Fettling wooden planes

[George_N]

I've just bought a 22" woodie on Ebay. I was originally looking for an old No. 7 but they were quite pricey and in a moment of madness I bid for the woodie and won it. I only paid £4.50 + P&P, so no big deal if it turns out to be a big doorstop. The iron is 2 1/2" wide and wedge shaped (Warranted cast steel, Brader & Co) which was in pretty good condition and, after re-grinding the primary bevel, it has sharpened up nicely with my Veritas MkII honing guide and new camber roller. The cap iron is Marples & Sons and is also pretty clean. I have honed and polished the business end of the cap iron and it fits very snugly to the blade with no gaps. The body of the plane is generally in good condition with no major cracks or splits. The main problem is the sole. There is a little damage to the toe at the front left corner, when viewed from above and and there is a fair bulge behind the mouth. The mouth is otherwise in good condition, about 3 - 4 mm with the blade set for a fine cut. Should I flatten the sole and if so how? Planing? I have a Stanley No. 6 which is somewhat shorter than the woodie, or should I try abrasive paper on a glass plate.
I do realise that this is a further slide down THE slippery slope, especially since I have no immediate task in hand that needs such a plane...just wanted it I guess, and it is satisfying getting a keen edge on that nice old steel and the smell of the linseed oil and...and...and...
Get a grip man!
I have read a few articles on setting wooden planes and I have been practicing but I think the unflat sole is preventing me from getting a satisfactory result. Any advice from the wise will be much appreciated.

 

[woodbloke]

I have a standard wooden jack where I recently trued up the sole. You need to insert the wedge and both irons to normal working tightness but with the cutting edge about 6mm below the sole. Then place the woodie in the vice sole upermost and use the longest plane you have (certainly longer than the sole of the woodie) to true the sole - obviously remove the min amount of material. If the mouth is becomes too wide, route in an additional piece of material just in front of the cutting edge to close the gap and fettle in until the mouth is about 1 or 2mm I would suggest, depends really on what the woodie is going to be used for - Rob

 

[George_N]

My longest plane is an old Stanley No. 6 which is only 18" long. That's one reason I was asking about the possibility of using sandpaper.

 

[todd]

I think that a good straight edge and square is the most important tool for this job and a plane no smaller than a smoothing plane.I never been a great lover of abrasive paper on hardwood ,a bit old fashioned maybe

 

[Alf]

George, if there's any significant amount to remove, then plane it with your #6. As Rob says, upside down in the vice, iron, cap iron and wedge all in place but slightly below the sole. Then just treat it like planing up any other board. Straight edge, winding sticks, etc. If you couldn't plane something longer than the length of the plane the world would be knee-deep in 6 ft jointers. :wink: If you're not confident at getting it accurate enough that way, or there's not much to remove anyway, then take it to abrasive glued down on something flat. Make it a longer length than the plane and you shouldn't have any trouble.

Cheers, Alf

 

[Anonymous]

Alf is spot on. I recently trued the sole of my 30" woody jointer with my LV low angle jack. As Todd said, a straightedge and winding sticks are the real tools here.

I would think you would set this plane up as a try plane. In that case, the sole doesn't have to be ultra precise but a bump behind the mouth has to go! The mouth opening should be tightened up to around 1 mm and there should be a very small camber in the blade of about 0.15-0.2 mm. This is an excellent setup for flattening stock and squaring edges.

Woodies are lots of fun and are easily tuned to very good performance.

 

[George_N]

I've had a go with the No. 6 and that has significantly helped the bump behind the mouth. I think the toe, in fact the whole area in front of the mouth, is a little above the rest of the sole. In other words, when I put my long steel rule along the sole there is a slight gap between the sole and the rule in front of the mouth. I think I will go over to using abrasive treatment now as the No. 6 has pretty well removed the major problem and I think I am less likely to do too much damage too quickly that way. A set of winding sticks sounds like a good idea. I suppose that was a traditional part of a woodworkers apprenticeship to make his/her own set. I haven't done this yet, is it a good idea to make a set? Or take the quicker and easier option to buy a set...I see Axminster have a set in the new catalogue that arrived today.

 

[woodbloke]

George N wrote:

good idea to make a set?

Winding sticks are easy to make. I made mine years ago from some mahoghany about 300mm long. The top of just one of the pair should be faced with something different - I used some very thin white melamine strip so that they are easy to sight against. They should ideally be parallel but as long as they are always used 'one way round' they will work - I hang my pair up on a couple of pins and when I use them the pin ends are always together, white topped stick at the rear to sight against - Rob

 

[George_N]

I'll have a go at making some then. I have some shortish bits of old mahogany shelving (another skip rescue). Now all I need is a 22" woodie try plane to make sure they are true...ooops

 

[Alf]

I see Axminster have a set in the new catalogue that arrived today.

Ah, first confirmed sighting of the new catalogue...

Winding sticks; well those Axminster ones are almost infamous, but there's a few ideas to make your own there and also in this thread. Not all the solutions involve wood...

Cheers, Alf

 

[Anonymous]

It may not be the thing to mention in a hand tools forum..... but as an alternative you can quickly flattern an old wooden sole with a powered jointer.

Quick and accurate if your jointers setup well.

Which is what I did here with a beatup old woodie....
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com.au ... hp?t=23798

I was being a bit of a smartypants in that thread,,,, was probably in a bad mood, and a bit fed up with the truth distortion that seems to come with advertisement....plus I was a bit jealous of those who could afford golden wonder plane I guess. :lol: :roll:

 

[George_N]

Hi Jake,
thanks for the link, I sometimes log on to the woodforums site but I missed your post. Your old woodie was in much worse condition than mine so I'm encouraged by the thought that if you can get that beat up old plane to work well I should be able to do something with mine. I don't have access to a powered jointer so I'll have to persevere with my N0. 6, sandpaper and scrapers. I really like the idea of getting an old tool and getting it back to good working order for little or no money...tight fisted Scotsman?

 

[George_N]

Just a little update. I cut a sheet of 120 grit AlOx sandpaper in half, lengthwise and stuck the twp pieces end-to-end on my glass lapping plate (just long enough) and started to sand the sole of the plane. It showed me where the high/low spots were ok but didn't remove much material. I replaced the 120 grit with 40 grit and set to work. About 30 min of sandpapering and checking, sandpapering and checking, the sole was flat from the heel to about 2" in front of the mouth. I could still see a little daylight under the straight edge at the toe but I decided to stop there andclean up on the 120 grit again. A couple of minutes of that and the sole felt pretty smooth so I set the iron and tried the plane on the edge of a piece of oak floorboard I had lying around. It was awful, the plane juddered and skipped its way along the board, then the lightbulb switched on in my dim wits. Wax! A quick application of candle wax and the improvement was immense. I may work some more on the sole but I think I will probably benefit more from working on my setting and planing skills. The only downside to this story is that I broke my glass lapping plate as I was putting it away, so I'll need to find a replacement. Still float glass is relatively cheap.

 

[todd]

I hope you don't mind me posting my thoughts about using abrasive paper on hardwood ,Iwas taught as a apprentice that the two do not go to gether and I still believe this because at the end of the day all that is created is a scratched surface .
I would use a jackplane, finish with a smoothing plane set as fine as possible and use linseed oil as oppossed to wax on a wooden plane .
The most important thing I have found with wooden planes is is to use them as much as possible to get them working right ,this I think is more down to our inability to use them to their full affect as opposed to any problems with the plane,and as I have found used properly thy are not hard workand a pleasure to use .Got to get of this soap-box as someone needs it later on at speakers corner

 

[George_N]

Todd, I appreciate what you are saying about not using sandpaper on hardwoods, especially a plane. For me, though, this method allowed me to bridge my skills gap in that I could get reasonably close to the result I wanted while not having the planing skills or confidence to do it the way you suggest. I hope as my skills improve with time that future plane restoration projects (yes, I'm certain there will be more) can be done with the tools I am bringing back to life now. I used boiled linseed oil to clean up the body of the plane, though I didn't go the whole hog of stopping up the mouth and filling the plane with oil, as the wood seemed to be in pretty good condition and not too dry and cracked. I thought using wax on the sole was a fairly common practice, but I stand to be corrected by those who know more about the subject than I do...always willing to learn. One benefit of the wax was that it filled all those tiny scratches left by the sandpaper.

 

[Alf]

Todd, d'you shun abrasives on hardwoods - full stop? 'Cos I'd be in a bit of bother if I did that, quite honestly. Although as it happens I don't tend to use that method for flattening wooden plane soles, but only 'cos I'm too darn lazy to set it all up... 8-[

Cheers, Alf

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jake,
...tight fisted Scotsman?

:lol: ...can relate to that....I'm a tight fisted Aussie...so I've been told.

uno, honestly something like 90% of your problems are solved if you've got a flat sole, thick shaaaaarp blade, and a means of holding that blade to the bed fixed...........the other details are nice, but if you nail those things you should be able to plane successfully....the rest is just in learning how to adjust it to take a good shaving.

Some wooden planes I've noticed, due to age or whatever, have blades , that even when the wedge is fully knocked home, still flex on their beds....thats something worth checking I think.

So, what I do when I come accross an old woodie, is make sure the blades wedge in, flip the plane sole up and push down on the blades bevel with my finger (or a stick if your worried you'll cut yourself) to see how much it moves......ideally it shouldn't move at all.......if it does that'll contribute to chatter, and means surgury on the bed or wedge.....I prefer to find one without that problem to begin with than to have to mess with the bed.

As for sole flatness. I reakon just make sure you've got at least 3 high points. One somewhere around the nose, one near the back, and one leading right up to the front of the mouth. You probably know that already.

And when you flattern on that sandpaper, try and make single direction strokes......pushing down evenly around the bed with your hands.....cause if you scrub back and forth like scrubbing the floor....you could sand in a hill into your sole inadvertantly.....I've done that before.

goodluck

 

[George_N]

Jake, I reckon I've got the sharpening bit sorted and the blade/wedge seem to be a good tight fit. The sole is also pretty flat from the heel to a couple of inches in front of the mouth. The area right at the toe still seems a bit low, could be because I've been scrubbing back and forth, although I've tried to keep the pressure on the handle and directly above the mouth. I'll work on it a bit more when I get time but it is already performing much better than when I first got it. The hardest part, like you say is getting the feel for adjusting the blade. I'll also need to work on that.

 

[todd]

Todd, d'you shun abrasives on hardwoods - full stop? 'Cos I'd be in a bit of bother if I did that, quite honestly. Although as it happens I don't tend to use that method for flattening wooden plane soles, but only 'cos I'm too darn lazy to set it all up... 8-[

Cheers, Alf

Again I apoligise about writing about this on someone elses post but ,yes I do until the finishing stage that is when I apply sanding sealer etc ,to any projectfrom then on Iwould use a brasives ,oh and wood turningwhich I have done very little of .
Maybe I was lucky that I had a chargehand that made me do everything by hand until I was 18yrs old.I learnt very quickly to keep my tools as sharp as possible for my own benifit.
Another thing he made me do at the beginning of my apprenticeship , and Iwas at a lose end was to get me use my planes on scrapes of oak ,mahongany beech etc,not just squaring them up but also doing hexagonal shapes etc Which gave me a good control of the plane ,as many of you know it is easy to square up a peice of wood but not so easy to make a hexaganol shape with all the lines parallel. plus it gave me a feel for the different woods, before going on to mess up some proper work
Grumble over

 

[Philly]

Todd
Understand where you're coming from but when it comes to tweaking the sole of a wooden plane the "sandpaper on a flat surface" is a great technique. If you try flattening the sole of an exotic timbered plane it comes into it's own as you don't have to worry about tear-out.
Cheers
Philly