Japanese saws– salvage the junk

 

One of my new favorite saws is an old piece of junk.

 

 

Found in a water filled wooden tray, out in the wilds of Hawaii, it had some unusual company. A good (albeit rusty) saw set, a pre-1917 Disston keyhole saw, a 1950-ish rip kataba Z-saw (stamped Honolulu), and a weird Swiss-army saw/multi blade thing, among other stuff.

 

 

Well, I cleaned off some of the rust and it's not so bad really.

 

 

It's no work of art, just a tool, but I'm liking it a lot more than I had expected. As a "cut down anything then forget it outside in the rain" kind of tool, it excels. I've found that it holds a good edge, and the spring and temper was well done. It had no kinks when I found it, and we haven't introduced any new ones, despite our best efforts. The saw back is taper ground to a knife edge, so much so that I can use it as a machete for thick grassy stems. It has proven itself to be deceptively capable.

 

 

As is expected, it could do with some improvement.

 

 

It has probably been sharpened a few times already, but the nib on the nose still stands proud of the teeth. It needs to be made even with the teeth. More importantly, the teeth height is uneven, one side being longer than the other. Whoever was sharpening it had a definite "strong side". I know that because I do, too. Because the teeth are longer on one side, the cut drifts to the longer side, binding the saw at about 2" deep.

 

 

And, as I was saying in the prior post, the saw teeth are still not as clean as they could be. Let's see if I can improve things a bit.

 

Scrape 'em clean.....

 

 

.....then polish 'em up a bit.

 

 

FYI, sandpaper isn't the best way to do this, but if you do, try to rub parallel to the tooth itself. If you rub back and forth, it mostly cuts up the sandpaper and rounds the tooth shape in undesirable ways. Anyways, the sandpaper method didn't totally ruin anything, and may have helped improve the teeth marginally.

 

I use the edge of a really hard oilstone instead. It's WAY better. I just do the minimum required to get the outer face of the tooth bright. No matter which method you choose, this does reduce the amount of set some (x)amount. The less you do, the better.

 

 

Sighting the length of the blade, you can see that the nib at the tail of the saw stands proud as well as a few odd teeth.

 

 

 

 

I joint the saw using a standard western mill file, running the length until I see a bright tip at each tooth.

 

 

I joint at each sharpening, because I'm training myself and my body. If I was REALLY good, I could probably get away with 1 joint/ 3 sharpenings, but what's the harm? You're only going to get better if you work on refinement, and in my head is a picture of a saw with teeth of a perfectly even height, not just "good enough".

 

 

 

 

And what do I get for all my high talk of standards?

 

 

Haha! Missed a big 'ol dip...whoops! I see a bunch of low teeth, mostly on one side, my "strong" side.

 

 

Maybe two. Jeez.....what a hack!

 

 

When I sharpened, I changed the tooth geometry a little bit, but that's for the next post. I've been thinking about and researching saw teeth for nearly two years now, but it's only recently that I've been able to test the saws so rigorously. Living this off-grid, extreme bush lifestyle, I am cutting live wood, green sticks and lumber, lumberyard "dry" Wood, and a fair bit of aged salvage lumber as well. And lots of it.

 

One of our new neighbors kindly offered to bring over his generator and a bunch of saws for me to use, after I told him that I was cutting everything by hand. You try to explain that you are actually enjoying the act of cutting the wood, and anyway, you can't easily cut much of this stuff with power saws and....you get that half perplexed, "huh.... OK, whatever" look. It's good to have such generous neighbors though.

 

 

Even though the tooth height is less than perfect, it still cuts well.

 

 

The cut through this hard (wet) Ohia went faster than you'd think, and the saw tracked straight and true, no binding anymore. I guess that I improved it some.

 

 

The wet wood shows scars easily, but it looks like a couple of teeth are set a tad more than the others. The scars look worse than they are, and I can't feel them by hand, but it's not perfect yet.

 

Because the saw is severely taper ground, it probably had very little set initially, and after a handful of sharpenings, it's probably about ready for asari/setting again. The lack of set, combined with the light weight of the saw has the saw itself riding up at times, meaning that you need to maintain downward pressure as you are using it for a ridiculously deep cut like this. What's happening is that the improved saw teeth are cutting more efficiently and are making more sawdust in the process. The problem is that the teeth are still the same size that they were before, and now the gullets are too small to hold the additional sawdust. The next step for this saw would be to give it some raker teeth and a few deeper gullets, turn it into a little madonoko saw, maybe.

 

This saw is for smaller stuff, like 2" and under, but it's good to have the capability nonetheless. I was felling a couple of 6" guava trees yesterday with this little guy, and it was a bit of a struggle. Why I don't use my chainsaw is a mystery to me. Scares the birds, I suppose.

 

What I really want to write about are teeth. Japanese saw teeth.

 

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New old tools!

It's tool sharpening day again.....Oh joy! As you know by now, that's not meant to sound sarcastic, either.

 

The bevel on my old drawknife is a bit more round/convex than I prefer, and now seems like a decent opportunity to flatten it out a bit. I don't need it to be PERFECTLY flat, it's not like I can sharpen this 12" monster on the stones.....which brings me to another point....getting the bevel perfectly flat isn't meant to be some sort of religious or ethical dilemma. A flat bevel is self-jigging, makes sharpening more easy and repeatable, that's all. A convex bevel seems to get away from you after a while. 22 degrees =>24 degrees =>45 degrees, you know? This bevel angle wanders around a bit, so I'm just trying to improve things a little bit.

Problem is, normal files won't touch this steel, it's too hard. To have any hope of getting this done today, I need to use my cheap China diamond files.

What looks like dust on the blade.....that's steel. These files cut!

This $10 set of files has the coarsest grit of anything that I've got, and they are turning into one of those "life-saving, off-grid, must have tools". They've held up amazingly well so far, and look nearly new still, despite having already seen some fairly hard service. The diamond grit is embedded very thoroughly, so as you use the files, more grit gets exposed and the action becomes more aggressive. They have shown no tendency to shed grit when used on soft-ish steel, something that can't be said of many of the more expensive diamond stones from guys like DMT.

This drawknife is most definitely NOT soft. I bought this thing on eBay last year, but haven't had much cause to use it until now. It still had most of the factory paint on it, I couldn't see any makers stamp, but it seemed nicely forged. The handles aren't too nice, and are mismatched, to boot. It hasn't been used much at all, nor mucked up by fools. I figured it for a decent newer import knife, but today I took a closer look.

D.R. Barton, Rochester, NY. The makers stamp is so faint that it was obscured by the paint. The blade is laminated. I couldn't see that under the paint either. The Barton stamp was used until 1923 I read, so there you go. I think I paid around $20 shipping included. Old drawknives are painfully cheap, and almost certainly better than anything that you can find today.

Ever more, my tools are around the 100 year old mark, which sounds impressively old, but now that I'm nearly 1/2 that age, it doesn't feel as exceptional, haha. If you think about tool life and return on investment, these old tools are really phenomenal values. I am lucky to see 4 years of use from a power tool, but many of the hand tools that I use every day have been in use for over 100 years. That's just incredible to me. Talk about value and economy!

 

My friend Brandon is soon to set sail to the far corners of the globe in our old sailboat (and now beautiful, thanks to him....he sure didn't get it that way, haha!) and boat space being at such a premium, he figured that I might be able to put some of his old tools to good use. Thanks yet again Brandon.....you're the best! They arrived two days ago, and they are perfect!

 

A lipped shipwrights adze (yeah, the handle's upside down,oops, my bad, haha), a hewing hatchet.....

 

 

....and an arrow for Ellie.

The perfect gift for her (and she likes the harmonica that you sent, too! Lucky for me, she is developing some skill with music, otherwise....:-p

This arrow is one of a set that Brandon made years ago for elk hunting. Now she needs to build a decent bow, something that has enough muscle to push this monster. Hawaii smoked ham, here we come!

 

Phosphoric acid takes away the slight amount of surface rust.

 

Even more importantly for me, it reveals the details of the forging.

A laminated blade, L.& I.J. White, Buffalo, NY Kent pattern #3 broad hatchet. This hatchet is also well over 100 years old. According to the catalog, you could buy these for $16/dozen, of course that was in 1890. Not cheap, these tools.

I've had a few broad-axes and hatchets before, but now that I really need one...I've got nothing. Your gift is SO very timely, thank you!

 

Something that I wasn't aware of before, is that some of the broad hatchets have a welded steel face on the poll of the axe.

That seems odd to me. All I can assume is that this is the original shingleing hatchet, so you'd want a hardened hammer face to use for driving nails. One end splits, the other end drives. Cool!

 

I love the original tooling marks.

Laminated blades are awesome.

 

When viewed on edge, you can see how the steel bit was forge welded to the body, using a nice long scarf.

Very clean. A really nice, solid tool. Perfect.

 

 

 

And on to the adze. It needs some BLO, to nourish the dried wood.

 

Looking better, now that I've got the handle facing the right way.

 

 

Sharp.

I should've taken the hatchet down far enough that the grinder marks were eliminated. I figured that they would soon disappear due to sharpening attrition, but now I don't know. This steel is tough, much harder that the adze. Those grinder tracks might be there for a LONG time yet.

 

As I was sharpening the adze, I kept wondering if I was seeing evidence of a lamination, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't, despite how the picture makes it appear. Even on the back of the blade, though, it almost looks like it could be. I can't say with 100% certainty, but if it is laminated, the heat of forging it caused enough carbon to migrate out of the steel that the separation line is virtually eliminated. And not that it matters one lick, it's an awesome adze, and I've wanted one of these lipped adze for the last 20 years. I'm pretty happy, partly a delayed gratification thing, partly just overwhelmingly pleased with the tools that Brandon sends me.

Thanks Brandon!! Ellie, too. She's psyched!

 

Now for something completely different.....

I have a short list of tools that I've wanted for quite some time, but I haven't really felt the lack until recently. I am of divided mind on tools acquisition. I used to flip through the tool catalogs endlessly, each tool suggesting new possibilities for projects, each idea giving birth to ever grander plans. I made lists, added up the totals then promptly chucked the lists out the window. How many tools do you really need, anyway (Coincidentally, Sebastian has been exploring this same issue with the students in his woodworking classes down in Chile.)? As I get more proficient, the answer is less and less. Before, I wanted ALL the tools, seeing them as somehow being necessary to proper craftsmanship. Now, I tend to view many of those same tools as being a crutch to make up for a lack of skill. How can you improve if everything is done for you?

On the other hand, I've gotten more than a few tools, just bought on a whim, but then later realized how awesome they are. The "point of a sword" knife that I forged is one of those tools (although I wouldn't buy one for the $300 they cost), a wakitori-ganna (a special plane used for shaving the sides of a groove) is another. The POAS knife I've never seen for sale used, but the wakitori-ganna are so common they are nearly free. Buy one.

 

Anyways, here is another tool that just never made it onto my must-have list, but it's there now.

A (Gasp!) new tool. Finally I've bought myself a sashigane! I had been planning to buy an old one, made using German steel (what was that stuff? Aluminum? Pewter?), but my needs overcame my wants. A new Shinwa sashigane, stainless steel and everything.

I have come to hate and despise the western style framing square, but even so, how different can the Japanese version be? It has been all of this Project Mayhem framing joinery practice that has finally made me see the light. When you watch those YouTube videos of the old Japanese carpenter laying out the joint, whipping the sashigane left and right, tilting and angling..... I realized that the square can be an artful and dynamic tool, more than just the 90° reference it is commonly used for.

A western framing square is placed down, skootched into position, then the line is drawn. It is stiff and heavy, and unless you are striking from an already square edge, you pretty much need to use two hands to move it where you want. A sashigane is different. It's thin, light and nimble. It's a single-handed tool that you poke down right where you want it, draw a line, then give it a twist to the next location, mark, move, mark. This Japanese joinery has so many cut lines that the layout becomes part of the fun itself, nearly a dance if done properly. I'm only beginning to feel this, but I REALLY like it.

 

 

 

Of particular importance in how the tool works..... The corner.

The edges of the sashigane are relieved . You know how when you are marking a line and it is just the slightest bit off, due to the interference between the square and whatever it is that you are using to mark with, the thickness of the pencil, whatever..... You need to pull the square back from the line before you strike it, if you want it to be accurate, you know?

 

To hazard another esoteric byway/explanation......

I have been striking my layout lines for years using a pencil for rough cuts, a knife for the important stuff. I use a knife, because it's more sharply defined than what the carpenters pencil in my pocket can provide. A knife works great with a square, because you can run the blade right next to the edge of the square, zero clearance like. The knife also gives this great little divot point for placing the tool as you progress the marking out, an index mark. I started using the knife more, because I wanted greater accuracy than my pencil would provide.

Ironically, now that I've started laying out these crazy complex joinery works, I am frequently wanting an even more accurate mark than a knife can provide. How is a relatively fat 0.2 mm line considered more accurate than a 0mm width knife mark? Obviously it's not, but the problem is that I want to fudge the cut some arbitrary amount one side or the other AWAY from the line, and that doesn't work well with a knife line. The knife struck line disappears if you get too close. An ink line lets you fudge, but still keep the original (in part at least). Right now, for my skill level, a 0.2 mm line feels like a good goal to shoot for. I can cut one side, then the other, and chances are I'll get an acceptable fit. Far from a piston, but I'm happy for now.

 

Anyways, back to the other tools.....

A sashigane has its edges ground back, so the edge doesn't actually touch the surface. It is said that's  because the Japanese guys layout using ink, and the relieved edge prevent the ink from getting all over the square and fouling the surface, but in practice it is more than that. When I use a sashigane, I can stick the corner point exactly where is want it to be, then angle the drawing tool (sumisashi, pencil or knife) to mark the line perfectly. It is so much faster and easier.

I never would've guessed.

 

 

 

Living in this way, very simply and with no power source, can be difficult in many ways (try living in a warm climate without refrigeration, haaa!) but it also has its rewards. Renee has seen the value of having all of these ridiculous hand tools! Now that she gets to see things in action (and she does much of the work herself, too), she's given me encouragement to buy more of what I need/want tool-wise.

 

Doing the Project Mayhem joinery challenge has brought to light one of my biggest lacks. Despite the amazing resource of the Internet, there is still not much info out there on basic Japanese carpentry practice and joinery. There are a handful of books however, that keep being referenced, but I don't have any. Strike that.....didn't have.

 

Books are coming, a survey of what might be useful to a relative beginner (I guess that's what I am. I'm sure no expert, haha ).

 

 

 

I'm also dreaming.....

 

.....dreaming of a shaded porch, lying in a hammock, feeling the afternoon breeze.

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Make a Japanese style saw vise.....finally!

 

 

Sebastian has been badgering me mercilessly (rightly so!) for quite a while now, to make a Japanese style saw sharpening vise. The style is as such....

A nice example of the real thing. Mine surely won't be as nice as this one, but hopefully the functionality will be similar.

 

 

 

This is a diagram that I found, a cross-section of ChoMasaru's saw vise.

Who better to emulate, right?

 

The saw vise itself is a simple device, being two boards joined together at a hinging point, then tightened using a separate wedge that gets tapped into place at the bottom of the assembly.

 

Simple stuff, but very handy to have. Why is it taking me so long to make one? I blame my butterfly brain......flitting from one interest to the next, la-di-da da....

 

 

 

Right off the bat, I'm deciding to do this slightly differently, seldom a good idea, but I want to use some of the salvaged materials that I've got on hand. I think that stock a true 1" thick and 18" long would be a good size for me, but I don't have anything handy, so I go with two 18" chunks of 2x12.

 

That's fine, I don't think that the extra weight will bother me and I intend to thin down the material during the shaping phase, but the big issue is that the grain direction of my vise will be running the "wrong" way. Mainly, the wedge will be trying to split the wood every time I tighten the vise, so I question whether I will be able to tighten this guy effectively. I guess we'll see.

 

Not enough time to do the job right the first time......How does that saying go?

 

 

A few years ago, I started working more by hand power, less by machine. That ( and learning how to sharpen my damn tools!) has done great things for my abilities to make nearly everything. Even my use of power tools has improved through this. Well....what started as more of a novelty.....

 

Hand tools are now all that I've got, haha.

I love the off-grid lifestyle, but occasionally I do still miss my tablesaw.

 

 

Two hatchet, West and East meet.....who shall be victorious?

Actually, a broad hatchet would be the right choice here, but the main idea is to remove some excess wood quickly, and they both did that task well. The Japanese one is sharper, haha. I rough out the shape using the hatchets, then finish the shaping using the kanna.

 

 

 

The inner surface of the vise is reduced, to allow room for the body of the saw or to accommodate the back/spine of a dozuki.

I cut the shoulder lines of the rebate using a saw, then hog out the rest using whatever plane will work.

 

 

After watching every Japanese YouTube sawing video that I can find, I have noticed one common act. The carpenters start every cut using the crosscut side of the ryoba, then as soon as a tiny groove is started, you flip the saw and start ripping.

It only amounts to 2-3 light strokes, PUSHING the saw slightly, but it makes starting the cut SO much easier...and accurate, too. The shape of the teeth on a Japanese saw being what they are, if you push the saw slightly the teeth are exactly like little knife blades, scoring the wood fibres. Just as with a marking knife, use a light touch for accuracy.

 

 

 

After the shoulders are cut, I make some room using a Japanese groove plane, a Shoko-sakuri kanna. While good ones are very expensive new, old ones that are at least as good go for about a dime-a-dozen. I think they are handy to have around. And the blades are (usually) beautifully forged.

 

 

There are a couple of pointers here, regarding fixing up the old beaters....from one of my favorite Japanese carpenters.

 

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ariari_1946/e/2db2ac9b3b4bf945158e8767b14de8fa

 

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ariari_1946/e/44edfdbbda68955db45c10f943fa0e6f

 

 

 

After cutting out the grooves to make some room, I hog out some more material using one of my oldest, ugliest kanna.

I love this old thing. How many people have touched this, used this tool, over the years. And it has been used! The blade still has 3/4" of steel left, but I don't think that the dai can be used for much longer, haha.

The softwood body ( not oak, someone just decided to use what was at hand, obviously. Hmmmmm....familiar.) is gently rounded in width, a hollowing plane, a sotomaru kanna/scrub plane.

 

 

 

 

Getting closer.

 

 

 

 

 

On the home front, we were all set to put in an offer on a nice piece of Hawaiian property, two paired lots on a dead end street, warm lower elevation, and just all around nice. Our realtor suggested that flooding in that area is occasionally a concern.

This is the intersection of 39th and Pohaku during the deluge of 2008, right where we would turn right, to get home.

 

We decided to pass, haha. Thank god for conscientious realtors.

 

 

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Japanese saws

Here we go, I'm diving off into the deep end again. Japanese saws this time. God help us all. More blind leading the blind, haha.

Not much gets written about Japanese saws, which is a pity considering how many people use them. And not just Japanese guys either. Out of all the many Japanese carpentry tools out there, it is the saw that has been most widely adopted. I would be willing to bet that out of every 100 new saws sold today, 95 of them have a Japanese style saw tooth. Go to Home Depot and look at their offerings (all 4 of them! Obviously few people are using ANY type of handsaw.).

The not-so-slight problem is that, while Japanese saws are amazingly awesome creatures that are in use world-wide, the industry has shifted almost exclusively to the disposable blade philosophy. Don't get me wrong, industry has chosen this route for good reasons. Annual saw sales must number in the 10's of millions, and to supply that demand......

Factory made saws ( the Japanese manufactured ones at least) are reasonably priced and really good. My Nakaya D210C kumiko saw cost only about $50 and is a REALLY nice saw, cuts fast and smooth, and is surprisingly hefty. Obscenely thin kerf. Definitely the nicest store bought saw I've ever had and when the blade gets dull, I can get a replacement for only $15 or so. I mentioned this saw before but to reiterate, it's a tool worth buying. A bit harder to find, but worth it.

Nakaya D210C from toolsfromjapan.com 

Bridge City Tools sells a gussied-up version of this same saw, near as I can tell. 

It costs over 2x as much, and I'd be embarrassed to use it in public though.

The other saws that are pictured above are:

• Z-saw 265, a good general purpose saw, $40 or so, commonly available and you can get a 6-pack of replacement blades for $50

• Gyokucho #290, a small yet hefty and stiff little saw. Very easy to use and a nice size for joinery. The curved tip lets you start the cut in the middle of a panel, handy. Hida Tool sells them for $29
• Vaughan BS150D Bear saw, cheap feeling and kind of flimsy, this saw is actually quite good. $18 at my (used to be) local Fred Meyer general store. The saw is really made by Zetto ( the Z-saw guys), but repackaged and sold under the Vaughan name. Super flexible flush cutting blade perfect for trimming dowels and kerfing joints for a perfect fit. What you do with the original gray plastic handle is up to you, haha.

The disposable blade saws often have impulse hardened teeth or, at the least, use very hard steel for the blades, making sharpening considerably more difficult. It can be done, though thankfully they stay sharp for an admirably long time.

But.

But.

Not so long ago in Japan, there were blacksmiths in every village and every carpenter would've been using handmade saws. And unlike now, carpenters were expected to know how to sharpen their own tools, and if major saw repair was needed, there were people who knew how to do that too. Between everyone buying disposable blade saws and the old-timers dying off, there are less and less people out there who really know how to fix up the old saws, much less make new ones.

If a person is so inclined, there are literally thousands of old Japanese saws that can be put back to good use. Rusty, neglected old saws sell for far less than the cost of postage, and often all they require is a good cleaning and the attention of someone knowledgeable about the use of a yasuri file. Lots of these old saws are handmade and are FAR higher quality than you can buy today. Anywhere.

I have no idea how many people, worldwide, have any more than the most basic knowledge about saws and what makes them work, Western or Japanese.

10?

100?

Not many, in any event. I'm not in that number, not even close, but I've got some ideas.

My European/South American correspondent, Sebastian Gonzalez is one of the only guys out there who is actually working on this stuff. He's got ideas too.

http://laborlimaetoolworks.blogspot.com/

Japanese saws are fun to use but there is much more sophistication than is apparent by their simple design. Just like kanna, God is in the details.

Curious? I am.

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Last is first, first is last----having a bad "kanna" day.

Sometimes they are your best friend, sometimes you want to chuck them out the window. I'm having a bad kanna day. Not really bad, just a little annoyed is all.

We are moving, literally in just a few days, and I just received my last kanna from my tool seller friend Junji (eBay seller yusui).

Unlike the other kanna that I've bought, this one is a "known" blade, and WAY better than anything that I would normally dare to purchase. So my first famous blade is also my last purchase (for the foreseeable future). First is last, get it?

"Kanzan", by Hideo Ishido Teruhide. 

Hideo Ishido passed on in 2006, I believe. I'll do my best.

It's a little hard to see in this photo, but just below the lamination line, to the left is the stamp of the Tokyo plane manufacturers co-op.

There is a nice feather pattern on the display face.

It is in pretty good condition, and lightly used. Definitely used though, so I can be comfortable putting this guy to work. Whew! I don't know what I'd do with a really nice kanna, you can only look at them so much, before you need too remember that they are just tools, haha.

Matching sub-blade.

There are stamped markings on the front side as well.

(Damn this iOS mobile app!! My apologies for the strange picture sizes.)

This kanna is very close to being ready as is, but the blade protrusion is slightly uneven. I need to shave a small amount from one side of the blade retaining groove. As I use these tools more, I am coming to the realization that "less is more", meaning that you should only do the barest minimum required to get the job accomplished. This is not to be confused with the easiest way, or the least amount of work. Perfection is a floating target at best ( and an illusion at worst), but you do the best that you can.

With my first few kanna, I adjusted the fit of the main blade to accommodate more lateral blade adjustment than was really needed. I was carving out the sides of the grooves so that there was about 2mm of gap on either side, but that's not the proper way of accommodating a blade that sits unevenly. Maybe it would help if I explained how this came about.

My first kanna had been sharpened unevenly, so that the blade edge was no longer perpendicular to the long axis. Seeing this, I thought, "Sloppy bastard, too lazy to do a good job, etc etc", then proceeded to square things up. It turns out that the dai had been cut slightly uneven, so the guy who was sharpening the blade funny was right, and I was wrong.

Now I had a kanna that was taking a bigger bite on one side, so to even things out, I needed to tap the blade over to one side. That meant deepening the grooves. Now the blade is sloppy, and I still need to tap that blade over to the right, each and every time that I use it. Forever. A better fix would've been to sharpen the blade so that it was no longer perpendicular to the long axis. Smart guy, I am.

We are so used to thinking of things as needing to be square, straight, flat, whatever, that it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot. These tools just aren't made that way. It's tough, but there is no standard/perfect/anything. You need to think. There are general rules and guidelines at least. Thank god, cause thinking isn't always my strong suit.

In my perfect world, the main blade of the kanna would slide down perfectly to within maybe 3mm of where it would start cutting. It would be perfectly centered, and would take an even thickness shaving the full width of the blade. There would be only 0.5-1 mm of clearance at each side of the blade, to accommodate any changes in humidity that might cause the blade to bind. If I *could* somehow get that perfect fit, then it would be a relatively simple matter to keep it that way. If I happened to sharpen the blade unevenly, pretty soon I would get shavings that taper to nothing on one side, so I would then refine my sharpening technique. I would be learning. It's cool!

I strive for a perfect world. It's an ideal, not a reality.

I laugh at those guys who need to have every tool ever invented, but sometimes it is nice to have some specialized help. I was sceptical of ever using a knife with a left hand bevel, but here is a good example of one, seen in use.

Right hand bevel, left hand bevel, and a 3mm chisel.

The left bevel knife really is handy for trimming flush to the underside of the groove.

Then the right bevel gets to do the other side of the groove.

The blade bed already has tape on it, so at least I don't need to feel guilty when I make the blade fit too loosely. Someone else beat me to the punch, haha.

Time for a preliminary bed check, using the straightedge light gap technique. I am going to borrow a picture from Kiyoto Tanaka (because he's a DUDE!, and the best in the world!) that serves to illustrate my ideal bed configuration.

This photo....it's perfection. There is a minimum of contact at both the front and rear of the bed, and just a sliver touching right before the blade......THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AREA! You can also see how the hollow in the bed of the blade gradually becomes deeper, then sweeps up to contact just before the cutting edge. 

Perfect.

This is what I've got.

Close, but needs some tuning. The notch is where the blade protrudes, so you can see that the bed is touching behind the blade. We want the opposite. We want the light to shine behind the blade.

One more thing. When I get the sub-blade aaaaaalmost to where I want it, it overrides the main blade on one side.

You can see the sub-blade osae-gane peeking out at the left. Crap! I hate when that happens!

The osae-gane fits perfectly, so never being one to take my own advice (much less others).....

......I take a bit off the side.

Just a smidge, I swear!

A little scraping, for starters.

And finally, a first test on some stringy, mystery mahogany.

Not too bad.

 It's a start, and is certainly workable as it is, but I want to see what this baby can do. The idea of getting the thinnest shaving possible isn't about the thin shaving. It is a simple matter to get the plane to work, to cut a shaving, to smooth the wood. That is easy. To get it to work perfectly? That is what the thin shaving thing is about. Any fool can get the damn thing to cut.

I messed up the edge when the osae-gane overrode the main blade, so it's time to sharpen. 

As is with almost all of these, the bevel isn't perfectly flat, but because I'm, uh, time constrained, I just concentrate on the edge itself. It pains me, because I REALLY want to see what this blade looks like polished, and I can't quite get all of the edge right, either. It needs to be redone, but that will have to wait. The rentetsu is even and fine grained. The lamination shows perfect heat control, and has no evidence of carbon migration. Very nice welding.

I try to get the osae-gane as close to the cutting edge as possible.

I think that I can see a thread of edge down in there.....

The African khaya shavings are very glossy.

However, something just isn't quite right. The blade isn't taking a full length shaving, and only partial in width, too. The board is only a short thing, and a quick visual confirms that it's not the board's fault, so it must be the kanna. I had a day like this a few months back, and it can be maddening. Everything is there, but something is off.

When the kanna isn't working right, the first thing I always check is the condition of the edge. It seems obvious, but almost every problem is rooted in sharpening, one way or another. 80% maybe?

I just sharpened, and although the blade isn't as perfectly sharp as I would wish, it doesn't explain the lack of proper performance. If the blade is fine, then it had to be the dai.

The dai looked ok when I performed the light gap test with the straightedge, but I'm often not as thorough as I could be, so it seems likely that I have missed some spots. A quick, yet nearly foolproof test is the "sandpaper stuck to a piece of glass " test.

High spots are lighter, the lower are dark. The hollow at the center of the dai is fine, but all of the light areas along the edges represent material that needs to be removed before this kanna will work properly. 

The section of the bed behind the blade needs attention, too.

Light test.

This usually goes back and forth a few times. Scrape, check the gap, then scrape a different area, probably.

Don't forget that little bit to either side of the blade mouth.

The difference is remarkable. When the bed of the plane is configured properly, you can feel the kanna sort of squat down as the cutting edge bites in. That's when the kanna will make its distinctive *Skweeeeep* sound and pull shavings the full length of this Bubinga, no problem, but......

This mystery wood (soft maple, perhaps) has a mild curl to the figure, and gives no problems, but still....

I feel like the sub-blade/osae-gane could be set a little finer, but it doesn't want to cooperate. This kanna is getting tired...... or maybe it's just me. Best not to push too hard, at this point.

It is a gray day, so photos of glossy, reflective surfaces are in short supply.

It's glossy, trust me.

 But *still*.....something is not quite right. I can check the blade bed, I haven't done that yet. I can fiddle more with the hollowed portions of the dai, they're not quite perfect yet. And I can do a better job sharpening, too.  

It has to be......*something*!

At least I can make it pretty.