All I want to do is just take a couple of swipes with this plane here
like this. Now,
if I take a swiping stroke,
the wood doesn’t have chance to answer back.
I’m using a lot of power, a lot of force,
and that generally overcomes the power,
the resistance that I’m getting.
But if I go slowly like this,
I can feel and I can see in the surface.
I can see this chatter in the surface.
What I have to con consider is it friction on the wood.
Is it the position of the wood in relation to the bench
and the tightness in the vice?
Is it the amount of cutting iron
that I’ve got protruding past the sole face?
Or is it some other adjustment that I’ve got to think about?
So first of all, I’m going to go as low as I can in the vice
to see what difference I get here.
It’s very different. I still feel a little bit of flex in the wood,
but I can’t go any lower.
So now I’ve got to consider backing off my plane iron.
So I’m taking the plain iron back up into the throat.
I’m getting a completely different sound,
and I’ve got no vibration.
There’s no vibration there.
But one added thing I will always do
is I’m going to reduce the friction
between the sole and the surface of the wood.
This is just my can and my ragging a can. Oiler,
I use that all the time. You could use beeswax,
then put that on. This makes. Ah, absolutely.
You can even hear the difference.
I can hear it, I can feel it.
And it just glides across the surface of the wood.
So I’ve eliminated that vibration because of the position of the wood,
because the adjustment of the plane.
Now I want to look at some end grain,
and I’m going to take my plane on here
and take a couple of shavings.
I’m not worried about the outcome in this case.
Now this is working well on the end grain.
Let me take another plane.
This is a smaller plane.
Let me see if I can.
So I’m struggling a bit here,
and that mostly it’s because I’ve got friction.
So it is jumping,
it is scudding across the surface and backing off my iron too much.
And I keep working the plane on the surface of the wood.
There’s sometimes when you’re planing in this end grain,
you’ll hear this very high pitched, um, vibration,
a harmonic setup. And then I go to the oil,
I wipe it across the sole here like this,
and I immediately eliminate the vibration.
So these are ways that we have to work with our tools,
work with the planes, adjustment,
adjusting our position, adjusting our attitude.
Sometimes I might take this same piece of wood
and go this way in the vice,
so that I’m pushing into the body.
Of the wood, of the bench itself.
And I get this really solid feel about it.
Not always. Can you do that?
The wood may be too wide. There are things like that.
Sometimes I go on this side of the vice, low down,
and I’m doing fine, no problem.
But when I go to this side of the vice,
something changes.
Now I can feel opposition again.
And that’s because you got to remember that wood is like straws
being stood up on end like this.
So when I’m pulling this, I’m pulling this apart.
I’m not opposing it, compressing it between a pressure point.
And these are the things that I have to consider,
because I’ve got vibration on this out cut
that I didn’t get here at the very beginning.
If I go on the inside again,
very low down in the vice,
absolutely zero vibration.
And that’s what I’m looking for all the time.
So I make these micro adjustments with my plane
just to see how I can better every situation.
So it is corresponding with exactly what I’m feeling,
what I’m hearing. And I work on my planes that way.
I work with my wood. I listen,
I feel, uh,
I smell. All of those different things are all part of the sensitivity.
We’ve got to make those micro adjustments and make the plane,
make the tools work better.