About thick cap-irons

[woodbrains]

20-30 minutes work with abrasives on a plane sole IS flattening though, let us make no bones about it.

In Paul Sellers plane tuning video, he flattens a sole in around 60 seconds. His techniques really are unbelievably good!

BugBear

Hello,

Doesn't he do that edge fairing in thing, though. That makes me wince and makes no sense anyway. I'm sure he does the flattening bit prior to that efficiently, though.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

Does anybody else play the banjo in this forum?

 

[GLFaria]

Strange. I always thought woodworking was just about - well, woodworking, what else! It never ocurred to me it could be so much about passion! :roll:

 

[Trafalgar]

Hello,

I have a preference for Record planes myself, the older the better in terms of manufacturing quality. But it was a Record 05 1/2 that was disastrously out of flat, as outlined above.

20-30 minutes work with abrasives on a plane sole IS flattening though, let us make no bones about it. I think you are a secret plane fettler and accuracy aficionado, you just don't like to admit it! No woodworker needs the accuracy of a Starrett engineers square, after all. ( I have one and wouldn't be without it, but then I'm not afraid of talking about thou's)

Mike.

You bet it's flattening in the strictest sense. It's not really flat, though, to a Charlesworth standard. It's better than it was but it still shows a little light in its width, length, and on the diagonals. The funny think is that plane is probably the one I use the least but it's very capable.

Understand that I didn't start with 60 grit and hog off waste. If I recall it was more like 220 grit and the effect was as much polishing as it was anything. It's an old No. 4, I'll post a pic sometime, but it strangely had pretty rough treatment of the soles and sides. It was not Record's finest exemplar.

 

[bugbear]

Hello,

I have a preference for Record planes myself, the older the better in terms of manufacturing quality. But it was a Record 05 1/2 that was disastrously out of flat, as outlined above.

20-30 minutes work with abrasives on a plane sole IS flattening though, let us make no bones about it. I think you are a secret plane fettler and accuracy aficionado, you just don't like to admit it! No woodworker needs the accuracy of a Starrett engineers square, after all. ( I have one and wouldn't be without it, but then I'm not afraid of talking about thou's)

Mike.

You bet it's flattening in the strictest sense. It's not really flat, though, to a Charlesworth standard. It's better than it was but it still shows a little light in its width, length, and on the diagonals. The funny think is that plane is probably the one I use the least but it's very capable.

Understand that I didn't start with 60 grit and hog off waste. If I recall it was more like 220 grit and the effect was as much polishing as it was anything. It's an old No. 4, I'll post a pic sometime, but it strangely had pretty rough treatment of the soles and sides. It was not Record's finest exemplar.

Any flatness problem that can be address with 220 grit was very minor, and a compliment to Record's factory. And you're fussier than I am on flatness if you even bother removing things that can be removed by 220 grit!

BugBear

 

[Corneel]

For the performance of the plane only three narrow areas are important. Toe of the plane. The area directly in front of the mouth and the heel. Light gaps between a straightedge and the planesole anywhere else on the sole do not matter.

 

[bugbear]

Does anybody else play the banjo in this forum?

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't. - Mark Twain

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The definition of "perfect pitch" - a banjo in a skip, from thirty feet.

 

[Trafalgar]

Hello,

I have a preference for Record planes myself, the older the better in terms of manufacturing quality. But it was a Record 05 1/2 that was disastrously out of flat, as outlined above.

20-30 minutes work with abrasives on a plane sole IS flattening though, let us make no bones about it. I think you are a secret plane fettler and accuracy aficionado, you just don't like to admit it! No woodworker needs the accuracy of a Starrett engineers square, after all. ( I have one and wouldn't be without it, but then I'm not afraid of talking about thou's)

Mike.

You bet it's flattening in the strictest sense. It's not really flat, though, to a Charlesworth standard. It's better than it was but it still shows a little light in its width, length, and on the diagonals. The funny think is that plane is probably the one I use the least but it's very capable.

Understand that I didn't start with 60 grit and hog off waste. If I recall it was more like 220 grit and the effect was as much polishing as it was anything. It's an old No. 4, I'll post a pic sometime, but it strangely had pretty rough treatment of the soles and sides. It was not Record's finest exemplar.

Any flatness problem that can be address with 220 grit was very minor, and a compliment to Record's factory. And you're fussier than I am on flatness if you even bother removing things that can be removed by 220 grit!

BugBear

As I mentioned in my post I was actually addressing grinding marks but certainly with an eye to knock down high spots as I identified them. It was flatter at the end than it was when I started but it was by no means what one would call a concerted sole-flattening effort, loins were not girded and float glass/machine tops were not brought into play (mostly because I have neither). The 220 grit was all I had around I'm sure. It was so spur of the moment I didn't go to the store for lower grit paper. I wouldn't read a whole lot into the process. I put the paper in a sanding block and hand sanded the sole. The paper wasn't tacked down to a reference surface. I did make a scribble here and there with a Sharpie. Perhaps it was precisely this casual effort that made it turn out so well. Sometimes trying too hard is counterproductive. I'm not so sure that spot sanding, like taking the high spots down on a board with a plane, doesn't beat attempting to lap the entire sole as if one were a machine. A lot of bananas have come out of the latter process. Find the high spot, sand the high spot, constantly checking with the straightest edge you have. Seems reasonable. One can't handplane the surface of an entire panel at once, yet we manage to make them pretty flat by a process of removing material from the high spots. A plane's sole is really no different.

Of course had I owned a Lie-Nielsen or Lee Valley smoother the whole exercise (fettling a Record) would have been the height of absurdity. Use the best tools you have and get the rest out of the shop. I'm not a huge believer in redundant tooling. All anybody really needs is one good smoother, jack, and jointer for stock prep. I have a No. 6 because I really do love them a lot. I could live without it though and probably should were I to totally put my money where my mouth is.