I started working on another lantern today, and I thought I’d show you how I use a Japanese kanna block plane to remove the marks left on the wood by the band saw that I use to mill the lumber into pieces. You can hear the vibration at first, that eventually gives way to smooth shaving noises.
I spin the piece around part way through so that the blade is cutting at an angle across the grain instead of into the grain. This yields a smoother cut. You can see that at the start, the grain lines are pointing up and to the right. Then, after the spin, they are pointing down and to the left.
You can also see that the piece I am planing is not clamped down at all. Since you’re pushing down on the plane, and so down on the piece, the only thing that’s necessary is the planing stop that you can see screwed down to the “planing beam”. My planing beam is simply a length of 2by4 held in my bench vise. My planing stop is 3 inches of 1/8″ welding iron that I drilled a couple of holes in so that I could screw it down. I did have to file the edge of the iron so that it wasn’t rounded over.
