Research project

The last couple of weeks I have been very quiet on this blog. There's a reason why. I have been busy doing a bit of research and research is often a secret business. Anyway, first part of the research is now finished and published on Steve Elliott's website. Knowing me, the subject can't be a surprise. Comparison of methods to avoid tearout when using a handplane. The link:

Surface quality for different wood plane settings

While you are overthere, don't forget to browse through Steve's site. It has very interesting stuff. He has a second one: Bladetest

He discovered and described how the edge wears in a handplane, and that it is different from edges in powertools who have been researched a lot. That is quite a feat!

An article in Popular Woodworking

Spring 2012 saw the Internet revival of the chipbreaker. When the video from professors Kato and Kawai were made available again, this time with an English translation, through the hard work and perseverance from Bill Tindall, it suddenly clicked for a lot of hand plane users. The chipbreaker, whos function was not very well known for everyone, was rediscovered. Its ability to prevent and repair tear-out in the surface of the wood can be seen very clearly in the Japanese video.

At that time I was experimenting with the chipbreaker, but to be honest, I wasn't very succesfull. I remember when Bill asked on woodcentral how far we had our chipbreakers positioned from the edge. That was the first time I ever really thought about this and I meassured a distance of 0.4mm. I certainly could prevent the worst kinds of tear-out with his setting but it was far from perfect. A little later Bill posted a link to the video and everything became suddenly very clear. I was still too far away from the edge.

It was an exciting time. Lots of people suddenly made public confessions about how perfectly allright the chipbreaker is. And then the question came up, why isn't this published in the leading woodworking magazines? Bill contacted me last summer and with a small group of people we sketched out some ideas. I wrote a first draft for an article and made pictures. Wilbur Pan also joined the fray and it was a lot of fun to cooperate, all over the Internet of course, because we live on different continents. Together with Wilbur I wrote the final version of the article, and Wilbur knows a few people at the Popular Woodworking staff which is always helpfull of course. And now, al the work comes to fruition, and the article is published in this months Popular Woodworking magazine. I'm proud and happy.

Many thanks to everyone involved. The staff from Popular Woodworking in the first place for making this possible. Bill Tindall for his perseverance. Ellis Walentine for his behind the scene work, and of course Wilbur Pan for the wonderfull cooperation.

Here are some links. First the Internet presentation of the article.

The video can be viewed from Steve Elliott's website: Review of capiron video.

And a blogentry with instructional video's I made back in 2012: How to use the capiron.

BTW, I am doing a bit of research at the moment and hope to have a first article available this weekend. Of course I will  announce it overhere.