Which Way Are You Going?

"A properly set hand plane should be able to plane in any direction."

That's how Graham Blackburn started up his discussion on hand planes.

Well, wait a second... that's not right! Doesn't he know you should figure out the grain direction, then plane WITH the grain? You pet a cat one way, and you plane one way. You don't want to raise the hairs on a cat's back just like you don't want to push your plane blade into the fibers of the wood. He proceeded to talk about the myth of what I was just thinking - that you should always plane with the grain.

Then he paused. And he asked us if we thought, 200 years ago or 400 years ago, woodworkers always planed with the grain.

"What about curly grained wood, like maple or mahogany? What about crotch walnut and birds-eye maple or wood where the grain changes directions? And then changes directions again? Do you think people back then planed a little one way, then a little the other, then a little the fist way again, all the way across the board?"

No, they didn't. They set their planes up properly, they clamped their wood in their bench, and then they started planing!

To further illustrate his point, he pulled out a slab of Indian walnut and clamped it into the bench. It was several inches thick, with one live edge, some curly figure, a few knots, straight grain, ribboned grain - you name it, it was on this board.

And he pulled out a Lie-Nielsen smoothing plane, made sure it was set properly, then went left, right, up, down, and sideways on the board, taking smooth, tear-out free shavings each time.

Then he showed us how he does it.

Rule #1: You need to have a sharp plane blade. Don't bother sharpening above a 12,000 grit waterstone. Your basic set should include the 400 grit, for shaping, the 2000-3,000 grit, for rough polishing, the 8000 grit for getting a really good edge, and then a 12,000 for the final mirror-like polish you need to get on the leading 1/8" of the face of your blade and on the bezel if you're going to be working with exotic woods. Most of the time, however, you will be working with just the first three (400, 2000-3000, and 8000 grit stones).
(Note: The face of the blade is the side without the bezel)

Rule #2: You need to get the cap iron (sometimes erroneously called the "chip breaker", as per Graham) fit tightly to the blade. That is, you should not be able to see even a slight bit of light between the face of the blade and the cap iron edge. So when you're sharpening your blade, you should work the cap iron, as well, to make sure the edge seats properly on the blade.

Rule #3: There were two parts to this rule...
One is that you should set the cap iron as close to the edge of the plane blade as the thickness of the shaving you want. For a smoothing plane, that's really, REALLY close. It isn't as close for a jack plane or a jointer plane.
The other is that you should adjust your plane to have the tightest mouth you can give it.

That is a simplified version, but... honestly, that's about it!

Hey, that doesn't seem too hard. If I could accomplish that, I'd be a pretty happy man!

This evening, I was in the basement with a bit of free time on my hands, and I thought I would give it a try. So I pulled out my #604.5, not without some trepidation, and grabbed a turnscrew. The blade was already sharp, so I just needed to set the cap iron properly and make a minor adjustment to my frog and then I could give it a go!

I choked up on the cap iron, moved my frog forward a millimeter or two, and then dug through some boxes to find something that I might not have attempted before. In this case, it was a chunk of curly mahogany I was saving for a tool handle.

I cleared a spot on my small bench (not an easy task, with the mess my basement is in), pushed the wood up against a stop (without checking for grain direction - not that it mattered much with this wood), and took a couple of swipes with the tuned-up plane.

Hey, that looked pretty nice! So I flipped the wood around to plane it from the other direction and watched as one thou shavings (and anodda thou... and anodda thou) piled up behind the knob of the plane.

Wow! It works! I went back upstairs to grab my camera, grinning from ear to ear.

Thanks, Graham! I'm looking forward to trying out all of the other tricks you showed us in class!

Oh, and now I also need to work on getting some of my other planes set up the same way...

Getting Ready For Frank...

This weekend, I'll get to spend most of two days with one of my favorite master woodworkers - Frank Klausz.

I spent some time the past few evenings making sure all of the tools I'm bringing to class are tuned up and ready to work. This evening, following David Charlesworth's ruler-trick method of sharpening, using just a #1000 grit stone, a #8000 grit stone, an eclipse-style honing jig, and a thin metal ruler, I got my two block plane blades and my smoothing plane blade razor sharp.

I didn't even think to take any pictures of the process, but when I came up with an end-grain shaving from my low angle block plane, I thought I would photograph it for you. You can just make out some of the text in the middle of the shaving. Not too bad for end-grain.

Yeah, I think it's ready for Frank...

I'll spend some time each night the rest of this week warming up my sawing skills and making sure the rest of my tools are ready to go, as well.

A New Inlay Idea...

I want to try out a new inlay idea on some of the boxes I'm making. Pretty soon I have to start getting ready for a Jim Malcolm concert, but I did have a little time this afternoon to get down into the shop and work on the first few steps, so I thought I would share that with you.

After laying out cut-outs of my idea on paper, I went through my stock to choose the wood I was going to use. I narrowed it down to holly (very white and with practically no grain) and then either bog oak or blackwood. The blackwood really has the darker color, which is what I'm ultimately looking for, but the blackwood I have would limit the size of my inlay. I think the bog oak will be dark enough once I add a little bit of boiled linseed oil to it, and it would allow for two pieces of inlay in the larger dimensions I wanted.

In the end, I couldn't decide, so I went ahead and prepared both of them. I'm always up for trying new things out and this seemed like a great opportunity to play around.

I already had my blackwood and bog oak thicknessed so I just needed to get a piece of the holly prepared. I didn't take any pictures of it, but you didn't miss anything. Since it was the first time I'd used the board, I took my Stanley #6 and jointed one edge. Then I used the tablesaw to rip off a strip that was about 1/8" thick. I cut a section off the strip that was the same size as the blackwood and then cut another section off that was a tad longer than the bog oak.

The blackwood was already 1/8" thick, so I didn't need to plane down that piece of holly, but the bog oak was a little more like 3/32" thick, so I took the block plane to the other piece of holly to get it flush with the bog oak.

The setup here is a piece of oak board (unfinished wide-plank flooring, in case you are wondering) with two brass screws sunk just shy of flush. I pressed the holly up against the screws and then planed towards them. Pressure keeps the strip in place. It didn't take much to get me down to 3/32" thick.

Then I needed to joint all of the matching edges. As you might have seen before, I like to do this with a Stanley #5 turned upside down on my bench. With that setup, I can easily run the strips of wood over the plane with control. I don't generally use any guide blocks to make sure the edge is exactly 90 degrees - you'd be amazed how well your mind can figure it out on its own.

After just a few minutes, all four pieces were jointed. If you're new to planing, this kind of work makes you feel REALLY good. It doesn't take much to get a small pile of curly shavings collected under the plane.

The only other thing I had time for today was the glue-up. Since this is inlay, and once I have it in the box there will be no stresses applied to the joint, I just needed to lightly clamp the pieces in place for a bit.

After a little thought, I accomplished this with the use of my bench hook. I pushed it into place on the bench, covered it with a piece of waxed paper, and then clamped a strip of wood parallel to the fence of the bench hook at the far end. With the addition of two filler strips (these three pieces are spanish cedar, waiting around for another project) and two shims I grabbed from my toolbox, I was ready to go.

I glued up the inlay pieces, set them into place, and then used the two shims to wedge the filler strips tight against the inlay. Again, I just need a good enough glue joint to keep everything together until I get it inlaid into the box, so I just tightened up the shims with hand pressure.

I'll let this sit for a day while I get kilted up for Jim Malcolm and hopefully I'll find some time tomorrow to work on the next part of the inlay.

Working Together...

I've spent some time over the last two weeks working on some boxes. I have two at a "joinery completion" stage and four more with the pieces just dimensioned. One of the boxes has the intended purpose of holding my up-and-coming Christmas present - a custom set of four dovetail paring chisels from Blue Spruce Tool Works. They all have curly mahogany handles (wood supplied by me) that match the carbide burnisher owner Dave Jeske made for me a month or two ago. They arrived two weeks ago and Dana let me see them just long enough to take some measurements before she secreted them away for the next six months. We ordered them a bit early to take advantage of a 10% discount Dave was offering and to get one of his Blue Spruce Tool Works t-shirts for free.

(And by the way... isn't my wife just the greatest?)

The other boxes don't yet have specific buyers but they are all intended to hold sgian dubhs. Well, dimensionally they would all serve that purpose, anyway. I'm making them for two reasons, one of which I can't really divulge right now. But the other reason is simply because I want to have some boxes on hand that I can offer as "immediately available" so I don't always have to bust my butt with a custom box when someone contacts me and says they need a box in three weeks. I'll take some pictures and post them along with some of my design ideas as I get a little further along in the process later this week. I had an idea or two that coincided with the Guinness 250th Anniversary that I wanted to play around with...

They are all sliding lid boxes with rabbeted butt joints. From a design point of view, the joinery is relatively easy to cut on the table saw with a flat tooth rip blade. Some of that challenge is in making sure the saw cuts are accurate. Over the past few days, I've learned some tricks for making these cuts incredibly precise - all without using any measuring devices. Again, when I start on the joinery for the next four boxes, I'll take some pictures and share with you.

But what has me more excited than anything is how I've quite naturally started blending hand tools with power tools into a true power tool/hand tool hybrid shop - the two halves are now working together. For example, the other day when I was working on the sliding lid for the chisel storage box, I had a board that wasn't exactly thicknessed properly (it was the last board from a bunch of resawn lumber); it was just a bit thicker on one edge than it was on the other. Without a second thought, I went downstairs to the workbench, marked the board thickness on all the edges with my circular marking gauge, grabbed my #604 1/2, and started planing the slight high side down to size.

Later, when I needed to cut dados and rabbets on the edges of the lid so it would slide in and out of the grooves in the main part of the box, I pulled out my Record 043 plough plane instead of trying to make the cuts back on the table saw. Wow. That was more satisfying than planing a board flat! After just a minute or two of careful setup (and scoring a line on the cross-grain cut to prevent tear out), it was just a matter of planing until the blade stopped cutting.

Finally, when I was cutting the panel for the second sliding lid, I had a board with one side far, far from straight (it was a raw edge with bark on it) and the opposite edge ended up not being a terribly straight line, either. Again, I headed back downstairs to the workshop, put the board on edge in a vice, and took about 15 or 20 strokes with the #604 1/2 (it was too short for the #7) to make the not-so-straight-edge perfectly jointed.

A great benefit to using more hand tools is that I can plug in to my MP3 player and listen to some Grateful Dead or Cat Stevens or Jim Malcom while I'm working - certainly something that helps my creative juices flow.

I'm starting to approach every part of the project with the question, "How can I do this with hand tools?" It is very freeing. If you haven't yet tried it, I would highly recommend at least making an attempt at it the next time you find yourself in the shop.

Hand Plane Class, Part Two...

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I signed up for the Hand Plane class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I knew quite a bit of it would be lecture and discussion, and I was fine with that, but I also wanted to actually use the hand planes I'd brought and get any advice or tips I could from Chris Schwarz or Tom Lie-Nielsen.

I wasn't disappointed; in fact, it was more hands-on than I thought it would be. We started off with a discussion on sharpening and then went back to our benches to sharpen our plane blades. Then we had a discussion on setting up our planes and went back to our benches to set them up. Chris pointed to two stacks of wood. He said the stack on the left was for practice but not to take any wood from the other pile as that would be used for a contest on the second day. I grabbed a piece from the first stack and started planing.

Towards the end of the first day, I'd already sharpened my blades and was tired of planing wood, so I pulled out the Record 043 Plough Plane I'd also brought along and worked on its 1/4" blade. Using our new sharpening techniques (flatten the face to 1000 grit and then use the ruler trick to take the very edge of the face to 8000 grit; honing the secondary bevel of 30 degrees on a primary bevel of 25 degrees), it didn't take me long at all to get a nice sharp edge on it. I then grabbed the board Alex and I had been practicing with and spent less than two minutes ploughing a groove.

A little later, I brought it up to Chris to see what he thought of the plane. He promptly ploughed another groove into a piece of oak and gave it a passing stamp. The only suggestion he offered was to add a wooden fence to it that would make it longer and help it glide along the edge of the board better. I have several pieces of lignum vitae set aside for just that purpose.

On the morning of the second day, we had a discussion on putting a camber on plane blades and then we once again went back to our benches to actually camber the blades of our planes. Using my Mark II, without the camber roller, I couldn't get a good one on my blade, so I had to borrow Alex's blade guide. Fortunately for both of us, Alex apparently cambered his blades the day before, so he didn't need to use the guide. Since I already have the Mark II, I'll probably contact Lee Valley within the next week or so to order the camber roller.

Before lunch on day two, Chris announced the "Flattest Board Contest of 2009" would take place after a brief discussion right after lunch. I left my bench to go to lunch, thinking I would be lucky if I could get one face flat, much less all four faces flat and square. Winning the contest never occurred to me as a possibility.

Something else that never occurred to me was to go back to the classroom early and pick through the pile of boards to find one that would be easier to plane. I think a few others might have had this idea, however, as a third of the pile of boards was relocated to various benches in the classroom by the time lunch was over.

While Chris spoke to us about using the camber when planing edges, Jeff (one of the staff members at MASW) passed out the contest wood to the people who didn't already have it. At first glance, my board didn't look too bad. I turned it over to find a fairly nasty knot and knew my chances of winning just got smaller. But I checked for cup and grabbed my #5 and started at the high spots.

After less than a minute, the high spots were pretty much gone! I checked it with a square and it was about as flat as I thought I was going to get it. I switched over to the #604 1/2 and started smoothing the first face. And that was when the magic of a cambered blade hit me! I could take off a pencil line with just a swipe of the plane! After the first face was done, I worked on the first edge. It was even easier. I checked for square and found one side just a little high. I adjusted the position of my plane to put the biggest part of the camber on the high spot. Two passes later, it was dead flat and square to the first face. I repeated those steps on the second edge and then flipped the board to the second face - the one with the knot.

It really wasn't that bad. After a few minutes, I took the board up to Chris to check. He marked one edge with a smiley face (meaning it was good), made a few minor pencil marks on the other edge and on both faces. Mostly it was just the removal of a minor ridge - really, just taking off the pencil line. He said if he was going to use the board for a project that it would have been good enough at that point, but this was a contest about perfection, so he wanted me to work on it a little more.

I took off the lines with just a few passes, squared up the second edge at one point that had a ridge and brought it back up for another check. The other edge and one of the faces got OK'd. I looked around and saw everyone else feverishly planing away, many on the first face or edge. That was when it hit me that I might actually have a good chance of winning the contest!

I quickly walked back to my bench and clamped the board back down to work on two small lines on the knotty face. I then popped the board back off the bench and ran up front. After a minute of careful scruteny, I got my fourth smiley face!

The board in the picture here might not look like much to most people, but it means a whole lot to me. So much, in fact, that I took the board home (how could I leave it?). I'd like to do something with it rather than just toss it in the trash or a burn pile. I was thinking about making a box for my Record 043 plough plane and using resawn pieces of this board for panels in the lid and bottom.

Another cool thing - if you hold the board up at the right angle, you can see a reflection in it. That is what you can do with a hand-planed surface. Try doing that with a board after 180 grit or fresh off the jointer!

Later that afternoon, Thomas Lie-Nielsen talked us through a video tour of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. He fielded questions and discussed the creation process a plane goes through. He also talked about the quality assurance they apply to each piece. Did I mention he gave everyone a free plane? It was small and made of balsa wood and flies around the room...

Key things I took from the class:

• The flat side of a plane blade is called the face (by Chris) and the back (by Tom).
• All the sharpening systems work. Pick a system and stick with it for a year or two until you are proficient with it. You will notice your sharpening skills improve greatly over time.
• Don't use a fine grit diamond stone to flatten water stones! The water stone will weaken the bond of the diamonds to the plate, destroying your stone. 220 grit diamond stones use a different bonding agent and are safe to use.
• Camber all your plane blades. The plane you use for roughing gets an 8 degree camber; the joining plane gets a camber of about .007 to .005 of an inch; the smoothing plane gets a camber of about .002 of an inch.
• It is a good idea to even camber your block plane blades.
• You can plane an edge square with a cambered blade!
• You can determine grain direction by either looking at the edge or by using the face and the endgrain (looking for peaks and whether you were on the bark side or the heart side).
• Sharpening a scraper is similar to sharpening a plane blade in that you have to polish the faces and the edges first.
• Keep your planes clean; wipe it down after every planing session.
• Most importantly, and kind of as a summation of the whole class, I learned how to flatten and square a board!

New vocabulary I learned from Chris:

• Bockity - Irish for "bad"
• Sticktion - when two surfaces stick together (as in the thin ruler sticking to the sharpening stone)
• Sneck - the tab on the end of a plow plane blade, used to adjust the blade by tapping it.

This was a most enjoyable class and certainly worth the price of admission. If you've never used hand planes before and are tired of the ear protection and dust left behind by your planer, jointer, and sanders, you might want to consider signing up the next time it is offered. Even if you think you know a bit about planes, this class might still be able to teach you a few things.

And if things go well, and luck shines on you, maybe you, too, can get the nod of approval from one of the great active woodworkers in the business. It's a feeling that doesn't quickly fade.

Hand Plane Class, Part One...

On Friday afternoon, my friend, Alex, and I left the greater St. Charles area for a weekend visit to the Marc Adams school of Woodworking in Franklin, Ind. I'm afraid I'm too tired to go into very much detail at the moment, but I did want to tempt you with the following photo...

It is a picture taken of the inside cover of my new book, Hand Tool Essentials, with a special note by Chris Schwarz. The book was my prize for, I'll so humbly say, a job well done in the contest our class had on the last day. The goal was to take a small board and make it as perfectly square and flat on four sides as we possibly could (the two ends were excluded as we only had one shooting board for the entire class to use) using only hand planes.

I must offer the most sincere thanks to my #604 1/2, a wonderful user plane I picked up for a mere $45, and my trusty #5, the first hand plane I ever purchased. Oh, and thanks again to Alex for driving!

It felt sooo good to leave that class knowing I'd picked up enough tips and knowledge and skill to do such a thing all by my very lonesome! On the way home, my little brain was taking a mental inventory of all the small boards I've collected over the years that are just too small to pass through a planer but would certainly make a good panel for a box or some such thing.

And then I also thought how wonderful it was to work on a huge immobile Lie-Nielsen workbench and know I will have to put "making a solid workbench" at the top of my project list once my shop is up and running.

Oh, and I did sneak out of class with my perfectly flat and square board, so I'll be sure to post a picture or two of it in the next day or so. I thought maybe I would try to put the board to some sort of good use by using it to make a box I can use to store one of my hand planes (maybe one of my friendly little Record 043 plough planes?).

I'll also write up a more detailed description of the class, for your reading pleasure, full of the little bits of information I picked up while in attendance and some of the new vocabulary I learned from Chris. Hopefully I can also entice you and encourage you to try attending such a class as may be offered in the future!

(For anyone wondering about the #8 to the right of the note, that was a bit of a joke between me and Chris. When he announced the contest on the first day, he said, "The winner of the contest would receive..." and then glanced over at the "table of treasures" by Thomas Lie-Nielsen, full of books and shirts and a wonderful assortment of hand planes and chisels and such. I piped in with, "A number eight?" He smiled and said, "Well, probably not a number eight, but something." So, of course, when I won, he had to give me a "number eight".)