The March 2021 issue of FWW has an article by Vic Tesolin on making a handplane. In it he mentions the recommended blade as a Veritas Bevel-up Bench Plane Blade, but not any of the particulars.
This blade is available in 25, 38 and 50 degree bevels and three different materials.
What is the preferred bevel for a pull-plane like this?
Replies
Those bevel-up Veritas blades are good for wooden planes as they're thick, meaning far less chance of unwanted vibrations once installed in a wooden body. But the article should have mentioned that the blades could be used bevel down in a wooden plane like that made by Victor.
The bed of his plane is 37 degrees so even a 25 degree bevel blade, if installed bevel up, would give a 62 degree cutting angle. Good for naughty wood but hard to push (or pull) when planing at that steep angle.
Were you to install a 38 or 50 degree bevel blade of that sort with it's bevel up, the cutting angles would be correspondingly steeper. You would have a true scraper plane.
So, the blade needs to go in bevel down to give a 37 degree cutting angle (for end grain perhaps) or go in bevel upto give a much steeper cutting angle.
You couldn't use a 50 or 38 degree bevel blade with the bevel down on a 37 degree bed as that would prevent the edge of the blade ever reaching the wood to be planed. But a 38 or 50 degree bevel up blade will give a 75 or 87 degree cutting angle on that 37 degree bed - it'd be a scraper plane. So .... a 25 degree bevel blade is the one to get for a Vic-plane of the sort shown in the article.
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Personally I think wooden planes with cross bars to locate the wooden wedge, rather than those cheek indents, are a much better design. Add a Norris adjuster rather than having to adjust the blade with a hammer and the design improves again.
Moreover, you can pull a Western style wooden plane just as easily as you can push it. No need, really, for a special Far East design, unless you like blocky things with no knobs or totes. :-)
Lataxe
Thank you for the reply. And not to argue with you (which is a sure sign of impending argument ;) ) but the drawing accompanying the article shows the bevel up.
A photo on p. 77 shows the iron being inserted with the bevel up, but another photo on the same page *seems* to show the bevel down by inference - I don't see any label on the top of the iron, while I think I see the label under his thumb in the first photo. But all of those photos might just be staged photos or inconsequential glue-up photos.
The photo showing the blade going in seems to show it bevel up; and from the width of the bevel it got to be a 25 degree bevel. I'm familiar with those blades having several, including one each of the 38 and 50 degree items, in which the bevel is a lot shorter than that shown in the photo.
So, it seems the plane is following the Far Eastern inclination not only in being a blocky pull-it item but also having a steepish cutting angle. (37 bed + 25 bevel = 62 degrees cutting angle). Many Far Eastern planes seem to start with a 50 degree bed for a bevel down blade and some are a good amount steeper than that.
I read that this is as a result of them evolving to deal with the difficult grain of many tropical and semi-tropical timbers - which may be true or just someone's "history as a guess". :-)
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As to Vic's plane - it looks like an interesting exercise to make but peronally I prefer other designs, for various reasons.
Lataxe
I can't speak to preferance, but I enlarged and measured the drawing. The short answer is that the angle on the iron in the drawing is by far closest to 50 degrees.
That's funny! I tried measuring the drawing as well and had concluded it was probably 38°.
Ok, I lied. I didn't really measure it. I compared it to a 30-60-90 triangle and decided it was closer to 30 than it was to 60.
Not germane to blades, but got to meet Vic for a bit. He’s a great guy — a walking encyclopedia of hand-tool knowledge and dry Canadian wit.
Looking at the pictures, it certainly seems like the iron is installed bevel up. And looking at the blade in the body, the cutting edge is close to vertical -- almost 90 degrees. If it works for Vic, it works, but that seems way too high to function at all.
John,
You're right - the diagram and photo pics of the blade in the article are ambiguous. .....
The blade is definitely shown bevel up within the plane body, in both the diagram of page 73 and the photo of page 77. The diagram looks like a 50 degree bevel blade whilst the photo could be a 38 or a 25 degree blade .... the angle the photo's taken and the reflections in the shiny bevel make it hard to discern.
A 25 degree bevel would give a 62 degree cutting angle - steep but still planing and good for timbers with difficult grain.
A 38 degree bevel would give a cutting angle of 75 degrees, which will plane but it's really more like scraping. (I have a metal-bodied plane that takes a blade to give that cutting angle, which produces concertina shavings and can only be pushed if the shavings taken are very thin).
A 50 degree bevel would give a cutting angle of 87 degrees, which is a true scraper plane and, I imagine, would be quite difficult to pull rather than push, even if set for very fine shavings.
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So, the only sensible blade bevel for a BU blade in that 37 degree bedded plane of Victor's would be a 25 degree bevel blade.
But now is the time for either the author or the publisher of that article to enlighten us.
Lataxe
I think the bevel in the drawing is upside down. I have reached out to Anissa to confirm.
I also think Vic is using that blade bevel down as the pictures of the blade don’t have the Veritas logo which is on the same side as the bevel.
Only The Victor can tell us the answer ....
A blow-up of the photo on page 77 of the magazine article, in which the blade is being inserted into the body of the plane, is a queer photo. (See attached). There seems to be a shiny bevel facing up; and it's either a 25 degree or a 38 degree blade, as the bevel length is too long for the (very short) 50 degree blade.
But look at the lower corner of the blade (that nearest the photographer). The shape there doesn't match the shape at the other end of the bevel! There seems to be a chunk of blade missing. Or .... one side of the blade is bevel up and the other is bevel down!! That's a Very Special Blade.
But perhaps it's just something about the light reflected in the polished blade. In all events, this pic confuses the situation even more.
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The article needs an addendum to state unequivocally how the blade is mounted (bevel up or down) and what angle of bevel is chosen from the three offered by Veritas for that type of blade.
An explanation of WHY that blade type and its configuration in the plane were chosen would also be appropriate, perhaps.
Lataxe
Vic has confirmed. The drawing has the bevel upside down.
SO, the Veritas BU plane blade is mounted in that plane bevel down then? (Just to be explicit, unambiguous, clear and without any chance of their being an alternative).
Also, what bevel angle of Veritas BU blade has been used? Presumably it's a 25 degree as a 38 or a 50 used bevel down would forbid planing because of the bed angle of the plane itself.....? It would be good to have an explicit, unambiguous (etcetera) statement from the author or his representative about this.
Gaw, this is like being back at work (spit) trying to persuade a techie writing a computer manual to mention the procedures that a user will actually employ, rather than a series of interesting hexadecimal values!
Lataxe
Oopsie! I suppose that means the honed bevel angle does not matter, it will always present at 37 degrees.
I think Lat_axe's point is that you need a bevel of <37 degrees, otherwise the "dull" end of the iron hits the work surface, rather than the sharp part. Or to put it differently, the heel hits the work surface, not the toe.
I think the only option then is the 25 degree.
Or any of them, and grind the bevel yourself. The way supply issues have been going, there might not be a choice. A couple of things I ordered from Lee Valley had an 8 month wait.
I didn't read that post, my reply was to BS.
You have a point on the bevel angle, 25 degrees is the one.
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