Chip Breakers
Bob Strawn, in an excellent article about his take on the Kawai-Kato video:
For an occasional craftsman who dreads taking a blade out or adjusting a plane, a top iron is horrid. For a craftsman who has a hundred planes on the wall, a top iron may be just another thing to fiddle with while trying to do work. For a craftsman with less than a dozen planes, or a craftsman who carries his tools, I believe that it is well worth his time to learn how to use a double iron.
Even more impressively, in this article Bob describes how he came from a place where he did not like chip breakers to where he knows how to use them well. The impressive thing is that Bob had the cojones to talk publicly about how he changed his mind.
In my day job, where I am on faculty at the medical school, I know from teaching medical students how to have the insight to know when their previous ideas may not be entirely correct and to adjust their practice is one of the hardest things for someone to learn how to do. So kudos to Bob for being brave enough to say this in public. Many of us never learn this skill. And it’s a more valuable skill than knowing how to set up and use a chipbreaker.
Which I have to start learning how to do, myself. I’m also in the “chipbreakers are useless” camp. But probably not for long.
This is the full version of the video created by Professor Yasunori Kawai and Honorary Professor Chutaro Kato at Yamagata University, as part of their research in the role of cap irons in planing. Mia Iwasaki did the initial translation of the audio and captions in this video, after which I edited the translation and added subtitles to the video.
In this video, the setup of the experiments is more fully described, and the comments are directly from Professors Kawai and Kato, rather than my own guesses as to what was going on. I’m just happy that I wasn’t more off in my interpretations than I was.
This is fascinating, and the whole video is well worth the watch, even if you’ve already seen the excerpts previously posted.
(Thanks again to Bill Tindall for his role in obtaining a copy of this video and the permission from Professors Kawai and Kato to share it, and to Mia Iwasaki for her translating. And thanks to Professors Kawai and Kato for generously sharing their work.)
Source: kegaki.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp
This is the last sequence from Professors Kawai and Kato’s video on planing. This segment shows what happens when the angle of the cap iron is steepened to 80º. To my eyes, at this point the plane blade is acting very much like a scraper. Tearout seems to be further reduced.
One last time: my captions, no knowledge of Japanese, could be way off in terms of the text, etc.
(Thanks again to Bill Tindall for tracking this video down.)
Source: kegaki.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp
This is the next sequence of from Professors Kawai and Kato’s video on planing. This segment shows what happens when a cap iron with a 50º bevel is placed at varying distances from the edge of the plane blade when planing against the grain. The cap iron does mitigate the tearout seen in the previous video, although it looks like it has to be very close to the edge for optimal results.
Again, the captions are mine, I don’t know Japanese, probably could be way off in terms of the text, etc.
(Thanks again to Bill Tindall for tracking this video down.)
Source: kegaki.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp
This phenomenal video of a microscopic view of what happens when a plane blade cuts wood was created by Professor Yasunori Kawai and Honorary Professor Chutaro Kato at Yamagata University, as part of their research in the role of cap irons in planing. This segment shows a plane blade without a cap iron, planing with the grain, then against the grain, and finally taking a thinner shaving against the grain.
The captions in the video are mine, and are my take on what I am seeing in the video. I will fully admit that I don’t know Japanese at all, and so the captions should in no way be taken as a translation of the text seen in the video. In fact, I may be completely off in my comments compared to what the text says.
(Thanks to Bill Tindall for tracking this video down.)
Source: kegaki.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp
Sentayehu Teshale is a woodworker in Addis Ababa:
As long as my chairs last, my customers will remember me.
Not once does he mention the obvious aspect of his woodworking.
(Via Robin Wood.)
Making Kumiko
The first in a series of really nice write-ups on making kumiko by Geremy Coy, a furniture maker in Washington, D.C. It looks like he’s using western tools, which makes me feel less bad about using Japanese tools to make western woodworking projects.
12 Lighthearted Questions for Tom Iovino of Tom’s Workbench
Terrific interview by Chris Landy with Tom Iovino, woodworking blogger extraordinaire and all-around great guy. Except:
9-Red or White?
Red. Big red. Zinfindel. Shiraz. Boooyah…
I would have thought that woodworkers would have taken that as a question on which type of oak they prefer.
