The Last On Cap Irons and Chipbreakers
With my last two posts it would be easy to think I’m declaring I “discovered” or “invented” the method of using a cap iron to increase the useful range of a bench plane. This is would be absolute nonsense. I’ll be absolutely straight with you. I had read about, but never put it into practice. You see, starting as an apprentice in the late 1990’s, planecraft wasn’t exactly lesson number one. My job was fetching and carrying, buy the ice creams on hot afternoons and bring them to the shop. It would of probably included making a cuppa, but the workshop had no running water so I dodged that bullet.
Even as I began to make things, the reality was we didn’t hand plane our work. It was sanded with belt and random orbit sanders as required. Planes were tools for fine adjustments only. I made projects entirely by hand at college. There was a complete machine shop on campus but we weren’t allowed to use any of them, save on occasion the morticer and bandsaw. Even when it came to making a practice flight of stairs, there was more chance the router cutters would start a fire than cut wood, so it was better to make things by hand anyway.
Fillister, plough and smoothing planes were what we used. A limited suite, but good for learning. Because all of our projects were in softwood (European Redwood) the tools were never tested like a hardwood or wood with difficult grain. The only reason I developed a more nuanced understanding of hand tools was because I’m interested, perhaps a touch obsessive about them and then most importantly making things with them. Part of that is a family connection spanning back four generations. Growing up I was surrounded by the stuff, it just seemed normal to have a heritage of tools and work in the same building your Grandparent and Great Grandparent did. The other is just how I’m wired, I have a healthy interest in history and learning.
This learning really sped up with the internet. My first time with “internet woodworking” must of been around 2011. That’s when my understanding of the nuances of hand tool work really strode forward. All of a sudden I could discuss, put into practice and learn from others. And here I found the detail of the cap iron and how to use it. While others had dismissed cap irons as something toolmakers adopted so they could use a cheap thin irons, to mate with a plane’s adjustment mechanism, aid in chip ejection or to frustrate you, it was refreshing to find that people that said that was plain wrong. Even now, salesmen and gurus are claiming that the whole thing is nonsense. Hey, no problem. You can easily have a go for yourself and find out.
The knowledge provided allowed people to get performance from a regular Bailey plane every bit as good as any modern plane maker you care to mention. So, here’s the link to the article on Wood Central. What I love about this is that it’s free information, bought together by like minded people for the benefit of everyone. I’m not declaring that the people responsible for the article discovered a lost method. Instead they were testing, pushing back against the narratives from magazines and personalities and proving that the method worked. The people responsible don’t earn money from the process, there is no paywall, just good sound knowledge. I was tempted, just for a split second, to literally copy and paste the whole thing here. But that would be disrespectful. I will be honest, I have copied the article just in case the host of the website decides to bring it to an end. But like so much of what we enjoy everyday, it’s to the credit of others. Thank you!