plough/combination plane blade bevel angle????

[undergroundhunter]

I need a bit of help guys n gals,
I'm in the process of making a Paul Sellers Oak chopping board as detailed in his woodworking master class.

So I've got the boards to size, long wide tenons cut, breadboard ends selected and cut oversize. Time to run the 3/8 grove and this is where I have had difficulty, I have a pretty much unused Stanley 50 combination plane, the adjuster was missing when I bought it but I have no problems adjusting with a small hammer. I sharpened the 3/8 cutter (no secondary bevel just the standard 35 degrees) it's like a razor, when I go to plane the gove nothing happened the cutter just lightly scored the wood, so adjusted the cut depth a bit, still nothing, so out of frustration i went too deep and it just dug in, when i started looking at the plane body and skate closely and noticed that the extreme corner that formed the cutter bed and broken off on the body and the skate, not a happy man.

I trawled Ebay looking for a replacement body and skate, no luck. I did however find a cheap Record 044 with all its cutters, parts and box (hammer) , it arrived on Wednesday so I set about cleaning it up and sharpening the cutters again to the 35 degrees, a quick test with the 1/8 cutter on some softwood worked fantastic, brilliant I thought...... set it to work this morning with the 3/8 cutter to find the same problem as with the Stanley. Damn It ](*,) !!!!!

After a lot internet searching and reading long forum and blog posts (including Alf's @Cornish Workshop) I came to the conclusion it was not the tool it was me! Back over to the garage I went to try and follow Alf's instruction to the letter. Still no cut still just scoring the wood.

In the back of my head somewhere I remembered Paul Sellers posting something about plough/combination plane cutter angles being too low from manufacture, so I reground (by hand) the bevel to 30 degrees instead of 35 degrees, what a difference, on both planes even with the chipped skate/body on the Stanley #-o !!! The wife is convinced it was just a ploy so I could buy ANOTHER plane :lol:

So after all that, what does everyone grind their plough/combination plane cutters to? Was there some trick I was missing with the 35 degrees?

Sorry for such a long post and thanks in advance.

Matt

 

[AndyT]

How strange. I'd never thought about this before - I've always just honed flat across the whole bevel at the manufacturer's angle and had never bothered measuring it. I've now been and checked in the workshop. I measured the bevel angle on a random sample of blades from Record and Stanley (different vintages), Rapier and Lewin. (I do have a fairly wide selection of plough and combi planes.)

All of them were at 35 degrees. (And yes, they all work fine, thanks!)

 

[Sheffield Tony]

35 degrees, single flat bevel is what Record recommended, and it works for me too. Assuming the cutter is correctly in place, bevel down, any angle from 25 to almost 45 ought to cut. Is it possible that, although it appeared to be 35 degrees, the cutter was not perhaps rounded over a tad close enough to the edge so that a bevel gauge reads 35, but the very tip that's doing the cutting is steeper, at or approaching the bedding angle ?

 

[undergroundhunter]

Interesting AndyT, I wonder why I couldn't get it to work for me?

Sheffield Tony - Most of the blades I have appear to have never been used same with my Stanley ones (some of them still had the factory coating on the bevel).

I suppose it could be a possibility as I don't really have any really accurate way to tell.


anyone else want to pitch in?

Matt

 

[Paul Chapman]

With combination plane blades, it's best to keep to 35 degrees (which is what most of them are ground at by the manufacturer). In particular, with the profiled blades, such as the ones for cutting beads, if you start altering the bevel angle there is a danger that you will alter the profile and getting it back to the original shape will be difficult.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[AndyT]

My guess is that you changed something else when you put the blade in the second time. Maybe you hadn't had it clamped tight enough the first time and it slid back up the bed?

What did the 'light scoring' look like? Was it just the skate rubbing?

Are the front and back parts of the skate in line?

 

[undergroundhunter]

Regarding tightness of the blade I have cracked the wing nut on the stanley 50 I had it that tight!!! I will put in one of the standard blades and then the one I have reground and post some photos. I was convinced it was something I was doing until I tried the 3/8 blade in both planes. I had thought adout the skate being inline and when checked it was dead on. Thanks for your suggestions.

Matt

 

[bugbear]

There are two main causes that I know of for blade suddenly grabbing:

* poorly bedded blade. The is sort of "hanging in mid air"; as you lower it, it eventually "just" touches the wood, and then the cutting action beds the blade right down, suddenly increasing the cutting depth. This means you cannot have a well bedded shallow cut.

* concave sole (i.e. middle not touching workpiece). In this case the mechanism is similar to the above, except that instead of the cutting force dragging the blade further into the cut, it is either the workpiece or the plane body that flexes into the cut.

BugBear

 

[undergroundhunter]

There are two main causes that I know of for blade suddenly grabbing:

* poorly bedded blade. The is sort of "hanging in mid air"; as you lower it, it eventually "just" touches the wood, and then the cutting action beds the blade right down, suddenly increasing the cutting depth. This means you cannot have a well bedded shallow cut.

* concave sole (i.e. middle not touching workpiece). In this case the mechanism is similar to the above, except that instead of the cutting force dragging the blade further into the cut, it is either the workpiece or the plane body that flexes into the cut.

BugBear

I thought about the convex sole so a rubbed a marker pen along the sole of the body and the scate and ran it across a mild abrasive fixed to a piece of float glass and all the maker was removed in 2 strokes.
The blade bed could be the problem but then why would changing the bevel angle fix this? The Stanley does suffer from the blade lifting problem but the Record has a positive blade clamping screw to prevent the blade lifting during the cut so i'm still unsure why both planes had the same problem until i changed the bevel angle.

Thanks for your help guys, I will try and post some pictures later when I'm home from work.


Matt

 

[bugbear]

There are two main causes that I know of for blade suddenly grabbing:

* poorly bedded blade. The is sort of "hanging in mid air"; as you lower it, it eventually "just" touches the wood, and then the cutting action beds the blade right down, suddenly increasing the cutting depth. This means you cannot have a well bedded shallow cut.

* concave sole (i.e. middle not touching workpiece). In this case the mechanism is similar to the above, except that instead of the cutting force dragging the blade further into the cut, it is either the workpiece or the plane body that flexes into the cut.

BugBear

I thought about the convex sole so a rubbed a marker pen along the sole of the body and the scate and ran it across a mild abrasive fixed to a piece of float glass and all the maker was removed in 2 strokes.
The blade bed could be the problem but then why would changing the bevel angle fix this? The Stanley does suffer from the blade lifting problem but the Record has a positive blade clamping screw to prevent the blade lifting during the cut so i'm still unsure why both planes had the same problem until i changed the bevel angle.

Thanks for your help guys, I will try and post some pictures later when I'm home from work.


Matt

I don't think the bevel angle changed anything. I think "taking out and putting back in" the blade changed something.

But I don't know what - yet.

BugBear

 

[GazPal]

Try not to over tighten things, as finger tight is enough. Keep shaving/cut depth fine - re how the plane iron relates to the distance it projects beyond the skate - and you should find technique falls neatly into place.

 

[ac445ab]

Ciao,
Me too I have a Stanley 50 having a poor blade grip, so this could be a common problem for this plane.
The best results are when the cutting edge is square to the fence and skates.

Giuliano

 

[AndyT]

If it is lack of grip on the blade causing the problem, allowing the blade to be pushed up so it stops cutting, a tip I learned on here is to rub some violonist's rosin on the back of it.

 

[Vann]

I don't think the bevel angle changed anything. I think "taking out and putting back in" the blade changed something.

But I don't know what - yet.

Except that UGH had the same problem with the cutter in two different planes. I think changing the cutting angle changed something.

I can't help wondering if there was still a flat on the end of the cutter - which was removed when re-ground and honed. But he claims it was razor sharp at 35° :duno:

Cheers, Vann.

 

[ac445ab]

If it is lack of grip on the blade causing the problem, allowing the blade to be pushed up so it stops cutting, a tip I learned on here is to rub some violonist's rosin on the back of it.

This could be a good solution to the problem. Have you experience of using violinist' rosin with wooden planes too?
I have a couple of them with blade grip issues and before to make a new wedge I was thinking of trying this rosin.
Ciao
Giuliano

 

[AndyT]

If it is lack of grip on the blade causing the problem, allowing the blade to be pushed up so it stops cutting, a tip I learned on here is to rub some violonist's rosin on the back of it.

This could be a good solution to the problem. Have you experience of using violinist' rosin with wooden planes too?
I have a couple of them with blade grip issues and before to make a new wedge I was thinking of trying this rosin.
Ciao
Giuliano

I've never needed to try it and it might work.

However, I do happen to know that if you are trying to get a cello to stay in tune, and its pegs are slipping, using rosin on that wood/wood surface is NOT recommended by cellists - it will stick, but too well, so you can't tune the thing. They recommend using fine chalk to add just a little bit of grip.

So I think I would try that first on a wooden plane. That, or wait for a little rust to form... ;-)