Replies

1. 
   Metod | Jan 20, 2012 07:23am | #1

   A Few Swipes

   A few swipes on a fine (polishing) stone or a strop is probably all you need. As long as you do not have a burr on the chipbraker, and a solid (no gaps) contact with the iron, you should be OK.

   Best wishes,

   Metod

2. 
   hammer1 | Jan 20, 2012 07:56am | #2

   The edge of the chipbreaker will be quite sharp, you want it to fit seamlessly to the blade so no shavings can get caught in that junction. You don't want a burr sticking out but you don't want the edge where it contacts the blade rounded at all. Stanley chipbreakers have a rounded profile but some of the replacement breakers don't as much. The name is misleading, they don't actually break chips, they stiffen the blade.

1. 
   dherbert | Jan 22, 2012 09:39am | #3

   chip breaker nomenclature

   Thanks for clearing that up. I am a retired machinist, and what we call a chip breaker when turning metal actually does break the chips.Now I understand what the end of the breaker should look like and how it performs.

2. 
   Maine_tyler | Jan 28, 2012 04:14pm | #4

   evolution of the breaker

   It's interesting, I had a teacher tell me that the purpose of chip breakers (or pehaps just the understanding) has changed over time from actually breaking chips to simply backing the blade like you said. This is why newer breakers are not always round like old stanleys. Does anyone know what shift occured for this to happen?

   The only thing I vaguely remember that might have been mentioned was that planes today are used mostly for finer finishing cuts where as in old they would be hogging out larger chips from rougher boards. I don't know if that makes sense though...

   -T

1. 
   hammer1 | Jan 29, 2012 10:20am | #5

   Some of the modern hobbyist woodworkers may want their planes to play like a Stradivarious but plane use isn't any different today than in the past. If you had to earn a days wage with hand tools, you needed them to work properly, acheive the desired results and make life easier for you but you didn't try to make it a Zen experience. There is no doubt between a sharp and correctly set up tool and one that isn't. Both you and your work suffers.

   Craftsmen are craftsmen with the intension of doing things well. There are times you want to be agressive removing stock and times you adjust for a finer finish cut. The Stanley chipbreakers are rounded to provide a bit of spring like action since they are fairly thin. Why would anyone need to break chips with a hand plane? Most preliminary plane use is done cross or tangetal to the grain, if fact, using a plane held askew on many planing operations with the grain is usually an advantage since it gives a slicing cut rather than a straight on, more blunt entry into the wood.

   When using a block plane on end or tangetal grain the mouth often fills up with chips and you are constantly cleaning them out. Any that get lodged in the mouth or wrapped on the blade edge are a pain and have to be removed. Broken chips in standard planes cause the same problems. A nice continuous curl dumps out just turning the plane over. When you get chips and debris in the mouth area, you spend more time cleaning them out than you do planing. Watch someone using a hand plane, they dump it upside down, inspect and blow on the mouth after every stroke or two which adds to the phyicality of using a plane. Debris that gets caught between the chipbreaker and blade take extra time to remove, that's why you want a nice tight fit.