Plane Blades sharpened at angles..

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rafezetter

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Quite a while ago I bought a stanley #22 block plane and it came with the blade sharpened at a very obvious angle, maybe 20deg, I put this down to poor practises and reground it.

Today however a kind old gent was in my shop and we got chatting about tools and such and he mentioned he had an "old angled plane" - to which I replied it's probably a shooting plane and googled a pic for him, but he said no the blade hole was straight, it was just the blade that was angled.

So that's the second time I've come across what may be a deliberately angled plane blade for a straight mouth - does anyone know what would be the reason for this? (other than a sheer kawinkydink?)
 
That does sound a bit odd. Could your plane have had a blade meant for a plane with a skewed blade, just put in to sell?
And maybe your visitor was describing a skew plane?

I can't think of a plane where the blade projects deep below the sole on one side.
 
Sounds like it was ground badly and then sharpened following the mistake. It is easy enough to do. Some of my chisels are not square at the end, despite me believing that I was holding them straight on the diamond plate. A grinder obviously takes material off much quicker so any mistake is magnified.

20 degrees is a lot though. But a blade for a skewed block plane would be worth more than a replacement straight one so I doubt that would have been done.
 
IIRC the Stanley #52 plane has a straight across blade, held in a skewed frog, which is quite a different arrangement
to that found in a badger or "normal" mitre plane, or skew rebate.

I've never seen or heard of a skew ground blade presented square on. Why would you do that?!

BugBear
 
Could have been used in place of a spokeshave for some particular special task.
 
bugbear":slro1ina said:
IIRC the Stanley #52 plane has a straight across blade, held in a skewed frog, which is quite a different arrangement
to that found in a badger or "normal" mitre plane, or skew rebate.

I've never seen or heard of a skew ground blade presented square on. Why would you do that?!

BugBear

Hehe no idea - hence the query. It was more out of curiosity that anything, the gent said he was going to try and dig it out and bring it in. He did mention it was a Spear plane - but Spear only not Spear and Jackson, with a brass lever cap.
 
I once had the need to remove a lot of stock, in a very tight space. My solution was to grind the iron of my block plane at an angle and use it like a scub plane to quickly remove a lot of material in a very short manner.
Maybe, as Jacob suggests, yours was also done to perform some special task.

All the best.
Adam.
 
rafezetter":1zn5lotg said:
Today however a kind old gent was in my shop and we got chatting about tools and such and he mentioned he had an "old angled plane" - to which I replied it's probably a shooting plane and googled a pic for him, but he said no the blade hole was straight, it was just the blade that was angled.
rafezetter":1zn5lotg said:
He did mention it was a Spear plane - but Spear only not Spear and Jackson, with a brass lever cap.
Sounds to me like his is a "Spiers" plane - that is to say, an infill.

Cheers, Vann.

Dang, Andy beat me to it.
 
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