Talking shop # 19

tapering battens

[ soundtrack : Svanrand - Heilung ]

***

Some Saturday mornings follow Friday evenings that have evaporated.

We take drinking Jól seriously up here in Ultima Thule.

A short, bracing bout at the bench can be mighty restorative — just what the doctor ordered. Nothing like a couple of hours of moderate activity to dispel the lethargy of dissolution; to get your blood up and your mind off neurotic hypotheticals. If the police haven’t called by dinnertime, you’re probably fine.

But for God’s sake, let’s keep it simple! All I want is to taper the ends of some battens.

It’s an easy-to-do operation that makes your work look just a little bit more refined and finished — like it was made by someone with attention to detail and a good eye.

Sometimes, the carpenters who visit my shop wonder why I have several handplanes. “You only have two hands, so you can only use one at a time!“ I explain that I use them for different tasks, and that they are set up differently.

When setting out as a hobbyist woodworker, you could manage with only one plane — a no. 5 would be my suggestion, especially if you have a set of differently ground blades to put in it. With a heavily cambered blade and an open mouth it can hog off wood almost like a scrub-plane, and with a more moderately cambered iron it works as the jack-plane it was designed to be. It’s long enough for edge-jointing if you’re attentive about it and with an imperceptibly cambered blade and a finely set mouth it can take fine shavings like a smoother — although it’s a bit too long. The problem with this approach is that you soon get fed up with changing blades and adjusting the frog back and forth … and that’s when you begin drooling over the online tool shops.

I not only take pride in my tools; they are my delight and my livelihood — they are an investment that helps me work easier and better. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I often opt to use my planes in progression; if I want to remove more than a trivial amount of wood, I’ll do it in stages, using two or three different planes, each set up slightly different, each suited to its usage.

First: a scrub plane for hogging off the majority

Second: a (short) jack plane¹ for flattening and adjusting the slope

Third: a smoother to finesse and make pretty

It all comes down to the amount of camber on the iron and the size of the plane’s mouth opening:

… more camber = heavier, but rougher! material removal.

I begin with the scrub: gripping it firmly — ‘locking’ my upper body in a vise-like stance — judging the angle and taking short, jabbing strokes — shifting sideways, back-and-forth. At first, you’re only working the very end of the face, so short shavings, but as you progress, establishing the new slope, your length of stroke increases, as does the length of your shavings. Pay attention to your planed surface, but also to the shavings; they are your receipts — they show you what’s going on.

If you’re able to establish a slope at roughly the right angle …

… that’s a good start.

Next, use the small jack-plane to adjust your new slope. It’s set up with a distinct but moderate camber to its iron, and will take fairly thick shavings; enough to quickly correct a discrepancy of a millimetre or two.

Use it to approach your final measurement.

Use your smoothing plane for the final passes.

Finely set, it’s well suited to sneak up to your limit-lines …

… ideally shaving them in half.

You can do this job using only one plane — a smoother, let’s say — but you will save time and effort by employing a small variety of planes, each tailored to a specific stage in the process. This is not extravagant, only expedient tool use.

… and he who has most tools when he dies, wins.

***

1. In this case, the Veritas #5 ¼ ‘Junior Jack’ — the viola to the smoother’s violin.