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25 September 2023 at 5:34 pm #814373
Yes, I initially thought it might have been some kind of taper, but it’s not a blade-long taper as in the photo. The tooth line in the photo is straight; it’s just that the plate there is narrower at the toe than it is at the heel. In my case, the width is the same until the last 3/4” to 1” of the toe, when the tooth line angles upward. It’s not a sharp angle, as the intersection of the lines is a little rounded for smoother cutting, and there is not a continuous curve at the toe of the saw. It’s more like two pencils being crossed at about 177*. (I’m sorry, but I’m not able to take a photo for this, so the verbal description will have to do.) it’s very curious.
23 September 2023 at 5:27 pm #814175I should add that if the teeth at the toe are filed with a shallower rake, a la Paul’s method, there’s no reason to get them out of the way of the cut once started. Those teeth are still just as capable of cutting as the main line of teeth, so why disengage them from the cut? Why not just have a straight tooth line?
23 September 2023 at 4:23 pm #814170That was my first thought, too. My second thought was, “Hey, wait a minute.” If I’m starting a cut and I’m holding my saw parallel with the surface being cut, the angled teeth mean the saw is going to contact the corner nearest me first. If I push forward now, the saw is going to dig into the wood. That angled end is going to create a slight pressure akin to pushing the saw down into the wood. That doesn’t seem like it will particularly help get the cut started, and it seems more likely to cause a ragged beginning of cut.
I could lift the heel of the saw to bring the teeth parallel to the surface, or to contact the far corner first, but at that point, what’s to be gained by the angled tooth line? You could do exactly the same thing with a straight saw edge, and it would be more predictable in use and easier to sharpen. I don’t get it. I haven’t actually tested any of this on real wood, yet; I’m just musing.
27 May 2022 at 9:41 pm #761284Thanks everyone. I was coming around to this conclusion the more I pondered it. I suppose this is a good illustration of the difference between theory and actual experience.
26 May 2022 at 5:29 pm #761146Thanks, Colin, this is helpful. Yes, it’s easy enough to use a gauge block to fit the panel on one side, but my worry was about the side opposite. You could use a gauge block for that opposite side as well, but you can plane the bevel to sink the panel edge to any depth in that opposite groove. There’s only one point at which the panel will be snug for the rail length you have. If you don’t plane enough, the panel won’t sink as far into the groove, which means you can’t close up the frame joint. If you plane too much, the panel will sink further into the groove, but then it will be thinner than you need for that length of rail, and thus will be loose. You could sink the panel to the bottom of the groove on both sides, which would eliminate the guesswork, but then of course there’s no room for wood movement. It seems like the only way to hit that right spot is to assemble and disassemble the frame every time to test, and that’s a pain. Craig
21 December 2020 at 10:37 pm #691164“The other item is that if you have two CVG fir treads glued into a panel, make sure the grain direction on the surface matches in each board. If not you’ll have difficulty at the seam and will have to switch directions on each side of the panel.”
Ohhh yeah. I’ve learned that the hard way previously. I made sure to orient them similarly this time. Thanks for Phil Lowe’s advice. Chris Schwarz has also written some articles along the same lines. He recommends looking at the end grain first to get a read on which side of the plank you’re working on and which way you’re going to want the cathedrals to go. The articles have been super helpful for me in puzzling out grain direction.
One thing I’ve read in passing is that, if you’re planing perpendicular to the rings, the grain direction isn’t that important; that you should be able to plane in either direction. The same thing goes with planing the edges of a plain-sawn plank. I think that may be more true with pine and other woods. With doug fir, I’ve found that grain direction actually does matter regardless of which cut I’m planing.
I can’t remember how much I paid for the treads, but I know they weren’t particularly cheap. Fortunately, I needed only four of them. Our house was built in 1916, and back in 2005 we took out the original built-in cabinets in the kitchen. The shelves in the cabinets were 18″-wide planks, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away with the rest of the cabinet work. That was long before I had the slightest inkling of what to do with them or how to do it; I suppose that’s the wood hoarder in me. They’re still stashed away, awaiting some appropriate inspiration. When the rear of our house was dismantled in 2014 as part of the remodeling, I snagged as much of the usable wood as I could. Tight-grained, honey-colored stuff; really nice potential. Then I realized I needed to figure out what to do with it, and by one turn and another, I wound up at Woodworking Masterclasses.
Thanks for all your help!
21 December 2020 at 5:52 am #691014Hi Cunha,
When you’re working with reclaimed/recycled/repurposed wood, you don’t have a lot of opportunities to choose the best cuts. You often have to take the knots where you find them and do your best with them. That’s been my lot. I’ve found that some knots aren’t too bad and can be planed without too much difficulty, and the surrounding grain, while not ideal, is at least fairly well-behaved. Others are like iron, the surrounding grain is really surly, and they are truly miserable. On some newer doug fir, the late growth rings are thick and can be almost as tough as the knots themselves, and they’ll dull your edge about as quickly. I feel kinda dopey saying this, but it didn’t occur to me until you pointed it out that the stair treads were clear fir. Indeed, no knots! I got them as routine items down at my local building materials place here in the San Francisco bay area. 11″ wide, 48″ long, 1″ thick, with a bullnose along one edge. And quarter-sawn, to boot. I had to replace some rotted stair treads on my back porch around 2012, and when we did our remodeling in 2014-15, they came back up. I certainly wasn’t going to let them be taken to the dump, which would have been their fate otherwise. Perfectly good wood.
Roberto, thanks for the link to the English Woodworker. Entertaining and useful. I watched a few of his videos and then came to this one, which was exactly on topic: “How to control tear out with hand planes — understanding the cap iron” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bhh6kxXZOQ). This is intriguing. According to the videos, mouth size and blade angle aren’t critical factors for avoiding tearout, but cap iron placement is. So now I’ll be heading out to the garage to experiment and see whether it does the trick with the doug fir.
Craig
21 December 2020 at 1:00 am #690989Hi Tilman, Thanks! I’ll definitely try that. Along those lines would closing the mouth help? I guess that would require moving the frog forward, but wouldn’t that leave the forward edge of the plane unsupported and lead to chatter? Craig
20 December 2020 at 7:03 pm #690939Oops! Grammar time. Our streets aren’t littered with kids abandoning their furniture, they’re littered with furniture abandoned by the kids.
20 December 2020 at 5:33 pm #690929Thanks, for the lead, Darren. I’ll check out Third Coast. That’s good advice about sharpening. Paul often talks about “sharpening to task,” but I’m not quite sure how to get a higher effective plane angle. Since the plane angle in Stanleys is fixed, it seems the only option is to bevel the back of the iron, but that also seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom about having a flat back. I could certainly try it, but I don’t want to mess up a perfectly good blade.
I’ll be working in Doug fir and pine for a while. We did extensive remodeling of our house a few years ago, so I have a large stash of 110-year-old old growth studs that just demand something be done with them. The remodeling gutted our garage, so I’ve been slowly (painfully slowly) building a workspace from scratch. Once I finish this cabinet, I’ll finally have a place to put a sharpening station, so I can sharpen much more often. I live in a college town, and at the end of the school year our streets are littered with kids abandoning their IKEA furniture. Tip for scavengers: IKEA beds actually have some pretty good, usable wood, primarily pine and IKEA mystery wood. Takes a little more work to get the raw material I need, but, on the other hand, it’s free.
20 February 2015 at 12:14 am #124844I’m also looking for a vise and have exactly the same concerns. I’ve been considering a Milwaukee quick release vise (https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/dept/TL/item/MS-VISE.XX), which gets a good review from the Tools for Working Wood folks. It’s a lot to spend for a tool — and shipping is probably going to be a killer — so I want something reliable and durable. Anyone have any experience with Milwaukee vises?
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