April Fool’s Day Comes Early – Sharpening a Moulding Plane
flairwoodworks
| Posted in General Discussion on
Well written.
http://pegsandtails.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/sharpening-a-moulding-plane/#comment-158
Replies
Darn! Gave it away in the title (kind of).
Chris,
Why stop with the mouldy ole planes, which are redundant now that there are 3HP routers and lovely TCT bits. The furniture of that over-dressed historical period also needs a good "sharpen" to make it fit for the modern age.
I believe I may take my Granfors axe and seek out a few scuttle-leggers as well as gadrooned items. Think how good they will look with all that folderol sharpened away! I might call it My Mission (as in: make it all into Mission-style).
Of course some of the more gothic stuff is beyond redemption, even with the aide of an axe. But there will be many a pensioner grateful for a heap of firewood, esepcially if it exhibits the last-gasp of frou-frouism as it is consumed by the cleansing flames. We may need to tie-down the ball & clawed stuff as it may fight back.
Lataxe, enforcing the straight & narrow.
Lataxe
Methinks thee deals too harshly with this period. As any student of the dark middle ages knows, these designs were introduced by the 'aristocracy' so as they could gainfully employ those of lower classes who were liberated from drudgery by the industrial revolution.
Just think of the mischief those idle hands could get into. As it was vast numbers had to be shipped to the colonys. Many were saved from a dreadful demise at the hands of the indigenes in these remote and terrible places by the forethought of these furniture designers..
Those young lasses employed as seamstresses making skirts to cover the inflamatory sight of a nicely turned leg (pun intended) on a table or piano, may well have turned to a life on the streets demanding the vote.
Heaven forbid but should some purists wish to take your thought too far we could see swords and BOWS AND ARROWS eliminated in favour of the clean killing efficiency of 357 magnums and 9mm parabellums.
wot, seeking a few bends.
Wot,
The Americans cheat by using compound bows, which have sights, cams (so the weak lads can still pull the string) and radar in the arrers. There are some who go the other way, using nowt but a stick and a bit of string. Their archery is just like their woodworking : it's either the technology of 1776 or that of 2132.
When I am their new king I will be taking their many pop-guns away and putting them in the royal armoury. They will have to squabble with fluffy pillows instead, which will allow the doctors time to treat ill folk instead of all them wounded ones. Also, those tablesaws will all have to have a sliding carriage................
There will be an enforced period of vegetarianism too. This will stop them revolting again as they will be less aggresive when not filled with half a GM cow with 38 McAdditives in it.
Lataxe, an uppity ferner.
PS Ball & claws will be hunted down, wherever they may scuttle. Anyone found harbouring a set will be made to have ormolu furniture and very bright chandeliers, even at bedtime. Soon they will cry out for a plain Roycroft or even some scandimodern.
Easy on the Yank Bow hunters ;-) In my youth I used to hunt and target practice with a homemade Osage orange long bow, Granted it wasn't an English Yew long bow but she shot well. In my late teens I got my dream bow for hunting in the brushy wood, A Fred Bear Kodiac Magnum recurve.
Bruce,
Despite my feeble attempts to exorcise the neanderthal gene from my own woodworking proclivities (I am well down various handtool slippery slopes) by mocking the scuttle and gadroon, I cannot help myself. As with woodworking so it is with archery....
I have a fine Hoyt recurve bow (made in Utah) along with Easton arrers (also American). However, I do hanker for the primitive aspect of an English longbow, despite (almost because of) it's lack of technogubbins, which literally drips from that Hoyt. There are all sorts of knobs, springs, sticky-out parts and rubber doingers on it.
However, it is a little known fact that English longbows were rarely made of English yew as it is too gnarly, knaggy and knurry for the purpose, seeing as how it grows in dank woods and churchyards full of rotters. In practice the English imported Italian yew which, growing in the warm loam of that blessed place, was somewhat straighter and less scarred with bark-inclusions and other wens.
And those woods you mentioned, including osage and others of the American forests, are now used in laminate form by current makers of traditional English longbow styles. As I understand it, the objective is to stagger the laminate from stretchy woods on the face (outside) of the bow to compressive woods on the inside. The yew sap and heart wood provided this combination of stretchiness and compressiveness all in one piece, I read; but laminates of more ideal stuff make an even better bow.
In all events, I must have a-one. Perhaps I will also attempt to make one in due course. I have the froes, axes, drawknives, spokeshaves, steam box and so forth after all......
Lataxe, discussing current obsession No 7B which has a bit to do with woodwork.
PS I will draw the line at dressing up as Robin Hood, although I could certainly fill a pair of green tights and would surely be irresistable in a small cap with a jaunty cockfeather in it.
FWIW, I started my foray into the ancient art of bowmanship many decades ago with an American imterpretation of the long bow, migrated to a long-ish recurve, and finally to a compound style.
When galloping through the desert on my burro (well, OK, burros don't really gallop, but they saunter rapidly), both the long bow and the recurve drag on the ground. The compound or a short Mongolian recurve work much better at shooting lizards* and scorpions on the saunter.
The long bow, however, does seem to be well-suited to the medieval tradition of ranks of standing bowmen raining death from the skies onto the mongrel hoards.
* not Geckos with British-derived accents, it should be noted.
Lataxe
Forgive them for they know not what they do........ honestly Lataxe would you condenm anyone, even a 'merkin to being flogged unmercifully around the nether regions by an Ikea chair or sofa?
wot
Wot,
I have just noticed your collective noun for our dear friends across the Atlantic! Now, I know you reside in a far away isle at the end of the earth but when the more sensitive fellows discover your disregard they may well feel obliged to sail down there to dump your tea into the harbour.
Perhaps you enjoy wild risk-taking? :-)
I see it now. There you are, happily rooting for rusty ole tools in a delapidated Falkland shed, with only a penguin and two albatrosses nesting in it, when Ralph hoves into view over goosegreen on his burro (which has a quilted overcoat, to keep out the cold). Better run, as he seems to have years of experience twanging a compound bow, which has 34 gubbins on it to ensure that it's impossible to miss.
Nor would I give him the traditional archers' sign of greeting to the French, that of the waved two fingers...........
Lataxe, shocked by what he found under "merkin" at WIkipedia.
PS Perhaps it is not too late to utter grovelling apologies? After all, it takes a while to sail down there with a task force, as we know.
Lataxe
Hand on my heart I thought everyone would accept it as I meant, as an abbreviation of 'American'. I should have realised that such an inquisitive little hobbit lookalike as your good self would dig a little deeper into the more arcane meaning.
Should Ralph venture down to these parts with mayhem in his heart (which I don't believe for a moment he has, knowing him for the fine upstanding gentleman he is) then he would be repulsed as other invaders were some 28 years ago, however we would offer him a beer first as we are very hospitable.
Be warned though we are ready to cut down our boomerang trees and prepare weapons of mass distraction (so I personally, can fade away into the ice packs) and defend ourselves.
wotnow, grovelling in abject humilliation and proffering apologies.
What a brilliant method of sharpening!
Coincidentally, the method also provides a solution to a problem I'm facing. My neighbor is an avid woodworker and has a amazingly well-equipped shop, including one of each of the Lie Nielsen planes and a complete set of Clark & Williams planes. After I helped him with a photographic project, he said he'd put me in his will, and that I'd be receiving all of his tools upon his death. Unfortunately, he's a vampire, and isn't expected to die . . . ever. Unless . . .
Ralph,
If you send the map co-ordinates of that exsanguinator I will tip an arrer with silver and also wrap a frond of the ladywife's elephant garlic about the shaft. I believe I could hit him from here - if you can hold him still for a minute.
Just listen for the whistle of the incoming as it crosses the Atlantic.
Lataxe, saggitarius extraordinaire.
PS I claim the LNs; you can have them wooden thangs.
Cupid you ain't.
wot
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