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Thanks for the advices @dperrott & @deanbecker!!
I received my card scraper and cabinet scraper yesterday. I tried them and they indeed worked much better than the plane for the cutting board. Still, I had trouble between the main body and the end parts of the board. It is quite difficult to plane a transition between two perpendicular pieces!!!
I need to progress with practice I think!Thanks Stijn! I think I will start making my workbench this Spring. I already have projects planned for up to April… So many gifts to make for Christmas, and then a rocking chair for my mother’s retirement!! 😉
Sven-Olof, thank you for your recommendations. I did not know this French site! It’s a bit expensive but seems a nice place to order things. I have ordered a Veritas cabinet scraper and also a card scraper. Indeed, the grain was going in multiple directions… When I tried to plane the board I had made a (quick) topographical map of the grain direction in order to figure out how to plane it. It did not work at all 🙂
Today I made two dovetails boxes with oak. It worked so nice! I cannot believe how easy it seemed to plane them (even end grain) with a correctly sharpened plane. I even managed to do plane the rim (top/bottom parts, I am not sure I understand the word correctly when Paul says it) perfectly. My previous attempt (on pine!) had been a total disaster! I attached a picture of the two boxes (don’t mind the workbench top, it is all but flat!).
Interestingly, I noticed that one piece of oak I used for the second box was very soft. My chisel seemed to cut very easily in it. Is there any way to figure out how soft a piece of oak will be before trying to plane/cut it?
Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.Thanks @hugonotti, good idea! I will check that next time I go to the tool shop (not sure about the correct word for the shop, google translate didn’t help here).
I tried planing a few pieces for a dovetail box yesterday, and I feel I have rediscovered how to plane. It was so enjoyable! I have also obtained oak end-grain shavings with the shooting board. I was so confused by the fact that I felt my skills becoming worse and worse at planning, while in fact it was just that I was progressively distorting my plane iron bevel.
I think that I will also make a small piece of wood at a 30° angle, just to help me learn the correct position when sharperning with free hands.
Thank you all for your help, I am glad I can use my plane again! 😉
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
Hi all,
first of all, I have attached some pictures to this message, in order to show you the progress. You can see a picture of the flat face before polishing (I really thought I had polished it, but on the picture it looks horrible).
[attachment file=”142713″]
After that, one picture of the polished flat face. Still not perfect, but I hope it is fine now.
[attachment file=”Flat_face_before_polishing.JPG”]
Then, pictures of the guide I made to sharpen. The guide is extremely simple and took me less than ten minutes to create (two wheels, a block of wood and two screws).
[attachment file=142715]
Finally, a picture of the bevel after hand sharpening. I believe it is much better now for, though I am certain I have a long way before it is perfect.
[attachment file=142716]
I checked the flatness of my sole, and it was indeed not flat. I think the corner where the plane once fell was creating a heavy spot on the sole. I tried to flatten it but could not obtain a perfect result. Nevertheless, it looked close enough to what Paul obtained in his bench plane restoration video.
@bossyrangs, thanks for your comments about the workbench. My workbench moving is a huge issue I think. I had already put two large stones on the bottom shelf of the bench, because before that, when i tried to plane, the bench would often start to fall aside. It was a great improvement, but it still moves a lot. I suspect this is because the legs are full of insect holes: I got this workbench from my grandfather, it had not been used in years (more than 15-20 years I think) and insects had claimed it. I tried to restore it, but there are hundreds of holes in each leg, so the wood structure must be really weakened.
Since it seems to be important, I think I will as a next step screw some wood/plywood on the back and side faces, in order to rigidify the structure.
I am longing to make my own workbench (I have watched all the videos of Paul Sellers about making a workbench), but I am so afraid to not be good enough to plane it properly that I am just waiting to be confident about it.- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.@mtaylor: okay I will check that also. I don’t have a large flat surface as Paul Sellers has in his videos, so I am not yet sure how I will check the flatness of my sole.
About the blade: I don’t think it has been heated so I see no reason for it to have become soft. But what you said about the angle confirmed what I suspected! Thanks!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
Hello everyone,
thanks a lot for all your detailed answers. The fact that none mentionned the other issues I was concerned with has reassured me a lot. From all your answers, I believe I have major problems sharpening correctly.
I have refined my issues around three aspects:
* I think my flat face was not polished correctly (even though I spent more than 1h on it Thursday evening). Possibly, my 1200 diamond plate is not fine enough to polish it.
* I have no correct stropping tool. I thought raw leather would be sufficient, but I believe from your comments that this is not a good idea.
* I really wanted to be able to sharpen free-handedly as Paul Sellers does. However, as a complete beginner this was not a good idea. I have discovered that I sharpened out of square (I had a 1mm distance from the square at one end of the blade). Furthermore, and I believe this may be the worst of my problems, I was sharpening at a 20, possibly 15° angle. Paul insisted a lot on not going beyond 30° when sharpening. I was so worried of not going beyond 30° that I resulted in sharpening at far less than 25°. I had a sliding bevel set at 30° to always check myself; this morning I set it at 25 and discovered I was far from 25°. I really hope this is the main issue because as I understand it, the angle is wrong for cutting properly, and the blade is thinner, which is probably why it fractured so fast.So here are the solutions I am applying today:
1. I polished the back face this morning again. I also decided to use my japanese plate which is not very flat, but has a very fine grain (6000 grit) to polish it as suggested by @mechfish. I hope I will be able to remove the burr in one pull after that. Even if I cannot, I am less confused about how to remove the burr thanks to your advices and the different links. I will not use leather until I have polishing compound. I will order online the buffing compound as recommended by @bossyrangs (thanks!).2. I decided to correct my sharpening bevel with a guide. I created an extremely simple guide (jig?) this morning and it works much better than I expected. I was amazed about the difference between a true 25° bevel and the bevel I created had when sharpening free handedly. It took me about 45 mn to grind the full bevel to 25°, and I think I removed something like 2.5-3mm of the blade before I had fully corrected it. This afternoon I will continue working on the bevel at finer grits. Finally, I will again try to apply the 30° microbevel free-handedly using Paul’s technique. I want to master that technique, and now that I have a guide to correct my mistakes, I feel much more confident to try it.
About end-grain shavings: I am reassured that I am not alone in struggling at this step. I believe from all your advices that sharpening properly should result in the ability to produce even small end-grain shavings. I will also study how my position and angle of attack affects the results. As @hugonotti stated, you have to engage all your senses when working wood. However, it is often difficult to be sure if what you felt was good or bad.
I have taken several pictures of my attempts this morning, and will continue this afternoon. I will post the pictures here after I have finished.
I am sincerely thankful for all your answers. I have many hopes that I understood the problems and now know how to fix them. This site has a beautiful community!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
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