A link to the text to be discussed – courtesy of google books, and after that links with commentary on Nicholson and old texts in general.
Nicholson on Sharpening and Grinding
Nicholson on Planing with Bench Planes in General
Nicholson on Planing the Face of a Rough Board
Nicholson on Planing Straight Edges
Owing what I’m about to say to the forums, or really lack of information about working entirely by hand and doing it productively- I figured much of what’s written in this text out on my own just over time, and don’t regret it. However, at one point long after sorting out the cap iron, Warren Mickley pointed out Nicholson to me. I’m sure it had been mentioned before, at least by Warren, but the significance didn’t really set in at first.
Regardless of not having “the key to the castle” on woodworking by hand, there is enough resource and enough that you can figure out on your own that you will come to do much of what’s in this book just out of productive laziness. That is, you can make something by hand entirely and do it any way you’d like. If you do much of it for long, though, you will start to prefer the older English tools, which just seems to happen, and you’ll do things the older English way – because there is just a natural inclination to.
Why Nicholson and not Roubo or Moxon? Full disclosure – I’ve never read all of anything that any of the above wrote. The difference between the earlier texts and Nicholson, though, is Nichlson’s book was written once hand tools were mature, and in an era where unlimited large first growth wood was probably declining in England. Before the cap iron was added to the plane iron, hand tools weren’t mature. Excellent work was done in volume, but have found with modern wood, trying to do this with single irons is a torturous hassle. You can try and compare if you don’t believe that. I had primo single iron planes, too – even a long plane that was unused from about 1830. I still have that plane. You never know if you’ll have a reason to make something like that -I don’t think I will – but just in case, it’s OK to have one.
After reading Nicholson, I’ve only changed one thing so far that Warren mentioned in Nicholson, sectionally jack planing long work rather than working up and down the length of a board. We’ll get to that. Nicholson’s method is a little more efficient and just involves learning the neural part of things – how to move the tool through leaning and rotation and extending and not through something that resembles a white fisted dumbbell press.
Maybe reading through this while posting will also allow me to find something else. There is but one thing that I don’t agree with in the text, and it doesn’t matter. That is the treatment of the cap iron to match the profile of a plane. I think the relative profile of the cap iron should be in relation to the sole of a plane. The practical difference in use isn’t anything, though. Too, with this is a comment from Nicholson that the cut should not extend all the way to the outer margins of an iron because those parts will induce a clog. This could’ve been an early problem or a problem of fit quality with wedges that moved more than planes with age (fingers coming in from the sides of the plane leaving a trap). My earliest double iron plane is from about the same time period as this book (1820s or 1830s). It doesn’t suffer this fault and no plane that I’ve ever made does, either. Nor do many Griffiths and Mathieson and so on – the cap irons and wedge fingers were set up to allow consistent feeding – far better than what was achieved with single iron planes. You can freely take a full width shaving if you want.
Next post will be the first topic – sharpening, and in generalized terms (I love it), not which stones you have to buy and which DVD-copied method. I was shocked to find that the method matches mine. But it’s less of a shock if you are an experimenter and you try things and refine – to find out where you stay has historical precedent.
The reward of experimenting is not getting into a rut of reading and not doing, which is pleasurable for people who are literary savants, and then finding that making what you read happen effortlessly is trouble. The hands on experience and seeing what has worked better with incremental improvement makes me confident. Not saying because I don’t read 80 pages a day that I’m a fool, just giving context.
I’ve also probably bought 40 wooden bench planes over the years, made another 25 or so, and had a sinful amount of metal planes and infills. This is not exactly a practical way to winnow the chaff and end up with the cleanest wheat, but it will work. Side by side comparisons without the time for your mind to make errant comparisons due to latency is a great thing. You can do what’s written in Nicholson (especially, but also Hotlzapffel) and avoid wasted effort if you just want to get to wood.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 