This week we received a beautiful batch of photos for Christopher Williams’s upcoming book “The Life & Work of John Brown.” When I reviewed the final photo, my heart skipped a beat or two.
It’s a picture of Chris’s chairs headed up by the last chair John Brown reportedly made in 2002
This photo shows the whole history of the relationship between Chris and John Brown, in wood, form and finish. When you read the book, you’ll understand the entire tale. But until then, I hope you like this photo, which is by Heather Birnie.
No matter how expensive or well-made your handplane is, there are times when you have to perform a “hard reset” on the tool when it starts to behave unpredictably.
I use my handplanes every day, so I have to do a hard reset almost every year. My smoothing plane and block plane are more sensitive tools and require more frequent maintenance – maybe every nine months or so.
When should you do a hard reset? I do it when problems occur that a simple sharpening won’t fix. Perhaps I get plane tracks in my work I can’t explain. Maybe the plane won’t hold a fine setting the way it should. Perhaps the tool just feels a little rough when I use it.
When I do a hard reset, I perform all the steps below. When I do all the steps, my planes always perform as better-than factory new. Skipping steps means success is not guaranteed (at least in my shop).
Grind, Reshape & Resharpen the Iron
Take the iron to the grinder and reshape the entire bevel. Remove all evidence of the previous edge. Create a burr with the grinder. If there’s a back bevel, remove it. Then reshape the edge appropriate for the type of plane (jack, jointer or smoother). When I do a hard reset I always dub the corners of the iron on a diamond stone to ensure the corners will not dig into the work.
Hone a fresh edge on the iron. If you use micro-bevels (I do), try to make the smallest micro-bevel possible.
Clean, Repair & Shape the Chipbreaker
Chipbreakers cause as many problems as they solve. They are made of soft steel so they are easily damaged when you plane a knot or hit something harder than a knot (such as your planing stop). Minor damage to a chipbreaker can ruin a plane’s performance. Here’s what I do to get it back to factory condition.
Clean the sap and gunk off the breaker with a rubberized abrasive (such as the Klingspor Hand Block). Hone (or grind) a new edge on the chipbreaker. The leading edge of the breaker takes a huge amount of abuse. A burr or teeny nick on it can destroy the plane’s ability to pass a shaving. Grinding or honing away the old edge will restore its function.
This grinding or honing will raise a burr on the underside of the breaker. Remove this burr with great care on a fine stone. Then attach the breaker to your iron and look for any light between the breaker and the back of the iron. If light can get in, so can a shaving. And that sneaky shaving will foul the plane.
To fix the problem you might have to file the underside of the breaker. You might have to bend the breaker a little in a vise so it clamps down harder on the iron. Hell, you might have to replace the breaker. They are cheap so don’t hesitate to get a new one.
Dress the Sole
Many times “plane tracks” are actually “sole tracks.” A knot or something else hard has scored the sole or the edges of the sole. And this damage has raised a burr that scratches your work.
The sole of plane should be as clean and smooth as possible. This is more important than it being dead flat (in my experience). To clean the sole, buy a piece of $5 granite tile at the home center and stick a piece of #220-grit sandpaper to it (I use a spray adhesive).
Disassemble the plane and rub the sole on the sandpaper until the sole is as smooth as a nun’s stomach. (Side note: You’ll read elsewhere that the sole has to be under working tension with the iron and cap iron in place to do this. I have not found this to be the case. I have found no sole deflection in a standard bench plane. Rabbeting planes and shoulder planes are another story.)
Note the rounded edges of the sole.
When the sole is clean and smooth, take some #220-grit sandpaper and strongly ease all the edges of the sole. This removes any damage on the sidewalls, toe and heel. And it helps prevent future damage. A sharp corner is more fragile than a rounded one.
Wipe the sole down with oil.
Clean the Interior
Remove the frog. If you do a lot of planing, the interior will be filled with crud. Clean all this out. At this point I always clean all the screw threads that hold and adjust the frog. You might think this is overkill, but crud builds up and there’s a tipping point where everything goes to pot.
So I remove all the screws and clean them to bright metal with a soft-bristled bronze brush. I clean the interior of the adjustment nut with a stiff-bristled nylon brush. Then I put some light machine oil on all the screws and reassemble everything.
Re-assemble
While everything is apart, tighten the screws on the tote and front knob. Sand off any burrs on the tote (these crop up when the wood gets knocked about). Clean up the lever cap if you like. The lever cap works fine if it’s filthy but it looks better if you clean it off with the rubberized abrasive.
And that’s it. The whole process takes less than an hour and the results are always worth it.
With my kids, I struggle when we talk about their futures. I want to tell them: Do what you love, work really hard and everything will be alright. It’s a great line, but it’s USDA prime horse crap.
My first business – The Kentucky Gazette – failed in the 1990s. And no amount of hard work could save it. I slept under my desk many nights, and I did a good deal of award-winning journalism. There is more to it than hard work, intelligence and talent.
The person who put it best, in my mind, is Doug Martsch, the founder of the band Built to Spill. He is one of my guitar heros and has an independent streak a mile long (which he somehow maintains while his band signed to Warner Bros. records).
I probably will forward this interview to my daughters someday. But it’s far too nice outside today, and they are both in good places with their lives and their work.
So perhaps I’ll disrupt your day instead. (I actually take great comfort from Doug’s words.)
— Christopher Schwarz
These excerpts are from SPIN magazine, an article written by Rachel Brodsky and posted April 14, 2015.
RB: Ira Glass has a quote where he essentially says that every creative person does terrible work in the beginning. Everybody who’s ever wanted to make art is terrible at first. But as long as you create a “volume of work” — even if it continues to be terrible — it will get better. That’s kind of reassuring.
DM: Well, I’m going to go one further and say that it doesn’t get better. You will not get to a point where you write good things. I’m saying that even now, 99 percent of what I write is really stupid, and it didn’t get any better.
What keeps you going with it then?
I can’t do anything else; there is nothing else I can do. I don’t know how to do anything else, and I still like it. Mostly what I’m talking about is the lyrics. The music part of it, it doesn’t come easy for me, but it’s more subjective, so you can get away with more. Whereas the lyrics, lyrics are subjective. But if they’re bad, they can really turn a person off to what’s happening in the whole. If the lyrics are bad, it’s impossible to listen.
Got any career advice for younger indie-rock bands?
I don’t at all. I can tell you about my circumstances, but they’re not going to apply. I just feel like people have something in them that they want to just do, and they’ll do it no matter what anyone says. Or if they need to be advised, maybe it’s not for them.
Yeah, the music industry is pretty much the antithesis of practical.
Yeah, exactly. So the thing I always say is that I’ve been really lucky. That’s my secret, that I got lucky. I’m not saying that there aren’t other things involved, but I wouldn’t be where I was if I hadn’t lived in Seattle at a certain time, met certain people. The people that I started a band with, I just happened to hook up with some people who were a little older than me who put out records themselves. That was a big deal back in those days. For me to work with them was amazing, and that made my whole life.
I wouldn’t say, like, put out your own record, because that might not do it. I wouldn’t say tour a bunch, because that might not do it either. The other thing I say is don’t have any expectations. If you want to do it, just do it. But if you want to make it big, you’re on your own. I have no idea how to make it big. No one knows the secret to that. I mean, I can tell you how to book time in a studio, but that’s neither here nor there.
Katherine has just finished making another big batch of soft wax, and it’s available in her etsy store.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the Soft Wax Saga this fall and winter, she’s made some changes to her production and bottling process – upgrading the packaging and refining the recipe. Details are here.
Counting all the jars she’s sold at our storefront (and to me), Katherine has made and sold more than 1,000 jars since she started mixing the stuff in the basement in April 2016. When we began making the stuff, I helped her bottle every batch. Now she takes care of everything herself, except ordering some supplies where she needs a credit card.
So thanks to everyone who has supported her these last three years and your patience when things occasionally went wrong. Katherine’s learned a lot about dealing with adults because of this business and, of course, I’m happy to see her get a taste of financial independence.
