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What I am doing wrong with this hand plane?

6K views 38 replies 27 participants last post by  TheFridge 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Hello

I'm trying to plane a rough sawn pine plank, but the hand plane I use refuses to give a proper shave. Every stroke makes a gash, instead of shave. If I pull up the blade with adjustment nut, the plane just slides over the wood. When it does make contact, it ends up eating into the wood.







Initially I was using an old No 4 plane which I bought from an auction site. I sharpened the blade and prepared the cap iron and went about planing. When it didn't go well, I bought a new No 4 from the local hardware store. Sharpened the blade and tried that too. Same result.

I think the error is on my part, but I can't quite figure out where.

Here is the old plane and blade:







And this is the new one:







On both the new and old one, the blade seems a bit skewed when I look through the mouth (shown in pics). But this happens after make adjustments with the lateral lever.

Can somebody please advice ?

Thanks very much
 
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#2 ·
You have the chipbreaker way too far away from the edge of the blade and way too big a throat opening. Try setting the chipbreaker 1/32 or so from the edge and then try to get the throat opening only slightly larger than that.
Pine is a relatively tricky wood to plane.
 
#3 ·
I agree with jdh122. Also make sure your blade is sharp. And figure out which direction the grain is flowing - you want to go with or across the flow - but not against it. Near a knot is always tough as the grain switches direction on you.

Back your blade out and advance just a bit - start planing at the high spot - it will skate over the low spots. (From you pic it looks like your blade was advanced out too far).

Try skewing your plane (hold it on the diagonal) - if you get tear out holding it in one orientation, try skewing it the other direction.

Check out these articles from lost-art press: reduce tear-out.

Andrew
 
#4 ·
Your plane irons may not actually be sharp. You may be sharpening them to the best of your knowledge, by they may just not be getting very sharp. What is your sharpening method?

Also, you may just have a crappy plane that will not keep from chattering. My first experience planing was just like this because I bought a junky plane. Take a photo of your plane from the top assembled and with the blade removed. That would likely help us come up with more advice other than move the chipbreaker forward and get it sharper.
 
#5 ·
Oyster makes a good point. My first experiences with hand planing were pretty much what you are experiencing. It took some time (and the purchase of a better plane, although that did not solve everything), and sharpening practice. And I still am not an expert, although I think I've made a lot of progress.
 
#6 ·
Those are called Tracks, and any plane with the corners of the iron even with the rest of the edge will make them. Round the corner back just a bit, a little is about all you need.

Go look up Crosman, or Paul Sellers, and watch them sharpen an iron…fast.

First set the iron so that it doesn't make any shavings, then adjust the edge into the wood a 1/4-1/2 turn at a time for each pass. Continue on until you get the full width, minus the corners. Then leave it alone, and just plane wood.
 
#7 · (Edited by Moderator)
Not sure what #4 you were using, but if it's pretty old, it's probably better than the one you got at the hardware store. I'd go back to that and focus on getting it set up correctly. To reiterate what others said :
- Flatten the back of the blade.
- Flatten the sole of the plane.
- Make sure blade is correctly sharpened, I just use the scary sharp method.
- Adjust chipbreaker to be ~1/32 from the edge of the blade. If you're looking to take off a lot, you can go larger, but you'll probably want to put a very slight radius on the blade, or at minimum, break the edges back.
- Adjust the frog forward so that, when the blade is installed, the opening is just a hair larger than that 1/32. Do your best to get the blade parallel to the mouth opening and do fine adjustments with the lateral lever after everything is reinstalled.
- Start with the blade backed out, and make a few passes, lowering the blade just a hair each time. Very small adjustments. Make a big pass, because like others have said, you'll have high spots and low spots. If you're just making test passes in a low spot, when you hit a high spot, you'll dig in. If the board is really rough, you could set the blade on something a little flatter, like the edge of a 2×4 or something.

A plane that isn't properly set up is just going to tick you off. Been there, done that.
 
#8 ·
Hard to tell, except that the chip breaker should be very close to the cutting edge, especially with hardwood. Try a 1/32" and then increase or decrease according to the way it cuts. The gouges are caused by your blade corners caused by the blade being skewed in the mouth opening. That might be caused by taking too heavy cuts (blade out to far) or the blade not being well enough secured, and a host of other things already mentioned
 
#10 · (Edited by Moderator)
I would grab a straight edge and check the soul up to a light to see how flat it is, which could be a reason as for the iron not engaging on the wood properly, also could just be the board to, but at any rate i would check to see how flat it is. You may need to sharpen the iron as stated here in earlier comments, i would knock off the corners like bandit said, and i would adjust the chip breaker a bit too(i do about 1/16'' away from the edge). As for the iron being skewed, I'm assuming that's because of the frog not being straight, see if you can adjust that, and while your doing that i would close up the mouth a bit(don't go to much or the shavings will clog up the mouth) if the plane has a lateral adjuster just leave the frog alone and adjust the iron via the lateral. If not the plane then it's just the dang wood, by knots the grain starts to do annoying things like change direction, in my experience i never like to plane #2 pine, the only thought i would say is get a nice sharp iron and try to skew the plane as you run it along the board like Andrew said ''Try skewing your plane (hold it on the diagonal) - if you get tear out holding it in one orientation, try skewing it the other direction.''
BinghamtonEd offered some good advice ( my post didn't post till after a few of these bad internet i guess)
 
#11 · (Edited by Moderator)
Has anyone mentioned making sure you are really sharp? :)

What you are describing is a classic case of not being sharp enough. That is probably the biggest hurdle to good planing-learning what sharp really is. None of the pictures above of the cutting edges show any characteristics of a being truly sharp.

When starting out with hand planes, I thought I had sharp edges until purchasing a plane from another LJ who is very skilled at sharpening. Using that plane one time re-defined my expectations and gave me something to strive for. My results since then have been much, much better.

I don't know where you are located, but will throw out an offer for you. If you would be willing to mail me one of those irons, I would flatten and sharpen it up to my standards and send it back at no charge to you. (provided you are in the US, I'm not going to mess with overseas shipping) Then you can work over the other iron on your own.
 
#15 ·
I don't know where you are located, but will throw out an offer for you. If you would be willing to mail me one of those irons, I would flatten and sharpen it up to my standards and send it back at no charge to you. (provided you are in the US, I'm not going to mess with overseas shipping) Then you can work over the other iron on your own.

Very generous offer JayT !....
 
#17 ·
Another + for Jays comments.
Also it almost looks like the blade is hitting one side of the wood more than the other, and from the first pic it looks like the blade isn't parallel to the mouth, make sure the frog isn't sitting slightly crooked, that might also make it hard to use the lateral adjuster correctly.
 
#18 ·
Another thing I noticed is that the chipbreaker 's angle is wrong . The forward edge should butt against the blade.
You can fix that by setting it on a flat surface with the forward edge on the edge of your sharpening stone and honeing it just a little . The the edge of the breaker will lie flush against the blade.
 
#19 ·
I encourage you to take JayT up on his offer. If I was in your shoes I'd do my absolute best to sharpen up both of those blades to my highest standard. Then I'd send the worst one of the two to JayT. Then when he returned the blade I'd study it and compare his effort to what I had before. Without a truly sharp blade is will be hard to figure out just what other adjustments are needed. "Sharp" has to be the beginning of the solution. Also if you included the chip breaker he could fix any issue with the fit and finish of that with just a couple of extra minutes.
 
#21 ·
Thank you all for the detailed and helpful comments.

Jay, thank you very much for the offer. I'm in New Zealand so I guess it would not work out (unfortunate!).

After reading the comments, I am beginning to think that my sharpening wasn't anywhere near sharp. I followed the method on this site, but used emery paper (300, 800, 1200) instead, on a glass plate without a honing guide.

http://woodtreks.com/how-to-hand-sharpen-using-waterstones/34/

I had setup my old plane using methods shown here:

http://www.woodsmithshop.com/download/109/109-benchplanes.pdf

http://woodtreks.com/how-to-tune-up-a-hand-plane/19/

The cap iron sits on the blade without the leading edge making contact on the blade iron:



Is that a problem? Does the edge have to make contact?

I've tried skewing the plane, but ended up with rough patches as shown in the red box. Tried reversing the plank to plane with the grain, but it produced all those gashes.

Skewed cut

As you can see, the surface is now a complete mess. I'll have to do with something better than emery paper for the sharpening. The only reason I didn't consider waterstones (or oilstones) were because they were pricey.

Oyster, I'll post some pics from the top of the plane. When you say "remove the blade" do you mean like retract the blade or remove fully from the body?

Once again, thanks everyone for taking time to reply.
 
#22 · (Edited by Moderator)
Cap iron is really important, I had the same problem as you on one of my planes and the cap was the culprit. Front needs to be against the blade, not the heel:
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Rectangle Font


The way you have it now, there's a little crevice and the shavings get jammed in there. Also, there can be no gaps between the cap iron and blade, it has to be pressed on your blade all the way over. And yeah - sounds like you aren't consistently sharpening the same bevel angle, which compounds your problem. Don't fret, it's not like you took a hatchet to that wood. You can clean that up.
 

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#24 ·
Your iron isn't sharp. I strongly encourage you to find someone's "nice" plane to try, or to have someone help you sharpen your iron. Using a "nice" plane changed my perspective and as a result my sharpening skills improved instantly. A honing guide will help you get started in the right direction, and $25 for a cheap guide will save you hours of frustration.

For now, i wouldn't worry overmuch about the other settings. You need to be able to make a shaving before the other settings will help (the above advice is all good, but I don't believe it's related to your current problem).
 
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