All About Spokeshaves

hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to the shop today I want to talk about spoke shapes and I've got a few of them in my collection and a few more that I'm not even showing here so today we're actually going to go through look at a few different types how to sharpen them how to set them up what to look for when you are picking out a spokeshave and as much information as I can cram into this short video so let's take a look at this [Music] further I'm going to be soon switching over these types of videos where I'm talking over to my second Channel and that way I can have a second Channel where it's all the talking videos and how-to and information like that and then the main Channel we're going to be doing the no talking video so if you want to watch more of those go over to Woodbury 2 I will leave a link to that up here usually when someone comes to me and say what spoke shape should I buy I say normally at 151 or a Stanley 51 something of that nature it has a flat bottom it's easy to adjust it has several things that just make it a simple spoke shape it's an easy one to learn especially because it had a little bit larger sole to it so it can rest on the wood and pull a little bit simpler you're not worrying about being at the right angle or different things like that the next thing people want is a round bottom spoke shape now a round bottom spoke shave is a little bit harder to control because these surfaces rounded it doesn't rest perfectly flat on the wood and so it'll rock around on there and so you have to get the angle just right as well as pulling it but that being said a rounded bottom can do a concave surface and you can actually get down into some of those nooks and crannies so I find myself using a rounded spoke shave more than I do the flat bottom spoke shave but the rounded bottom is a lot harder to learn so yeah you're eventually going to want to and then three and then four five six and seven and you're gonna need a lot more now I want to take you through a few of them here that I have collected and these are just some of the more common ones and what you're looking for a Stanley 151 has these two in-depth adjusting screws on here it makes it very easy so you can adjust one or the other and you can tip it side to side this is probably the most common one you're going to come across with a large sole on here it is a simple design very very very common and just a general Workhorse so you'll find these all over the place next I have the Stanley 53 it's fairly similar it has a very similar grip on it it's just a little more difficult to adjust because you're actually going to be tapping on this to move it in and out and move it side to side so a lot of the old ones are going to be Hammer adjusted that sounds difficult but it's really as simple as just to tapping around like that to get it exactly where you want it and these are fairly common and really cheap the next you're going to come across quite a few of these with the uh the concave Sole and the flat sole honestly I've never used this I have no reason to use a concave Soul some people swear by it for cleaning up sticks and rounded surfaces but I really don't see any need for that because you can do the exact same thing with a flat so yeah um I I've never used this this one is probably my favorite of any I've ever found and they're they're they're hard to come by I have one that's missing a few parts that I purchased and it was like 35 bucks for this one missing parts finding one with all the parts is is very expensive but this is one of my favorites you can actually change the sole around here so this will be both flat and rounded and it's a very very comfortable tool to hold then of course you can always make your own and I have a couple videos on making spoke shapes if you want to see that I'll leave a link to it down below it's a relatively simple thing especially if you get one with these tangs they go in and out very easily and so it's just two pieces you have the wood body and then you have the blade on there and you put them together and you got a Spoke shave then I picked up a few other odd ones like this aluminum one a while ago which is kind of fun to play with it has tangs just like the wooden ones but there's also screws that hold it in place I was given this monster a while ago and I keep intending to clean it up and sharpen it I've seen one other like this it's just huge I don't know if there's any particular use for it but it would be a lot of fun to play with and then you can also get into travisors these have the rounded the convex bottom to them these are great for getting into the bottoms of seats in your Windsor chairs and such just a really useful tool I don't have a lot of them I only have two but they're a lot of fun when you need that particular tool now this is not a comprehensive list of all spoke shows out there there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of styles and types and different methodologies and if I really to go into that this video would be incredibly long not to mention I don't have them all I just have this small selection of them so as much as I would love this to be a total comprehensive view of everything on spoke shaves I'm not going to get that far so let's work through some of the basic things that are true across all spoke shapes so when you pick up that weirdo and you're like how do I work this you'll know an idea and it'll get you fairly close but 99 of them out there are going to be fairly standard and we'll be covering those ones here so how exactly do you go about sharpening these I want to look at two common Styles number one the traditional iron it's just a simple flat plate this is basically a big chisel or a plane iron it's just not quite as long as you're used to which has a few bits that make it difficult and then number two these weirdos now I covered this a little bit more when making a Spoke shave so if you want to see that in more detail I'll have that video linked to down below so as with any sharp edge this is basically just two planes that intersect so just like a chisel you have a flat back and then you have a bevel that you need to grind you do the same thing on this usually once you've sharpened the back you never need to touch the back again can't I do that by putting it flat down on the plate and grinding it out until I get a nice shiny smooth surface all the way across now this one I have that nice shiny smooth surface so I'm not going to be messing with that it might take a little bit but once it's done once you never have to mess with it again the bevel on the other hand gets a little complicated as there is not much to hold on to so most jigs that you would do a plane iron and just can't hold this because there isn't anything back here to grab onto and I really try not to overthink it just hold it in your hands and then I let it slide on my fingernails and I'll sharpen on that so I just match whatever that bevel is set my fingernail on there and I use that as a guide to hold it in place just pinching between my thumb and fingernails and if you're just cleaning it up you're not going to do enough to your fingernails to cause a problem and just with a few passes like that you can get this thing nice and sharp then of course as always I'll finish it with the strap doing the same thing here 20 or 30 Strokes flip it over 20 or 30 Strokes on this side and I'll get that nice clean Edge and if I've done it right a burr we'll just barely fall off at the very last moment so what angle should I sharpen it at everyone wants to know what angle should I sharp it at somewhere between 5 degrees and 45 degrees is best that was a joke most of mine I sharpened about 30 or 35 degrees somewhere in that range I really don't matter too much I'll just set it whatever the last angle was lock it at that and sharpen there I'm not going to worry about it much I'm never going to check it I'm never going to go back and look at I'll just see you know is it somewhere around 30 35 yeah we're good to go the reason being is that most spoke shaves or at least all with an iron are going to be beveled down so the cutting angle is determined by the bed of the spoke shave not by the bevel on the iron now with the older wooden style and Tang spoke shaves the bevel is going to be up it's pretty obvious because that's how the tangs then go into the body itself and for these flattening the back is fairly easy I'm just going to put it on here I'm going to pinch the tang with both fingers and then I'm going to stick one other finger over on here and I will sharpen it on the plate that way it doesn't take too much time until you get that nice smooth shiny surface all the way across there the question then comes how do you get this bevel it just doesn't fit in there and that is one of the reasons why I make these removable so you can pull them out you can flip this over the edge and have the Tang hanging down and then I'm just going to rest on the tang and I'll do my sharpening on there just like that and with that little bit I can get it nice and shiny all the way across there make sure I get a little bit of a burr hanging off the back and then we can come over here and strap it off this way flip it over just drop it off this way and we can get ourselves a nice sharp edge now if you want to see more information on my sharpening method and system I'll leave a link to that down below as well as links to the plates that I use and I do make my own straps that I sell so that's enough of the sharpening let's actually get into the fun part how exactly do you use one of these now when people first get started they grab it and they hold the handle and they they they're just like manhandling these things they're not intended to be that way these are very delicate tools that need a light touch you're basically just going to put your thumb on the top put your fingers underneath and that's all you need that little bit of grip right there is how you're shaping it you'll notice that there's usually some flanges or something here that fit really well on the thumb and you can just hold it that way and get your shavings the rest of your fingers are just there for a little bit of stability or to control it moving it one way or the other these fingers are what are actually doing the work so let's start with a flat bottom plate the Stanley number 151 makes it very easy I'm just going to be gripping with the two fingers here and we can pull it along we can set on that flat bottom and it will run along now one of the things I have on this is on this side I have a very low cut and on this side there's a very heavy cut and so if I'm just using this side I can get these nice clean finishing shavings and if I bring over this side then I can get these really heavy cuts and take down through some material and then I can come back over here and clean off what I've missed off with much lighter cuts and so you'll often see spoke shaves where the blade is skewed one way or the other and that's just because you can get a little bit different cut from one side to the other so for adjusting these spoke shaves I'm going to back these up pull the screw pulls the blade and I'm going to go until I don't have anything cutting well in this case I'm just getting a very light wispy shaving that's actually where I want it to be so let's back it up a little bit farther and I won't be cutting anything there now I'm not cutting anything over on this side I'm probably cutting something a little bit because that was a heavier side no that one's good too and now I'm just going to push them forward because you want the last movement being pushing the iron forward so now we go I need a little bit more I'm trying to get a light shaving on this side just a little more there I've got a light shaving on this side and then I'm gonna work with this side I'm going to push it down a little bit more so I can get a heavier shading over here a little heavier than that there we are now we have a heavy shaving on this side and a light wispy shaving on this side happy curls and that's one of the reasons why I say the Stanley 151s are a great tool to start with they're very easy to adjust they're very easy to sharpen they're very easy to work with so definitely a plane worth grabbing now let's move over to a rounded Sole and so this has a round Salon which makes it hard if it's tipped to too far forward you're not getting anything if it's tip too far back you're not getting anything and if it's right on then you're going to get those beautiful shavings you're looking for and getting that rotation is what matters and so you're spending a lot of time trying to get that rotation and some people when they're starting they get this nice wispy shaving as they get farther back they get heavier and heavier and then suddenly they skip out because you're rotating it too far you don't want to rotate as you go you want to keep it the same all the way across so try not to move your wrists try to lock it in place and then the same thing with this I want a light cut on one side that one's so light it's not actually cutting anything on this side it's a bit heavier and then I can come back and adjust that with the Mallet here this one has to the little iron that's about all I need and I can rock along the nice thing about rounded bottom is when you get good at it you can control it and you can get a really heavy cut by rocking it back just a hair and then I can bring It Forward just a little bit I can come back and clean those off and so by Rolling it I can actually adjust the depth of cut on there much is going to be the same with a plane that has a Tang bottom on there you just want to make sure you don't ride it on the iron because it's flat you're not going to get anything you actually want to ride it on the front of the mouth so you're going to Tip It Forward just a little bit and then use that to peel out [Music] this one has a much smaller sole on it created very very little so that I can very lightly come in as a rounded body would and I can adjust my cut you'll also notice on all these I'm not running straight across the board I'm not cutting directly on at 90 degrees I'm skewing it almost like 45 degrees and that skewing will actually give it a lower effective cut so you are lowering the angle at which the blade is attacking the wood whereas if I go straight across I'm just sticking with whatever I sharpened it at skewing it across often gives you a nice clean easy cut that's easier to work with and then once you've mastered working with a flat bottom plane and a rounded bottom plane then you can start trying to play with a Traver and most of the time they are a combination between the two they're not quite flat and they're not quite rounded but you can play with them a lot more because you can focus if I just want to work on something over on this side or I can work over something on this side and I can actually adjust the iron to be slightly different from one side the other giving me something to play with of all the planes that I have and this is just a selection of the ones I use the most common the Millers fall round and bottom is the one I grab most often it's just a simple plane that I can do most anything with and once you've mastered that rounded bottom you can use it in any situation you would use a flat bottom with it's just a fun tool and it feels very good in the hand very easy to manipulate very fun to feel with second most the Stanley 151 is one that I'm going to be using quite a bit if I'm just wanting to do something quick and easy and I don't want think about it this is the one I'm going to grab gives you that nice clean surface plus having the sole on there does a little bit of burnishing I grabbed this one quite a bit as well so what exactly is a Spoke shave for I've used them quite a bit for doing chamfering which it makes it very nice when you want to get into something has an Ever So slight curve on it spoke shaves get into those Corners a lot easier than other planes though most of the time I am just going to grab a block plane a Spoke shave does chamfering very well where the spoke shave really shines is anytime you want to work on something with a rounded surface or in this case as I'm going around it and I'm actually creating a slight curvature to the surface sort of how I would with a molding plane this allows you to just detail it in so anytime you get an organic feeling on a handle or a bent piece spoke shaves are phenomenal for that you can often think of the spoke shave as the more delicate finishing version of the draw knife and a draw knife really is a Spoke shape but without the sole so it's more aggressive and bites in although if you do Master your skill with this you can get finishing Cuts with draw knife that almost will match a Spoke shape it just takes a lot more time and practice to get to that point so this is one of those videos that I get to the end and I feel like there are so much more I want to say there's lots of other ideas that come into this and I would like to go into more detail and and talking about these more so I might end up doing a live sometime in the future where we actually talk through spoke Shades how to sharpen them and things like that and if there's any particular question or if you have one that is of interest to you and you have some questions about that let me know down in the comments below I would love to look through those and I do actually read through all the comments and I answer most of them so I'd love to hear your thoughts questions and comments down there so I think that's about it for today this is a topic that I love and anytime you actually get to spend with a Spoke shave and play with it it's just it's a good time in the shop a great way to make curls you just have to make sure you don't go too far so I hope you liked the video if you did like comment subscribe that really does help it out also I do not have any sponsors on this channel it's not that I haven't gotten any it's that I don't want them on this channel I want this channel to be what I say so if you want to help out with that and say thank you I do have patreon as well as you can click the join button down there and become a member here on YouTube that really does help out the channel so I think that's about it for now and until next time have a wonderful day you know how I get my head so clean it's with a Spoke shave shave oh yeah get rid of all that hair

Channel: Wood By Wright ASMR

Views: 49,164

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Spokeshave, spokeshaves, how to sharpen a spokeshave, spokeshave types, the best spokeshave, hand tool woodworking, traditional woodworking, hand tools woodworking, chisels, hand planes, tools, how to, how-to, wood working, handtool woodworking, sharpening, starter, hand tools only, starter tools, woodworking hand tools, tool, blade

Id: ixq_-_3fozI

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2019