Hi Folks,
I have several transition planes and am wondering if they are worth fettling into working planes. I’ve read several posts in the past that didn’t exactly place them in esteem high by users. The ones I have look to be in pretty decent shape, i.e. the wood is in good shape (not rot) and the irons are certainly workable/fettlable.
Any thought as to how best to employ/tune them?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 8/26/2007 7:22 am ET by KiddervilleAcres
Edited 8/26/2007 7:23 am ET by KiddervilleAcres
Replies
This oughta help, http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=smalser&file=articles_610.shtml . Personally I've never found any transitional except the 35 to be attractive but an ugly plane does just as good work as a pretty one I spose.
-Ryan C.
Of course they are worth fettling, the feel of wood on wood to my mind gives a unique satisfaction not to be found with metal planes.
If you have to, redo the mouth, true the sole, sharpen the blade with a tad of camber and listen to the whistle as you work. I find if I do not have shavings thinner at the sides, then the mouth tends to choke- the planes not mine!
Probably an age thing, but I have a degree of difficulty in understanding the cult of planes, chisels and so on. I do like tools which perform as they should, however the limiting factor seems to be fettling myself to do just that instead of overcomplicating every task.
Mufti,
That was exactly what I was thinking too. I'm curious if a finely tuned transitional plane might cause it to burnish the wood. Perhaps a light touch? If so then the blade must be very/scary sharp?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 8/26/2007 11:12 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Viability as users? I certainly use them as you can see. And have for 45 years along with other family woodies. The transitional's modern niche is overhead and odd-angle work on large, fixed workpieces like boats because they are relatively light for the work they'll do. But properly tuned, they'll take a thin, full-width shaving of hard oak as well as any plane, including the pretty, new 250-dollar ones.
Yes, I use them. So did 4 or so generations of the same Victorian/post-Victorian craftsmen whose houses, furniture and yachts folks today ooh and aah over.
Today the trend seems to be to drool over their craftsmanship yet pooh-pooh their tools, entirely missing the connection between the two. One moment we lionize their work, the next we poormouth their tools as if they were some unfortunate victims desperately waiting for Tom Lie Nielsen or the Japanese to build them a proper hand plane, saw or chisel. Well, the great numbers of tool companies between 1870 and WWII competed hard with each other to meet the demands of their customers, not determine it. These old tools deserve a lot more credit than they get these days.
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Edited 8/27/2007 7:10 am by BobSmalser
I do believe a new adventure is about to begin for me. Thank you so much for your words of wisdom. I had a feeling that I should investigate these planes further.
My grandfather had one and was the first plane that I had any experience using (back in '72). I kept it for all these years and just the other day I spotted it in a dusty box of tools he gave me many years ago.
Never gave it a thought with my fascination for all these power tools I've acquired sinnce then.
And now I've got a new/old tool! Thanks Bob (Mr. Smalser)
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
It's always my pleasure to help. Post #25 on the Woodenboat Building and Repair FAQ has everything I've written to date on traditional boatbuilding, to include converting the logs and tuning the hand tools necessary to do it: http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/showthread.php?t=48786&highlight=faq
These jewels can't be had anyway else either, and beat sanding a couple hundred linear feet of spar 6 ways from loose:
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Boats remain one of the last fonts of commercial hand tool use, because so many angles, curves and finish requirements in combination will allow nothing else.
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Like on transitional planes, take a lot of what you read about hand tools these days with a grain of salt. A lot of it is written by collectors and tool dealers who may mean well, but really don't know very much about wood, and even less about woodworking at a commercial pace to a "Bristol" standard. Otherwise Stanley and others sure did pull the wool over the eyes of several generations of fools using their products professionally, selling them millions of hunks of firewood and door stops while calling them tools.
Edited 8/27/2007 6:53 am by BobSmalser
One would think that there could be a whole new beginning for those inclined to manufacture frogs of varying degree!
Wondering about a low angle bevel up? Maybe someone missed the boat, no pun intended................
I tuned up one of the planes from grandpapa and tried it out this morning. Still looking for the right cut. Seems like you have to keep it veeerrrrryyyy small.
I'm somewhat used to having the weight of the iron working for me. Now I have to really work the plane. Also, there seems to be more feeling/readback from the wood.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, this just might be fun. Not to mention the workout!
Fettle while you work,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 8/27/2007 8:01 am ET by KiddervilleAcres
Ah, transitionals...the planes Pat loves to hate!
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One of my good all 'round users. I took a picture of it simply because it was one of the seeming rare instances of making something "other" for a while. Thickish shavings in a fairly non-challenging wood (Mahogany).
They are easy to tune, can be made to bed the irons very well, and most can have a thicker iron placed in them if desired.
Because they are so cheap they can reperesent a pretty good buy for someone just beginning, too.
Take care, Mike
The problem here is you are going to introduce a sense of reality to these proceedings. For many of we virtual entities wandering the halls of cerebal cyberspace (with more space that cyber), this may prove too much.
Keep commonsense comments coming, you never know we may learn something.
Here-here! Well said!peace, mark
I am in the dark here: who in this thread has actually rubbished these transitional planes? Was it me when I mentioned that they are difficult to use EFFECTIVELY on some hardwoods? Nay. I don't rank any of the oaks as very hard, or difficult to work, but I would still prefer to use an all metal decent quality plane to work the more difficult hardwoods-which does not mean that transitional planes are useless for hardwoods. I am saying that they are more difficult to use on hard woods-real hard woods.
I am referring to Stanley transitional planes like the one I pictured i.e those with thin whippy blades, the 45 degree bed and the famous Stanley adjusting mechanism with lashings of back lash.
So I do not share the view of Bob entirely, unless I got him wrong, but I certainly do not agree with Patrcik Leach who likes to burn these planes on sight.....Philip Marcou
Edited 8/28/2007 4:24 am by philip
Philip,
Just now that Ayn Rand has got hold of my meme-procesor so more sympathy than is usual in my nog is being given to modernist sentiments. But even without this current amplification of the modernist rhythm in my bonce, I have to both defend the idea of tradition but also suggest that the word does not mean "uncritical approval of all things past".
Mr S rightly gives credence to the fact that good old tools produced good old work. But (perhaps as you are suggesting) let us not forget that there was plenty of bad old work done with bad old tools as well. Naturally the bad tends to disappear over time whilst we preserve the good. This is maybe where these "golden age" myths arise. But it also shows that a good tradition includes experience-based experimentation and evolution from good to better.
Moreover, it is foolish to pretend that everything worthwhile (including tool design and manufacture) was achieved long ago so we cannot make better stuff. I am tempted to give 1000 examples to illustrate that the shock of the new soon becomes the everyday, pleasurable (and even expected) new (and higher) standard for this or that. Go on then: one or two examples:
* The telegraph ("the Victorian Internet") compared to the WWW.
* Rebreather scuba equipment compared to diving suits/helmets.
So, are modern quality tools (including planes) an improvement over the old equivalents (globally speaking). I don't know as I am not familiar with the old stuff. However, I am seriously impressed with the new, particularly Marcou, Veritas and Lie Nielsen.
Finally: I often wonder why people adopt a stance based not just on their intimate knowledge of A but inclusive of a foolish rejection of B when they know bugger-all about B. How often do you read, "I have never used B because B is rubbish".? (How can they know)?
Lataxe, who likes to tear off blinkers and look about.
Aye Lud, aye . Never a truer word said, with such diplomacy.
There is just one small thing I would like to add to the stew: in the good old days there was an abundance of nice friendly wood species so there was no need for the good old boys to worry themselves or their planes with the likes of Burmese Teak, Jatoba,Afzelia, Mutondochuru, certain Australians etc. (Well Ramjee Singh and co used the Teak exclusively, but have you seen their transitionals? Man, they sit on them and ride them like Harley Davidsons...)
But seriously, if you can lay your hands on a heavier type of transitional like what Mike W pictured (See the heavy iron and cap with screw rather than the cam type), snapitup like,paint it green and add it to the herd.
I never did get into Ayn Rand-too late now.
Philip Marcou
Edited 8/28/2007 6:54 am by philip
If you examine 100+-year-old shipwright planes, you'll find they are often a bit narrower than store-bought woodies, that razee totes were favored, and they were often made out of difficult tropical hardwoods. Where do you spose those fellas got those tropicals if they weren't using them in boats?
Mine is a different point of view. Certainly there'a a difference between a factory-made transitional and an expensive smoother. And for general use well short of smoothing highly-figured woods, that difference is mostly price. For most users, smoothers serve a number of other purposes, often where the last tool you'd choose to carry up the scaffold or out in the rain is your most valuable houseplant plane.
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There's a place for both. Chipbreaker and cap iron technology works on transitionals just as well as on Bedrock clones when planing hardwoods, and if the rest of the plane is tuned, iron thickness alone means nothing in 95% of my work. The advantage of the woodie is the flat sole even the heavy irons need to work well is so simple to achieve for beginners.
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Otherwise I'll defer to y'all about the advantages of the more spendy hand planes and heavy, 50-degree smoothers. But only so far. ;)
Edited 8/28/2007 10:57 am by BobSmalser
Bob,
Another thought keeps swirling around in my head, a transitional scraper plane?
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I've never tried to make a scraper plane, but I've shimmed plenty of frogs to various angles.
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On a non-razee transitional, you could shim the frog up to an angle that matches the #112's, and simply reverse the plane, using it backwards. Ergonomics would benefit from making a new plane body of course, and you'd have to do some file and tap/die work to reverse the knobs.
But I believe some mouth front clearance for the scrapings would be useful, and you'd have to figure that out.
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All in all, you'd more than likely wind up with a Rube Goldberg contraption and would be better off buying a L/N #112, a better value than a collector Stanley. Besides, the more money you spend, the more TSHOF points you accumulate ;)
Edited 8/30/2007 12:31 am by BobSmalser
You can of course take a standard smoother and simply turn the iron 180degrees, open up the mouth to compensate, and you have a bit steeper than york pitch at a pinch. Works well too.
It is indeed possible to use a Stanley bench plane as a scraper plane.
A little while ago I posted this picture of a #7 set up to scrape at 90 degrees (reversed blade bevelled at 45 degrees). The timber here is hard Jarrah.
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This worked so well that I did the same to a #4 and compared it to a Stanley #112.
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Regards from Perth
Derek
Señor LaTaxe!
Ayn Rand, eh? If you've not gotten there yet, for an interesting and intellectually challenging bit of reading, try Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness. I think you'll enjoy dissecting those two....
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are, of course, also fun reading, as is Philosophy: Who Needs It.
.<!----><!----><!---->
Tschüß!<!----><!---->
<!----><!---->James<!----><!---->
<!----> <!---->
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that...."
-- A.C. Clarke
Bob, I agree with Mufti-they are worth jacking up if you enjoy the process.
My only caveat is that they are not much good for hard or difficult woods, or rather, they are difficult to use effectively on these woods.
They are light, so on soft woods are very pleasant to use.
I found one here and "fixed" it up just for fun.
Sir philip,
Cat man do - Bob Seger! Sorry, it was the first thing that came to mind.
If they're basically only good for softwoods then it seems to me not worth the effort. I'm curious how they might perform as a final smoother, i.e. get the mouth very tight and a very light cut?
Perhaps I should abandon my quest to make these into a useful tool. I read Mr. Smalsers rehab as suggested by RyanC and found it most interesting. I have a slab of hard maple with which to rehap the sole and am thinking about perhaps using birch for same.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 8/26/2007 8:54 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
BobI've got a transitional plane sitting on one of the bookshelves in my office. Reminds me of what I'd rather be doing....Tom"Notice that at no time do my fingers leave my hand"
Tom,
Aahh, c'mon man. You're not up to a challenge? Where's that old get up and go? Surely you aren't about to let that plane just sit there and gather dust?!
How's about using it as a shooting plane? Outfitted with a new hard maple sole could ya make it into a real nice smoother? Think of the possibilities!
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
You can give it any mouth you want.
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And plane anything any other 45-degree lightweight smoother will plane just as well.
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View Image“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
Mr. Smalser
What are your thoughts as to the viabiity of these planes as users?
I see them as a great smoother albeit light in weight but wouldn't they be good for the touch? Perhaps as a final to get that wood really smooth?
Am I trying to push a daisey into the wrong field?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 8/26/2007 11:03 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Bob, I know you: you enjoy reviving these old tools, so do not "abandon the quest".
Look at this Stanley Rule Level Co #27-jack plane length, but very light in weight and also construction, so would not fair well on "tough" woods, but very nice otherwise. I would not bother with a very tight mouth-you want to take thick shavings. The sole is beech, the right stuff for the job, but I used some Iroko for the knob as the original was damaged.I like the colour green for tools.... About two hours to revive that one-worth it.Philip Marcou
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