I enjoy incorporating curves in my work and so have explored lots of different tools and methods for shaping, refining, and smoothing them. Years ago I used a new Record #20 compass plane but then got rid of it. The problem, however, was mostly in my approach to the tool. I’ve harbored mixed feelings about the metal compass plane since, but have finally come to peace with the beast since owning this vintage Stanley #20 for the past year.

I’ll get into the function and handling of the tool in the next post, but here I will detail its tuning and modification.

This #20 was manufactured sometime in the years 1933-1941, as best I can tell. It arrived from the seller fundamentally sound – no cracks in the main casting, working sole adjustment, and japanning in excellent shape.

These planes need all the help they can get with chatter dampening so I replaced the thin Stanley blade and chipbreaker with a hefty Hock A2 cryo blade (#BPA175) and chipbreaker (#BK175), 1 3/4″ wide. I prefer the durability of A2 for the way I employ the #20, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

Patrick Leach notes that the #20 (and #113) have unique chipbreakers so I carefully checked the diagram on Ron Hock’s site. The critical parameters are the chipbreaker’s slot-to-edge distance and the length (the short dimension) of the slot. These worked out beautifully. The #20’s advancing fork engaged the chipbreaker slot very well despite the increased thickness of the blade-breaker set. Also, the disc in the lateral adjusting mechanism nicely engaged the blade slot.

Unfortunately, the thicker blade-breaker set caused severe pleating of shavings, and bad clogging. To remedy this, I disassembled the sole by knocking out the pin at each end of the sole and freeing the dovetailed connection between the sole and the body, then filed the forward side of the mouth to widen it (barely advancing into the row of pins that bind the flexible portion to the dovetail block), and added a slight forward angle to the throat, all to make more room for shavings to escape. It also proved necessary to round over the crisp bevel on the back of the chipbreaker.

This solved the clogging problem very nicely, and the beefy A2 Hock set outperforms the Stanley set! Suprisingly, I have not found the wider mouth to be a problem for planing curves. 

The frog needed minor truing. I reattached it as deep as it would go, then, after reassembling the sole, filed the landing below the frog to be mostly level with the frog to increase support for the blade.

I flattened the sole around the mouth with a diamond stone. There is no point in flattening beyond the vicinity of the mouth in a compass plane with its flexible sole. A general clean and lube, and touch ups with a file here and there, finished the job.

Consistent with the purpose that I assign to this plane, I sharpened the blade with a medium camber and made sure the corners would not catch the work piece.

There are other options in metal compass planes including a Record #20, Stanley #113, other variants of the #113 style, and current versions of the #113 by Kunz and Anant.

The metal compass plane is a bit of an odd animal and one must come to terms with it, as will be discussed in the next post.

Is a thinner kerf saw more accurate? Does that make a skinny saw better? After all, we associate thin with accurate, such as thin pencil lines or thin gradations on a rule.

Accurate sawing means a clean, neat kerf that consistently splits the layout line, with the kerf in the waste wood. This comes from teeth of appropriate design and pitch for the task that have a small, consistent amount of set. Further, the saw plate must be produced straight and stay straight throughout cutting. The sides of the teeth should also be cleanly free of burr.

The sawyer must employ good mechanics, aided by good tooth geometry, saw balance, hang angle, and other mechanical factors. With all that on your side, you can physically sense true cutting, split the layout line, and visually monitor the progress with accuracy.

But is thinner kerf width, per se, more accurate? I don’t find this to be so. As an example, my .012″ plate Japanese rip dozuki holds no advantage in accuracy by virtue of its thinner plate over my .018″ plate Western dovetail saw. In fact, because of other factors, I find the latter is more accurate. Yes, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison but my eyes and hands can tell that factors other than plate thickness are the deciding ones in determining relative cutting accuracy between these saws.

Similarly, my carbide tip bandsaw blade makes a considerably wider kerf than my steel blades but it cuts more accurately. We also don’t think of thin kerf table saw blades, whatever their other advantages, as being more accurate than standard kerf blades.

Now, I’m not saying get a dovetail saw with a .042″ plate, nor that thin plate saws are necessarily bad choices. I do think confusion arises in assessing and choosing saws because thinner plates are sometimes associated with other factors that promote accuracy such as nicely set fine teeth, or comparing a good quality thin Japanese saw with a poorly made thicker Western saw.

Within limits, however, one ought not assume that, all else being about equal, a thinner plate is more accurate. In some cases, contrary to the assertions of some vendors, it may be less accurate.

There are many factors that produce an effective, accurate saw. You may, for various reasons, prefer a thinner plate saw. But I suggest don’t get charmed by skinny saws. Rather, consider the whole picture, I’d say, and see how the saw really saws.

In saw descriptions and discussions, there is often the implicit assumption that a thinner saw cuts proportionately faster than a thicker saw. At the risk of setting this up as a straw man case, the assumption goes that, as an example, with all else being theoretically equal, a .012″ plate will cut twice as fast as a .024″ plate. Further, it follows that a thin-kerf saw has, within limits, this distinct advantage, assuming that its other sawing parameters can be controlled to maintain good function.

This would be analogous to a 24″ wide swath of snow being twice as hard to push as a 12″ swath, all else being equal. However, I don’t think saws work like that!

Let’s think about what a saw tooth does. A rip tooth cuts and plows the wood at the bottom of the kerf. In this, kerf width is probably roughly proportional to the effort, and thus inversely proportional to speed. At the sides of the kerf, the tooth shears the wood, and there the task is approximately the same regardless of kerf width.

The crosscut tooth severs the wood fibers at the sides of the kerf where, again, the task is approximately irrespective of kerf width. At the bottom of the kerf, where it is a lesser task of shuffling away the broken wood, the work is probably about proportionate to the kerf width.

Thus, in both cases, especially crosscutting, this simple idealized analysis suggests that, all else being equal, twice the kerf width does not mean half the sawing speed. It is not like pushing snow.

In reality, all else is never equal, of course, and the dynamics are surely more complicated than described here. Nonetheless, this way of looking at it at least gives some basis to explain my real world observations using many saws that, within limits, thinner kerf saws do not seem to give a proportionate advantage in cutting speed over thicker kerf saws.

Again, my argument is against this as an assumption that may be made by some when comparing saws. This is applicable in comparing among Western saws, and generally comparing Western with Japanese saws.

Further, as plate thickness is reduced too much, especially in Western saws, disadvantages ensue. Among these, depending on other design parameters, is a tendency to distort in the heat and action of sawing. Also, energy intended for cutting seems to get wasted in vibrating the skinny saw plate, somewhat akin to action of a thin or poorly supported plane blade.

In summary, skinnier is not as attractive as it might seem. It is important to look at the whole picture when choosing saws.

Next: Ah, but is the thinner kerf saw inherently more accurate, all else being equal? Does that make skinny better?

Sometimes in woodworking, especially in unusual constructions, there comes a deflating realization that things would be a lot easier now if a different turn was made several steps earlier in the process. It’s not an abject mistake but it is time for the fix-it crew.

Here are several notable tools among the many whose modest bearing belies their performance in the clutch.

The pair of left and right-handed crank-neck 3/8″ skew chisels get into vertically and horizontally restricted areas to remove small amounts of wood that are preventing parts from fitting well. Widely available and inexpensive, I find them more useful than straight skew chisels.

For precise paring in more accessible locations, long paring chisels allow much finer control than a regular bench chisel. Using the dominant hand at the back end, the tool’s length allows fine control of the attack angle of the edge to produce clean cuts.

The Japanese azebiki saw has short, curved rip and crosscut edges. It’s great for starting cuts on a flat surface, and for getting into restricted areas. I adjust the set to a bare minimum on my saw.

The very flexible .020″ hand scraper is easier to use than thicker scrapers to clean up localized surface defects that can arise in the late stages of building from planing tearout or handling dings.

I’m almost embarrassed to say how often I use the little 1″ x 2″ .016″ mini scraper for fix-ups. I keep some edges with a hook and some without, and use it pulling, pushing, angled, skewed, or even flat against a surface to solve all sorts of problems.

The low-profile ratcheting driver is another tool that I might be lost without. It accepts 1/4″ hex-shank bits and can be used for driving and, patiently, for light drilling when necessary. With this tool and with a right-angle attachment for a power drill, it is very handy to have shorty drill bits available.

Of course the most important tool in a jam is the one on your shoulders. Pause, step back, collect, think, and be optimistic – there’s probably a solution!

The Veritas Shooting Sander uses the principle of shooting – a guided vertical cutter is pushed to engage a work piece that is stably oriented by a surface and a fence – but uses sandpaper instead of a plane blade as the cutter. It’s simple and useful.

Though it certainly is not intended to replace shooting with a plane and a good shooting board, I’ve been so far finding it handy for odd-shaped parts that cannot be fully backed by a conventional shooting board fence, and for small parts.

As we would expect from Veritas, the tool is well made and thought out. The accurately made anodized aluminum extrusion body and the nifty adjustable wooden handle are good reasons to forego a shop-made attempt at this low-cost tool.

The shooting board I made for it is straightforward but there are a few fine points. The base is 3/4″ MDF, 23″ long. The work surface is 7 3/4″ wide with a nice straight edge against which the sander runs. The track for the sander is 2 1/8″ wide with a 1″-wide outer guide rail.

The work surface must be elevated at least 9/32″ above the track surface for the sandpaper to meet the lowest part of the work piece. I made the work surface from two pieces of MDF (just what was handy) for a total thickness of 11/32″, which gives a little margin for error when applying the sandpaper to the tool. That is, the bottom edge of the work piece is sure to be within the width of the sandpaper, even if I don’t apply the PSA paper to the tool perfectly accurately.

The fence is about 1 3/8″ high, screwed down 3 1/2″ from the end of the board with slightly oversized clearance holes that allow fine tuning for squareness.

Break in the shooting board just as you would for a plane shooting board by running the sander along the edge of the work surface so that a tiny width of sandpaper, say 1/16″, cuts a miniscule rabbet along the edge of the work surface. Then screw down the 1″-wide guide rail on the outside of the track so it is snug against the sander for the full length of the track.

A generous amount of oil-varnish finish toughens the MDF surfaces. Finally, I waxed the track. It all works well.

1 1/4″ wide adhesive-backed sandpaper strips are used for this tool. These are most economically made by slicing 2 1/2″ Klingspor PSA abrasive roll paper down the middle of its width. The paper strips that Lee Valley supplies are Klingspor’s.

After removing the first piece of sandpaper from the tool, I cleaned the residual adhesive off the tool with a citrus-based remover, but did not then clean off the slightly greasy residue of the remover. I found that subsequent sandpaper stuck plenty well enough and left hardly any residual adhesive when removed.

The tool is very easy to use but there are a few caveats. The sandpaper leaves grooves that are surprisingly deep for a given grit. That is simply because the tiny grits on the sandpaper are running in the same tracks over and over, unlike with regular hand sanding where the slight variations in movement erase most of the tiny grooves.

The work goes slower than shooting with a plane, especially since sandpaper seems to cut slowy on endgrain. Also, the thickness (height) of the work piece is limited to just under 1 1/4″.

The tool can be used ad lib to sand odd angles without using the fence by holding the work piece very firmly and offering its edge at the desired angle (such as indicated by a scribed line) to the sander running in the track.

All in all, this so far has been a worthwhile addition to the shop. My sense is that it will increasingly become a valuable quick “problem solver” tool that I’m very glad to have.

First, the tips:

The cutoffs from thick curved cuts on the bandsaw will probably prove useful, so think twice before trashing them. With a little cleaning up, they can become clamp blocks, sanding blocks, or supports under the work pieces for hand tool work.

Camellia oil oxidizes very little but enough to make it somewhat gummy after a long time in a tool oiler or on the surface of infrequently used tools. Since adding a generous amount of vitamin E oil, an antioxidant, to my storage bottle of camellia oil, the problem has been all but eliminated.

After just a few weeks, the magnetic-mount LED work light from Lee Valley has become a shop favorite. I always use it for bandsaw work where the powerful magnet keeps it stable while the 18″ flexible neck stays put. At the workbench, it is easily set up for joinery work by using the mounting plate with the 3/4″ post in a dog hole. It is also invaluable for creating a low raking light for surface finishing tasks.

[Addendum: Over time I have found this lamp to be unreliable. High quality batteries seem to drain unusually fast and leaked in the original lamp and again in a replacement lamp. I no longer recommend it.]

I find this simple bandsaw push stick (above) handy and safe. The key is the hacked-up tip that grips a corner of the work piece. The tip is self-renewing as it gets passed into the moving blade (so my fingers won’t), until the stick gets too short, when it takes only a minute to make a new one.

Now, the irritations:

While A2 steel certainly has merits, it dulls differently than O-1, often with minute chip-outs, even with higher secondary bevel angles. I am also convinced that it must be very difficult to manufacture consistently with regard to carbide grain size, because I have some durable A-2 blades that almost never chip out and some that do so much more often, despite all being from highly regarded makers.

Jorgensen’s otherwise excellent #37 series heavy-duty bar clamps come with soft orange pads that leave oily stains on the wood when tightened hard. (On sanded mahogany in the photo below.) The stains do seem to get obscured by oil or varnish finishes, but are a risk and annoyance better avoided. The manufacturer acknowledged the issue when I contacted them, but I have seen no changes in the product in the more than one year since. I replaced the OEM pads with Bessey pads on the screw end and thin adhesive cork on the fixed end.

This one goes in the DAMHIKT file. I think I’d work outdoors in single digit temperatures rather than do topside routing of MDF in the shop, at least when a router dust collection attachment is impractical. It’s just not healthful.

Another one: Non-tapered sliding dovetails longer than about 3 or 4 inches should be considered a major risk factor for insanity. This was a situation where a tapered sliding DT would not work, but some things are just not meant to be.

It’s all OK though, because making things continues.

The 0.5 HB, despite limitations, is convenient and versatile to perform most layout work. However, as in most matters of woodworking, it is valuable to have a range of options to suit the tool to the task.

In the photo above, the line on the left was made with 0.5 HB, the next with a worn chisel point 2.0 mm 2H, and the three on the right with fresher chisel points.

What about the flat carpenter’s pencil? It won’t roll away while you are building on a roof but I do not like them for furniture making layout. The lead is too soft in the widely available regular ones, and though harder lead is available, I find them generally too coarse. A chisel point can be made with a knife, and renewed with sandpaper, but the process is slower and messier than the 2.0 mm and 0.9 mm 2H.

This is just personal preference and you may find you like them. Another option for sharpening the carpenter’s pencil is the clever Keson sharpener, which uses two blades in succession. Other sharpeners that bring the flat pencil to a rounded point are a good example of defeating a design with “improvements.”

Since only the timid and fools don’t make mistakes, those who use pencils must use erasers. The pink eraser on the end of a wooden pencil is adequate for spot use but it tends to smudge. The refillable white eraser on the end of the Pentel Twist-Erase is much better.

However, I like to make big, head-slapping mistakes so I keep two types of separate erasers available. A kneaded eraser is convenient in that it does not produce crumbs, and it lasts a long time, but often it cannot fully remove lines on wood. Its surface is refreshed by folding and kneading. More thorough is a white “plastic” eraser, such as the Staedtler Mars. It does produce crumbs but this serves to keep its surface clean and thus prevent smudges on the wood.

Finally, you might like this short video of great insight drawn from the humble pencil.

Lines made with pencils are a ubiquitous and essential part of woodworking, so it pays to take a close look at pencils, points, and how they are used.

The basic hexagonal wood pencil with HB (#2) lead, such as the classic yellow Dixon Ticonderoga is a handy workhorse for general non-critical layout and labeling. I stay away from round pencils and the annoyingly flexible cheap ones made from composite material.

The point wears quickly on the ol’ #2, so consider using a 2H art/drafting pencil. The harder lead retains a point better so it draws a finer line for a longer time. I find that pencils harder than 2H tend to dent many woods, or make lines that are too light.

For dark woods, I prefer a white pencil, though some like red. Colored pencils are softer than regular ones so must be sharpened more frequently. The Sanford/Prismacolor Verithin #734 seems to be the most durable white pencil.

A battery-powered sharpener at the front of the drawer under my bench top is fast and handy for these wooden pencils.

For a more consistently fine line, a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil is useful. The ratcheting style allows the point to be easily advanced with one hand, a significant advantage when the other hand is holding a square in place. My favorite is the Pentel Twist-Erase. It has a bulky rubbery grip and a robust eraser that is not hidden by a cap and has plenty of spare length. (It is the black pencil at the top left in the opening photo.)

For these pencils, I find HB lead to be the most practical. There is little advantage to the harder 2H since the line will always be about 0.5 wide anyway.

Unless the 0.5 mm lead is extended and held vertically against the layout tool, which is not always possible or desirable, one is not quite sure exactly what distal point on the lead will actually contact the wood, and thus how far from the tool the line will be drawn. This can make it difficult to accurately meet a previously drawn line or mark. Sometimes it helps to place the pencil point on the mark and then slide the layout tool up to it.

0.3 mm pencils make finer, more accurately placed lines, but I gave up using them a while ago because the lead is so prone to breaking, even Pentel Hi-Polymer. I have also found colored 0.5 lead to be too fragile.

The way to step up to greater accuracy when you need it is to use a chisel point. For this, I use 2.0 mm 2H lead in a drafting “lead holder.” (It is the silver pencil at the lower right in the opening photo.) Here is a close up of the point:

For tighter quarters, 0.9 mm 2H in a slim Pentel P209 drafting pencil is useful. (Below, and it is the yellow mechanical pencil at the top right in the opening photo.)

The chisel point is created with a single pass of 2-3 inches on 400 grit sandpaper with the pencil held at about a 45° angle. Use the location of the clip to consistently orient the pencil – I always keep it down and to the right.

The flat side of the chisel point is placed against the edge of the square to make a very fine line that is placed with near marking-knife precision. In situations where the pencil cannot be held at such a steep angle, the rounded side of the chisel point can be held against the tool or other layout edge.

A chisel edge can be made with a wood pencil but I find this is messier, slower, and lacks the same feel of precision.

Next: comparison of lines and more on the subject.