# Troubleshooting thin and stringy hand plane shavings



## bertwagner (Jul 2, 2014)

Hi all,
I just recently built my first hand plane and am very pleased with how it came out:










However, a good looking plane is useless if it doesn't produce nice shavings. This is the kind of stuff I'm getting:










These shavings are coming from pine, but I experienced the same type of shavings from oak as well. When I make a pass with the plane, the shavings come off the board unevenly in little stringy parts (the boards I'm using are flat, so it shouldn't be due to an uneven surface).

Things I've tried troubleshooting so far include:

1) Making sure the sole of the plane is dead flat in all directions
2) Sharpening the blade many times
3) Blade adjustments; depth, centering, etc…

I do know my mouth opening is larger than I intended to make - would a large opening cause these types of shavings? Or am I overlooking something else? I'm looking to get wide (as wide as the 2" blade) and thin shavings. Any advice on what to try next would be greatly appreciated, thanks!


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## ShaneA (Apr 15, 2011)

A pic of the mouth opening would help. But my first guess will always be the sharpness of the blade. Took me a while to know sharp, but once you do, you will realize what sharp is and isn't.

The plane sure looks nice, well done.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

You may be fooling yourself about the sharpness. You
may need a bit more blade protrusion.

A blade can feel sharp and cut hair on your arm but
it's easy, especially freehand, to not actually get your
final polish to the edge of the bevel.

Positioning a friction-fit iron at ideal depth and even 
all the way across the mouth of a wood plane can 
be tricky.

You did flatten the sole with the iron and wedge
installed, right?


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## cutmantom (Feb 2, 2010)

blade sharpness ,possibly the blade is in bevel up?


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## TiggerWood (Jan 1, 2014)

I need more pics. How precisely flat is the iron? How truly flat is the mortice? How well does the wedge mesh with the iron? I would believe your problem would most likely be with one of these three things.


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## waho6o9 (May 6, 2011)

Strop the blade.

Nice plane BTW.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

Oh, yeah. Off chance if the chipbreaker is set almost right on the
edge of the iron a plane will tend to scrape. I would set the 
chipbreaker back to about 1/16" while you're figuring this out.


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## TiggerWood (Jan 1, 2014)

Excellent point by Loren!


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## Tim457 (Jan 11, 2013)

What's the plane's bed angle? Are you getting good contact with the wedge against the front of the plane iron? Any chattering? I'm guessing it's a sharpness issue too, but I've used plane irons well past where I should have sharpened them and not had that type of shavings so the bevel up point is a good one too.


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## Tim457 (Jan 11, 2013)

I don't think I see a chip breaker there. It just looks like a thick blade and a wedge.


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## shampeon (Jun 3, 2012)

Just to add to the already good advise here, a large mouth opening will tend to allow much larger chips through, so we can cross that off.

Those are the kind of shavings you get from a scraper plane, which means the effective cutting angle is very high. It looks like your Hock blade is facing the right direction in the picture, if you have a bevel-down blade. Did you by any chance add a back bevel to the blade?


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

If my block plane is set up perfect, when it starts making shavings like that I know it needs to be sharpened.


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## Pezking7p (Nov 17, 2013)

Looks dull.


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## DocBailey (Dec 9, 2011)

I'm with Shampeon on this one-

My very first thought upon seeing the second photo is that those look like the kind of shavings you get from a scraper or high-angle smoother.

Great for difficult grain, but not what you're after.


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## JohnChung (Sep 20, 2012)

What is the effective angle of the iron?


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## bertwagner (Jul 2, 2014)

Thanks everyone for your input! A couple of additional answers:

-Yes the sole was flattened with iron and wedge installed
-Chip breaker has been tried in multiple positions, but in the pictures above it was about 1/16" from the blade
-Bed angle is 60 degrees. With the wedge in between the blade and pin, there is no movement of the blade and no chatter
-Plane blade bevel is 30 degrees

It will be a few weeks before I can get back to troubleshoot the plane again, but I will check on everyone's suggestions. It seems like the consensus is blade sharpness though. I've been using the Veritas Mk. II Honing guide to sharpen to 30 degrees. I noticed that the blade was a little off from 30 degrees (maybe 30.5 or 31?) so I've been slowly grinding it down on sand paper + flat surface in order to get the blade bevel to the correct angle for the honing guide. I'm guessing I still haven't gone far enough and and will continue sharpening!

Thanks everyone for your input! Glad you like the plane.


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## Smitty_Cabinetshop (Mar 26, 2011)

"...a good looking plane is useless if it doesn't produce nice shavings…"

More to the point, a plane such as yours should produce a smooth surface. What surface is being created currently?


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## JohnChung (Sep 20, 2012)

Based on your feedback I am assuming the effective angle is 60 degrees. The bevel of the blade is facing down.

http://www.google.com.my/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uxC0rGWFnQ0/T-TFch1QtOI/AAAAAAAANHo/tC-GZt_5qLE/s1600/Plane%252Bangles.jpg&imgrefurl=http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com/2012/06/chip-off-old-block-iii.html&h=893&w=979&tbnid=Dbsa8sv2zZEQLM:&zoom=1&docid=5OkbZg7t3dYttM&ei=f5u6U63-IoigugSfvYCwBg&tbm=isch&client=firefox-a

If the iron is truly 60 degrees then the iron is most likely not sharp.


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## shampeon (Jun 3, 2012)

30 degrees is a pretty steep bevel for a smoother, IMO.

And a 60 degree bed angle makes it a high angle smoother, so you're more likely to be taking a scraping cut than a plane that's bedded at a 45 degree angle.

So my hunch is that the combination of the 60 degree bed and the steep 30+ bevel on the iron is making it a) hard to sharpen fully and b) hard to push through the wood for anything but a light scrape.

Try regrinding the bevel to 20 degrees, and polish it up to 2000 grit (or a green compound + leather strop). That should make a big difference when trying to make shavings.


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## donwilwol (May 16, 2011)

the question should really be what's the piece being planed look like. With a 60 degree bed, its going to be pretty hard to get long ribbon like shavings on all but the cleanest of grain.

And are you sure the bed is 60 degrees? it might be the picture, but a 60 degree bed should be noticeably high considering the typical bench plane is 45 degrees.


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## JayT (May 6, 2012)

> And are you sure the bed is 60 degrees? it might be the picture, but a 60 degree bed should be noticeably high considering the typical bench plane is 45 degrees.


I have to agree, the picture sure doesn't look like a 60 degree bedding. For comparison, here is my 60 degree small smoother next to a standard bench plane and the angle difference is very obvious.










And here it is with some ash shavings.










The shavings I get from this plane are crinkly rather than smooth and tissue-like, as a result of the high angle and scraping action, but they are shavings and not dust like you were getting. It has to be very sharp to get those shavings and dulls quickly because of the angle, which is why I use it for small areas and not smoothing a complete piece.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

A 60 degree bed angle is nearly a scraping plane. They are typically
used on the most figured and difficult hardwoods.

My 60 degree wood plane (Knight Toolworks) makes shavings like
shown above. It has no chip breaker. It has to be very keen-edged
and it's tricky to get the iron set just right.


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