Why camber plane irons.
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- This topic has 5 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 5 months ago by MTaylor.
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After a long time being afraid of ruining my plane irons I finally honed a radiused edge. OMG I never relized the difference it makes or how much more versitile it makes my plane. I understand how basic a topic this is, but I don’t think it has been discussed enough for us nobs.
1. Yes it makes plane tracks go away.( The discussion usually ends here.)
2. (Paul has mentioned it but it didn’t really sink in.) Having that camber allows you to square the edge of an out of square board with out tilting the plane.
3. The camber allows you to plane past the edge of two boards meeting at 90 degree angle without planing across the grain of the non-target board. Very usefull in cleaning up the edge of a box.
4. The slight hollow makes edge joining tighter.I hope experienced guys will post other benifits they have experience with. Please let us nobs know.
4 November 2016 at 6:26 pm #142183Good idea to talk about basics. Even though it is possible to do good work, when you simply follow advise of others, it is still better to understand the principles.
I was a bit confused at first, because there are two possible places for a round shape on the blade. The corners can be rounded off and the bevel can be honed into a slight camber instead of a flat surface. But I think, you mean the rounded corners.
Why would rounded corners make it possible to square edges without tilting the plane? It seems to be possible pretty well even with a perfectly square blade.
And what do you mean by “the slight hollow makes edge joining tighter”?
A silly reason for rounded edges: It makes the plane lighter 😀
(but one advise you always get if you want to make your racing bike lighter, is to take off the valve caps on the wheels)Dieter
Rather than just rounding the corners I rounded the entire edge, just slightly. By tracking the plane to the right or left of center you take off a little bit more on that side because of the radius. All the time keeping the plane square to the board face.
As for edge joining. If the plane is tracked down the center of the board there will be a slight hollow. When the boards are glued and clamped the outside edges ( the face of the glue up) will contact first. I really stress slight hollow. If you radius it like a scrub plane the joint would be weak.5 November 2016 at 2:30 pm #142202I don’t like the idea of a radius over the complete width of the blade, except on scrub planes. In order to take off a bit more on one side, I use the weight of the plane or my arms. It works really well and so I don’t see any advantage of the rounded blade, especially not for surface finishing.
Dieter
Some people round just the corners, some camber the entire edge. Both are useful. As mentioned, a camber across the entire edge makes it easy to change an edge that is out of square by moving the plane right or left. You can also do this with the dubbed corner blade by applying pressure, but it isn’t as easy. On the other hand, if you just want to take shavings from an already squared edge, it is easier to keep things squared with the blade with rounded corners than with the blade that is cambered all the way across, but both can work. I think you can learn to work with either. The degree of camber matters, too. The camber on a scrub makes it unusable for anything else, but it is a huge camber compared to just a few extra passes on the stone with a bit more pressure towards the corners, which is what I think @mtaylor is describing.
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