Might be preaching to the choir, but this wood planing video

[K. L. McReynolds]

mesmerized me.

[Mark Allen]

It's cool stuff for sure and people have referred to it many times. Academically, I question the validity of the results to what's actually happening when someone planes wood, since the model they use makes no attempt to introduce the sole or mouth opening size as factors in chip creation during planing.

[JimReed@Tallahassee]

Wow. And I thought I had lots of time on my hands! These guys have me beat.

[Alan S]

It's cool stuff for sure and people have referred to it many times. Academically, I question the validity of the results to what's actually happening when someone planes wood, since the model they use makes no attempt to introduce the sole or mouth opening size as factors in chip creation during planing.

It seems to me the point of this is to isolate parts of the process to show what is important.  Obviously, the mouth size and bed angle have profound effects, but the thing this video shows is that you can plane cleanly against the grain even with a wide open mouth, and a low bed angle.  Whether you choose to use a cap iron or other means to avoid tearout is a separate question, but this has very practical consequences.

[Wilbur Pan]

I played a part in the making of this version of the video. The video had been out on the internet for a while, but a team that I was part of translated the narration and subtitled the video. 

The link provided above goes to a YouTube page where the guy basically copied the video, after taking the time to edit out the credits at the beginning of the video that explains the back story. If you want to see the real thing, have a look here: http://giantcypress.net/post/23159548132...created-by

[Mark Allen]

In statistically designed experiments, isolation is not something that is desired. If there are known interactions, the experiments should be designed to incorporate those interactions and measure the effects. The experiment is a nice first step to show that chipbreaker angle and distance are factors to consider in chip creation. If they want to move forward, they need to add some sophistication to their model and increase the factors influencing the experiment because it's far from describing a practical situation of a blade mounted in a plane. For example, just watching the video ... no one planes a board that slowly. Does speed impact chip creation? It's not part of their experiment, so how can someone conclude the result would be the same in real world applications where people plane boards much faster. What about different wood hardness? Lots to consider before making conclusions here.

I agree with the scientific approach and would encourage them to continue their work but unless there is a radical innovation in planes and planing methods that mimic the action we see in the video, I think this experiments ability to describe the real life, practical woodworking situation is questionable. From a practical approach, what might be a take away are the the upper limits of chip breaker and blade depths that reduce/eliminate tear out, assuming other factors like speed, wood hardness, grain and plane sole have negative impact on chip formation in those ranges of blade depth and chip breaker distance.

[SteveVoigt]

The video, which has been on Wilbur's site since 2012, was not created for the purpose of using hand planes. It was created to further research into industrial super-surfacers (basically giant planing machines), which are used extensively in large-scale furniture production in Japan. So, the criticisms commonly leveled at the video--no mouth, shallow angle, too slow, etc. etc.--are not really relevant.

However, the video does have relevance to hand-planing, if viewed from the proper perspective. It provides proof-positive that chipbreakers work, and it demonstrates the relationship between set-back distance and the bevel angle at the tip of the breaker.From there, it's a simple matter of doing your own experiments, in your own shop, to discover how the video applies to working at the bench. The video is a starting point, nothing more; the rest is up to you.

However, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. The video, and chipbreakers more generally, have been discussed in literally hundreds of pages of forum discussions, not to mention dozens of articles and videos. There is a ton of information out there, at your fingertips…

[Alan S]

"Professor Kato’s research was on plane blade wear, specifically for the Japanese Super Surfacers, planing machines that replicate the surface finish of hand planing. A laboratory planing machine was developed for these studies. The planing machine enabled videos of shaving formation to be made. Professors Kato and Kawai realized that these pictures would be a useful teaching tool in their trades classes. They prepared a video for this purpose. This video was presented by Professor Kato at the 3rd International Tooling Symposium in 1994."

Quoted from http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.p...on-studies
It of course refers to the Japanese version before the efforts Wilbur describes for its translation.

When you say "In statistically designed experiments, isolation is not something that is desired" this is true in some circumstances, but not not generally.  It would be fair to say that certain types of conclusions should not be drawn from studies that isolate variables.  Experiments are designed to answer questions, and use resources to do so.  It is not a fair criticism of a study that addresses one question to say that it is substandard because it does not answer a different question, particularly one that would require far more resources.  It is perfectly fair to point out that it does not answer that question, but then the question of relevance might arise as all studies fail to answer almost all questions.

[Mark Allen]

My apologies to the group here ... You are both quite right ... I was not aware of the purpose of the experiment so it's unfair to accuse the research of presenting results to unrelated questions it never set out to answer. I had assumed it was related to hand planes, not an unreasonable assumption as we usually speak of hand tools here.