i’m using a #4 smoother to plane some curly maple i want to use as an electric guitar top. i’m making my blade adjustments on a piece of 2×4 (pine) and it’s shaving great. nice pretty curls, not to thick, just working perfect, that is until i move to the maple. i can’t even get the blade to make contact to the wood. on the off chance i do, i’m getting super think chunks that stop the plane dead in it’s tracks. the blades good and sharp, the mouth opening is about 1/32″. same with the blade distance from the chip breaker. i’ve done everything except bouncing the thing off the ground (which I’m not to far from doing). just don’t get it.
on a side note, i have a #6 that i can’t get to contact head and heel at the same time. it rocks at the blade. the only thing i can think that’s causing the problem is my blade angle, ground at 45 degress.
Replies
OK this is not a difficult problem to fix, but bouncing the smoother off the floor probably won't help lol.
First of all, make sure everything on the plane is tight, contacting nicely, and have a freshly sharpened blade - the frog screw should be just tight enough to hold the blade securely, DO NOT over-tighten.
From the picture you gave its a little hard to tell but the pine shavings pictured are still pretty thick for a smoothing plane IMO. I set my #4 tight for final finish - I can easily see through my shavings and they feel more like fleece or a cotton like material than wood or paper. 1/32 is a pretty tight mouth opening, probably a good distance in this case, and that makes much more of a difference on hardwoods (esp. highly figured ones) than softwoods like pine. On really gnarly grain a tighter mouth can help facilitate the formation of chip and by extention, shaving. Don't be afraid to experiment with settings in different woods to get familiar with the tool.
As long as you have good chip clearance around the mouth, and SLOWLY advance the blade until you just start to pick up a shaving, you should be able to adjust the blade to get a nice shaving right in the middle. Its important to set your smother up on a board that is already flat so you can dial it in without worrying about riding the irregularities in the piece.
The smoother is the most touchy tool in the shop as far as I'm concerned, but I think if you take much lighter cuts and skew the plane you will see a big improvement.
About the #6 - does it rock even with the blade installed but retracted into the body? Have you lapped the sole with the blade installed in the same manner?
-Ian
Not ready for the smoother...
In my opinion, if I was to take a #4 to a board and it very infrequently made contact w/ the wood, but when it did it dug in so much that it stopped the plane dead in its tracks, I would think that the board is definitely not flat enough for the smoother. A smoother is a short plane, so it should follow hills and valleys pretty well -- if it doesn't, then the board must not be that flat.
You could take your smoother and set it so the blade is just BARELY visible when sighting down the sole, and start running it acros the board taking down the high spots and slowly advancing. This is how I personally set my depth -- under a light, sight down the bottom of the sole, and starting with the blade fully retracted, slowly advance it until you just barely start to see it. Make sure it's not skewed to one side or another; adjust accordingly. Take it and start running it across the board. If you're not getting anything at all (you should, if your board is somewhat flat and your plane sole is flat) then something's up.
I personally (not saying it's wrong) wouldn't tune my plane in on pine (I'm envisioning a piece of 2x4 white pine from Home Depot) because you could easily PRESS into that wood enough to flatten it out and compress the fibers enough to get a good shaving. You won't get the same results from a nice hard wood like curly maple. If you want to tune your plane in that way, and I see the value in doing that on another board that's not your "good" piece, I would at least use a piece of scrap of the same wood.
If it were me, I would take out my bevel up jointer with my high angle blade, great combination in figured wood, and knock down those high spots until I am getting a full length shaving. I would set it to take really fine shavings w/ a tight mouth. I really get a nice surface from my jointer like this, so I would probably then just go straight to a card scraper (esp. in that wood) and concentrate on anything that needed attention. I realize you might not have a bevel up jointer or a card scraper, just sayin' that's what I would do. I would highly recommend a card scraper on that wood -- even the Lie Nielsen ones are inexpensive.
Hope there is some help in there somewhere.
Hard to tell from the picture, but it might be that you are planing the wrong way on that grain. Kind of looks like the iron is diving into the wood. Try planing from the other direction and see if that helps at all.
At Lie Nielsen's suggestion I've been using poplar to set up my hand planes with great success. I use a small strip perhaps 2" x 3/4" x 3/4". With the plane vertical on the bench I simply pull the strip past both edges of the blade and compare the thickness of the two shavings, or you can put the poplar strip against a bench stop and push the plane across it, again using the two edges.
All,
Sorry for the multiple posts, something locked up, and I wasn't getting thru. Than all he11 broke loose!
Ray
multiple posts
Wow . . . I guess . . . ha ha ha.
When that happens to me I go in and just select all and put a " . " or some such in place of the text in the Subject and one in the Comment to minimize the mess. In the old days one could ask the moderator to remove them but I have not had one of my many screw ups removed by asking in like a year or so.
It's all part of the fun that is Knots.
.
( like that see )
roc,
As slow as this site has become, that would have taken me an hour to do. sorry, y'all are not worth it. haha,
Ray
P-p-p-posting
I read each of the posts, Ray, and I'm considerig disagreeing with the second one. ;-)
Ralph,
I think I was really hitting my stride by post # 4.
I think I was really hitting my stride by post # 4.
I think I was really hitting my stride by post # 4.
I think I was really hitting my stride by post # 4.
etc,
Ray
Yep
You were, indeed.
My experience...
A few years ago I bought a piece of figured maple and was fascinated by the beauty of it. I made a piece for a dear friend and to this day he just raves about it. I used seven different woods in it and the figured maple was the star. And that's how my love affair began with figured maple.
It was then I realized I needed some good tools if I wanted to work with this wood. So I made a substantial investment in L-N planes. I had no idea I was working in the stone age all those years.
But the maple was still tough to work.
So I made another investment by upgrading my sharpening tools. I got those L-N blades shining like mirrors. If there was any hair on my arms, they would have jumped off (thanks Mike for that one!)
But the maple was still tough to work.
A few weeks ago, while browsing through my local hardwood store, I saw a nice selection of quilted maple. WOW! I bought the primo pieces and took them home. Yes, I made my planing life even harder.
I told my boss many years ago, "I work very hard to make my job easy." He looked at me quizzically. Then he realized what I was saying. I try to do the same with woodworking. So I've been sanding highly figured woods. That doesn't stop me from going back and trying to plane or scrape the wood. But I keep finding myself back with sandpaper in hand and eventually a smile on my face.
plane setup for curly maple
drivethru1973 wrote:
i'm using a #4 smoother to plane some curly maple i want to use as an electric guitar top. i'm making my blade adjustments on a piece of 2x4 (pine) and it's shaving great. nice pretty curls, not to thick, just working perfect, that is until i move to the maple. i can't even get the blade to make contact to the wood. on the off chance i do, i'm getting super think chunks that stop the plane dead in it's tracks. the blades good and sharp, the mouth opening is about 1/32". same with the blade distance from the chip breaker. i've done everything except bouncing the thing off the ground (which I'm not to far from doing). just don't get it.
that blade has to be sharp enough to shave with. move the chipbreaker closer to the edge, as close as you can get it. really close, and really sharp. and take thinner shavings. curly maple is unforgiving of a less than exactly set up plane, but the surface it gives is worth it.
Bridger
ah . . . pst
A couple of thoughts:
This post is about eight months old he has probably forgotten he even owns a hand plane.
Plane blades must be sharper than shave sharp or at least it is fun to go there.
Forget the chip breaker. Makes no big difference once you get into the technical aspects of blade geometry. For instance a bevel up plane has no chip breaker yet it performs better on this particular wood..
reply: trouble handplaning hard wood
the idea that bu planes by definition outperform bd planes goes hand in hand with the idea that chipbreaker setting doesn't matter. the bd plane is technologically more complex than the bu plane- in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to set up a chipbreaker the bu plane will perform better. get the chipbreaker working right and the bd plane outperforms the bu plane, all else being equal. a bu infill panel plane will probably outperform a bailey #5 all over the place....
I get cleanly planed surfaces with no tearout in heavily figured hard maple using an old stanley smooth plane. the plane has to be tuned up right, but that is true for any plane you are trying to get good performance in difficult woods with. the OP talks about blades sharpened at 45 degrees- this will cause problems in a plane with a frog angle of 45 degrees. you have to have SOME clearance angle under the blade. another thing that can cause the sorts of problems the OP talked about is a plane with a concave sole. in woods with high elasticity like pine the plane will cut, in stiffer woods like maple it will refuse to do so.
how to set up a chip breaker
>the bd plane is technologically more complex than the bu plane<
Yes but it is a weaker design structure prone to chatter and more flex at the blade edge. Then they attempt to "fix" these problems by adding yet another piece, which adds to the complexity but not to the performance, the chip breaker. It bows the blade down in the direction of stress to dampen the chatter. The solution is to better support the blade near the edge from the under side. See the finest Japanese bevel down planes.
> in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to set up a chipbreaker<
fortunately for us we have you here who knows how to get the best out of a bevel down plane by setting up the chipbreaker for the unlimate performance. So . . . beyond the very obvious quick tune ups such as :
stone the mating surface of the underside of the chip breaker to meet the blade perfectly with no gaps all along its length especially at the front most edge so that when under compression from the mount screw and the cap iron wood fibers cannot, even a little, get under the fit up between the blade and the chip breaker. Can not see any light at this joint in other words. Looks perfect from the front edge under bright light and magnification.
polish the area of the chip breaker where the chip may contact the breaker.
set up the chip breaker within a 64th of an inch of the cutting edge and then test the plane on the problem wood moving the chip breaker back in extremely fine increments and retesting until that sweet spot is found for the wood and plane at hand.
( realistically from my experience with the above fine increments one can just set it back from the edge a 32nd or a 16th it doesn't matter in the least but I am looking forward to being enlightened here.) (how ever in tear out prone or problem woods a back bevel makes a huge difference and cures the problem )
What do you recommend in the way of fine points of chipbreaker set up ?
Of course we could get into the throat gap (which with a properly selected blade geometry again has very little bearing on the cut in most all cases) but that is straying from the specific subject of the chip breaker setting so I am hoping you won't go way over there.
Again . . . please give some examples of proper chip breaker set up .
PS: I must say that it is almost irresistible that I can put the blade in the BU, with no futzing with the CB screw and setting it to just the right what have you, and just cut the damed wood. I can't tell you how many times I have wondered at the desire to have the extra , fussy, parts of the BD.
I have many BD planes and use them but sheeesss it almost isn't worth the tedium. Keep in mind the wood I work dulls blades so it isn't like I can get a surface done with out changing a few times to sharp blades.
OK. . . no pissing contest
( though it entertains the other inmates )
The thing I run into when setting the breaker that close ( I used 1/64th as a crazy close setting to start from) is the shaving curls up so tight it clogs the throat.
Hmmm
Even less you say. Well I gotta try that.
I sure get less than pleased when I mess up and push the chip breaker up to the edge and then over it and there goes my nice sharp edge. Yep that is when I want to start playing darts with what is left of my plane blade. I just had a revelation that I could hold the blade vertically up against a board and slide the breaker up to the board and what is embedded in the board ( use end grain ? ) would be my setback.
Maybe
Thanks for the enlightenment.
PS: As I recall with the CB set that close to the edge , with any camber in the blade for more rapid stock removal, the CB is hanging off the corners of the blade across the edge. That can't be good ? Or is that just not a problem ?
chipbreaker setup
roc wrote:
The thing I run into when setting the breaker that close ( I used 1/64th as a crazy close setting to start from) is the shaving curls up so tight it clogs the throat.
Hmmm
Even less you say. Well I gotta try that.
I sure get less than pleased when I mess up and push the chip breaker up to the edge and then over it and there goes my nice sharp edge. Yep that is when I want to start playing darts with what is left of my plane blade. I just had a revelation that I could hold the blade vertically up against a board and slide the breaker up to the board and what is embedded in the board ( use end grain ? ) would be my setback.
Maybe
Thanks for the enlightenment.
PS: As I recall with the CB set that close to the edge , with any camber in the blade for more rapid stock removal, the CB is hanging off the corners of the blade across the edge. That can't be good ? Or is that just not a problem ?
to deal with the mouth clogging you may need to back off the frog a bit. if the front of the mouth is rough or sloping back (toward parallel with the blade) try smoothing it with a file. get the angle vertical or sloping forward a bit. the shavings should come out of the plane shooting straight up in the air, not curly.
dress the leading edge of the chipbreaker so it meets the blade with zero gap between and hits the blade at 45 degrees or steeper above.
camber makes a smoother easier to adjust laterally and makes the chips clear the throat of a scrub easier. it avoids the problem of corners digging in. it also reduces the width of the shaving if you camber more than the thickness of the shaving. with a rough work plane like a scrub or jack you generally aren't looking for tearout free surfaces. scrub planes often don't even have chipbreakers. set the chipbreaker on your jack or jointer so it meets the corners of the blade, or if you want to use it more like a panel plane camber the chipbreaker a bit so you can set it closer. I generally go for minimum camber. the problem is, you end up with a bunch of planes so you can have them set up differently, or at least a bunch of blade/chipbreaker pairs.
Bridger
There We Go !
camber the chipbreaker a bit so you can set it close
That is one of the things I needed to learn.
Thank you.
I was thinking about that during my last post but had never until that moment.
it relates . . . how could I not
Well . . .
yah know . . .
I was searching through the old posts to give a new poster some idea of the great posts here that once were (and could be again if we weren't all down in the shop wasting time cutting up wood and stuff ) and came across this :
http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-woodworking-knots/hand-tools/chipbreakers
scroll down to Larry's post with photos of the molding planes.
Specifically the line with " . . . How practical is it to set the cap iron .004" or closer to the iron's edge?".
and
"I view the introduction of the cap iron as the point at which planes began a down-hill slide. It's the first dramatic compromise made by early plane makers as they moved to mass production."
That Larry guy and I sure think alike . . .
it is like we are psychically linked or something
scary.
at least I am sure he would find it frightening.
I'm rather enjoying it.
(posted from the good ship Tung, a week out, bound for the port of Facial Cheek during a search expedition for a clear passage to the distant lands of Reason.)
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