How To Set A Wood Plane

7 Steps to Acme Handplane Performance by J. Norman Reid Delaplane, VA

You've just purchased that new smoothing plane you've had your eye on for so long. Or y'all've lovingly brought an older Stanley Mitt Plane to vivid and shiny status. And now y'all're ready to put a fine finish on a treasured piece of woods. But is your aeroplane gear up to brand the wispy shavings you lot're hoping for? What can y'all practice to set upward your plane for the best results? Here are seven steps to get meridian operation from your hand planes.

Acuminate and Hone the Bract

Your airplane will never work as it should without a well-sharpened and honed blade. Premium planes will cut reasonably well right out of the box, but to perform their best fifty-fifty they need a niggling training. Budget planes and survivors from an earlier era crave fifty-fifty more attending.

Starting time, flatten and polish the back of the blade to remove any machining marks. Piece of work your blade back and forth beyond the sharpening stones, starting with your coarsest grit and working up through the grits until all scratches have been removed and yous attain a mirror smooth. This job only needs to be done once, but even on premium planes it'southward a necessary step. Don't go overboard; you are really only concerned with the last one-half inch or and then of the blade's back. The residue of the blade will never bear on the wood and tin can exist safely ignored.

Next plow your attending to the bevel. The principal bevel on almost plane blades should be 25°. Exceptions are blades set up at a college cutting angle for hard grain. If your bevel is non at the right bending, the edge is not foursquare to the sides, or the cutting border is nicked you'll need to regrind it. This tin be washed on a grinder—an viii inch slow-speed grinder is best for this work, a water-cooled, large wheel grinder even meliorate—simply practiced results tin can exist achieved past working the blade on PSA sandpaper fastened to a dead flat surface. I offset with fourscore grit paper and work up to 120 dust. Once the bevel is shaped to the proper angle, information technology, too, will demand to be polished mirror smooth by working your fashion through the grits of any rock or sandpaper method y'all apply. While some woodworkers are able to get skilful results by hand belongings their blades, I highly recommend a honing guide to produce consequent, repeatable results.

If your restored plane has a blade that's in very rough condition, you may find it easier to purchase an aftermarket replacement blade. Non only will yous kickoff with a blade that'southward in premium condition, but it will be made of a more durable modern steel than was bachelor when the older planes were originally made.

Once y'all have a high polish on your primary bevel, you lot want to institute a secondary or micro bevel about 2–5° college than the chief bevel. This will need to be done on all blades, as even premium blades exercise not come with a micro bevel. Over again, start with your coarsest rock and stroke until you've established a sparse line evenly across the tip of the blade. So proceed to the adjacent higher grit. Finish by giving it a mirror smooth with your highest stone. Do a careful job hither; information technology's the micro bevel that meets the forest and produces those fine shavings.

Finally, to get the sharpest edge, apply David Charlesworth's ruler play tricks to put a very slight back bevel on the blade. Place a thin ruler lengthwise on the rear edge of your stone. Then, lay the blade on the stone bevel side upwardly with the cutting edge off the far edge of the stone. While making back-and-forth sideways motions, carefully pull the blade onto the rock, then push it off once again, repeating the procedure up to 10 times. Do this using each of your stones, working to your highest grit. The effect—a high shine on the extreme tip of the bract back that gives the sharpest edge. Once washed, this footstep demand not exist repeated, though you may wish to refresh the back bevel with your finest stone each time you lot re-hone your microbevel.

At present that your blade is sharpened and honed to perfection, you will unremarkably only need to refresh the micro bevel on your finest stone from time to time to keep it in tiptop cutting condition.

Upgrading Your Plane Blade

If your blade is in bad shape—either badly nicked or rusted—you might be meliorate off installing a new replacement blade. Several manufacturers offer replacement blades in a diversity of widths to fit older Stanleys, Records and other brands. Some blades are as much equally 25 percent thicker than the original blades and use mod steels, including both A2 and 01 steel. Replacement chipbreakers are likewise available.

Thicker blades reduce the likelihood of churr and offer greater stability, but they may require adjustments to the frog or fifty-fifty the size of the mouth opening to accommodate the greater thickness. Available blades vary in thickness, and then take this into business relationship when purchasing. A thickness of .095 inches or less will likely work in nearly older planes.

Replacement chipbreakers in particular may be thicker than the original parts and may not fit older planes. Cheque with the manufacturer earlier ordering. Highland Woodworking carries Stanley replacement blades and chipbreakers.

Set the Mouth Opening

While the lion's share of attention goes to getting a swell edge on the bract, several other steps will help you get the best from your plane. One is adjusting the mouth opening. On a bevel down aeroplane, this is achieved by moving the frog forward or backward until the opening is slightly wider than the thickness of the desired shaving. For smoothing planes, very fine shavings are the goal so y'all will desire to set up a very narrow gap. The opening tin be wider for jointers and wider still for jack planes ready to have thick shavings when roughing out a board.

Set the frog with the blade in place and slightly projected. On planes based on the Stanley Boulder model, which includes Lie-Nielsen planes, adapt the opening by loosening the two screws on either side of the depth adjustment wheel. And so accelerate or retract the frog as necessary by turning the large screw located between the 2 locking screws. Once the frog is adjusted, loosely tighten the locking screws, remove the blade and sight down the frog to the mouth to confirm that the frog is perfectly foursquare to the rima oris. Then tighten the locking screws alternately and gradually until tight. Don't over tighten them to avert stripping the threads.

The more common Bailey-fashion planes have a slightly different screw arrangement—two locking screws located nether the bract-chipbreaker assembly and an adjusting screw at the rear of the frog. This ways you may take to insert and remove the blade and chipbreaker associates several times until y'all get the oral fissure set the way you want it. Otherwise, the adjustment process is the aforementioned every bit for Bedrock-manner planes.

Some newer planes—including cake planes and other bevel-upward planes—are built with adjustable mouths. Usually the rima oris is loosened by turning a lever at the base of the toe, and so sliding the mouth assembly forward or backward to obtain the desired opening.

Adjust the Chipbreaker

The chipbreaker on a bevel down plane should also exist set and so the distance from the bract edge is slightly more than the width of the shavings y'all intend to make. For smoothing nigh hardwoods, 1/32 inch is skilful, though you lot may desire to gear up it at 1/64 inch for difficult woods prone to tearout. For softwoods, ane/16 inch may be more than appropriate. The distance will vary for individual planes fix to accomplish different results. Bevel up planes, of course, have no chipbreakers and need no such adjustment.

Arrange the Cap Iron Pressure

The cap iron should hold the blade and chip breaker firmly to eliminate chatter but not so tightly that the depth adjuster tin't be easily moved with two fingers. With the lever loosened, tighten the screw until information technology holds the blade and chip breaker snugly in place, then snap the lever downwards and test the ease of adjustment. Once you've achieved the right amount of pressure, leave the screw lonely and remove the iron by raising the lever.

Gear up the Depth Adjuster

Now we come to the business terminate of the adjustments, where the metal meets the wood. On virtually planes, you plow the depth adjustment wheel clockwise to deepen the cut and counterclockwise to retract it. Yet, there are exceptions. I recently came upon an sometime Crusader where the depth adjuster was turned in the opposite management, so bank check your plane to see which dominion applies.

Unfortunately, because of the unavoidable condition of backlash—backlog play in the cycle adjustment—setting the bract depth so it does not skid in identify requires a footling more technique. The rule is to stop all depth adjustments with a down, usually clockwise, movement of the wheel. Failing to keep downward pressure level leaves the blade in a loose condition that lets it sideslip, and you can apace lose the adjustment you only carefully gear up.

Thus, if the blade is gear up likewise deep, back information technology off by turning the bike counterclockwise until the bract is fully retracted. Then make small down (ordinarily clockwise) adjustments, testing after each motility, until yous get the correct depth. If you lot find you need a more than shallow set, repeat the entire process by backing the blade out and and so deepening the cut past small-scale degrees.

Lateral Adjustments

The rule of thumb here is to slide the lateral aligning lever toward the side of the blade that is cutting too deeply. Yous tin can test the remainder of the blade depth by sighting downwards the sole and looking for the blackness line that shows the presence of the bract. Or you can look directly into the rima oris from the bottom of the plane to judge whether the bract is the same altitude from the mouth border on both sides. A third method is to have a sparse wood chip and stroke information technology gently on each side of the blade, paying attention to the size of each shaving produced as well every bit the sound as the fleck passes over the cutting edge. The acid examination, all the same, is to brand a cut on a scrap lath to see if you lot get shavings of equal thickness from each side of the blade. On a apartment lath, you would expect to go a full-width shaving of compatible thickness. If the shaving is low-cal on one side or missing birthday, motion the lever slightly to the side that is cut heaviest and retest. A series of small, successive adjustments will ordinarily produce better results than making wider swings in the hope of hitting the correct setting in i move. Oftentimes, moving the adjustment lever affects the overall depth of cut, then be prepared for follow-up depth adjustments.

Cambered blades, because the blade corners are curved, are easier to put into balance. This is one reason why they are recommended for most users, especially those new to using manus planes (see beneath).

To Slant or Not to Camber—That is the Question

Plane blades tin be cambered or kept straight, according to the user'due south preference and skill level. The temptation—specially for new users—is to leave the blade edge just every bit it comes out of the box: directly. Only it is precisely new users who can benefit the about from a cambered blade. Why? Because a cambered blade is more forgiving when it is not precisely set to equal depth on both edges. A bract that'due south non balanced is very likely to dig more securely into the forest on one side than the other, leaving "tracking" marks on the surface.

To camber a blade, separate the blade edge into fifths and with your index finger on each fifth of the blade accept progressively more strokes on your stones every bit you work farther away from the center. By taking slightly more metallic from the edges than the middle, you lot'll create a slight curvature to the cut border. Count the strokes and use the same number on each side and with each of your stones on both the primary and micro bevels. For best results, record your strokes in your shop notebook so y'all can repeat the same process each time y'all re-hone the blade. Smoothing planes can be cambered very slightly; blades on planes intended for heavier stock removal can exist given greater curvature.

Lubrication

Lubricating the plane's sole makes a surprising departure in the ease with which the plane glides over your workpiece. I generally brand a serial of Ten marks on the sole of my plane using a stick of beeswax. How often should you do this? The simple reply is, whenever you experience the resistance brainstorm to build against the smooth motion of your plane. That can range from every dozen or so strokes to every 2 or three boards. It'due south a affair of personal preference and whether yous're working a rough or smooth surface.

In improver to beeswax, paraffin or mutton tallow piece of work well. Or, you can make a airplane oiler by gluing a piece of discarded rug to a forest cake and spraying it lightly with Camellia or jojoba oil. Elevate the plane backwards over the carpeting to glaze information technology lightly with oil. None of these lubricants will interfere with your stop.

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The writer is a woodworker, writer and photographer living in Delaplane, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife, iv cats and a woodshop full of power and manus tools. He can exist reached by email at nreid@fcc.cyberspace.

Source: https://www.highlandwoodworking.com/woodworking-tips-1305may/peakhandplane.html

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