I wanted to get more into dimensioning timber and decided to add a No. 6 bench plane to the others I have to better square edges. I figure as I get more experienced I'll figure what I need and what I don't need and then I can justify taking the plunge on a really nice fancy plane.
But in the meantime I got this Faithful brand No 6 for under £50 new. I thought I'd have a bit of fun and do a review as it's taken me a while to tune it. Unfortunately I didn't really think about this until after I'd started so sorry not many pics of it as it was new.
Initial Impressions
Sole is flat as seen on a precision ground cast table on my bandsaw - I don't have a certified block to use. I also used a straight edge and square to check the sole again and the sides. I saw an opportunity to adapt David Charlesworth's (DW) trick of using some tissue / cigarette paper (17gsm / 1thou) to test for gaps (had to explain this one to the wifey as I gave up smoking 10 year ago- never too late!) The casting of the plane is square and flat and nicely ground. Nice brass and wood furniture but the painted finish is shoddy, paint is thick and globulous. But then it was only 50 quid.
Of more concern - and the reality of the work I'm going to have to do - the iron came with a skew to the grind and the cap iron / chip breaker also had a skewed grind meaning a lot of work to regrind a primary bevel and square off the cap iron. But I don't mind - all part of the process! I bought this expecting to have to do some remedial work, if the sole had been out of true I would have probably sent it back for exchange but I can work with the tool steel and unhardened chip breaker. But I don't want to use any power tools at all.
Anyway cleaned all the factory oil off and first attempted shavings using 'as stock' were completely rubbish. Chewed up a scrap of iroku. I suppose this was to be expected given the slack tolerances for the cap iron.
Attention first to the chip breaker. This came to me ground very poorly at the mating surface with two distinct hills at either side extending to the edges edges, this would require flattening. This also explains the chattering on the Iroku. First I cleaned it up using Scotchbrite - but just coarse for now. Flattening the psuedo-bevel (mating surface, unsure of the proper name) was just a case of lapping on 3m microfinishing film but while also keeping the curve for the sprung section neat - this was by far the most challenging part of all this as I favour my right over my left. Once I'd achieved a uniform bevel it was the DW cigarette paper feeler gauge to check for any catching when compressed against the iron and adjusting the grind of the bevel by tiny amounts to get the two surfaces mating.
The Back of the Iron to you!
The issue here, aside from the issues with the bevel, is heavy tooling marks that can be almost caught as a fingernail nick. Without a linisher capable of acheiving a perfectly flat finish and only wanting to put sweat in I settled for two methods:
1. Dowelled Method
- this is where I get a squared bit of timber (preferably wider than mine, one of my learning curves!). I mark off spacing to settle two dowels to pin the iron in place then flush cut the dowel to the iron. This was more effective than the other method and the one I ended up using mainly - up to 120grit:
2. Superglue method.
- this is where I'd superglued a block of wood at least as big as the plane and heavy - at least a couple inches thick. I'd then use this as a carraige to push the iron against the float glass microfinishing film. this was more prone to errors and uneven finishing I think because you loose proprioceptive contact with the metal having all that wood there. But still an option, you do have to deal with the SG after but just twist the iron off easy enough then scotch to get the SG off. TBH it's a rubbish option and I don't know why I did it, I think I wanted to use the float glass for its flatness maybe.
Anyway I then just took the burr off as it was created when sharpening the primary bevel and that was pretty much the extend of it. As you can see the back isn't great atm, I'll plan on putting more time in at the next proper resharpen.
I'm also using it as an experiment... Regarding the back of the iron I question how far you need to go with it in terms of width of surface finish, as well as the keenness of the edge. I would think the compression seal of the chip breaker being slightly textured would help . This comes from the idea that perhaps this seating is analgous to in-cylinder friction reduction studies I suppose! So what I did I was lap the back at same grit progression as the main bevel just remove the burr from sharpening and create some kind of shallow bevel.
So I'll play about with the blade:ricasso ratio as I'm wondering if you only need to clean up at least the depth of the deepest shaving you'll ever reasonably take which could be achieved with a DW-like block positioned a few micrometers or whatnot above the stone upon which you'd ride the body of the iron, thus achieving that very subtle bevel on the back of the iron.
Setting the main bevel, refining.
First off I rigged the TSProf to take the iron at the 25deg angle. I've done this process before and find it gives consistent results as long as I set it up square and make sure there's minimal flex in the system. I found that the factory angle was an inconsistent width across the width of the blade and the angle of grind was off - it was around 25 up to 30! Here I've marked the bevel with black sharpie to better show this (this is after about half an hour of work!)First I attended to the back.
I started off with a 220 grit cheap stone I'd bought for resetting bevels and set to work. Having an inclinometer here really helps - especially when working with different thickness of stones which can throw of the angle by 0.5 deg which is enough to be optically noticeable on inspection especially with such a wide primary bevel. Once the primary bevel was ground I started progressing through the grits. Here you can see the effect of not accounting for this in the scratch pattern (which was just 0.5deg out - the successive stone was thinner than the previous):
Between the stones if there was a rather larger grit progression between two of them I'd go to the float glass with lapping film and 'bridge' the gap. It's more steps now but much less effort overall. Using the wrong grit progression / solution is like deliberately tying your shoelaces together before a marathon. You'll eventually get there but people will wonder about you.
Eventually I worked my way through all my Chosera stones through to the 0/1 micron diamond stone (0.5micron / 60,000AIS - entirely unnecessarily btw, would have been enough to have stopped at 8k for a mirrored edge). However, at this stage things were looking more hopeful for the Faithful.
By this point I had a nicely polished bevel. I have feathered the edges a little too.
Part 2 - the bawbaggio bits and some final thoughts...
But in the meantime I got this Faithful brand No 6 for under £50 new. I thought I'd have a bit of fun and do a review as it's taken me a while to tune it. Unfortunately I didn't really think about this until after I'd started so sorry not many pics of it as it was new.
Initial Impressions
Sole is flat as seen on a precision ground cast table on my bandsaw - I don't have a certified block to use. I also used a straight edge and square to check the sole again and the sides. I saw an opportunity to adapt David Charlesworth's (DW) trick of using some tissue / cigarette paper (17gsm / 1thou) to test for gaps (had to explain this one to the wifey as I gave up smoking 10 year ago- never too late!) The casting of the plane is square and flat and nicely ground. Nice brass and wood furniture but the painted finish is shoddy, paint is thick and globulous. But then it was only 50 quid.
Of more concern - and the reality of the work I'm going to have to do - the iron came with a skew to the grind and the cap iron / chip breaker also had a skewed grind meaning a lot of work to regrind a primary bevel and square off the cap iron. But I don't mind - all part of the process! I bought this expecting to have to do some remedial work, if the sole had been out of true I would have probably sent it back for exchange but I can work with the tool steel and unhardened chip breaker. But I don't want to use any power tools at all.
Anyway cleaned all the factory oil off and first attempted shavings using 'as stock' were completely rubbish. Chewed up a scrap of iroku. I suppose this was to be expected given the slack tolerances for the cap iron.
Attention first to the chip breaker. This came to me ground very poorly at the mating surface with two distinct hills at either side extending to the edges edges, this would require flattening. This also explains the chattering on the Iroku. First I cleaned it up using Scotchbrite - but just coarse for now. Flattening the psuedo-bevel (mating surface, unsure of the proper name) was just a case of lapping on 3m microfinishing film but while also keeping the curve for the sprung section neat - this was by far the most challenging part of all this as I favour my right over my left. Once I'd achieved a uniform bevel it was the DW cigarette paper feeler gauge to check for any catching when compressed against the iron and adjusting the grind of the bevel by tiny amounts to get the two surfaces mating.
The Back of the Iron to you!
The issue here, aside from the issues with the bevel, is heavy tooling marks that can be almost caught as a fingernail nick. Without a linisher capable of acheiving a perfectly flat finish and only wanting to put sweat in I settled for two methods:
1. Dowelled Method
- this is where I get a squared bit of timber (preferably wider than mine, one of my learning curves!). I mark off spacing to settle two dowels to pin the iron in place then flush cut the dowel to the iron. This was more effective than the other method and the one I ended up using mainly - up to 120grit:
2. Superglue method.
- this is where I'd superglued a block of wood at least as big as the plane and heavy - at least a couple inches thick. I'd then use this as a carraige to push the iron against the float glass microfinishing film. this was more prone to errors and uneven finishing I think because you loose proprioceptive contact with the metal having all that wood there. But still an option, you do have to deal with the SG after but just twist the iron off easy enough then scotch to get the SG off. TBH it's a rubbish option and I don't know why I did it, I think I wanted to use the float glass for its flatness maybe.
Anyway I then just took the burr off as it was created when sharpening the primary bevel and that was pretty much the extend of it. As you can see the back isn't great atm, I'll plan on putting more time in at the next proper resharpen.
I'm also using it as an experiment... Regarding the back of the iron I question how far you need to go with it in terms of width of surface finish, as well as the keenness of the edge. I would think the compression seal of the chip breaker being slightly textured would help . This comes from the idea that perhaps this seating is analgous to in-cylinder friction reduction studies I suppose! So what I did I was lap the back at same grit progression as the main bevel just remove the burr from sharpening and create some kind of shallow bevel.
So I'll play about with the blade:ricasso ratio as I'm wondering if you only need to clean up at least the depth of the deepest shaving you'll ever reasonably take which could be achieved with a DW-like block positioned a few micrometers or whatnot above the stone upon which you'd ride the body of the iron, thus achieving that very subtle bevel on the back of the iron.
Setting the main bevel, refining.
First off I rigged the TSProf to take the iron at the 25deg angle. I've done this process before and find it gives consistent results as long as I set it up square and make sure there's minimal flex in the system. I found that the factory angle was an inconsistent width across the width of the blade and the angle of grind was off - it was around 25 up to 30! Here I've marked the bevel with black sharpie to better show this (this is after about half an hour of work!)First I attended to the back.
I started off with a 220 grit cheap stone I'd bought for resetting bevels and set to work. Having an inclinometer here really helps - especially when working with different thickness of stones which can throw of the angle by 0.5 deg which is enough to be optically noticeable on inspection especially with such a wide primary bevel. Once the primary bevel was ground I started progressing through the grits. Here you can see the effect of not accounting for this in the scratch pattern (which was just 0.5deg out - the successive stone was thinner than the previous):
Between the stones if there was a rather larger grit progression between two of them I'd go to the float glass with lapping film and 'bridge' the gap. It's more steps now but much less effort overall. Using the wrong grit progression / solution is like deliberately tying your shoelaces together before a marathon. You'll eventually get there but people will wonder about you.
Eventually I worked my way through all my Chosera stones through to the 0/1 micron diamond stone (0.5micron / 60,000AIS - entirely unnecessarily btw, would have been enough to have stopped at 8k for a mirrored edge). However, at this stage things were looking more hopeful for the Faithful.
By this point I had a nicely polished bevel. I have feathered the edges a little too.
Part 2 - the bawbaggio bits and some final thoughts...
if you follow the link, it takes you to page 14 or something..... start on page 1, it is indeed that thread
