Recent content by Steve Elliott

I examined a Norris adjuster from the 1930s a number of years ago. The threads on the main shaft were 32 tpi right-handed and those on the smaller shaft 40 tpi left-handed. Over the years the design of the adjusters changed so yours might be different. The only other adjuster I've studied was...

It's been my experience that gaps between the corners of the blade and the sides of the mouth can get shavings caught in them so I prefer almost no gap. Adjusting for a slightly out-of-square blade can still be done if the blade bed is wider at the tops of the sides than at the mouth. I've...

Paddy, Back in 2005 I did measure the change in thickness of a test piece to determine the thickness of shavings, taking 275 shavings that were .001" thick as far as I could measure and control the thickness. Of course as the blade wore with successive passes the shavings would become thinner...

I use a small paint roller that comes with a plastic tray that can be sealed with a lid. By leaving about 3/8" of glue in the tray the roller stays moist enough that the glue doesn't start to set. I leave the tray set up for months, using it now and then. For large surfaces I start by pouring...

My best tip for not overheating while dry grinding is to start with the blade already cold. I like to keep ice water next to the grinder and cool the blade down before I even start. I put the back end of a plane blade in the water so that even if the cutting edge should be hot it won't suffer...

Derek, Your experience planing interlocked grain is the same as mine. Back in 2005 when I first heard of Kato's work I tried a closely set cap iron on the most difficult wood I could find, a piece of Bolivian rosewood. The closely set cap iron reduced tearout considerably and convinced me that...

I did a test that confirms what Brent Beach found, namely that a well-honed edge can be degraded by stropping on leather. I took my standard sharp edge honed with 1 micron diamond on cast iron and refined it by "stropping" on boxwood charged with 1/4 micron diamond. After 80 strokes the...

Matthew's statement would be a good place for discussions of honing angle to begin and end. The angle right at the cutting edge does matter and lower angles give a longer-lasting edge provided they are able to resist chipping and deformation. In the case of bevel-up planes where a higher...

The pad is loose and can accommodate slightly tapered blades but it's not a ball joint. It's held in place by a little clip like the one on the pad of the Veritas Mark I jig. I get the blade square on the grinder and then the rocking feature of the plate holder allows the entire blade edge to...

Larry, I wish those were my microscope images but they were made at a professional microscopy lab and sent to me by Bill Tindall. Thanks for the clarification. David, The back bevels I use are at an angle of 2½ degrees. They are essentially the same as your ruler technique (“trick” seems like...

Larry, I'm drawing a blank about a photo of plane irons with pitted backs. Usually the only pitting I see is on old laminated blades. Or have I misunderstood what you're referring to? Just curious.

Back in July you posted on WoodCentral, "You're the one with very fine measuring capability, maybe there's a way to measure what I'm talking about. The depth of the wear bevel into the steel is incredibly shallow, probably quite a bit less than 1/10th the length of the wear bevel." That was...

As possibly one of the worst offenders in this regard I'm reminded of the apocryphal story of a cardinal declining to look through Galileo’s telescope to see the evidence for Galileo’s discoveries. I’ve learned a lot by using my microscope and would like to share some recent results. For years...

A technique I sometimes use is to make a casting using Bondo that conforms to whatever the irregular shape is. (Bondo is a brand of auto body filler made of polyester resin. I'm not sure whether that brand will be known on your side of the Atlantic.) Then I have a clamping caul that applies...

My secondary bevels are also very narrow but I've made a device using a laser pointer that allows me to measure the bevels to well less than a half a degree. Here's a picture of a freshly sharpened Hock high carbon blade in the device: This shows the back bevel (on the left) at about 2.6...