Filing your plane
- Thread starter pe2dave
- Start date
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Argus
Established Member
Me too, I think that idea goes way back.......
I've always done most of those things, even on second-hand planes .......thinking about it, most of mine are second hand.
If old planes arrive with shreds of wood trapped between the cap and the blade, then it's dead giveaway that there's poor fit and that's the first to get a new filed edge. Sometimes the blades are not flat at that point..... I also look for any casting ridges on the inside front lip of the mouth; even minute ridges can hang up a shaving - it is only a quick wipe with a small file.
As far as relieving the aris on the sides of the sole, I tend to leave the sides, unless it's sharp and just do the toe and heel.
I've always done most of those things, even on second-hand planes .......thinking about it, most of mine are second hand.
If old planes arrive with shreds of wood trapped between the cap and the blade, then it's dead giveaway that there's poor fit and that's the first to get a new filed edge. Sometimes the blades are not flat at that point..... I also look for any casting ridges on the inside front lip of the mouth; even minute ridges can hang up a shaving - it is only a quick wipe with a small file.
As far as relieving the aris on the sides of the sole, I tend to leave the sides, unless it's sharp and just do the toe and heel.
Interesting he says "the chip breaker or back iron, whatever you want to call it ..."
When I learned as a boy it was always a back iron - I didn't hear it called a chip breaker until I read it here. But then, I never heard a handle called a tote, either.
Two other observations - 1/ I read some 30 years to file the inside front of the mouth but to angle it towards the toe - it leaves more room for a shaving to curl when using an extremely tight mouth. It does take a very thin file, though, and 2/ We were always taught never to slide the iron along the chipbreaker but to slide the chipbreaker along the iron. That way the newly sharpened edge doesn't clash.
When I learned as a boy it was always a back iron - I didn't hear it called a chip breaker until I read it here. But then, I never heard a handle called a tote, either.
Two other observations - 1/ I read some 30 years to file the inside front of the mouth but to angle it towards the toe - it leaves more room for a shaving to curl when using an extremely tight mouth. It does take a very thin file, though, and 2/ We were always taught never to slide the iron along the chipbreaker but to slide the chipbreaker along the iron. That way the newly sharpened edge doesn't clash.
Last edited:
pe2dave
Established Member
You say tomato, I say potatoe (or whatever)!
Argus
Established Member
Few planes, good or not-so-good, are work-ready straight from the box and I suppose that the most important part of fettling any plane, new or old, is knowing when to stop.
That's how the older infills were made - they were deliberately made with some relief to use the cap iron to control tearout but without having a garish big mouth (older as in pre-adjuster norris planes, etc). The only thing keeping that from being done on a stanley type plane is that they probably figured you'd just leave the mouth large enough so that the chip could escape with the chipbreaker set close (the mouth being tight is OK, better than nothing, but poor at controlling tearout compared to using the cap iron. Norris fixed the mouth and didn't give you the choice, but it's interesting that most people would rebut "if a closed mouth isn't good at controlling tearout, why did they do it on norris planes?".
If they didn't intend for people to use the cap iron close set, why would they have bothered to file the mouth toward the bun so that you can literally set the cap right to the end and still have a shaving feed? (having the mouth closed on those planes is a fairly simple thing - it doesn't hurt on a smoother, and if you're in a contest to get someone to buy your plane, leaving the mouth closed looks dandy).
