I re-checked this plane for flatness after 12 months of use, check out the results here - ruclips.net/video/8-5ZKORrXjs/видео.html And see it taking some super thin shavings here - ruclips.net/video/YvInfTSzjSU/видео.html
That level of tolerance is so beyond overkill for a hand plane that the exercise is absurd and beautiful in the best ways possible. I can absolutely see myself doing something similar just for the fun of finding out of it can be done. I love this process. The final result is beautiful and unique too with a great story
I completely nerded out while watching this video. I not only like the looks of the scraped plane, I can see how it would be slippery. I have a couple of older Stanley planes that I've never properly paid attention to, and I'm on my way to googling scrapers....
If you go further into Old School Woodworking you will come across a "Shooting Board." You can make your own or Stanley made a metal one with a special plane to go with it, but not many people bought that set. When using a Shooting Board to cut end grain accurately and most importantly square or to a set angle, you use a No. 5 Jack Plane ON ITS SIDE so your aesthetic scraping of the sides of the Plane will have more use than you even realise as you find more uses for your plane. Excellent video, thank you.
Thanks Rebecca. I use a Stanley 4 1/2 as my dedicated shooting plane, it's too wide for most things but the extra weight is good for shooting. Squareness of the plane isn't actually a pre-requisite for shooting - ruclips.net/video/KKeGnfHuhvU/видео.htmlsi=T6ZGDwP4y99RE80m&t=356
@@radboogie its not a prerequisite but it does make things easier if they're not out by too much. Lovely work, i love the way the scraped finish looks.
Well I know how to scrape.. And I have a rusty old hand plane.... And the operators and newbies will be shocked to see me pull out a calibrated hand plane..... and everyone else will laugh. You have convinced me
I love it. If someone thinks it's overkill they can go watch a video on the ins and outs of pocket screws, For me this is the kind of stuff that tickles me pink. I had always wanted to know more about scraping and so last week I went down the old rabbit hole and watched a bunch of videos about it. No reason other than curiosity. Being a wood worker who also has a soft spot for metal working this is the kind of content that I like. 30v years ago it would have taken me many trips to the libreary and many fruitless hours to learn about something so removed from my life.
Thanks Jim - glad you liked it 👍 I know what you mean about the library, a lot of my learning back in the day was through books. Nothing quite like being able to hop onto RUclips and watch a demonstration on pretty much anything that you want. Cheers
Fascinating! What a beautiful finish! I wonder how the plane restoration purists would feel about this technique? I've never seen any one flatten a plane this way but i find it VERY appealing and will attempt it myself. Good to have a metal worker's perspective on restoring a wood working tool. The side of the plane can be used on a shooting board and I have a habbit of using the plane on that face with out a shooting board but on a flat surface. When ever I restore a plane I make sure the sides are 90 degrees to the face. Such a shame that a company like Stanley would make such a crappy plane, it damages their reputation and turns people off.
I bought a second hand Jack plane and had it ground flat and the right hand side trued for using on a shooting board for joining guitar backs and fronts. still using it now, 32 years later. The sole is no longer flat, but I have moved along with the plane over the years. Although I may consider doing some work on it sometime. I have been given a couple over the years and set them up, but find it hard to use them.
Steel, even hardened tool steel, is like very hard bubble gum. It will flex. It will move as you've so well illustrated. It fascinates me that we think we're so advanced now with high speed mills, hard mills, cnc wire machines etc. that we could have never reached there without the old school technology and techniques like this video shows. Excellent video.
While it is more common to flatten planes using sandpaper on flat plate, the pressure exerted on the body of the plane can cause distortion of the body. Scraping can prevent this because only small sections are worked at a time. My father was a machinist and I am a woodworker. Nice to see both skills combined. Thanks for a great instructional video.
scraping seems more fun but your argument doesn't hold water for me due to: I push pretty hard on my planes when I use them so, if I bend them flattening, then, they are equally tortured in use. Truth be told, the sole is cast iron and we are muscle and bone. I doubt any of us are likely to flex the sole to a significant degree. The argument for leaving the iron in still holds.
Hand tooled metal finishing to incredible tolerances is my new youtube fascination! I was surprised to learn the old artisanal skill is still in use in machine shops and that the patterned micro pockets are good for retaining lubricant between sliding surfaces. Thanks for the lesson.
Some of the best high end cnc machines have hand scraped surfaces, but not on the sliding surfaces. When you have 2 parts that are bolted together, if both surfaces are scraped the whole surface will be in contact, which greatly increases rigidity and therefore accuracy of the machine
I thought I'd watch the first few minutes, just to see how you did it and stayed for the whole vid'. Nice one! It's always a delight to watch a Master at work. I had to renovate my Nr5 after a friend of mine(?) borrowed it and left it out in the rain for a week or two. After seeing this, I think I would have still have stuck with plate glass and emery. Doing it your way and after constantly correcting, I would probably have ended up with a base thinner than the undulations in your beautiful finish.
Thanks. It turns out that leaving the blade in might turn out to be a bit of an urban myth according to some of the other comments here. I might have to do a follow up video to test that out! Thanks for checking in 👍
24:30 for those interested. I thought it would have been good to remove it (seems easy to bash when it's being moved around so much), but ah well, I guess flex is a thing as well
Good info. Never watched hand scraping before, so didn't understand how it was possible to get such a flat surface with hand scraping. Having said that, i work in machine shop (not trained in the trade however) making higher end hand planes, more specifically at the moment in the grinding department. Looking at that 4 1/2 Stanley, those lines you see on the sides are grinding step over lines. The body will be milled with a face mill to rough dimension, in a single pass, they wouldn't use such a narrow tool on a wide surface, at least not in a production environment. After milling it then gets ground to finish the surface, obviously in later Stanley's they didn't do a very fine finish. When i grind the planes at work, i leave a very refined surface, that's flat and sides perpendicular to the sole.
cool idea! when I saw the thumbnail I first thought "oh, not /another/ damascus video on youtube", but this is 1000x better. I'd love to scrape something flat some day
lol I know what you mean about the Damascus look. Internet rule #3408 "If something exists, someone on the internet has made one out of Damascus steel." 😂
Never having worked with metal I found this video to be truly fascinating and informative and I agree with some of the other comments that the end result is aesthetically stunning. Thank you
@@odinsprophet8849 I had a significant dip between the area behind the mouth and the heel that I never got out, but getting everything else in plane took a few days at a few hours a day
Richard, Love your work. That plane should absolutely sing when you use it. Very nicely explained and demonstrated, it reminded me of my Apprentice days nearly 50 years ago. BRAVO, BRAVO!!
Great video. The sides of a plane are vital for shooting end grain or ensuring work is perfectly level. Commonly it's just end grain you'd shoot so having a side that is perfectly square with the face is very useful in addition to using it as a flat edge check as you noted. Beautiful end result!!
Hi Richard - I thoroughly enjoyed your video. I am a retired engineer and havent seen any scrapping since the late 70s. I needed to measure some huge parabolic reflectors back then which I needed to set up on an 8' x 10' surface table and take readings with slip gauges and a telescope. Before I could begin this process a contractor was brought in to scrape the table. He was probably in his seventies and had been scraping for many years and had incredible muscle memory. Once he had flattened the table he went over the whole surface in what he described as a hounds tooth pattern. It was beautiful and you would swear it had been done by machine or robot as it was perfection. I have restored many planes over the years and have to admit I prefer Record to Stanley as I have always found the surface finish to be superior. Those 80s onward Stanleys look to have been finished on a belt sander rather than grinding and are very coarse indeed. Incidently I have always been intrigued by the thinking that you must keep the frog in place under tension. I could never see that the way the frog is mounted could have an effect and I was proved right. I have set up all my restorations on my surface table held in place by magnets on the extreme edges and measured them with a DTI and have never registered even a 0.0005" difference with the frog in place or removed. I do use a scaper ocassionally but mine is made from a very old 50s file, ground to a smooth finish and it keeps it's edge beautifully. I have not used it on a plane though as I find it much quicker to lap them but I can see that a scraped finish is probably superior as there is far less friction. I have to admit that I prefer woodworking to metalworking these days as it is much cleaner. I will look out for your videos as they are most enjoyable. Keep up the good work.
Thanks David, so glad you enjoyed the video. It must have been quite something to see that chap scrape in an 8' x 10' table! Belt sanding would make sense on the late model Stanleys and account for the shocking finish and lack of flatness, my bench grinder is 36 grit on the coarse wheel and would give a much better finish than that. Either that or they ground them on an old mill stone 😂 Thanks for sharing your findings on flatness with the frog removed, I was thinking of doing some similar tests to see if it's just another of those myths. I might run some tests for flatness with the plane coming out of a freezer near zero degrees and again out of an oven at 40C to see what effect heat has on it. Academic interest of course! All the best - Richard
i'm pretty sure that it is a holdover from wooden planes and wedges. there is a serious impact there. i have also measured some difference on a garbage indian plane that i have, but it is a mess in a number of ways. the frog only sits on 3 of the 4 contacts unless you crank it down. someone along the way might have had a similarly bad plane and seen the difference and propagated it again? @@radboogie
Interesting comments, lapping would seem to be easier though not as eye catching as these beautifully scraped surfaces. Having the frog and iron mounted and tightened during scraping would add beneficial rigidity to the plane for scraping purposes, no?
As I said before I have never been able to detect any measurable change in the sole with the frog in or out of postion. I think you have to consider how the frog is fitted. It is sitting on four pads with the mounting screws roughly central on the thickest part of the sole casting. It is fairly obvious that the tightening of the screws is unlikely to have any effect. If the frog extended to the very ends of the sole it may make a change but as it is, not likely. I have measured every plane I have restored from No 3 - No 8s and they were all the same which is probably because irrispective of sole size the frog size is very similar.
The finish on the plane is fantastic, it looks great. That's some real time and effort. I don't know much about scraping, but you seem to have a nice touch for consistent depth on your strokes. This composition of your video was also fantastic. Nicely well edited, great pacing, great picture and audio quality. Your narration is excellent! Everything about this was really enjoyable! Thanks for all of the work this must have taking to put together.
A hand scraped blade just featured on JackEnglishMachines channel (recommended) and whilst it might not be necessary, it got one hell of a shaving. Beautiful result. I'm sure a few obsessive wood workers would pay to get this done.
The sides of the plane being flat and square with the sole allows you to use it with a "shooting board" so you can precisely square up (or cut precise angles) on the ends or short sides of boards. This is an excellent platform to learn to hand scrape. Even the most club-fisted amateur is unlikely to render the plane unusable. (Short of breaking the casting itself of course.)
Yes, planes are an excellent source of cheap yet good quality cast iron for scraping practice. As you say the worst case scenario for a beginner would be to make their plane slightly flatter than it was before 👍
This was simply wonderful! A terrific melding of woodworking and precision metal working. I’ve seen granite surface plates “lapped in”, but never really seen metal scraping performed. Well done, sir!
Just found your channel, I’m glad I came across it. I used to be an electrical technician in a large machine shop and large erection shop (I know) at a naval shipyard, we had two guys who came in to scrape our machines. The father was in his 80’s and his son in his 50’s, I loved watching them scrape the ways on our 100’ prop shaft lathe. It’s a dying skill I would love to see revived.
100' of scraping, that would take some skill and patience! Thanks for sharing your story Stuart, it's always great to hear of examples of this kind of work being done and the amazing people that used to practice the craft 👍
Great video, in case you're unaware a plane can and is used on its side on a shooting board which when set up properly will give you squared end grain and longgrain for joining boards together, this method is used when making the backs and soundboards for acoustic guitar and classical guitars and anywhere else a seamless joint is wanted. Shooting boards are standard for handmade woodworkers.
I did this to my great grandfather's hand plane (that I now use day-to-day) a while back! It's totally overkill but I love the way the sole holds wax and simply skates along the surface of the wood now, I might flake it at some point to improve that further.
This is fantastic, great job. I'm also a metal worker and a wood worker and have thought about scraping a hand plane like this but have never done it. Maybe this is the inspiration I need to move forward. Excellent video.
When I discovered hand scraping 15 or so years ago, I went down the rabbit hole pretty deep. Which led to me being the proud owner of a ton and a half or so of Busch Precision cast iron straight edges, surface plates, and various other machinist toys. I’ve got a couple sets of hand scraped male and female Scraping Masters, along with a few scraped straight edges that I don’t really have a use for. So if you know anyone who scraps vee ways on old machinery and needs the scraping masters, let me know. I really enjoyed the video. Taking the time to get to a completely unnecessary level of precision is the story of my life.
Thanks Eric, it sounds like you've got quite a collection there! "Taking the time to get to a completely unnecessary level of precision is the story of my life." sums it up perfectly, it's a beautiful thing not having to work against the clock and where time is not money. The ability to take as long as you want to produce an end result that mainly serves to make you feel good 👍
I have a lathe that really needs some TLC on a couple of the slides ( cross and compound). One of the things preventing me from fixing it is not having the proper straight pieces (masters). Wondering where you are and if you still have the masters you mentioned?
Nice video. I have always wanted to try hand scraping, Being lazy I usually just flatten my planes on a piece of 3/8" glass and some wet and dry paper. Thanks for the tutorial.
I really like the content on his channel. He is very informative and helpful, I have been really influenced by my father and a few of my friends to work with wood and metal , and as a kid I used to build everything that I could out of wood because it is easy to work with and the metal influence was by a neighbor who was a welder. And I had a few things that needed to have some welding repairs done on them. And he was a good friendly neighborhood metal repair shop and I was curious about welding and I eventually got a welding machine and learned how to use it for anything that I ran into that needs repairs or a how to build stuff out of metal ? And I liked to tinker with things and build anything that I could do easily with whatever materials that I could scrounge up?
Realy cool, man. Im going to try this out on one of my antique Stanley's just for the aesthetics alone. Really cool finish. Thank you for the edutainment!
Thank you, Richard. I feel richer, having learned about this process. I never knew that cast could be worked in such a way. My Bailey number five may soon benefit.
Thanks. It really is amazing that using hand tools and 200 year old techniques it's possible to achieve more precision than some modern day machine tools.
This is cool. I am not expert on scraping but I took a class with Richard King a while back and a couple of things stuck with me. One was to scrape the whole surface on the initial pass,, the idea is that it is going to get scraped anyway and going over it will produce a uniform surface that is easier to blue up. I also found that psychologically it feels better to work with a fully scraped surface. The other was that less experienced scrapers (myself) tend to remove too little material at the beginning of the process. His suggestion was to really hog it out at the beginning of scraping. This didn't feel right at first but I found that it speeds things up dramatically. Also up touching the carbide up with a diamond grinder through the process helps a lot. It looks great by the way. Thanks.
I have not seen this done before. This is the first, and I like firsts. The sides of the plane must be flat and perpendicular to the bottom of the plane if you intend to use it on a shooting board. The mouth should be flat so that when the shaving is made it breaks cleanly. With that said the flatness of your plane far exceeds the true need for a Jack plane. You do beautiful work.
flat yes, perpendicular not. You use the lateral adjuster to get the blade perpendicular, which you should check anyway even if you have perpendicular sides.
This is some mighty fine work, you've done! Congrats on being a fine craftsman and a fine instructor as well. Learned more -unintentionally- here, than in a handscraping 101 video a year or so ago :D
my dad was an engine erector and fitter who taught me how to hand scrap a car cylinder head. It's a slow process but really satisfying as you can see the progress with each blueing.
Wow, really cool video! The gauging section around 41:00 made me feel good way down deep in my testicles. And I loved how the scraper sound seemed to be saying “scrape scrape scrape.” Looking forward to the day when I might get to do this, and I might try it with a file and my own planes. Thanks!!
Thanks Michael, the scraping process is immensely satisfying - therapeutic even. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and the best of luck when you pick up a scraper!
3 месяца назад
Thanks Richard, interesting to see how you went about this process, the finish looks really good now but more importantly this kind of challenges how I thought about flatness, realising the many minute scraper marks are better than a gradual belly undulation that appears to be smooth !
On surface plates - I have a very large granite polished plate - courtesy of my local ornamental stone mason. As you have probably guessed it is a redundant gravestone. I can find no high or low spots using a 4 foot Rabone straight edge not can I see any aberrations in reflection of a grid pattern offered up to it - plenty flat enough for me and free of charge. All I had to do was grind out the names on the other side, as I promised him I would
@@radboogie It was only the start of the story for me. Turned out that getting rid of stone was a problem for him. He had to break these up before they went to the tip, for fear one would surface somewhere that some relatives might identify - bad for business ! Once the level of trust built he used to deliver his waste stone to me on his tipper truck and I used it for my patio, paths steps and also cut and dressed a lot for building stone, Granite of many colours, York stone, Marble ... and more Sadly the yard shut when he retired so no more to come. I'm too old now to be throwing round huge lumps of stone anyway, but someone might get lucky by asking locally, especially if they have the means to obliterate the incised lettering, and promised to take a photo of the finished job back as proof of 'decommissioning' .... along with a nice bottle of whisky ;
I have a chunk of kitchen granite which is often a portion of a very large sphere. I could not measure any out of flatness using two techniques. An indicator on a surface gauge rotated and moved around would not show any error from a perfectly curved surface, but that narrowed it down to flat or curved. Then high grade machinist squares back to back in different combinations ruled out a curve. A precision straight edge with feelers gave nothing. The same with a light also nearly nothing - this being the most sensitive.
There are few comments here referring to the craziness of truing a plane using this approach, and maybe we all like going a bit crazy now and then so I certainly won't judge. But developing the skill to be able to work to those tolerances with hand tools... there's nothing crazy about that, it's time well invested, and the results are stunning. I would've liked to see the finished plane making some shavings, but that's just my romantic side loving to see old tools restored back to (and in this case far beyond) their original condition. This video was a joy to watch!👍
Thanks Doc! That's the spirit of the video, to introduce people to an old hand metalworking technique used to improve an old hand woodworking tool. And shows that doing things the old way can achieve results way beyond what is actually required. I didn't want to make shavings in the video because people would have judged it based on the shavings and not the flattening process. But I'll definitely upload a follow on video showing how it cuts which will hopefully answer a few of the questions that people have raised here. Cheers👍
@@radboogie Ive almost decided to buy some scraping supplies and trying it out. they sell a real scraper on Amazon here in Canada . I'll have to buy a crappy plane to try it on as mine are not in need of flattening. Im having trouble finding a granite reference bloc,(other than $2500} any suggestions?
You DO use the sides of a hand plane. Use it for shooting boards when jointing perpendicular and mitered glue joints. For that you not only want the sides to be flat/coplanar, but also perfectly square to the sole. Don’t forget to break the edges or the toe and sides will cut/slice your wood.
I am certain someone else has suggested that you take all the parts off and see what difference it makes. I would like to know :) Thanks for the entertaining and informative video. What a beautiful end result!
My number 5 was about as bad as this when I bought it and this seems to be much quicker than the usual sanding process I used. Well explained too, thank you
Retired machinist here. Regularly worked to ±.0001" or less on high end powder compaction tooling. Never did hand scraping myself, but I'd seen it done on our machines during recalibration. It's a lovely process and you've demonstrated it beautifully. I remember back in my early ways in the early 70's reading a story about John Moore Sr. taking a customer thru his plant. They came across a guy doing the final scraping on the bed of a Jig Grinder before assembly. Moore asked him how it's going and the response was "I'm almost there, we're down to 50 millionths."
@@radboogie Yea, that is some insane tolerances. Speaking of just breathing in it - here’s a story for you We had a Starrett precision level that we used when installing a new machine. We’d get the machine close with regular levels then put the Starrett one on. Leave it sit for half hour or so to settle before starting with it. First time I saw it move our mechanic asked me over and said “Watch this “. He leaned over about 8 inches away from it and just breathed slightly on it. I watched the bubble move two lines on the scale. Each line meant .0005” per foot. Now he says we have to wait a few minutes for it to settle again. Just crazy.
I read a book by Moore that I think was called "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". It's amazing what goes into high precision tooling. I think Moore was the first company that made a measuring machine that could be repeatably positioned down to a millionth of an inch. It's hard to measure beyond that without special metrology, like interferometers or electron microscopes.
Brilliant, thank you; great info' and such a clear demonstration of this disappearing art. My apologies in advance, if I offered some, but i love the surface appearance left by this technique. Worth doing for that alone. Thank you.
I had just stumbled on his channel by accident and I usually don't randomly stop on something that i am not looking for. But I like the sort content that he is doing on his channel. Figuring out how to square up a plane surface is really interesting, but how is it done? That's what caught my attention. Besides I love working with wood and metal's of any sort. Thanks for sharing this content with us and have a great day
Thanks for doing this, I've been toying with doing this myself on an old #5 that was bad when I got it and made worse by me trying to flatten it with a file. I have several other planes that I've lapped on glass that work pretty well but have many times thought about scraping one in ever since I learned that scraping was a thing. I have all the tools I need except the scraper. BTW if you use a plane on a shooting board, at least the side that rests on the shooting board should be flat (ish) so doing at least one side makes sense, not to mention using it as a straight edge as you pointed out.
Glad you liked it! You can make a scraper by grinding the end of an old file, just needs the right radius and rake angle. I might square up the sides on my shooting plane by scraping but it's easy enough to square up the iron with the lateral adjustment lever. Cheers 👍
this was a great watch and I have to admit that the scraped looks fits the plane quite well. While I am not about to invest into a scraping tool, I have to rely on sand paper to flatten my planes and finding a flat surface to work on has been a struggle. Best I could do was use a side panel of an old dresser made out of particle board and I keep telling myself it flat enough for woodworking.
@@davemurphy3813 Hello, I tried, but I all I can get my hands on are thin pieces and not remotely longs enough. I used glass a couple of times flattening no. 4 planes, that glas eventually cracked. I have a new no. 6 that will need some flattening (judging by my level, since I do not have a proper straight edge) we will see how I tackle that one.
As part of my training as a mechanical fitter, I had to master hand scraping as it consisted part of the City and Guilds practical trade test. It was slow and laborious, but the seagull finish made it so worthwhile and satisfying. However I have never seen a hand scraper with such a long blade.
I did this as a fun way to flatten cheap number 4 style plane that was very out of whack. You can use a HSS woodturning scraper blade, or almost anything as you mention if you are willing to sharpen it up frequently. I marked crosshatches with sharpie and ran it on sandpaper over glass as my alternative to using the blue. The scraping method struck me as a faster way to take off loads of material. And it is! I went too far in a few spots--got lazy about going back to the sandpaper after every round--but was able to end up with a very flat ring around the mouth and the overall circumference--so it's like a japanese plane now in that it has a hollow in the non-critical area in front of the mouth. The plane works great. Anyone can do it, especially if you use more patience than I did.
15:34 everyone says how much the lever cap pulls the plane body out of alignment over that little bit of tension across the blade which is probably not translated across the frog screws in my opinion and definitely isn’t warping the entire cast body, but you have the ideal setup to measure deflection during “use” and while the plane is at “rest” with the blade removed
Yes I've seen mixed opinions on whether the lever cap and frog assembly affects the geometry. Some say it does and some say it doesn't. I reckon if all the components are flat and true then they won't have any effect whereas if (say) the frog doesn't sit perfectly flat on the sole then it might cause it to deform. I might do some tests on mine with the surface plate and upload a video of the results.
@@radboogie I wish. I’m just about done my power scraper build. Check out the last few videos related to the build on my channel. I have one more to post which is the complete machine.
It would be really interesting to compare the change in flatness of the sole of the plane with all the hardware removed (frog/etc) as I've always wondered just how significant it is (.5 thou or 10 thou) does it turn into a banana? With your measurement equipment this would be fairly straightforward and of great interest to most wood plane owners - worthy of a mythbuster video. Loved this video - I'm planning to do the same as I love the finish it gives.
Been there done that several years ago. In my experience it is critical to leave it completely assembled - tote, knob everything - tightening them applies plenty of stress on the sole. Gotta wrap in kitchen plastic film to keep it clean. Great demonstration otherwise! I've scraped two #4 planes, a #5, and a #6...and I'd rather not say how many more restorations lie in the pipeline 😂 they were all scraped with a homemade scraper I made from one of my father's old dull mill bastard files. I'd like to forge one using forge welding construction with an O-1 tool steel bit on a mild steel bar... it's on that list of things to do!
How often do you need to re-hone the repurposed file scraper? Gotta say I'm glad I switched to carbide, can do a whole plane on one sharpening pretty much.
great video, and crazy timing...i just got my stanley #5 back from the machine shop i work at. had it face milled and it came back +/- .0002. super excited about it! going to lap out the tooling marks this weekend. yours looks fantastic! wish we could have seen it take a shaving.thank you for sharing and cheers from vermont
Fascinating and very interesting to watch this process unfold, entertaining it was, as I had been completely unaware of ‘scraping’, thank you… 👍🏻 I’ve just picked up a Stanley Bailey 5½ from Fleabay and scrubbed it in warm soapy water, which has made it much nicer already. But, I don’t think it will go through your process, much as I really do like that very attractive finish… ✅
Got to the end finally. So we never use the side of the plane? A shooting board is the first jig I made and I use that as much as regular planing. You have what I call "overskill" as you can scrape in a machine surface but now its time to use that machine. All this only happens on youtube and I don't think anyone is complaining :) I subbed.
I re-checked this plane for flatness after 12 months of use, check out the results here - ruclips.net/video/8-5ZKORrXjs/видео.html
And see it taking some super thin shavings here - ruclips.net/video/YvInfTSzjSU/видео.html
That level of tolerance is so beyond overkill for a hand plane that the exercise is absurd and beautiful in the best ways possible. I can absolutely see myself doing something similar just for the fun of finding out of it can be done. I love this process.
The final result is beautiful and unique too with a great story
Well said👍
I completely nerded out while watching this video. I not only like the looks of the scraped plane, I can see how it would be slippery. I have a couple of older Stanley planes that I've never properly paid attention to, and I'm on my way to googling scrapers....
Give it a go - it's a very satisfying process and the end results are well worth it 👍
I knew this response was coming from one who cannot do it and certainly no experience with a truly flat handplane.
Some people just don't understand but you GET it.
All that scraping was worth it for the aesthetics alone. Just gorgeous!
I can't believe how much I enjoyed this 43 minute video.
Fantastic.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Ditto!!
Having done this to my small planes, I bow to your patience.
Thanks Juan, I was really glad to have a decent carbide scraper for this one 👍
If you go further into Old School Woodworking you will come across a "Shooting Board." You can make your own or Stanley made a metal one with a special plane to go with it, but not many people bought that set.
When using a Shooting Board to cut end grain accurately and most importantly square or to a set angle, you use a No. 5 Jack Plane ON ITS SIDE so your aesthetic scraping of the sides of the Plane will have more use than you even realise as you find more uses for your plane.
Excellent video, thank you.
Thanks Rebecca. I use a Stanley 4 1/2 as my dedicated shooting plane, it's too wide for most things but the extra weight is good for shooting. Squareness of the plane isn't actually a pre-requisite for shooting - ruclips.net/video/KKeGnfHuhvU/видео.htmlsi=T6ZGDwP4y99RE80m&t=356
@@radboogie its not a prerequisite but it does make things easier if they're not out by too much. Lovely work, i love the way the scraped finish looks.
@@radboogie Oh hey, I've got a 4 1/2 sat idle and unused, using it's extra width for shooting is a great idea, thank you.
Well I know how to scrape..
And I have a rusty old hand plane....
And the operators and newbies will be shocked to see me pull out a calibrated hand plane..... and everyone else will laugh.
You have convinced me
Go for it! 👍
I love it. If someone thinks it's overkill they can go watch a video on the ins and outs of pocket screws, For me this is the kind of stuff that tickles me pink. I had always wanted to know more about scraping and so last week I went down the old rabbit hole and watched a bunch of videos about it. No reason other than curiosity. Being a wood worker who also has a soft spot for metal working this is the kind of content that I like. 30v years ago it would have taken me many trips to the libreary and many fruitless hours to learn about something so removed from my life.
Thanks Jim - glad you liked it 👍 I know what you mean about the library, a lot of my learning back in the day was through books. Nothing quite like being able to hop onto RUclips and watch a demonstration on pretty much anything that you want. Cheers
Fascinating! What a beautiful finish! I wonder how the plane restoration purists would feel about this technique? I've never seen any one flatten a plane this way but i find it VERY appealing and will attempt it myself. Good to have a metal worker's perspective on restoring a wood working tool. The side of the plane can be used on a shooting board and I have a habbit of using the plane on that face with out a shooting board but on a flat surface. When ever I restore a plane I make sure the sides are 90 degrees to the face. Such a shame that a company like Stanley would make such a crappy plane, it damages their reputation and turns people off.
I bought a second hand Jack plane and had it ground flat and the right hand side trued for using on a shooting board for joining guitar backs and fronts. still using it now, 32 years later. The sole is no longer flat, but I have moved along with the plane over the years. Although I may consider doing some work on it sometime. I have been given a couple over the years and set them up, but find it hard to use them.
Steel, even hardened tool steel, is like very hard bubble gum. It will flex. It will move as you've so well illustrated. It fascinates me that we think we're so advanced now with high speed mills, hard mills, cnc wire machines etc. that we could have never reached there without the old school technology and techniques like this video shows. Excellent video.
While it is more common to flatten planes using sandpaper on flat plate, the pressure exerted on the body of the plane can cause distortion of the body. Scraping can prevent this because only small sections are worked at a time. My father was a machinist and I am a woodworker. Nice to see both skills combined. Thanks for a great instructional video.
Thank you William 👍
scraping seems more fun
but your argument doesn't hold water for me due to: I push pretty hard on my planes when I use them so, if I bend them flattening, then, they are equally tortured in use.
Truth be told, the sole is cast iron and we are muscle and bone. I doubt any of us are likely to flex the sole to a significant degree.
The argument for leaving the iron in still holds.
@@radboogie Loved the video. Was quite enjoyable to watch and I learned quite a lot. Thank you.
Lol, until you use the plane and exert that same pressure. Then the plane will warp and you work will be an entire thou out
@@burtreynolds3143 Thanks Bandit, glad you enjoyed it 👍
Hand tooled metal finishing to incredible tolerances is my new youtube fascination! I was surprised to learn the old artisanal skill is still in use in machine shops and that the patterned micro pockets are good for retaining lubricant between sliding surfaces. Thanks for the lesson.
Fascinating to think that a 200 year old hand tooling technique can still out perform machined finishes in the modern era.
Some of the best high end cnc machines have hand scraped surfaces, but not on the sliding surfaces. When you have 2 parts that are bolted together, if both surfaces are scraped the whole surface will be in contact, which greatly increases rigidity and therefore accuracy of the machine
When a machinist brings his ever present obsession with precision to a wood working tool. Loved it.
I thought I'd watch the first few minutes, just to see how you did it and stayed for the whole vid'. Nice one! It's always a delight to watch a Master at work.
I had to renovate my Nr5 after a friend of mine(?) borrowed it and left it out in the rain for a week or two. After seeing this, I think I would have still have stuck with plate glass and emery. Doing it your way and after constantly correcting, I would probably have ended up with a base thinner than the undulations in your beautiful finish.
I'm glad you explained why you left the blade in the plane, made sense once you mentioned why. Great video.
Thanks. It turns out that leaving the blade in might turn out to be a bit of an urban myth according to some of the other comments here. I might have to do a follow up video to test that out! Thanks for checking in 👍
24:30 for those interested. I thought it would have been good to remove it (seems easy to bash when it's being moved around so much), but ah well, I guess flex is a thing as well
Good info. Never watched hand scraping before, so didn't understand how it was possible to get such a flat surface with hand scraping. Having said that, i work in machine shop (not trained in the trade however) making higher end hand planes, more specifically at the moment in the grinding department. Looking at that 4 1/2 Stanley, those lines you see on the sides are grinding step over lines. The body will be milled with a face mill to rough dimension, in a single pass, they wouldn't use such a narrow tool on a wide surface, at least not in a production environment. After milling it then gets ground to finish the surface, obviously in later Stanley's they didn't do a very fine finish. When i grind the planes at work, i leave a very refined surface, that's flat and sides perpendicular to the sole.
cool idea! when I saw the thumbnail I first thought "oh, not /another/ damascus video on youtube", but this is 1000x better. I'd love to scrape something flat some day
lol I know what you mean about the Damascus look. Internet rule #3408 "If something exists, someone on the internet has made one out of Damascus steel." 😂
Hmmmmm.... That's actually an interesting idea to make a sword with this pattern instead of Damascus.
Never having worked with metal I found this video to be truly fascinating and informative and I agree with some of the other comments that the end result is aesthetically stunning. Thank you
Thank you, that is everything I hoped for with the video 👍
Kind of mind-blowing to see what one skilled and patient person can do with such a simple setup. Very cool work indeed.
Thanks 👍It always amazes me how a 200 year old hand metalworking technique can produce better accuracy than most workshop machine tools.
Did this to my #4, and my#8, which was fun & completely unnecessary. Glad I'm not alone in the craziness 😅
lol - spot on! 😂
How long did the 8 take?
@@odinsprophet8849 I had a significant dip between the area behind the mouth and the heel that I never got out, but getting everything else in plane took a few days at a few hours a day
@@odinsprophet8849 Twice as long as the 4 I imagine ;-)
This was quite incredible to watch. The precision of a skilled craftsman with hand tools is always mind boggling to me
I have often said that genius is seeing the obvious before others, but this video shows that realising that something is simple is genius.
Never heard of machine scraping (in my 50yrs as a tradesman ) just ordered a scraper! Love the antiquated but very accurate technique!! Thankyou
I'm glad you found it interested - congratulations on entering the wonderful World of scraping and best of luck with it 👍
That was fascinating! Thanks for sharing your expertise
Richard, Love your work. That plane should absolutely sing when you use it. Very nicely explained and demonstrated, it reminded me of my Apprentice days nearly 50 years ago. BRAVO, BRAVO!!
Thank you Bryce - glad you enjoyed it 👍
Great video. The sides of a plane are vital for shooting end grain or ensuring work is perfectly level. Commonly it's just end grain you'd shoot so having a side that is perfectly square with the face is very useful in addition to using it as a flat edge check as you noted. Beautiful end result!!
Hi Richard - I thoroughly enjoyed your video. I am a retired engineer and havent seen any scrapping since the late 70s. I needed to measure some huge parabolic reflectors back then which I needed to set up on an 8' x 10' surface table and take readings with slip gauges and a telescope. Before I could begin this process a contractor was brought in to scrape the table. He was probably in his seventies and had been scraping for many years and had incredible muscle memory. Once he had flattened the table he went over the whole surface in what he described as a hounds tooth pattern. It was beautiful and you would swear it had been done by machine or robot as it was perfection.
I have restored many planes over the years and have to admit I prefer Record to Stanley as I have always found the surface finish to be superior. Those 80s onward Stanleys look to have been finished on a belt sander rather than grinding and are very coarse indeed.
Incidently I have always been intrigued by the thinking that you must keep the frog in place under tension. I could never see that the way the frog is mounted could have an effect and I was proved right. I have set up all my restorations on my surface table held in place by magnets on the extreme edges and measured them with a DTI and have never registered even a 0.0005" difference with the frog in place or removed.
I do use a scaper ocassionally but mine is made from a very old 50s file, ground to a smooth finish and it keeps it's edge beautifully. I have not used it on a plane though as I find it much quicker to lap them but I can see that a scraped finish is probably superior as there is far less friction. I have to admit that I prefer woodworking to metalworking these days as it is much cleaner.
I will look out for your videos as they are most enjoyable. Keep up the good work.
Thanks David, so glad you enjoyed the video. It must have been quite something to see that chap scrape in an 8' x 10' table!
Belt sanding would make sense on the late model Stanleys and account for the shocking finish and lack of flatness, my bench grinder is 36 grit on the coarse wheel and would give a much better finish than that. Either that or they ground them on an old mill stone 😂
Thanks for sharing your findings on flatness with the frog removed, I was thinking of doing some similar tests to see if it's just another of those myths. I might run some tests for flatness with the plane coming out of a freezer near zero degrees and again out of an oven at 40C to see what effect heat has on it. Academic interest of course!
All the best - Richard
i'm pretty sure that it is a holdover from wooden planes and wedges. there is a serious impact there. i have also measured some difference on a garbage indian plane that i have, but it is a mess in a number of ways. the frog only sits on 3 of the 4 contacts unless you crank it down. someone along the way might have had a similarly bad plane and seen the difference and propagated it again? @@radboogie
Interesting comments, lapping would seem to be easier though not as eye catching as these beautifully scraped surfaces.
Having the frog and iron mounted and tightened during scraping would add beneficial rigidity to the plane for scraping purposes, no?
As I said before I have never been able to detect any measurable change in the sole with the frog in or out of postion. I think you have to consider how the frog is fitted. It is sitting on four pads with the mounting screws roughly central on the thickest part of the sole casting. It is fairly obvious that the tightening of the screws is unlikely to have any effect. If the frog extended to the very ends of the sole it may make a change but as it is, not likely. I have measured every plane I have restored from No 3 - No 8s and they were all the same which is probably because irrispective of sole size the frog size is very similar.
One likely problem with modern [ie. younger than me ;
Loved this video. I have restored many hand planes and this is the wildest approach I’ve seen yet. Love the detailed information and the final look!
I don’t have any insight to add, just want to offer my appreciation that you’ve shared your journey with us.
Thanks for checking in 👍
The finish on the plane is fantastic, it looks great. That's some real time and effort. I don't know much about scraping, but you seem to have a nice touch for consistent depth on your strokes.
This composition of your video was also fantastic. Nicely well edited, great pacing, great picture and audio quality. Your narration is excellent! Everything about this was really enjoyable! Thanks for all of the work this must have taking to put together.
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it 👍
So many new Machinist could learn so much from just this video!
A hand scraped blade just featured on JackEnglishMachines channel (recommended) and whilst it might not be necessary, it got one hell of a shaving. Beautiful result. I'm sure a few obsessive wood workers would pay to get this done.
The sides of the plane being flat and square with the sole allows you to use it with a "shooting board" so you can precisely square up (or cut precise angles) on the ends or short sides of boards. This is an excellent platform to learn to hand scrape. Even the most club-fisted amateur is unlikely to render the plane unusable. (Short of breaking the casting itself of course.)
Yes, planes are an excellent source of cheap yet good quality cast iron for scraping practice. As you say the worst case scenario for a beginner would be to make their plane slightly flatter than it was before 👍
This was simply wonderful! A terrific melding of woodworking and precision metal working. I’ve seen granite surface plates “lapped in”, but never really seen metal scraping performed. Well done, sir!
Thank you very much!
Just found your channel, I’m glad I came across it. I used to be an electrical technician in a large machine shop and large erection shop (I know) at a naval shipyard, we had two guys who came in to scrape our machines. The father was in his 80’s and his son in his 50’s, I loved watching them scrape the ways on our 100’ prop shaft lathe. It’s a dying skill I would love to see revived.
100' of scraping, that would take some skill and patience! Thanks for sharing your story Stuart, it's always great to hear of examples of this kind of work being done and the amazing people that used to practice the craft 👍
Great video, in case you're unaware a plane can and is used on its side on a shooting board which when set up properly will give you squared end grain and longgrain for joining boards together, this method is used when making the backs and soundboards for acoustic guitar and classical guitars and anywhere else a seamless joint is wanted. Shooting boards are standard for handmade woodworkers.
I did this to my great grandfather's hand plane (that I now use day-to-day) a while back! It's totally overkill but I love the way the sole holds wax and simply skates along the surface of the wood now, I might flake it at some point to improve that further.
Beautiful. The way I look at it, being too flat is never a problem 👍 I'd love to be able to do the flaking, that would look superb!
This is fantastic, great job. I'm also a metal worker and a wood worker and have thought about scraping a hand plane like this but have never done it. Maybe this is the inspiration I need to move forward. Excellent video.
Go for it!
Mechanical Engineer here and hobby woodworker, neat video. Subscribed :)
When I discovered hand scraping 15 or so years ago, I went down the rabbit hole pretty deep. Which led to me being the proud owner of a ton and a half or so of Busch Precision cast iron straight edges, surface plates, and various other machinist toys. I’ve got a couple sets of hand scraped male and female Scraping Masters, along with a few scraped straight edges that I don’t really have a use for. So if you know anyone who scraps vee ways on old machinery and needs the scraping masters, let me know. I really enjoyed the video. Taking the time to get to a completely unnecessary level of precision is the story of my life.
Thanks Eric, it sounds like you've got quite a collection there! "Taking the time to get to a completely unnecessary level of precision is the story of my life." sums it up perfectly, it's a beautiful thing not having to work against the clock and where time is not money. The ability to take as long as you want to produce an end result that mainly serves to make you feel good 👍
I have a lathe that really needs some TLC on a couple of the slides ( cross and compound).
One of the things preventing me from fixing it is not having the proper straight pieces (masters). Wondering where you are and if you still have the masters you mentioned?
I really enjoyed your video a lot. Thank you for having taken the time to film and share it.
@@rotaryw glad you enjoyed it 👍
Nice video. I have always wanted to try hand scraping, Being lazy I usually just flatten my planes on a piece of 3/8" glass and some wet and dry paper. Thanks for the tutorial.
It's marvelous getting a glimpse into an unknown technique... Thanks for the demonstration.
Glad you liked it!
I really like the content on his channel. He is very informative and helpful, I have been really influenced by my father and a few of my friends to work with wood and metal , and as a kid I used to build everything that I could out of wood because it is easy to work with and the metal influence was by a neighbor who was a welder. And I had a few things that needed to have some welding repairs done on them. And he was a good friendly neighborhood metal repair shop and I was curious about welding and I eventually got a welding machine and learned how to use it for anything that I ran into that needs repairs or a how to build stuff out of metal ? And I liked to tinker with things and build anything that I could do easily with whatever materials that I could scrounge up?
Realy cool, man. Im going to try this out on one of my antique Stanley's just for the aesthetics alone. Really cool finish. Thank you for the edutainment!
Thanks, good luck with the scraping 👍
Thank you, Richard. I feel richer, having learned about this process. I never knew that cast could be worked in such a way. My Bailey number five may soon benefit.
Thank you Michael, I highly recommend giving it a go - it's a very satisfying process and end result 👍
Beautiful work. Well worth a watch to see such precision got by hand tools.
Thanks. It really is amazing that using hand tools and 200 year old techniques it's possible to achieve more precision than some modern day machine tools.
This is cool. I am not expert on scraping but I took a class with Richard King a while back and a couple of things stuck with me. One was to scrape the whole surface on the initial pass,, the idea is that it is going to get scraped anyway and going over it will produce a uniform surface that is easier to blue up. I also found that psychologically it feels better to work with a fully scraped surface. The other was that less experienced scrapers (myself) tend to remove too little material at the beginning of the process. His suggestion was to really hog it out at the beginning of scraping. This didn't feel right at first but I found that it speeds things up dramatically. Also up touching the carbide up with a diamond grinder through the process helps a lot. It looks great by the way. Thanks.
That's really cool taking a class with the master scraper himself 👍 You can definitely hog off a lot of metal when you have a feel for the tools.
Ahh. Beautiful work and an educational experience. Thanks Rich, I didn’t know how much I wanted an engineers plate in my shop until now. ❤
Thanks Chase, glad you enjoyed it! Really handy having a dead flat reference surface sometimes 👍
Brilliant! I've watched it all and feel like I could've gone on even longer. For example the finishing work at around 37:20
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it 👍
Ridiculously unnecessary and also ridiculously amazing. Fine work!
I have not seen this done before. This is the first, and I like firsts.
The sides of the plane must be flat and perpendicular to the bottom of the plane if you intend to use it on a shooting board. The mouth should be flat so that when the shaving is made it breaks cleanly. With that said the flatness of your plane far exceeds the true need for a Jack plane.
You do beautiful work.
Thank you Robert.
flat yes, perpendicular not. You use the lateral adjuster to get the blade perpendicular, which you should check anyway even if you have perpendicular sides.
Great info for getting real results! Its easily worth the money and time when you have a properly set up piece of equipment.
This is some mighty fine work, you've done! Congrats on being a fine craftsman and a fine instructor as well. Learned more -unintentionally- here, than in a handscraping 101 video a year or so ago :D
Thank you very much! 👍
my dad was an engine erector and fitter who taught me how to hand scrap a car cylinder head. It's a slow process but really satisfying as you can see the progress with each blueing.
Nice one 👍 Definitely part of the enjoyment, seeing the flatness develop over time.
Wow, really cool video! The gauging section around 41:00 made me feel good way down deep in my testicles. And I loved how the scraper sound seemed to be saying “scrape scrape scrape.” Looking forward to the day when I might get to do this, and I might try it with a file and my own planes. Thanks!!
Thanks Michael, the scraping process is immensely satisfying - therapeutic even. I'm glad you enjoyed the video and the best of luck when you pick up a scraper!
Thanks Richard, interesting to see how you went about this process, the finish looks really good now but more importantly this kind of challenges how I thought about flatness, realising the many minute scraper marks are better than a gradual belly undulation that appears to be smooth !
Quite an interesting, and amazing technique.!.!.! Well done, sir.!.!.!
On surface plates - I have a very large granite polished plate - courtesy of my local ornamental stone mason. As you have probably guessed it is a redundant gravestone. I can find no high or low spots using a 4 foot Rabone straight edge not can I see any aberrations in reflection of a grid pattern offered up to it - plenty flat enough for me and free of charge.
All I had to do was grind out the names on the other side, as I promised him I would
Awesome 💯 That has to be about the coolest workshop story I've heard - a tombstone for a surface plate. Love it 😁
@@radboogie
It was only the start of the story for me. Turned out that getting rid of stone was a problem for him. He had to break these up before they went to the tip, for fear one would surface somewhere that some relatives might identify - bad for business ! Once the level of trust built he used to deliver his waste stone to me on his tipper truck and I used it for my patio, paths steps and also cut and dressed a lot for building stone, Granite of many colours, York stone, Marble ... and more
Sadly the yard shut when he retired so no more to come. I'm too old now to be throwing round huge lumps of stone anyway, but someone might get lucky by asking locally, especially if they have the means to obliterate the incised lettering, and promised to take a photo of the finished job back as proof of 'decommissioning' .... along with a nice bottle of whisky ;
@@radboogie
tombstone for a surface plate - yep ... dead flat ! ....I'll get me coat...
We machinists have a joke that our surface plate will become our grave stones. You've done the reverse. Well done!!
I have a chunk of kitchen granite which is often a portion of a very large sphere. I could not measure any out of flatness using two techniques. An indicator on a surface gauge rotated and moved around would not show any error from a perfectly curved surface, but that narrowed it down to flat or curved. Then high grade machinist squares back to back in different combinations ruled out a curve. A precision straight edge with feelers gave nothing. The same with a light also nearly nothing - this being the most sensitive.
There are few comments here referring to the craziness of truing a plane using this approach, and maybe we all like going a bit crazy now and then so I certainly won't judge. But developing the skill to be able to work to those tolerances with hand tools... there's nothing crazy about that, it's time well invested, and the results are stunning. I would've liked to see the finished plane making some shavings, but that's just my romantic side loving to see old tools restored back to (and in this case far beyond) their original condition. This video was a joy to watch!👍
Thanks Doc! That's the spirit of the video, to introduce people to an old hand metalworking technique used to improve an old hand woodworking tool. And shows that doing things the old way can achieve results way beyond what is actually required.
I didn't want to make shavings in the video because people would have judged it based on the shavings and not the flattening process. But I'll definitely upload a follow on video showing how it cuts which will hopefully answer a few of the questions that people have raised here. Cheers👍
All around excellent video, enjoyed pretty well everything about it
That’s very pretty. Great job!
Really good video! And well presented in a totally upfront and honest way
No trendy cuts or cutaways 👍
Thanks mate, I try to keep the "showbiz" to a minimum 👍
Love it. It's just good wholesome fun. I'm a woodworker who loves metal working as well and this is great!
Thanks! It's a great crossover of two traditional genres, they go well together 👍
@@radboogie Ive almost decided to buy some scraping supplies and trying it out. they sell a real scraper on Amazon here in Canada . I'll have to buy a crappy plane to try it on as mine are not in need of flattening. Im having trouble finding a granite reference bloc,(other than $2500} any suggestions?
You DO use the sides of a hand plane. Use it for shooting boards when jointing perpendicular and mitered glue joints. For that you not only want the sides to be flat/coplanar, but also perfectly square to the sole.
Don’t forget to break the edges or the toe and sides will cut/slice your wood.
Nerd
If the side is not 90* to the bottom you can easily change the blade angle to square the cut.
I am certain someone else has suggested that you take all the parts off and see what difference it makes. I would like to know :)
Thanks for the entertaining and informative video. What a beautiful end result!
Thanks 👍 I will probably do a video on it, it'd be good to put a number on it and see whether there is a myth to be busted there.
My number 5 was about as bad as this when I bought it and this seems to be much quicker than the usual sanding process I used. Well explained too, thank you
Love the look too
Thanks Colin. Scraping can be quite quick when you get the knack of it, I find it a much more enjoyable process than lapping on paper too.
You're an artist, Richard!
Thank you very much 👍
Wow, would love to actually feel the effect in use.
Thanks heaps Richard!
Retired machinist here. Regularly worked to ±.0001" or less on high end powder compaction tooling. Never did hand scraping myself, but I'd seen it done on our machines during recalibration. It's a lovely process and you've demonstrated it beautifully.
I remember back in my early ways in the early 70's reading a story about John Moore Sr. taking a customer thru his plant. They came across a guy doing the final scraping on the bed of a Jig Grinder before assembly. Moore asked him how it's going and the response was "I'm almost there, we're down to 50 millionths."
Thanks Don 👍Great story about John Moore, 50 millionths - half a tenth? Blimey I should think just breathing on that would change the dimensions 😂
@@radboogie Yea, that is some insane tolerances. Speaking of just breathing in it - here’s a story for you
We had a Starrett precision level that we used when installing a new machine. We’d get the machine close with regular levels then put the Starrett one on. Leave it sit for half hour or so to settle before starting with it. First time I saw it move our mechanic asked me over and said “Watch this “. He leaned over about 8 inches away from it and just breathed slightly on it. I watched the bubble move two lines on the scale. Each line meant .0005” per foot. Now he says we have to wait a few minutes for it to settle again. Just crazy.
Wow, amazing levels of accuracy there! Almost makes you afraid to even look at something that sensitive for fear of putting it out of calibration 👍
@@DonsWoodies And then you watch your workpiece start to glow as you machine it and wonder if all your calibration work was really for nothing.
I read a book by Moore that I think was called "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". It's amazing what goes into high precision tooling. I think Moore was the first company that made a measuring machine that could be repeatably positioned down to a millionth of an inch. It's hard to measure beyond that without special metrology, like interferometers or electron microscopes.
Brilliant, thank you; great info' and such a clear demonstration of this disappearing art.
My apologies in advance, if I offered some, but i love the surface appearance left by this technique. Worth doing for that alone.
Thank you.
I had just stumbled on his channel by accident and I usually don't randomly stop on something that i am not looking for. But I like the sort content that he is doing on his channel. Figuring out how to square up a plane surface is really interesting, but how is it done? That's what caught my attention. Besides I love working with wood and metal's of any sort. Thanks for sharing this content with us and have a great day
Welcome Rick glad you made it 👍
Man, I'd watch a timelapse of the entire scraping process if you put that up. Great work!
Thanks for doing this, I've been toying with doing this myself on an old #5 that was bad when I got it and made worse by me trying to flatten it with a file. I have several other planes that I've lapped on glass that work pretty well but have many times thought about scraping one in ever since I learned that scraping was a thing. I have all the tools I need except the scraper. BTW if you use a plane on a shooting board, at least the side that rests on the shooting board should be flat (ish) so doing at least one side makes sense, not to mention using it as a straight edge as you pointed out.
Glad you liked it! You can make a scraper by grinding the end of an old file, just needs the right radius and rake angle. I might square up the sides on my shooting plane by scraping but it's easy enough to square up the iron with the lateral adjustment lever. Cheers 👍
Yeah, I wasn't thinking about square for the sides, just flat.
@@fmbjmf sorry my bad, read your comment too fast and missed your point. Cheers
1:52 I'm glad you mentioned the tote & knob
as they looked a bit spesh ❤nice job
not for nuthin' but the works of the great masters of antiquity never contemplated flatness on such a level.
Amazing video. Love your explanation of the process, keep on doing your thing!!
Thank you! Will do 👍
this was a great watch and I have to admit that the scraped looks fits the plane quite well. While I am not about to invest into a scraping tool, I have to rely on sand paper to flatten my planes and finding a flat surface to work on has been a struggle. Best I could do was use a side panel of an old dresser made out of particle board and I keep telling myself it flat enough for woodworking.
Thanks Petr 👍 It doesn't really matter how flat the plane is, if you can produce good work with it then flat enough is good enough...
Petr, have you tried finding a piece of glass?
@@davemurphy3813 Hello, I tried, but I all I can get my hands on are thin pieces and not remotely longs enough. I used glass a couple of times flattening no. 4 planes, that glas eventually cracked. I have a new no. 6 that will need some flattening (judging by my level, since I do not have a proper straight edge) we will see how I tackle that one.
Saw this just in time since I'm restoring a couple of old planes. Thanks.
Nice one! Good luck with your restoration projects 👍
As part of my training as a mechanical fitter, I had to master hand scraping as it consisted part of the City and Guilds practical trade test. It was slow and laborious, but the seagull finish made it so worthwhile and satisfying. However I have never seen a hand scraper with such a long blade.
Nice! I think the bloke that makes them does an even longer one 😬
What a stunning finish!!
Fascinating! Incredible video- thanks for sharing your expertise!
I did this as a fun way to flatten cheap number 4 style plane that was very out of whack. You can use a HSS woodturning scraper blade, or almost anything as you mention if you are willing to sharpen it up frequently. I marked crosshatches with sharpie and ran it on sandpaper over glass as my alternative to using the blue.
The scraping method struck me as a faster way to take off loads of material. And it is! I went too far in a few spots--got lazy about going back to the sandpaper after every round--but was able to end up with a very flat ring around the mouth and the overall circumference--so it's like a japanese plane now in that it has a hollow in the non-critical area in front of the mouth. The plane works great. Anyone can do it, especially if you use more patience than I did.
Nice one. It's surprising how quickly you can rough off metal with a scraper. I find it a much more enjoyable process than lapping, looks great too 👍
@@radboogie Your work is really outstanding, awesome channel!
@@tn7198 thanks mate, I'm glad you like it 👍
15:34 everyone says how much the lever cap pulls the plane body out of alignment over that little bit of tension across the blade which is probably not translated across the frog screws in my opinion and definitely isn’t warping the entire cast body, but you have the ideal setup to measure deflection during “use” and while the plane is at “rest” with the blade removed
Yes I've seen mixed opinions on whether the lever cap and frog assembly affects the geometry. Some say it does and some say it doesn't. I reckon if all the components are flat and true then they won't have any effect whereas if (say) the frog doesn't sit perfectly flat on the sole then it might cause it to deform. I might do some tests on mine with the surface plate and upload a video of the results.
It looks really beautiful. Great job!
That plane looks hot. I’m just getting into power scraping with a new build I’m experimenting with. Great job.
Thanks Gary. Are you using a Biax?
@@radboogie I wish. I’m just about done my power scraper build. Check out the last few videos related to the build on my channel. I have one more to post which is the complete machine.
It would be really interesting to compare the change in flatness of the sole of the plane with all the hardware removed (frog/etc) as I've always wondered just how significant it is (.5 thou or 10 thou) does it turn into a banana? With your measurement equipment this would be fairly straightforward and of great interest to most wood plane owners - worthy of a mythbuster video. Loved this video - I'm planning to do the same as I love the finish it gives.
Thanks Bill, I've been planning to do this for a while now. You've given me the incentive I need - will get onto it 👍
Yes! I did find it interesting and entertaining. Thanks for presenting it.
Love it - the shown technique and the beautiful look of it.
Subscribed! The algorithm took its time with this channel!
I have never seen this done before! Awesome, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Mike, glad to be able to share a 200 year old technique 👍
Been there done that several years ago. In my experience it is critical to leave it completely assembled - tote, knob everything - tightening them applies plenty of stress on the sole. Gotta wrap in kitchen plastic film to keep it clean. Great demonstration otherwise! I've scraped two #4 planes, a #5, and a #6...and I'd rather not say how many more restorations lie in the pipeline 😂 they were all scraped with a homemade scraper I made from one of my father's old dull mill bastard files. I'd like to forge one using forge welding construction with an O-1 tool steel bit on a mild steel bar... it's on that list of things to do!
How often do you need to re-hone the repurposed file scraper? Gotta say I'm glad I switched to carbide, can do a whole plane on one sharpening pretty much.
@@radboogie plenty often frankly - but it doesn't take long - I've got a little 1" x 30" belt sander with a fine belt that touches it up in seconds.
great video richard i,m a woodworker with interest in metal work , i,ll bet that glides over the wood lovely
Thanks, yes it's a beautiful silky finish, a pleasure to use 👍
This was very instructive!
Running board can give you a nice 90 degree edge to the wood.. Nice flattening - both of my two new planes took several hours of flattening.
great video, and crazy timing...i just got my stanley #5 back from the machine shop i work at. had it face milled and it came back +/- .0002. super excited about it! going to lap out the tooling marks this weekend. yours looks fantastic! wish we could have seen it take a shaving.thank you for sharing and cheers from vermont
Thanks Bob, great idea getting your plane milled flat - will save a lot of elbow grease! All the best - Richard
Fascinating and very interesting to watch this process unfold, entertaining it was, as I had been completely unaware of ‘scraping’, thank you… 👍🏻
I’ve just picked up a Stanley Bailey 5½ from Fleabay and scrubbed it in warm soapy water, which has made it much nicer already. But, I don’t think it will go through your process, much as I really do like that very attractive finish… ✅
Glad you enjoyed it!
Got to the end finally. So we never use the side of the plane? A shooting board is the first jig I made and I use that as much as regular planing. You have what I call "overskill" as you can scrape in a machine surface but now its time to use that machine. All this only happens on youtube and I don't think anyone is complaining :) I subbed.
This technique is new to me and I'm loving it.. thanks for taking the time
Glad you like it!