Mark's Musings

Mark Bronkalla

June Meeting

Mike Hanley did a great presentation on hand planes. He covered the relative merits of a number of plane styles and showed off some samples of work that were finished with a hand plane. Personally, I really enjoyed the comparisons of the modern plane makers and the traditional designs. Based on his recommendation, a low angle jack plane is now on my shopping list.

July Meeting

The July meeting is a combination. Show and tell presentations from a number of people will be given. We have a good number signed up, so it will be full evening.

The tool swap will also be held that night. Bring in you hand and small power tools to sell. Clear out the old stuff (make room for new).  Come early to get a good spot for selling and to get the best buys.

Workshops

Ken Bahr is looking for workshop presenters. While we don’t normally have many I the summer, now is the time to think about the fall workshops. We like to schedule these about 3 months in advance so that we can have sign-ups during 2 or 3 meetings.

I will be running at least on e of the phases of the workbench workshop and may do one on epoxy work and another on tool making. I would like to have the workbench workshop as a series of 3 sessions and in a round-robbing fashion if possible.

Logfest

We are still looking for wood and volunteers to help with hauling and cutting.
Contact Ron Hinderman, Bill Smeaton or Ken Bahr if you have logs or would like to help

Toys

Summer is great time for small projects. For me one of the fun small projects is making toys. It is time to start thinking about and making toys for the toy drive. Also keep your eyes open for rubber membrane roofing material, commonly used on flat and industrial roofs. It makes great feet for the flapper ducks and other toy parts.

In the shop

The past month has been a number of small projects.  With summer starting, I don’t usually do any major furniture projects, but do some “project clean –up” instead. Duting the last class I taught, we sharpened scrapers among other things. My files had been jumbled together in a pile (not good for them) and I have wanted to organize and protect them better. Additionally my chisels wer stored in a drawer on the other side of my shop from my workbench. This lead to building a file and chisel chest to accommodate both.  It is a simple 5 drawer chest made from plywood scraps. The sides are 1/2”  Luaun, the drawer sides are baltic birch and bottoms are 1/4 “ oak plywood.

With the nice weather we also were doing some yard work and looking over the log piles, I came across some nice turning stock candidates. My turning skills need some improvement and using firewood turning stock is a way to practice without burning money.

A particular challenge for me has been to turn nice reproducible beads with a skew. The books say it can be done, but it requires practice. So, I started practicing. Rough out a spindle turn a row of beads a, flatten them, turn them again and so on until there was nothing left. I was getting better, and my chisels were getting adjusted (seems a short bevel works better for me). I still had the problem, when I had a catch, I could not clean up the spiral gouge without making matters worse. After doing some reading I came across 3 tools that looked promising a “pyramid point” tool, a spear point tool and a round bottom scraper / skew like tool. The prices are not bad, but to get all 3 would be well over $100 and I was not sure I would like any of them. So I thought I would make my own.

Making your own tools is a rewarding way to better understand the dynamics of the cutting tool, provide personal customization and save money. The tools required to make your own are: a wood lathe, Torch – either Oxy acetylene or MAPP gas, a magnet, grinder or belt sander, oven.

I use 01 oil hardening tool steel (recommended by Bruce Bogust who taught me how to harden tools). It is inexpensive, easy to machine and can be hardened and tempered without fancy equipment or painstaking detail. )1 stock is available form a variety of places including http://www.mscdirect.com/ and http://www.toolanddie.com. The stock arrives in a fully annealed state and can be cut with a hack saw and easily ground or sanded to shape. I like using my combination 6x48 belt / 9” disk sander for the roughing process.  So start your shaping and grind away. Don’t worry about over heating at this stage as you will harden the piece later. The partially finished tool can be taken  to the lathe and tested. If you like it – great, if not, go and grind some more. In my case I had  to make the pyramid point longer and the spear point shorter.

Once the tool is close to final shape it is time to harden it. To harden, heat it with a torch to bright red color and test with a magnet. When the magnet won’t stick (here is wher the magnet on a stick tools are nice), you have it hot enough. Try to have the torch set for a slightly carburizing flame. Quench it in a bucket of oil (used motor oil is just fine) and swish it around until cool.. The kids enjoy watching the smoke and flames at this point. It this point, the metal is fully hardened. You can check with a file and it should simply skitter across without cutting.

The next step is tempering. Clean up the metal and make it nice and shiny again. I t will be blacked from heating and quenching. Wash it well to remove any residual oil (or the next step will make you very unpopular with your spouse. To temper, bake in a 400 degree oven for at least an hour, turning the oven off to cool – leave the tool in. Once cool, you can either polish it up, or leave the colors (I like the gold-purple – bronze colors myself).   Sharpen it up and mount it in the new handle you make on your lathe. I like copper rings for decoration and to prevent splitting. To do the final fit, you may wan tot heat the tang end with a torch to cherry red again and then plunge it into the handle (especially for flat tools). If glue is needed, I normally use some polyurethane.

So this month, I have the new spear point tool, pyramid point, skewchigouge, and a thin parting tool. Each one cost $8-10. I will be making some more including a large skew.  The money saved will help pay for a new large gouge. By the way, the new tools work well for beads and can very nicely to do the clean up necessary if I have a skew catch.

For a good article on making some of these tools see:
http://www.davidreedsmith.com/Articles/PyramidPointTool/PyramidPointTool.htm

If you are using your belt sander for shaping, do not mix the metal dust and sawdust in your shop vac. The seemingly obvious danger of sparks igniting the stuff in the vacuum is not too great as they go out quickly, but the reaction between the metal dust and wood dust (if at all damp) can cause spontaneous combustion.


Board Briefs

JUNE BOARD BRIEFS


Members Present:          Mark Bronkalla, Dick Yezek, Liz Rohde, Jerry Kashmerick,
                                       Leila Crandall-Frink, Ken Bahr & Mary Anderson


President:    Mark announced that he received the new microphone needed for the monthly meetings. This should help everyone hear the presenter in the guild meetings.  He also indicated a need for better lighting for the same meetings.  Everyone present agreed that we should look into a way to create a safe way to light the presenter while not blinding or creating a hazard for other members present. Some members let Mark and other committee members know that they liked the chairs set up in the semi-circle pattern much better than the other way.  Many questions arose regarding how to move and store the logs for Logfest.

 
Vice-President:    Dick announced that there were not much more monies coming in for the summer for workshops.

Treasurer:      Liz announced that we currently have a $11,123.11 balance in the Treasury at the end of May.  She also announced that she was called with an idea for a workshop from Wood Craft.  This would be a marathon turning workshop.  The toys that were made would all be donated to the shelters for the holidays.  The board all agreed that it was a good idea and that we should look into it further.

Exhibits & Publicity:    Jerry mentioned that there is a need for 24 people to work Germanfest and that we only have approximately 10 people so far.  Some of the members are working double shifts.

Publications:    Leila mentioned that she has the new business cards.  It was brought up to the board that there is a need for more trifolds so that we will have some for German fest.  The board agreed to print more.  Jerry will keep them with him.  It was mentioned that there would not be a publication meeting for the months of July and August.  They will resume in September.  All assignments were taken care of.

Programs/ Workshops:    Ken came up with some new ideas for the monthly guild meetings.  The board discussed them and agreed that we should look into them.  He has also lined up three programs for the rest of the year.  He let us all know that Ernie Conover will be available for 2005.  Everyone agreed that we should set up a workshop to make a workbench to be used for the monthly guild meetings.  The workbench would be a donation.  There were many new topics from the board on different workshops or programs that current members are willing to perform.

Membership:    Mary announced that the membership is up greatly from the previous year at this time.  We are getting one to two new members each month this year.  The current membership stands at 171 members.
 

Program

For current calendar information see:
http://wiscwoodworkersguild.org/cgi-bin/eventcalendar.cgi

Reflections

Mike Hanley – Hand Planes

Brian Halligan


    Mike Hanley, a founding member of the Wisconsin Woodworkers Guild, presented an overview of hand planes for fine woodworking at the June 2004 meeting.  Mike began with a justification for why, in this era of power tools, the hand plane is a valuable contributor to fine woodworker’s toolbox.  Many argue that the finish left by a hand plane cannot be duplicated by other means.  Because the fibers are cleanly cut instead of abraded, this leads a to clearer view of the wood grain.  Mike also pointed out that hand planning can be far less aggressive than a power jointer or thickness planer and this can be critical for highly figured woods and delicate areas such as crotch or burl sections where the grain does not run in a consistent direction.  Although this is true, there are some who would also argue that a thickness sander could also smooth these areas without tear out as well, but it is better to ruin a project slowly than quickly.
    The history of the hand plane dates to ancient Egyptian times or earlier.  Basically, a plane can be though of as a chisel mounted in a holder.  Initially, this holder was made of wood.  Wood has some advantages such as being easy to fabricate and to flatten the bottom, but has difficulties in adjustment and long-term durability.  This led to the development of the metal adjuster mechanism patented by Leonard Bailey.  Mike discussed two of the three main forms of planes:  the infill plane in which the sole and adjuster are metal and the body is made of wood, typified by the English and Scottish planes such as the Norris and Spiers coffin body infill smoothers, and the all metal planes produced by Stanley, Miller Falls and others in the United States.  The third form that was not discussed are the transitional planes, often made by the same US manufacturers, in which the adjuster is the same as found on the all metal planes, but the body and sole of the plane are made of wood.  
    Mike argues that many of the initial US made planes were aimed at the general carpentry trade more than the fine woodworking trade and were of slipshod design and construction.  The English planes were being produced in a very labor intensive manner and were a response to the use of exotic woods imported from far flung parts of the British Empire which became popular in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.  These more difficult woods required a higher quality tool to produce fine work.  The American response to these high-end planes was the Stanley Bedrock series.  Notable in later models for their square shoulders, these planes were designed and constructed better than their more common Bailey counterparts.  They had better ‘frogs’ which provided better blade support and throat design.  Since these high priced planes were produced in much fewer number than their common carpentry plane counterparts and their production ended at the start of WW II, they are difficult to find and complete examples in collector condition can often fetch several hundred dollars.  Tool swap meets and Ebay are the two most fruitful sources for these planes. 
    The only modern planes that are comparable are those produced by Lie Nielsen and a couple of other ‘boutique’ plane makers.  These manufactures have recreated a number of the original Stanley designs in bronze and malleable iron as well as the original cast iron.  The other metals have an advantage over cast iron in that cast iron is brittle and can crack or shatter if mistreated. One improvement that was introduced with these copies of the original designs is the inclusion of a much thicker blade, which is also sometimes cryogenically treated so as to have better metallurgical properties. These improved blades can also be used in antique planes.  A second advantage of the newer planes is that they come out of the box ready to use.  Most of the antique planes will take some or a lot of work to repair and true before use.
    Mike also discussed the issue of blade geometry.  Bench planes have their blades situated with the bevel facing down and the back of the blade facing up.  Most have an angle of 45° between the back of the blade and the sole of the plane.  Block planes have their blade with the bevel facing up, but are bedded at a much lower angle, typically about 20°.  However, since the bevel on the blade is at 25°, the effective angle is 45°, or the same as the block plane.  Bench planes with the blade bedded at a higher angle (50°) were called York planes from the area that first produced them and they were made to work difficult woods that were prone to tear out.  Since these planes are difficult to find, an alternative approach is to add a 5° bevel to the backside of the blade.  This ‘back bevel’ leads to an effective angle of 50° in a normal bench plane. Mike also discussed the value of a chip breaker.  His argument and testing implies that the chip breaker is not a necessary component and in fact most planes function as well or better without one.
    Mike then attacked the thorny question of “If you were on a desert island with one plane, which would you pick?”  Assuming that a hand crank radio transmitter or a package of flares was not among the choices, Mike would pick the Lie Nielsen #4 1/2.  The #4 1/2 is a heavier, wider version of the #4 smoothing plane. In general, planes with single digits are bench planes and higher numbers are bigger.  The 1/2 designation indicates extra width, while the 1/4 designation is less wide than normal. Although Lee Valley has introduced innovative plane designs, the quality of the Lie Nielsen machining makes for a more functional plane.  The $300 price tag for this plane is justified if you are working extensively in exotic woods or if you like bragging about how thin your shavings are.  This brings to mind the story about the three woodworkers bragging about their planning prowess. The first says, “My shavings are so thin that you can read through them”.  The second guffaws and says, “Mine are so thin that they float up to the ceiling on their own”.  The third states, “I got you both, mine are so thin that they evaporate as soon as I make them.”  Some people make furniture; some people make shavings.
For an extensive overview of Stanley planes, see the Stanley Blood and Gore site at:http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan0.htm.

Photos from the Meeting:




Raffle Column

Alan Clapp

July Raffle:

 
Tom Schuppe was the June raffle winner of the "Mr. Strong" clamping system donated by Bob Janecek, manager of Rockler Woodworking and Hardware.  Tom will no doubt enjoy using this flexible tool for his next woodworking project.  Rockler Woodworking and Hardware is located at 845 North Mayfair Road Milwaukee, WI  774-1882.
 
Several packets of 3M sand paper will be raffled off during the July raffle to help you smooth out your summer project.

Classified

Delta 16" bandsaw with extra blades and accessories. $225 Brian Halligan