seemed to have survived for centuries in particular the hand powered large dry stone that every body who worked with their hands seemed to have. so it may well be true that the craftsmen did their own sharpening but one wonders how expensive the small stones were and what was actually provided by the shop owners and how they costed the time sharpening.

paul

[mrgrimsdale]

May 7, 2008 23:33:47 GMT engineerone said:

snip
i can remember helping my grandad in the late 50''s hedge and ditch and sharpen his scythe. i often felt that what we were mainly doing was knocking the long grass over and bruising it so it kind of tore off rather than cleanly as now.
snip

Hmm, obviously in need of the tormek scythe attachment or the veritas thingy.
I've just been scything the weeds on my allotment (late start this year :. One of my favourite tools. Cost nothing to run. Highly efficient and much faster than a strimmer, not quite so tidy on soft grass, but superior by far on nettles, cow parsley etc. Silent and deadly.
Whereas the toolies do the same thing with noisy expensive petrol driven devices. They dress up in camouflage kit and special boots, goggles, helmets, gloves, and have jungle warfare fantasies. ;D ;D

cheers
Jacob
PS a few scythe sites on the web this a good one

[robo]

Jim Kingshott in one of his videos or books talks about the craftsmen sharpening all their tools (inc. saws) ready for the next day before leaving for home?

As a boy I used the help on a farm where the old farmer used a scythe especially for cutting and collecting bullrushes (the real ones - not what people mistakenly think which are Great Water Reed Mace).
He'd sharpen the blade regularly with a few deft movements of a round stone. The rushes were spread on the pigsty floor and the young male pigs castrated using a Stanley knife and methylated spirits. No Vet and no anaesthetic!
The border collie sheepdogs did quiet well for food that day!
I can still hear the pig screams to this day.

On a more civilised tone where I come from (Millstone Grit country) a lot of people sharpened knives and other tools on their stone door steps

R

[Scrit]

May 7, 2008 21:44:40 GMT mrspanton said:

In say 1760 what did the joiners and carpenters use to sharpen saws? I realise it must of ben files but where did they get them from, presumabaly no factory produced ones were available. Did they have fine hand stitched(?) ones?

The earliest files were hand cut. The process involves cropping square bars of steel (called"strings") to make individual file blanks (called a "mood"). The mood is then hot forged to shape on a shaped boss or die, softened (annealed), filed with a large file to remove scale then each tooth painstakingly hand cut using a hammer and triangular chisel. After cutting the file would be hardened (heated then salt water quenched), cleaned using coconut fibre and shell and finally dipped in rape oil to preserve it. If that all sounds like a combination of ancient and modern that was the process used in around 1805 by Peter Stubbs of Warrington and which is still fundamentally the same process used today to hand make files. It is believed that the process dates back to the medieval period if not earlier in Europe (daVinci is known to have "invented" a file cutting machine) and bronze rasps more than 3000 years old have been found in Egypt.

Nowt new under the sun, eh?

May 8, 2008 12:32:56 GMT robo said:

On a more civilised tone where I come from (Millstone Grit country) a lot of people sharpened knives and other tools on their stone door steps

I can well remember my grannie sharpening her knives on the back step in similar manner

Scrit

[chill]

i remember being told by my grandfather who was a carpenter,and retired in 1972, that friday afternoons were spent cleaning and sharpening all of his tools ready for the next weeks work.


cheers chris

[Alf]

May 8, 2008 18:33:58 GMT Scrit said:

May 8, 2008 12:32:56 GMT robo said:

On a more civilised tone where I come from (Millstone Grit country) a lot of people sharpened knives and other tools on their stone door steps

I can well remember my grannie sharpening her knives on the back step in similar manner

My Dad showed me how to sharpen my penknife on the granite doorstep, ooo, 'bout 20-odd years ago now. These days he hands over stuff to be sharpened to me with mutterings that "You know how to do this fancy stuff". I'm not entirely convinced that progress has been a Good Thing in this case. ;D When push comes to shove I'd still sharpen my penknife on the granite step if required, but a bit of slate is better. Granite's a trifle on the coarse side - reckon I need to change counties...

Cheers, Alf