Reply To: Thickness of card scrapers
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Colin, Ed, and Larry,
Thanks to all of you!
With the memory of a semi-domesticated black hole, I had of course forgotten that packing the throat helps. Fortunately the very tight mouth, and the chip-breaking cap iron[sup]{1}[/sup] now a gnat’s whisker from the blade edge, did it to a degree.
Could it be that the strong hydrophilic property of concentrated alcohol induces a localised additional drying, making the fibres brittle and more amenable to planing? The trick worked very well today. I conceded on dimensioning the maple by hand, and, at the very fair price of 8 cinnamon rolls and four Budapest pastries, saw it done by the local cabinet maker, whose machines had no problems at all – except for a knot, which yielded after ethanol intoxication. (The 13.1 board feet of maple had set me back $160; clearly calling for something roborating, though of less potency and not denatured).
The use of cyano-acrylate or West System + thinner is another addition. This far I’ve only applied the former to end grain when cutting tail recesses for half concealed dovetail joints. It really helps at preventing splitting, tearing, and spelching.
Discretion being the better part of valour, smoothing was done with a #112 and a cabinet scraper; sooner sacrificing some glossiness than failing at repairing with the Novoryt wax system.
Thanks again.
[sup]{1}[/sup] I believe plane shavings curl into spirals due to a “continuous breaking” of the surfaces facing the cap iron or bevel (in the case of bevel up planes), resulting in non-homogenous tension of the shavings, inducing spiralling. That friction induced heat and drying would result in a moisture gradient and spiralling, seems less tenable, I think.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Sven-Olof Jansson. Reason: Addition