~  -----Original Message-----
~  From: owner-oldtools@l...
~  [mailto:owner-oldtools@l...]On Behalf Of Minch
~  Sent: Saturday, August 07, 1999 1:35 PM
~  To: amenex@a...; Old Tools
~  Subject: Re: Mouth too tight ?
~
~  However, a hand plane has the blade sticking down a
~  measurable amount.
~  Imagine a scrub plane set rank - what touches the wood?  If
~  you bear down
~  on the handle it would be the toe and throat in front of the
~  blade, while
~  the bed of the plane is parallel to, but not quite touching,
~  the surface
~  of the wood.  If you bear down on the tote it would be the heel and
~  throat behind the blade, and the bed would be at a slight
~  angle to the
~  surface of the wood with the toe sticking slightly up in the
~  air.  In
~  order to get three point contact, something would have to
~  give - distort.

It does, see my posting of a few days ago.

~  Now distorting a piece of metal causes it to heat up a
~  little (break a
~  paper clip by bending back and forth).  This repeated
~  distortion as you
~  stroke may contribute a bit of heat along with the friction,
~  more so with
~  a metal plane than wood - you can't distort the wood (if the
~  plane is
~  thick).

~  Does this mean that the wood plane is not - cannot-
~  make three
~  point contact with the wood??

Why not? A wooden beam will deflect under load. One can conjecture
that we have the entire toe area in contact with a line of contact
under the heel of both wooden and metal planes.

~  It might be interesting for one you lab rats to measure the surface
~  temperature of a wooden and a metal plane after use.  I'd do
~  it, but I
~  don't have a good thermometer.

No android I, I'd prefer to let both the plane and myself cool off,
even in our temperate climes. 8-).

Thanks for some nice elegant speculation!

Jeff