Getting to know the tools inside out is also important to me. I am not sold on the very thick blades of the new premium brands. That’s a lot of sharpening as I will be sharpening by hand, and I’m sure they don’t need to be that thick (Paul Sellers certainly doesn’t think so).
I have an old Record no4, but it’s a bit sloppy and is proving difficult to adjust accurately enough to get super fine shavings for smoothing. I might just put a huge camber on it and use it as a scrub plane as someone here suggested.
If you want to get to know how to use a Bailey plane correctly, then you might seek someone
who uses a double iron plane as intended, and not the most rudimentary take on things demonstrated by most of the gurus, because those folks work hard on keeping things at a certain level, and advice by all is not helpful.
Seems like you might have some bad habits, like planing things in a vice (I'm guessing)
as even a shoddy plane what's short, should be able take reasonably wispy shavings.
Don't put a huge camber on your plane I suggest.
Keep that no.4 for a smoother, get another smoother if you wish to compare.
Use the cap iron on either, even the rough one will do.
i.e hone it to
at least 50 degrees or greater, keep the
mouth open, and make sure you have such a small gradual camber which allows one to slide the cap iron to 1/64" from the edge..
.
and compare that plane set up as say David W on youtube, Derek Cohen or whoever actually makes full use of the cap iron (no guru's will demonstrate so)
Compared with whomever's recommendations which would be other than
exactly that,
as changing the recipe even slightly will not yield anywhere near whatsoever the same result.
Once that's done, then even the worst old plane will be seen in a different light.
Everything else is pretty much a misleading rabbit hole of expenditure in various flavours.
Good luck
Tom
)
that's great, this sort of thing is how it should be
