Revelation in stock preparation

[paulchapman]

One of the revelations for me at the West Dean hand-tool event, was to see the use of a toothed plane blade for stock preparation. When preparing sawn timber by hand, the convention is to use a heavily cambered blade in a scrub or jack plane to quickly get the wood to a presentable state before moving on to more conventional planes. The heavily cambered blade works well because the camber reduces resistance and enables thick shavings to be easily removed. One problem, however, is that tear-out can sometimes be quite severe, depending on the wood.

At West Dean, Deneb Puchalske of Lie Nielsen Toolworks gave us a demonstration using a toothed blade in a bevel-up plane. These are the blades www.lie-nielsen.com/?pg=4

What you get using the toothed blade is a series of serrations but no tear-out. Like the heavily cambered blade, resistance is reduced so you can take thick shavings. I had a go with the plane and it was impressive. Unfortunately I don't have a bevel-up plane - if I did I would immediately order one of the toothed blades because they work so well and I do all my stock preparation by hand.

Has anyone else tried this technique?

Cheers

Paul

[engineerone]

looks interesting paul, i have a couple of ln bu's and note that at least one of them will take the blade.

wonder how it would work on cherry, which is more prone to break out than i had hoped

reading the blurb though it seems to suggest you have to plane at an angle to the grain, did you, and did you notice a difference if you planed with the grain.

paul

[paulchapman]

Hi Paul,

I only had a quick go at it, so didn't experiment much. Here's a picture of Deneb working on the particular piece of wood - a thick slab of Mahogany. At this point he had finished with the scrub and toothed blade planes and was now using a #8 to smooth it.



Deneb tended to work at 45 degrees across the grain but I see no reason why it wouldn't work in any direction. Part of the reason why he worked at 45 degrees was determined by the particular high spots on that piece of wood.

The only difference between the toothed blade and a conventional one is that it gives you a series of ridges (bit like finely corrugated cardboard). Why it works well on rough, sawn wood, I think, is that the corrugations on the blade reduce the resistance and make the planing easier.

Most texts tend to suggest that scrub-type planes should be used across the grain or at 45 degrees. However, I use my scrub-type planes (a #3, #5 1/2 and #7 with steeply cambered blades) in whatever direction suits what I'm doing, and very often this is along the grain.

What I tend to do is read as much as I can, but then do what works - which might, of course, be quite different from what the "experts" say. The problem with hard and fast rules is that every piece of wood is quite individual and you need to "read" the wood and adopt whatever technique is appropriate.

We never stop learning - I'd never seen this technique before so thought it worth passing on. Deneb was using a bevel-up plane with the toothed blade but thinking it through, I see no reason why it would not work with a bevel-down plane, provided you could get a toothed blade that fitted. Probably just need to set the cap iron back a bit.

Cheers

Paul

[engineerone]

thanks paul. i agree, if you do not work with people who actually know and have experience, you should read and then experiment.

of course the really good thing is when someone finds and promotes what seems like a brand new idea and then actually works

today i picked up the latest issues of popular woodworking and american woodworker. both have items about hand planes, in pop wood, it is by michael dunbar showing the sprung method for jointing and other interesting tricks, whilst american talks about the planes to start with and use.

as for the toothed blade, i wonder whether if you use it bd you need a greater or lesser frog than with the bu??

paul

[paulchapman]

Probably need to set the frog back a little to give a wider mouth when working on sawn wood, because the idea would be to take quite thick shavings, get the surface to a presentable state and then move on to the conventional planes.

Cheers

Paul

[Alf]

Hmmm, something to think about there, Paul. Although I feel the biggest revelation in stock prep is probably the planer thicknesser; but I'm not supposed to say that, am I? ;D

Cheers, Alf

[engineerone]

planer thicknesser shock horror what happened to the "goddess"

of course these days the problem is having wood which
is stable enough for either process ;D

paul

[paulchapman]

Jun 8, 2008 8:41:54 GMT Alf said:

Although I feel the biggest revelation in stock prep is probably the planer thicknesser; but I'm not supposed to say that, am I? ;D

No, but you're right This hand-tool lark is very enjoyable and it's nice to know how to do it all by hand, but it's knackering and results in low productivity. I'll get one eventually........... ;D

Cheers

Paul

[Alf]

Jun 8, 2008 9:22:46 GMT engineerone said:

planer thicknesser shock horror what happened to the "goddess"

What can I say? Feet of clay.

[engineerone]

must confess that i find my little mafell a real help.

if for no other reason, it makes it easier to ensure things are square

paul