Axminster Rider No 7... concave sole, customer service pants as usual

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I purchased a LN 62 to do testing and write an article a couple of months ago. It was almost intolerable to smooth flat wood as it was out exactly at spec concave (1.5 thousandths) to my starrett edge and feelers. The first several passes for everything was just to clip the ends off of the wood before finally being able to smooth. I flattened it and now it works well.

I’m surprised by this as 1.5 thou is probably less than the amount steel moves due to the temperature difference between winter and summer. If I made sure my planes were always flatter than that, I’d have much less time for planing, if I ever got to that level of accuracy to start with.
 
tsk tsk what a load of tosh ....this really is. i seriously doubt whether any of the respondents including myself have the skill ,capacity or need to work to any of the tolerances stated.

The initial enquiry was about making toy boxes for kids not precision medical equipment for laser surgery ffs shakes head .....dear oh dear.... some folk sure do like making a mountain out of a molehill and in the process insulting others that are trying to offer help and advice to the op
 
I’m surprised by this as 1.5 thou is probably less than the amount steel moves due to the temperature difference between winter and summer. If I made sure my planes were always flatter than that, I’d have much less time for planing, if I ever got to that level of accuracy to start with.

The last LN plane that I had was 1.5 thousandths hollow. I spent less than an hour correcting it to flat. A 14 or 15 inch long plane with a 1.5 thousandth hollow will be almost impossible to plane a match joint that closes unless you stand on the plane. You cannot use a plane properly to do that kind of work if it cannot cut flat or slightly hollow under it's own weight and no more than the downforce on the handle.

I hear this all the time "you can't work to that level", that's false. You can work as reasonably close as you can see in flatness, which is a small fraction of that.

I hear the same thing "a serious woodworker wouldn't have time for that". With all due respect, that's garbage. I could teach a mediocre woodworker how to flatten a plane to that spec from end to end in a matter of half an hour, both for convex and concave planes.

And, no, a plane that is 1.5 thousandths concave will never be flat or convex or 3 thousandths concave at any time no matter how much the temperature changes.

The other part of this is discretion - knowing when it matters (1.5 thousandths doesn't matter at all if the plane is convex and not twisted. On a long plane, two or three times that doesn't make an undesirable plane. And putting a plane between two boards and pushing on it with the toe and heel supported to see how much you can get it to move is a bogus test - I've heard that before, too. You don't plane with a plane sitting on two boards on the toe and heel.

I answer this kind of discussion a lot. I have a lot of experience flattening planes and being able to measure when they're actually flat, despite not being a professional and despite spending about 200 hours a year woodworking. Seeing assertions made out of lack of experience, or from machinists who don't use planes, or whatever else gets really annoying.

It misleads people. This is not a particularly high skill exercise. It's practical and can be accurate without being time consuming (though it's hard to get away from buying a straight edge that actually meets an accuracy spec, as well as a small set of accurate feelers to go with it.)
 
tsk tsk what a load of tosh ....this really is. i seriously doubt whether any of the respondents including myself have the skill ,capacity or need to work to any of the tolerances stated.

The initial enquiry was about making toy boxes for kids not precision medical equipment for laser surgery ffs shakes head .....dear oh dear.... some folk sure do like making a mountain out of a molehill and in the process insulting others that are trying to offer help and advice to the op

when someone offers a simple solution and you offer a response of "nobody here has the capacity to do what they say", you're moving people backwards.

Not all planes need to be flat. Some work better if they are (block planes, smoothers, jointers). It takes little talent or skill to learn to do it, and little cost. but it takes less talent to insult people who actually provide reasonable pragmatic advice.
 

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