Spokeshave Q&A | Paul Sellers

hello my friends and today is a special day because we've got a Q & A and I am going to be talking about the spokeshave and this is either everybody's friend or everybody's enemy so we're gonna try and demystify some of the things that cause the issues cause the problems and get you to where you can adjust your spokeshave and use it without the the hiccups that people seem to be facing and there are different problems but people are asking for advice and these first few here I'm going to talk to you to Dan holiday in Texas which he has sent his question and he says which is the most versatile spokeshave which one will accomplish more tasks than the others and which ones are your favorites well for me it's not a one size fits all but I do think that the Stanley Record the Veritas has one that's based on this and basically this is where we have a bevel down spokeshave so that means when it's held in this position the blade is inserted it means the bevel is on the underside of the blade I find this a very versatile spoke shape if you said is this the very best spokeshave I might say I'm not sure because it depends on what I'm going to do with the spoke shape and I'm hoping we'll clear some of that while we're doing it so my first choice would be the 151 flat bottom spokeshave not the round bottom spokeshave and we're going to cover that in this next question Steve from Green Bay in Wisconsin when would I use a curved bottom spokeshave as opposed to a flat bottom this question is a very very common question and people often buy them in pairs and often they're sold as pairs because people advise people to get a round bottom and a flat bottom and in reality that's probably good advice it depends on how how much of a curve you're going to do on large radiuses you can use a flat bottom spokeshave perfectly well without any issue at all so that would do something maybe this wide and maybe an inch deep a flat bottom spokeshave will shave out the bottom of that curve very well is when you get to this one where it gets a little bit tighter this is a four inch radius and this is where it starts to become a problem for the flat bottom because when you place the spokeshave in here the flat bottom spokeshave is suspended between this point the four edge of the spokeshave and the back edge of the spokeshave which means to get it to work you have to have the blade protruding quite a lot as soon as the blade protrudes a lot then you have stammered in the surface you have chatter you have a variety of things because the blade is unsupported it's not supported as firmly as it could be however if you take a round bottom spoke shape like this one and it's got no support on either side you find yourself having to adjust the spokeshave and sometimes that's not as successful as you had hoped it would be so on a tight curve the round bottom spokeshave does work well so four inches in diameter or less it would work fairly well let me show you what I've done with my spokeshave and you see if you feel you want to do this with yours this is a round bottom spokeshave and but what I've done is I've filed across the four part so between the blade and the about quarter of an inch in I've filed it flat that shortened the length of the sole and I've found let me show you that when I'm using this spokeshave I can go in and I can take perfectly good shaved parts of course you have to go into the bottom and work from both sides but I can get perfectly good shavings using this spoke shape so it works perfectly whereas on the flat bottom spokeshave I would be struggling and I would have to have the blade protruding quite a lot to get there so this one is perfect this is one I've adjusted now this one will cut but it tends to chatter so this one now is chattering in the surface if I go in with this one I don't have that chatter so I get a good finish and that's what I would recommend you might want to do with your round bottom the other thing is I can still do flat surfaces with this so I can still use this spoke change this way as I can even with the flat bottom on it fine no problem but when it comes to the round bottom I can do it but I'm constantly flexing and trying to get the surface to be in contact with the blood or the blading in contact with the surface and I have nothing to steady it I hope that helps so this one is from Joel past it's AK from Lincoln Nebraska in the US what would a good beginner spokeshave be definitely a 151 model it doesn't have to be Stanley it doesn't have to be record it could be a more up-to-date version it could be another maker a more modern maker that might have put more effort into put coming up with a well engineered piece but really I don't think you should spend more than 40 or 50 pounds on a spokeshave and the Stanley and the records usually go for about anywhere between 15 and 20 and they're definitely going to be a usable spokeshave after you've settled it so that's a great choice 151 the one the other models may not have the adjusters on them I do like the adjusters so by the adjusters I mean these two points here these are just a blade up and down through the throat and I like those but you don't have to have them okay and if you don't have them you've got to use a hammer tap or slacken things to adjust them if you are going to own two spoke saw spoke shows what would they be well adjusting mine like this you get two spoke shows in one and this will do just about everything you ever want to do so I might recommend a metal spokeshave with my just adjustment to it there my adaptation and then I might suggest a flat bottom one you can pick these up fairly inexpensively and if they're in good shape a wooden spokeshave it's just a different tool altogether it does do the same tasks but between the two you should be able to tackle any job with that so I wouldn't a spokeshave like this one would be fine also we've got a how to make this one which is a wooden spoke chair very similar to that with adjusters in this case so this is a poor-man's spokeshave and that you can find out how to make on my youtube channel okay Joe well we've got that we've answered that one Jeff Rogers I have a Millis Falls number one cigar spoke shape and find it almost impossible to get shavings from do you have input on adjusting and also sharpening the blade I really don't I've really I've never used one so I can't advise you I have looked at them and I've often wondered how easy they would be to sharpen and to set up and to use so I can't really advise you on that I'm very sorry Jeff I wish I could and Eddie Maryland is your blade sharpening straight across or does it have a slight crown side-to-side like some smoothing planes I go square across because most of my work is square across and it relies on being square across so I probably would not camber the blade because it's very different to using it for mostly we use it on edges or on convex is concave we don't usually you don't use it on wide surfaces whereas the plane blade is being used across a wide board it's just the crowning just feathers it in from each side as you work across you don't have to do that with a spoke so very often we usually don't do wide flat surfaces with a spokeshave this is Ben bunting Somerville South Carolina I have my spokeshave bevel at 30 degrees would 25 degrees be better that's a great question because what I found is that when people sharpen their spoke shaves they're a tendency to go even steeper so instead of staying at 30 degrees they go to 35 and 40 degrees and when you put that in relationship to let me plot this on here when you put the flat bottom spokeshave in relation to that you have an angle here that's probably around 45 degrees so the more bevel you put on the steeper the bevel you put on the more you making it commensurate to this angle and what I've often found is that the the actual cutting edge people will round that very for part of the cutting edge on the bevel side and that stops the blade from having contact with the surface so I would say generally go for the 25 degrees keep that bevel ground at 25 degrees and then just lift up for a couple of strokes put the convex camber on which is the camber on the back of the blade the one I use for my planes and then use the spoke shape and just keep on top of it the tendency is to overcompensate on the on the second bevel Omni on the micro bevel if you want to go the secondary bevel and that stops the blade from cutting so that's what I would do always aim for 25 and then just lift up two or three degrees and you'll have a good working spoke shape blade Jeff black from central California how do you sharpen wooden spoke shaves the blade seems so different from the cast iron spoke shaves which I have which have blades like small planes okay I understand that and and really what we do with this spokeshave now this one's fully adjusted and I don't want to put it back and adjust it so let me see if I can pull one out here you tuck your iron out here just using a hammer a light hammer like this wiggle it out put your block of wood in the vise put your piece of wood on here and then take a piece of wood with some abrasive paper that's what I've got in my hand here and then run it along here like this and work in a circular motion and you can get the exact bevel for the 25 degrees which is fine and then you can increase by either lifting this up or moving this puddle further along here and that gets you the 25 the 30 degree bevel so that's how I would sharpen mine the underside is once you've initialized this and you've got this polished out you don't have to touch that again except just to remove the burr which you can do with a strop pulling it on the strop and you'll have a sharp edge okay john bauer from Gaithersburg Maryland US when do you push and pull when do when do you push versus pull the tool mostly that's according to the grain so if you're working on wood grain and you you get like here I've got nuts and I might be going along with any one of the spokes shapes here go along here this is working fine I don't have any stammer and then I come to the knot and I've got tear out so I might turn this around here oh look what happened so I'm going against the grain that's a great example where I couldn't have engineered that better so I'm going against the grain rather than turn my body on my piece of wood around I turned and I correct it by going in the opposite direction there are times when you're working on concaves like this where you're going down this way into the cut and then you come down this way into the cut and rather than change my body or turn myself around I would work in both directions so I would work that way and that's generally how I work it so I work it that way the whole time and I actually often do that with bench planes too so if I was using just my bench plane I come to that kind of grain we've just met our n I might turn around and come this way and do it on the pull stroke that's very common for me and I think it's common for a lot of the old woodworkers that I used to work with okay now then Daryl Carson from sprog River Oregon USA how do you prevent shatter that is a result of the small surface area on the base of the spoke shave my favorite thing is to lubricate so let me see if I've got a spot of shave that will give me a problem so I'm using this spokeshave now I use the oily rag in a can oiler which I've used for 50 years it's the best thing I've ever come across for planes and this technique is a plane so it's got the sole just go across the surface here and I totally transformed even in that short session there it transformed this spokeshave so a quick wipe with that and that takes care of the first primary cause of chatter if we calling it chatter which usually is skidding not chatter because the blade what the the phenomenom of chatter is when the blade is bending and flexing back and forth and causes an utterance of the wood by the blade keep flexing back and forth so scooting is probably more a typical answer for that so that's the first one I would do then I might check my depth of cut that would be another one that would cause let me over set this like this that's not doing it so there I'm getting it now so I've got this terror on the surface so that's because the blade was extended too far beyond the plane body so back off the iron keep going a little bit more once I've got that done i advanced thee once it's not cutting advancing and there we have it so now we've taken care of the chatter I think that will be the answer and now this is a fellow called Paul that was a wonderful name you've got Paul in Toronto are there any issues with having a spokeshave set for a light shave on one side and one end I think what he means is when he set the plane the the blade he's got a light cut on this end and a heavy set on the other side which was very common that was how we used to and still do you set this eye this side here heavy and this one light and that means you can take a heavy cut on this side followed by a light cut for refinement and that's what we also do with this type of spoke shape so often I will set one side heavy there's my heavy cut and then his might like it's a bit like that's very light there so I've got my light and I can refine my cut and I can work anywhere between the heavy cut and the like when you do get a problem is if you're consistently taking passes here without moving your plane you will end up taking more and more and you'll end up with a beveled edge that would be the with conflict there if there is a conflict so generally if we do want to parallel them we've got a lot to hug off we set the plane bar at the spokeshave parallel how do I get this is Jack Hessian from Galway Ireland I love Galway I'll be glad to come there whenever you want me how do I get an extremely fine cut when shaping curves okay it's all to do with set really however having said that when we set the spoke shade let's say now I've got a heavy cut on one side I can go in and I can really like see these are onion skin thicknesses but I didn't alter the set of the spokeshave what I did is I tilted it forward using my muscle i suspend the blade from cutting if i want a heavy cut I just press harder so you get used to that sensitivity develop sensitivity and that's what woodworking is 90% about the spokeshave is not bulldogged to task it's not heavy unfeeling it's always to do with sensitivity and feeling for that cut that's what you want you want to get that sensitivity going in your life oh right Richard from Virginia is there a modification or adjustment to keep ships from getting jammed under the blade the big one this check this this jamming shaving is a biggie so when we have this spokeshave and we've got the blade is sitting fine there's no problem there what it is is is this underside edge here that's gotten an open edge on the very front edge so what you do with this is back this out so it's not protruding set it on the stone and on a coarse stone and just just rub it so that you get light coming on here now I've got light on the back edge of this but when this is actually in position this screw needs to be protruding about an eighth of an inch so I'm just gonna rub this lightly like this and now I'm right on that front edge I've got light along this front edge even here so if I take this and keep going at this I don't want to wear the screw down too much so I could put a piece of wood under there at 1/8 now I've got light going across the whole band that apart from this left hand side so I'm just going to raise it up a little bit more and I feel like I've got enough support there along that back edge so when I reload this back this back out slide it into there and elevate this and there should be a gap between this end we don't use this to tighten the blade in there we use it as a counter cantilever so that when we prep when we turn this set screw here the fore edge of that blade is going down onto the surface of the blade on the back of the blade so there we've got it and we're ready and that should chop stop the shavings from the feather edge of the shaving going in behind the cap iron okay this is from Dennis in Moscow in Russia how do I keep the spokeshave sole parallel to the flat surface at the correct angle to the curved surface to get consistent shaving so curved surface what does that mean does he mean curved as in a hollow or curved as in around it looks like I have to apply some force to tilt it a bit forward but my hands don't feel when my hands don't feel when it is in the correct position thank you okay I'll try an answer this when I'm not sure if I will but I'm gonna try it is about pressure here I've got a flat sole for naught yeah I'm gonna use this one because this is now my favorite so when I'm using the spoke shave it isn't about hard pressure it's more about light pressure it's also about applying the rag oiler on that surface so what's happening here you see there's no one answer for this because often we're going this way and I've reduced the friction so I know that's not the problem but I can feel a little undulation so what I might do is skew this so I get a skew cut which is the optimum cut you can get with any plane off tool is that pairing action so this is very equivalent to a pairing action I get a very nice clean cut now I'm handling this I'm holding this spoke so firmly but not bulldogging it to task so I'm very careful not to over grip this spoke shape so I get that and then in the hollow again light setting on the plane iron spokeshave I own a feel for that so I do feel for the edge now I've got to use a lot of pressure but it's firm pressure and I'm being sensitive as to when I ease up and when I put more pressure on it's just practice really Dennis okay Konrad veteran avid earn in Canada hi Paul I've noticed you're perfect you perform straight planning with the spokeshave over well over wood wider than the blade and you get super thin shavings can you explain how to set the spot wave to do this yeah good question here a narrow piece of wood in the vise doesn't matter which spokeshave we use really so what we're going to do is we're going to take the blade up into the body of the spoke show till we take you know shaving on either side then we're going to turn these knobs here the adjusters till they take all the slack is taken up and we keep turning what equally and trying one side and then the other so I'm getting no shaving here now I'm getting a little bit of a shaving on that one side and a little bit of a shaving on the other side very thin shavings so I'm working either side now I feel like a little bit more on this side and that's how I would set my spoke shape so I can take a wider cut well maybe I should do a wider cook maybe this will work and remember also keep going back to this Euler because it really makes a huge difference so now I've got a wide shaving off this piece of wood and it's working fine so that's how I would do it that's what I would do to it okay Alex in Twyford I recently bought a wooden spokeshave and often find the blade works itself loose after a few passes I close the mouth of the plane as much as possible but still find after a few passes it opens up again what that means is that this blade these two tangs here have worn into the hole a little bit more as they've been tapped in and out over the years so it's unfortunate when that happens because it's a little difficult to get to adjust them so what you do is what there are two options one you can reheat this area of the spokeshave in the fire and then anneal and soft in it and then you'll be able to tap one of these either in or out to increase the friction on the side of the the hole the square Tang goes into my favorite thing to do is to put a piece of very dense grained wood in there just a slither really like a wedge in the extreme of the hole I'm thinking this side here on one side only so adding a little bit of wood in there will increase the friction and use some five ton epoxy to glue it in there then take a rasp or a file should I say chisel and chisel it down until this fits in until it goes to about that position so it's protruding past the face of the sole of the plane of the spoke shape and then as you start tapping it see what you need to take off until it sets nicely for you great good questions everybody good questions a couple more here reefs in Memphis Tennessee why are there two blade adjustment screws good question this is I think we've already actually answered that by adjusting one side and the other we can offset the plane iron to the other spokeshave iron to the face of the soul or we can have it perfectly parallel that's what these adjusters do some spoke shapes don't have the adjust the adjusters and you have to either you can either tap with the hammer on both corners like this or you can loosen this and just move it with your fingertips the tap method is better just a simple tap Robert Roberto Fisher in Rio de Janiero ah new cheap generic spoke shaves restorable if not what makes someone usable I regret getting one of these but it was also crazy cheap so this information would help me understand what to look for in good ones okay over the years I have seen spoke shaves on the economy and come to market and I've actually found that they can be work they don't usually come straight from the manufacturer whichever country they're made in wherever they are so you do have to fettle them and you have to work on them to get them right but I think that it's simple enough and we have enough information out there on my blog or in YouTube or wherever for you to be able to restore one of those spoke shows so please try and find that information there we've put as much out as we know to put it out there so this is a great question yes they can be settled and they can be made to work just as good as any other but I will say this not always there may be one that's just a pup that you cannot you cannot resolve this one's from Robert in Utrecht in the Netherlands I have a couple of wooden spoke shows that I have trouble getting to work the soul of these spoke shaves are quite worn out so the mouth is very wide I can't seem to get the thin shavings I have found that I have found any I haven't found any that don't have this so can't figure it out if this is down to my technique or the tool my question is how can you tell when the soul of a wooden spokeshave needs fixing and how do you set the blade properly to get the thin shavings that's another good question because if you notice on this type of spokeshave on the wooden spokeshave there's actually a hollow in this surface the same in this one this one actually no Hirst that's wrong this one's got a perfectly flat sole no no it has got a slight hollow this one's more evidence so we'll work with this one and the reason is this is what this area here is what we call a relief area so when we offer the spokeshave to the wood it means the cutting Eddie's right on in there and there's nothing at the back holding the cutting edge from cutting the surface of the wood so it's perfect so I miss for instance you can see how this works I've got very nice thick shaving or white shavings and it's working perfectly but what happens is this edge here sometimes starts to get rounded on the leading edge which means the blade is too far down which means we have to tap it out to get a shaving of any kind and then we have this bevel on the underside which is constantly pushing the spokeshave up as the as the spokeshave progresses in to cut it slit it's lifting off so that's probably the problem I don't know if you can see this but on this bevel here there's a bevel from this point here a bevel leaning forward so this leans forward ever so slightly so there might be a 1/16 lower area here than here on the on the spokeshave so that means that we do tend to want to lean in until we feel it bite and then we follow through with the cut as we progress that cut and that's the question I think Mike well you know how can you tell us all well again another thing is that sometimes this area here gets very worn out and what you have to do is just take a gauge and make a mark here c'mon here cuts a rebate in here do another piece of comparable wood this is Beach so I would put beach on there and then you can reshape this to get the spoke you can close the mouth up for one thing and you can also get the spokeshave to work well again okay Joe from San Francisco in California USA is the blade inserted bevel up or bevel down woah this is such an issue sometimes I will buy a spokeshave on eBay and it does come with the blade upside down and when you get it you think ah this is a bevel up spokeshave so I'm going to use it with the bevel uh which means it's protruding out of the sole way too much so I'm backing my iron off and then we'll see what we've got so here my boat shave is upside down and you can see what happens this gives me the corrugation it looks like a corrugated roof in Texas in the summer so what we do just simply take the blade out flip it over this is a bevel down spokeshave the wooden ones are 99.9 percent always a bevel up spokeshave you've seen me take this apart you saw me sharpening it that meant the bevel was on the top that is the only one way you can get this one in okay so this is the only one that you can really put bevel in the wrong way so you can have it on the top if it's just never going it will never cut that way you'll never get it to go so you know it's the wrong way up if it just won't put flip it over put the bevel down and you're on your way this is from Louis in France and he's talking about the Stanley spokeshave upper he purchased online it's a bit rough mmm yep they do come rough they've always come rough since 1965 as far as I know most stanley tools have come rough you have to fettle all of their tools they come to you I'm talking about edge tools planes spokes shaves that kind of thing and so whenever you got one when I was an apprentice we got the spokeshave I put it to the wood he always jumped and chattered and scooted and gouged and did everything and then George would say to me come on Paul let me show you what we do so what you do is you take the blade out take these off take this off and then you try to flatten in here as best you can with a piece of with a file or whatever you can the trouble is there's not much room to get a file in so it has to be super thin if you can't do that just take a slither of wood like this glue a pad on to it and this will then go through that throat and you can flatten this surface quite nicely try not to rock it get it nice and flat and that's the first step and after that there's really only the sole that you might need to work on this is around spokeshave so I'd put that slight flat on the leading edge I would like I would prefer just to have one spoke shape rather than to the blade needs sharpening of course it and we give enough information on sharpening because it's the same for the spokeshave pretty much identical and then of course you've got to do this fettling on the backside on the underside of the cap iron and then you've got to get this right a lot of times I think I already mentioned it before on another question but a lot of times people will set this and this has gone to the extreme and it's still not the lock the blade in so I'm going to back off this set screw here this adjustment screw and then I'm going to turn this Center screw here in but it's this is not to tighten the blade in it's just to give that counter lever so now when I turn this it's pressing the four part of the blade by having a gap on this back edge so after that it's just a question of adjusting the cutting iron as we showed you and then you're ready to start cutting your wood so thank you for all the questions we had so many questions but these we feel addressed the key questions the core issues that people are really struggling with so I hope this has helped you I've enjoyed it I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope you get your spokeshave out fettle them and enjoy them for the rest of your life [Music] you

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 86,960

Rating: 4.9691119 out of 5

Keywords: spokeshave, spokeshaves, paul sellers, hand tools, woodworking, DIY, workshop, joiner, carpenter, craftsman, crafts, furniture, joinery, hand tool woodworking

Id: W5ZhNK5egbI

Length: 35min 9sec (2109 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2019