What Degree of Angle Is a Back-bevel Configuratio

A few weeks ago, I was doing some site work - some inlay in a Mahogany staircase. I had to inlay twelve flame Birch panels into the stair treads. They were left a little over-sized in thickness and then planed flush with the treads once they were installed. For anyone who has ever worked with flame birch - you are likely cringing right now because you know what kind of nightmare flame birch can be to work with. Lots and lots of honing.

There were three planes in my line-up that were suited to this work; the XSNo.4 smoother, the SNo.4 smoother and my LN block plane. They are all narrow and nimble planes and were able to follow and maintain the gentle curvature of the solid treads.

The reason for this post is not to start a war - but to show the different wear on working tools. I used the SNo.4 and the block plane to do the lions share of the work, and then finished up with the XSNo.4 set to take a very fine shaving. The XS is the smallest and most nimble in the bunch. All three planes performed their task wonderfully, but this experience reminded me of why I developed the XSNo.4 in the first place. I wanted a one handed (and very small) smoother that was in a bevel down (BD), high bed angle configuration. I was frustrated with the location of the wear on my bevel up (BU) block plane. Before I get too far into it - here are a few photos of the blade of the SNo.4 smoother (BD) and the block plane (BU).

Oh, - I should also explain a bit of how I sharpen. Both blades are hollow ground to about a 34 degree angle, the backs are flat, and there are no micro bevels or "ruler trick" back bevels.

(click on any of the images for a larger view)

The BD smoother blade on the left and the BU block plane blade on the right. Notice the amount of wear to the back side of the cutting edge on the BU blade.

Here is the bevel side of the BU block plane blade. Notice there is significantly less "wear" to the cutting edge.

The "back" of the iron of the BD blade.

And the bevel side of the BD blade.

So here is my observation based on using these two planes - they both required frequent re- honing, but the blade of the BU block plane required a lot more work to get it to a freshly honed state. I had to re-grind before each honing in order to get rid of the wear to the "back" (the flat side) of the iron which saw more wear than the bevel side. The bevel down blade seemed to have a similar amount of wear to each side and was less effort to re-hone because of it.

If anyone has any insight into what I might be able to do to reduce the amount of wear to the "back" of the BU iron - I would love to hear it. Or if people have had similar experiences with any BU vs BD planes I would love to hear from you as well.

What Degree of Angle Is a Back-bevel Configuratio

Source: http://sauerandsteiner.blogspot.com/2010/07/up-down-bevels-that-it.html

Share this post