Plane Bevel Ups and Downs | Paul Sellers

I've worked with wood working hand planes for 50 years and really I've used just about every type that comes on the market but you know sometimes new things come to market ten years ago bevel up playing started to be made my tree manufactured and then they were presented as being the new age plane that we're going to you know these planes we're going to transform the way we work wood and that's very much how its I think it's being portrayed today but we tend to dismiss some of these old planes like this one you know to 300 year old 400 year old planes been going a long time and then we tend to look at the old planes as being old-fashioned they don't quite work they didn't work that well but you you know you really do have to think about the era that you're living in now and then compare the woodworking we have today with the woodworking of two and three hundred years ago and that was the era when hand woodworking was at its peak it was the zenith of the tradition of handwork and the work was the most exemplary in the history of Western woodworking nothing today even comes close to what those craftsmen those everyday workmen were working with and what they were producing nothing is is anywhere near and yet we have this high skillful technology we've got these cryogenic Steel's we've got this ductile iron they didn't have back then that we should be at the pinnacle today but we're really not and so I wanted to re-examine a couple of things some of you have written in and then you know we've just shown you some video footage of the comparison between a bevel up metal down play but what I wanted to do was take this old plane here this is a piece of oak it's inch and a half wide and it's just standard oh nothing special about it so we're going to take some shavings and I want you to take a look at the shavings just draw a comparison for yourself I know that these planes were very well so let's take a look at them let's look at the shavings let's look at the plane in action because this is where it really matters so I've got a four foot long piece of oak here I've got it on edge so I can see you know I've got the green so it's going to be the most consistent for the planes for all of the planes as I work through each one and you look at what we get and and then we can draw a comparison at the end of this and I'll give you my verdict of these different planes and tell you how I think they work so straight off we're going to look at this wooden plan this is just a wooden jack these are all Jack planes they're all with their original thickness iron so most of them have the thin iron so these four here the standard Bailey pattern hand planes bench planes I've got a very terse here that's got a thicker I am about twice as thick as the standard iron and I've got this one that comes again with the original iron in it so let's take a shaving or two with this one and see how this one works here so this is your wooden plane bench plane here it's working very nicely I love the way I feel about this is it's almost too light on the surface of the wood minor adjustment take a little bit thicker shading you know I look inside the salt of the plane and I see the shavings just scaling up inside and I see how these planes were abandoned not because they didn't work and work well but because they didn't keep pace with the industrial world and then you know there's no resistance at all it's almost like there's zero resistance so I'm not actually stressing the plane down to the surface of the wood maybe pulls itself to task and this will shave all day long I like the way this feels I'm getting about this is probably a couple of thousand thick something like that thousand thick half of them so let's take a look at these planes here we've got the various plane it's a bevel up plane these have all been sharpened to the same level of sharpness we've oiled the sole with just some oil here on each one of them they've all been oiled and this is set to about one thousandth of an inch I believe so we take a couple of shavings just a level at what we just did with that wooden flame I just measured the bevel on a bevel up plane with a thicker iron and it's 12 millimeters and still that's the loss of steel to hold off just using hand methods which we do and on a regular plane it's maybe four to five mill so it's less than half the amount of steel you have to remove so those are all considerations when you when you're looking at the efficacy of the planes and what you have to do to make them work and this is feeling very nice you're getting a consistent shaving full length full width off that one so here's another plane this is a saw be very standard then I are not very thick at all so oh look at this this is a basic Bailey pattern plane nothing special about it it's exactly the same thickness of iron it's not retrofitted is just the standard iron that came with the plane and it works perfect this has got a much steeper angle on it it's it seems steeper that's a 12 degree on the verities this one's 44 degree on the saw B that feels about the same here's a Stanley now this is a Stella this is about the cheapest of all the Jack planes it's got to be junk right bit thicker shaving on that one so we'll just back the iron off just a hair and look what we get in again skipping a little bit with us now we're getting a full loan this green may not be I love the shavings I'm guessing with that and then that and the neat thing is this had a certain level where I could feel the pressure this felt exactly same if anything this one felt lighter this one felt a little bit more resistance so here's another Stanley here this is this is the thinnest cheapest Stanley on the market as far as the jack plane goes uh oh this is lovely I look back to the 1860s when this plane came about Leonard Bailey invented this particular plane and nothing has changed in a hundred and fifty years barely anything changed and I can pick up a plane from that era and go all the way through the history decade after decade after decade and see that that plane they value the efficacy of that man's engineering it's still stand against all the best today so this is a cheaper plane this one will cost you twenty five pounds on eBay and it's doing exactly what I got with the voters so why is that they see it's not just various it's any bevel up plane here's a saw B that I love very much and that's doing the same so what we're saying here is the non bedrock bailey patent bent plane gives me very very consistent shavings across the whole range so you have to decide yourself I like the bevel up plane it has a certain inline thrust that I like to these planes produce exactly what I can get with this one and very very consistently with thin ions so they're about the same it's up to you if you want to spend on the higher dollar one there's nothing wrong with that if you just want a working plane goes every day pick up a stanley and take your shavings all day long and I must say I haven't flattened the souls of any of these planes apart from just taking off the rough edges spend a little time on them but not I haven't flattened them to within a thousandth or anything like that they give me what I really want which is a consistent thickness of Shaving and a plane that will go all day long for 50 years I have all my planes for 50 years and they still you Oh

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 212,672

Rating: 4.9569073 out of 5

Keywords: Paul Sellers, Woodworking, Bevel, Planes, Veritas

Id: 10RPOPBTwZA

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 23 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/MartzReddit]

I'm really surprised at the negatives comments in this thread about Paul Sellers. For me, a novice, his videos have been hugely inspirational for me, not because of his great teaching style but because of the results he gets with the very cheapest and simplest hand tools. I've learnt so much.

The ones which come to mind are the chisels in the chisel sharpening videos, his "90" year old saw, and recommending a Stanley No. 4 smoothing plane for the vast majority of tasks.

[u/mradtke66]

I take it a step further. With a properly sharpened iron AND correctly set chip breaker, the the Bailey design (and derivitives: Bedrocks, Lie-Nielsen, BD Veritas planes) take a BETTER shaving.

I've never seen a BU plane be able to take a shaving both with and against the grain without tearout. A BD plane can do that.

Of course, having a LAJ is a nice thing to have. I find it easier to shoot with and random, odd ball tasks.

[u/thegreybush]

I have learned a ton from Paul Sellers videos and I very much appreciate his opinion, but I don't exactly agree with him.

I believe that the reason bevel up planes weren't invented 150 years ago is that manufacturing and sharpening techniques were not what they are now. I modern bevel up plane must be built to a higher degree of accuracy because of the very low angle of the iron. Modern bevel up irons must be honed with a much more accurate angle and edge than traditional bevel down planes as well. These are things that could not be done 150 years ago.

I do agree that a well maintained bevel down plane can produce shavings just as well as a modern bevel up plane, especially in the hands of a master like Paul Sellers, but modern bevel up planes offer advantages that simply cannot be found in vintage bevel down planes. The most obvious advantage of the veritas bevel up jointer is the variable bevel angle.

I am not suggesting that vintage Bailey planes are not great because they are, and all but one of my planes are vintage Bailey planes, but I don't necessarily agree with Mr. Sellers in this video.

[u/jlpoole]

Paul Sellers stated: "nothing today even comes close to what those craftsman... [did].. we should be at the pinnacle today, but we're really not."

I wish I knew what criteria he was using to make this assertion.

When someone says "If you want to spend more money, that's fine" is disingenuous, it's a polite way of saying "you are wasting your money".

It seems he is proving the adage, "It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools."