Bevel Up or Down?

At Woodworking in America this year, Graham Blackburn was a last minute addition to the seminar lists as David Charlesworth was not able to attend due to pneumonia. Ouch!

Well, I had the pleasure of attending two classes on plane craft by Graham and the one thing I came away with on the second seminar was:

"If you plane is properly setup, you should be able to take it to any piece of wood in any direction and get zero tearout"

I thought, "Come on! Not possible! No way!"

He said the secret (which is really no secret, only a lesson that needs passing on to those of us learning on our own), is to:

1. Keep the mouth of the plane open only as wide as the thickness of shaving you want to produce; and
2. Keep your Cap Iron as close to the cutting edge as the thickness of shaving you want to take.

So, what about bevel up planes I asked. He said at the end of the class that in order to take a plane to any piece of wood in any direction with no tearout, you have to have a cap iron. I was starting to despair that my investment into bevel up Veritas planes was for naught.

Well, I decided to write it off as fanatical dogma. You know, sort of like saying that pins first is the ONLY way to get tight fitting dovetail joints (just ask Tom Iovino and his experience at the Hand Tool Olympics).

Well, when I got home, I decided to give it a try as it had been bugging me for a couple of weeks now and I finally got an opportunity to put it to the test.

I set up my bevel up smoother to take a really fine shaving and closed up the mouth as tight as possible and set out to work on a piece of curly maple. I then did the same with a bevel down smoother.

To my surprise, I was able to get a very clean surface with both planes. It may be that there may be a more gnarly wood out there that will really prove Graham's statement to be true, but I'll have to wait to find that piece of wood another time.

So, bevel up fans, do not despair. At least from a smoothing point of view anyway. I'll be testing this theory in other configurations, but that will be for another post. Thanks Graham, you've helped me grow in my skill level and although I may dispute your statement on the cap iron, it made me think and that's a trait of any great teacher.

Vacation, sharpening, shooting board and drawers

So, my vacation is almost over. Much has happened to keep me out of the shop. My mom and my sister Anneli, came out for a visit from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There was my cousin's wedding last Saturday, My daughter Vanessa's baptism on Sunday (and it was my first Father's day), lots of bar-b-que cooking by yours truely and plenty of card playing.

Card playing is a long time family tradition. We play a game called "May I?" (apparently it's similar to old maid) and Euchre. When my mom and Anneli partner up in Euchre, watch out!

It was sad to see them go this morning, but I'll see them again at Christmas this year. Normally, I only see mom once a year, so this year is going to be a treat!

Today, I got back into the shop to rebuild the drawers for the Nursery Cabinet. It seems that due to my eagerness to make progress and learn on the fly is coming back to haunt me. See, when I installed the face frame, the drawers were too big for the opening and also, I used big box store pine to build the drawer shells, so here were twists to the boards that I didn't notice until fitting the drawer front. That was before buying my planer or hand planes (not that I can hand plane a board flat and true yet).

There I was with some freshly flattened 1/2" pine tonight, cut to width, but without a way to cut square to length. My mitre saw will only cut 5" widths, and I question the trueness of the cut. So I decided that there was no better time to make a shooting board. It was not very difficult to assemble one out of scrap plywood for the base and bamboo for the fence.

I also had to sharpen my Veritas low angle smoothing plane, and thanks to Ron Hock's book on The Perfect Edge, I was able to get the blade sharp enough to take some hair off of my arm. That is a tale for another day though. I will put Ron's teachings to the test with some chisels and my mastercraft hand plane blade.

All in all, it was a great wood working day with much accomplished and a feeling of personal accomplishment. Sorry I didn't post any pictures, but my camera was down. I'll try to get some in on my next post.

Tomorrow I golf and will tackle assembly of the drawer frames. It's great to be back after a well deserved break.

Rambling Quickie - Handplaning boards and workbench stability

Today, I took my lunch break and scooted off to the garage for a little therapy away from spreadsheets and financial forecasts.

There's a cherry board that I did a little knot repair to for practise. The board has some dry rot along one edge and I figured if I could fill the knot as per the technique in TWW episode 113, I could cut away the rot and salvage at least part of the board.

After filling the knot, I was left with a high spot of epoxy and it has cured fully (I applied the epoxy last week). So I took my smoothing plane (the board is still in rough cut state), and started taking shavings. With each swipe, some hardened resin came away.

It was going well until the hollow that the knot is sitting in became evident and wood shavings around the knot started coming up. The blade is still sharp, and it was cutting well but planing a board takes considerable force. Too much for my workbench to handle (plywood on 2 sawhorses).

My bench started walking across the floor. If I want to be able to plane this board without destroying my 'bench', I will need to find a way of stabilizing it. Maybe I'll try again after work and align the board so that my push action is towards the shop wall.

Back to my spreadsheets for now.