Bearing Down Single-Iron Wooden Planes

[woodbrains]

Hi Mike. It would seem doubtful that the primary bevel would come close to being at or slightly below 40*, but without photo's it does make it very difficult to accurately diagnose.

regards Stewie;

Hello,

Indeed. Some photos would be great. I'd like to see the plane anyway; building them without a bit of showing off is not fair to us all!

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

Hello,

Camber is useful, as you say, for not leaving plane tracks. Which is why I very slightly camber my smoothers - the last plane that will touch the wood. Try planes seldom plane boards wider than their soles, plane tracks are not indicated. Jacks are followed by smoothers, so their tracks are removed. This is why we have different planes for different jobs!

The idea of camber is a good one, and cambering all types of plane is fine, of course, it is just something that I have never done and find, for me, unnecessary. If I did a lot more hand planing from sawn boards, then I would have a jack with a slight camber as well as one without. But since I have planer thicknesser machines, I never take terribly thick shavings with my jack, so I keep the iron sharpened flat. But many irons I see are cambered too much. I want to use as much of the irons width as there is available. Too much camber reduces the width of cut and it is surprising how little camber is needed, to take a near full width cut and prevent track marks. It is literally a hair. Any more and the iron may as well be narrower and all that is achieved is never utilising 2 strips of tool steel at the edges of the blade, a waste of time and good steel.

I do find it beneficial for accuracy, not cambering jointers, I find it easier to keep square.

Mike.

The other even bigger advantage of camber (after the feather edges and lack of tramlines) is that a cambered blade removes more material for the same amount of effort. Very much more in the extreme example of a scrub.
So a jack (of all trades) should be well cambered. To get the full benefit of your sharpening you can use more of the blade by tilting it to some extent (with a Bailey plane) but this is a bit of a red herring - the value of the camber is greater than the sharpening wasted on the unused parts of the blade. Another answer to this is to use a narrower plane on harder woods, or where you want to remove a lot of material. A 5 is handy for this.

 

[J_SAMa]

Problem found and solved... see update. I feel so stupid now...

 

[rxh]

I'm glad you solved the problem. Please can you post a photo of your plane? We love to see pictures of shop-built planes.