Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

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Petecane
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Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Petecane » Sun May 05, 2019 1:31 pm

I have recently invested in the above.
I will be surfacing boards no larger than Tenor Ukulele.
Is this a good substitute for a high angle plane?
To achieve optimal sharpness I find difficult.
The plane is made to master class so the fault lies with me.
My second question is do you have any tips?
I would dearly like to attend your courses in Sydney but the cost of travel is prohibitive to me.

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kiwigeo
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by kiwigeo » Sun May 05, 2019 4:56 pm

Is the Veritas scraper plane a good substitute for a high angle smoothing plane? The scraper plane is good where you have difficult grain to deal with or youre removing minute amounts of material and you want a smooth surface straight off the plane. For working wood with grain that isn't rogue a high angle smoother will mean less muscle work.

Sharpening a high angle blade and a scraper blade is a totally different kettle of fish. The high angle blade will come with a primary bevel ground into the blade. I work a secondary bevel into the primary bevel and that is my cutting edge. For a scraper blade you need to true up the edge of the blade ( I use a file in a right angle jig) and then work a hook into same using a hand burnisher or a burnishing tool. IMO getting a good working edge on a scraper blade requires a bit more skill than sharpening a smoothing plane blade. It's hard work and until you get good at it your early attempts will result in a hook that doesn't last long.

Sharpening a Veritas scraper plane blade explained in this video: https://youtu.be/wggbXi6WSIk
Petecane wrote:
Sun May 05, 2019 1:31 pm
I have recently invested in the above.
I will be surfacing boards no larger than Tenor Ukulele.
Is this a good substitute for a high angle plane?
To achieve optimal sharpness I find difficult.
The plane is made to master class so the fault lies with me.
My second question is do you have any tips?
I would dearly like to attend your courses in Sydney but the cost of travel is prohibitive to me.
Martin

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Trevor Gore
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Trevor Gore » Tue May 07, 2019 7:08 pm

To me (at least) high angle planes and scraper planes are very different beasts. I don't own a scraper plane (but I use card scrapers), I have 2 high angle planes and can configure 2 other planes as high angle planes. I find that if I can't do it (whatever "it" happens to be) with a high angle plane, I probably won't be able to do it with a scraper plane either (but not necessarily for the same reasons).

For uke panels, you could consider the following: Do the bulk of the thickness reduction planing cross grain (see Figs 6-4 to 6-7 in Build) with a standard angle plane, then put a finish on the surface by planing in line with a high angle plane. For uke panels this can be the same plane, a standard (20 degree bed angle) block plane, with two blades. One with a low bevel angle (say 25 to 30 degrees) and one with a high bevel angle (40 to 45 degrees). This gives you cutting angles of ~45 degrees (standard angle) to 65 degrees (high angle), and should pretty much cover all bases. Lie Neilsen and Veritas make suitable adjustable mouth block planes. Check this out!

One final thing, sharpness is everything! If you can't get the blade sharp, you're in a world of gloom!

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kiwigeo
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by kiwigeo » Tue May 07, 2019 9:17 pm

I should have added that I have a Veritas scraper plane but I hardly use the thing.....I picked up a 1930's vintage Millers Falls scraper plane at a tool sale a few years ago and before I bought my drum sander the Millers Falls was doing most of the work thinning sides.
Martin

Andos
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Andos » Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:12 pm

Appologies all but just to move slightly off topic.
I've just made a high angle Bailey No4 using Trevors method with the 12mm round bar. I'm waiting for an A2 blade and a honing guide to appear in the mail before I try it out.
My question is what angle should the micro bevel be?
I was thinking about increasing it to 45 or 50 degrees or is it better to stick to 35?

Cheers
Ando

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kiwigeo
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by kiwigeo » Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:48 pm

If you're using the Veritas roller style honing guide the angle of the microbevel is preset at 1-2deg. The primary bevel is ground and then the roller is elevated slightly by turning the adjusting screw....the screw only has two stops from memory..primary and micro-bevel.

If working in a microbevel by hand aim for 1-2deg or roughly work the microbevel face about 1/8" back from the primary bevel edge
Andos wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:12 pm
Appologies all but just to move slightly off topic.
I've just made a high angle Bailey No4 using Trevors method with the 12mm round bar. I'm waiting for an A2 blade and a honing guide to appear in the mail before I try it out.
My question is what angle should the micro bevel be?
I was thinking about increasing it to 45 or 50 degrees or is it better to stick to 35?

Cheers
Ando
Martin

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Trevor Gore
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Trevor Gore » Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:10 pm

Andos wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:12 pm
Appologies all but just to move slightly off topic.
I've just made a high angle Bailey No4 using Trevors method with the 12mm round bar. I'm waiting for an A2 blade and a honing guide to appear in the mail before I try it out.
My question is what angle should the micro bevel be?
I was thinking about increasing it to 45 or 50 degrees or is it better to stick to 35?

Cheers
Ando
I've always used 35 degrees, but might change, soon. There's a bit of a story to this...

When I first did the "round bar" frog modification I also went for an after-market blade, because I thought it would work better, with no real idea of what "better" might mean. Well, it worked fine and the after-market blade I used was a Lie-Nielsen 3.5mm thick blade.

Move on 15 or so years and I thought, "how about trying a PMV 11 blade in the high angle plane?" The PMV 11 blade was only 2.5mm thick. So I re-set the plane mouth and honed up the PMV 11 blade. It was a total fail. The reason was that the blade bent. At 2.5mm thick, due to the cube rule it was only ~1/3rd as stiff, so on the cutting stroke the blade dug into the wood, bent back and the plane just stopped. There was no way it was going to get pushed through that. Essentially, it was a case of terminal chatter; one half cycle and it was done. So I had to revert to the 3.5mm blade and revert to the original plane set up.

So the learnings from that were that the unsupported overhang of the blade cutting edge over the end of the frog must be as short as possible, to keep the bend flex down. The blade needs to be as stiff (read thick) as possible. The effective stiffness can be increased by increasing the primary bevel angle, which is OK because with the frog at ~ 60 degrees there is plenty of clearance angle.

Further, my bevel up high angle planes always seemed to work a little bit better than my bevel down high angle plane, and I used to think that was due to the bevel-ups being 62 degrees cutting angle vs. 60 degrees on the bevel down plane. However, I now reckon that was due to blade flex that had gone un-noticed, because no chatter was evident. So I reckon with a bit more tuning of the modified bevel down plane, reducing the length of unsupported blade on the frog and reducing it again by having a higher primary bevel angle on the blade, I should be able to match the performance of the bevel up planes.

You live and learn!

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Steve.Toscano
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Steve.Toscano » Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:18 pm

Andos wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:12 pm

My question is what angle should the micro bevel be?
I was thinking about increasing it to 45 or 50 degrees or is it better to stick to 35?
As you are talking about a bevel down plane here the angle of the micro bevel will make no difference to the performance of the plane, it will however to the longevity of the edge. Personally I'd go with around a 30 or 35 degree micro bevel, as high as 50 will also work.
kiwigeo wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:48 pm
If you're using the Veritas roller style honing guide the angle of the microbevel is preset at 1-2deg. The primary bevel is ground and then the roller is elevated slightly by turning the adjusting screw....the screw only has two stops from memory..primary and micro-bevel.
My Veritas mk2 guide has 3 stops - Primary, and then 2x micro (secondary) bevel stops. I always go from the primary to the 2nd micro stop (180degrees around) which i believe gives a 5 degree micro bevel.

Andos
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Andos » Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:53 am

Thank you for your replys,
Luckily it is a 3.2 thick blade I ordered,. So that should take care of any chatter problem.
Hopefully the honing guide will sort my abysmal sharpening skills out. It is a veritas, so any issues will lie with the operator!
As for the angles, to start I'll stick to standard angles, see how it goes and maybe change angles later.
Sharpness, followed closely by blade life is what I'm after. I tried heat quenching a standar0d blade. That wasn't too successful as I couldn't keep the blade flat.

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kiwigeo
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by kiwigeo » Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:30 am

I'm away at work but that sounds right. Haven't had my hands on the honing guide for over a year now :?

I usually use the second stop.

I also use the convex roller on my guide which allows me to put in a slight curve on the sharp end of the blade....reduces the dig in you sometimes get with a straight ended blade.
Steve.Toscano wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:18 pm

My Veritas mk2 guide has 3 stops - Primary, and then 2x micro (secondary) bevel stops. I always go from the primary to the 2nd micro stop (180degrees around) which i believe gives a 5 degree micro bevel.
Martin

bluefuzz
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by bluefuzz » Tue Aug 20, 2019 9:01 pm

I've not really found any advantage using either high-angle or low-angle planes. If there is need of a different angle it's just as easy to just put a back bevel on a standard angle blade. The wood doesn't really care what the angle of the frog is.

What I do find useful is using a home made toothed – or rather 'kerfed' – iron for difficult woods. I grind kerfs every 2–3 mm with a Dremel grinding wheel on the edge of a standard No. 4 blade. For *really* difficult wood I have a blade with a back bevel *and* kerfs. Otherwise it's sharpened normally at 35°.

I usually take the wood down to within a millimetre or so of final thickness with a standard angle No. 5 1/2 with a slight camber on the blade. I then take it down to thickness with the kerfed No. 4 and finish off with one of StewMac's 'Carruth' scrapers or a scraper plane. This is a really quick and painless way to thickness backs and sides with absolutely no tearout.

The kerfed blade has the added advantage of being much easier to push through the wood.

Andos
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Andos » Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:50 am

Cheers for that bluefuzz. I'll get the grinder onto a spare blade this arvo!

All the veritas bits turned up. I only ordered them from Carbactec on Saturday, arrived tuesday- no complaints about their service.
The blade slot is a wee bit narrower. I'll turn up another follower for the squaring lever then, fingers crossed, I'm in business

I have been using a standard plane bevel up which gave me 80degrees and a few problems. Chatter and hard to push. Lite cuts and candle wax minimised those. And short blade life, so lots of honing. All up, it takes me hours to do a back.
Now I have two planing methods and decent honing guide. Things should be getting a lot easier

Thanks for all the help
Ando

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Trevor Gore
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Trevor Gore » Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:44 am

I find that the fastest way to remove bulk wood from figured panels is to plane cross grain with a curved edge standard angle plane. Then finish in line with a high angle plane. See pages 6-3 and 6-5 in Build.

Andos
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Re: Veritas scraper plane in lieu of high angle plane

Post by Andos » Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:23 pm

WOW
WHAT A DIFFERANCE

I got the plane mods finished, honed & fitted my new a2 blade, put the wood I going to use for the next uke on the table. 5 minutes, no ridges, no tearout. It used to take me 1/2 the night using the old elbow grease sander to get under the tearout.

I'm wrapped with the results - the guide, the blade and the plane mods - money and time well spent (for a change) lmao

Now, there is a fulla down the South Island selling some hard beech (hard to work due to high silica content). Time to give him a ring!

:dru :dru :dru

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