Granite surface plate/flattening/where to buy?

[pe2dave]

How confident are you of the actual flatness of the results? What have you checked against?

BugBear (with a teensy obsession in this area...)

No, not teensy, obsessional though, I'd agree. For *using* a plane, I'd suggest this is more than adequate.
Could you tell the difference between a plane bed flatted to 2 microns and .5mm?

 

[D_W]

This thread is old enough that it could bring stephen hawking back.

If you're match planing, a #6 or #7 sized plane 2 thousandths hollow starts to cause problems. One four times that in the other direction is usable.

It's not how accurate something is nominally, it's whether or not it works well.

If you think that's not a problem. try match planing two fairly rigid boards with ends a hundredth or more apart. You can glue them together, but it's not good policy.

.5mm seems to me to be about 12-13 thousandths. A plane hollow in that amount would be completely unusable.

 

[Inspector]

.5mm is more like .020". A third more unusable.

Pete

 

[Jacob]

Hi Bob,

I have 13 years of experience in surface plate lapping and polishing in India.
Do you have any idea where and how can I apply for the job?

I also worked in kitchen Granite worktop.

Thanks
Imran

If you can match woodworkers needs you'd could find a market and do it yourself as a business?

 

[D_W]

.5mm is more like .020". A third more unusable.

Pete

It'd be an interesting challenge to intentionally make a plane like that and get people in a competition to try to match plane two three foot boards with it (i got converting microns and thousandths and thousandths and MMs messed up. For some reason, the answer is different!!).

 

[shed9]

Prior to this morning, the last post in this thread was nearly 11 years ago. Perhaps Ali has found a solution by now.

Or he's now on medication for trying to surface grind a No 6 plane with half a gravestone and a broken shop window to engineering tolerances that even NASA finds redundant?

I have to question the rationale of having to have permanent access to surface plates for a small finite set of hand planes. I get it if that's something you do to each new plane you come across and you come across loads but to just finish your own hand tools is a tad OCD. Do it once on a piece of sufficiently thick float glass and Robert is very much your fathers' brother. If you really crave the tolerance get the local machine shop to surface grind it for a box of beer or bragging rights on Instagram.

The thing is if you took two planes, one surface ground on an AA graded plate and the other lapped on a piece of float glass from the local glazier, you won't be able to measure the difference of the two on the actual material being worked, i.e. wood.

 

[Bedrock22]

I bought a granite floor tile from the local tile warehouse, 24"x 12" some year's ago. Checked it with a Moore and Wright straight edge, all fine.
Think it cost under £20.

 

[Jacob]

Or he's now on medication for trying to surface grind a No 6 plane with half a gravestone and a broken shop window to engineering tolerances that even NASA finds redundant?

I have to question the rationale of having to have permanent access to surface plates for a small finite set of hand planes. I get it if that's something you do to each new plane you come across and you come across loads but to just finish your own hand tools is a tad OCD. Do it once on a piece of sufficiently thick float glass and Robert is very much your fathers' brother. If you really crave the tolerance get the local machine shop to surface grind it for a box of beer or bragging rights on Instagram.

The thing is if you took two planes, one surface ground on an AA graded plate and the other lapped on a piece of float glass from the local glazier, you won't be able to measure the difference of the two on the actual material being worked, i.e. wood.

I've "flattened" a few old ones but more as a clean up rather than for uber precision.
I'd guess that 99.9% of all the precision sole flattening that goes on is a complete waste of time!
Only ever had one which was really in need of correction and that was a No7 Stanley with a definitely concave sole making edge jointing really difficult. Was new but I'd had it a few years before I realised it was the plane's fault and not my planing! Did it on my planer bed with 2 sheets of wet n dry very wet with white spirit.

 

[okeydokey]

I wonder if your local headstone maker would have a suitable sized offcut he would be willing to sell for small amount?

 

[D_W]

I've "flattened" a few old ones but more as a clean up rather than for uber precision.
I'd guess that 99.9% of all the precision sole flattening that goes on is a complete waste of time!
Only ever had one which was really in need of correction and that was a No7 Stanley with a definitely concave sole making edge jointing really difficult. Was new but I'd had it a few years before I realised it was the plane's fault and not my planing! Did it on my planer bed with 2 sheets of wet n dry very wet with white spirit.

Jacob, you wouldn't know. You're scrubbing beams.

For someone doing cabinet type work, flattening a jointer and smoother is usually worthwhile unless they are slightly convex from the start (they're never dead flat, but slightly convex doesn't cause any harm).

It takes no more than $20 of "shelf replacement" glass and $15 of PSA roll to true up every tool one will ever come across if the point is just truing the tools. A 24 inch high quality straight edge is worth buying in my opinion, but I'm sure there are people who spend 100x that in options on cars or cable TV to watch who think the straight edge is a waste of money.

Most of the people commenting on what does or doesn't make a difference in planes would waste 100 additional hours over their lifetime planing with a junky plane that could be corrected in 20 minutes, and then bloviate about how they're not prissy.

(let's be realistic, though - most people arguing that planes never need flattening couldn't flatten a board with them accurately in the first place, and will turn around to make up for shortcomings in a $40 plane by buying gaggles of sanders and oddball scraping tools).

 

[D_W]

I bought a granite floor tile from the local tile warehouse, 24"x 12" some year's ago. Checked it with a Moore and Wright straight edge, all fine.
Think it cost under £20.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. The most important part of this isn't that you have a certain type of surface, but that you have a good straight edge to check it by eye. A straight edge and a light bulb is all it takes to match any boutique flatness spec. (perhaps a file sometimes if a plane is wonky in a way that's not that easy to lap out without chasing the wonkiness down in sole thickness).

 

[Jacob]

Jacob, you wouldn't know. You're scrubbing beams.

I scrubbed a beam! Once!
I discovered what a scrub plane is for.


What sort of work do you do D_W?

For someone doing cabinet type work, flattening a jointer and smoother is usually worthwhile unless they are slightly convex from the start (they're never dead flat, but slightly convex doesn't cause any harm).

Do you do cabinet work yourself? Show us a pic or two?

 

[D_W]

I scrubbed a beam! Once! I discovered what a scrub plane is for.


What sort of work do you do D_W ?

I literally posted an upper and lower cabinet made by hand and French polished in the last thread where you made dopey comments about planes, finally admitting that you do mostly coarse work and mostly with power tools the last three or four decades.

Entirely solid wood with hand beaded flat panel doors, cut mouldings top bottom and middle and colored with micronized earth pigments.

I've planed more board feet of wood in the last five years than you did your whole career, and not pine.

 

[Orraloon]

The other and free option is the cast iron top of your tablesaw. Provided its reasonably flat. Check with a strait edge first. Saves having to lug around and store a huge lump of rock and doing yourself a mischief. It's how I did my planes.
Regards
John

 

[Jacob]

The other and free option is the cast iron top of your tablesaw. Provided its reasonably flat. Check with a strait edge first. Saves having to lug around and store a huge lump of rock and doing yourself a mischief. It's how I did my planes.
Regards
John

Yep. It's what I've been doing for years. And I use thin paper backed wet n dry, very wet. Nothing is flatter for grinding/polishing, in terms of an ordinary non engineering workshop.
I've also used the toughened glass door saved from a cupboard, which works perfectly well.
Well it would do wouldn't it.
You get drawn in to doing all these pointless things by the enthusiasts, I even bought eze lap diamond plates which was reckless as they are expensive and have low resale value. They don't cut any better than various Norton stones and I have the feeling they won't last as long. I do use them however as they are convenient and I want to get my moneys worth! The coarse side of a Norton combi "0" cuts a lot faster than the coarse diamond Eze Lap.
I've never been tempted by water stones as they sound so inconvenient and messy, judging by all the descriptions you get on forums. Nor a "Tormek" which is universally described as "very slow" which I interpret as "very pointless".

 

[Jacob]

I literally posted an upper and lower cabinet made by hand and French polished in the last thread where you made dopey comments about planes, finally admitting that you do mostly coarse work and mostly with power tools the last three or four decades.

Entirely solid wood with hand beaded flat panel doors, cut mouldings top bottom and middle and colored with micronized earth pigments.

I've planed more board feet of wood in the last five years than you did your whole career, and not pine.

Couldn't find it - do you have a link?
Do you micronize your own pigments?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I wonder if your local headstone maker would have a suitable sized offcut he would be willing to sell for small amount?

I expect his local headstone maker imports them ready made from China. I had an acquaintance who owned a granite quarry - he could but them them from China cheaper than he could get the granite out of the ground.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Only ever had one which was really in need of correction and that was a No7 Stanley with a definitely concave sole making edge jointing really difficult. Was new but I'd had it a few years before I realised it was the plane's fault and not my planing!

I bought a new Stanley No.7 about 30 years ago and sold it on it was so bad. I have an old (red) Marples No5 that was winding so badly I put it on a coarse alox disc on my lathe. It's fine.

 

[D_W]

Couldn't find it - do you have a link?
Do you micronize your own pigments?

Robin artist colors and Kremer for earth pigments. Go look for the pictures yourself. Until you post something that would suggest you could use planes for fine set work, i have no intention of mapping my posts for you.

You give people terrible advice unless they want to make large blocky test pieces. There are actually people who do neat work and who would gain from better advice instead of being told to forgo 20 minutes of work on an old plane.

 

[Jacob]

Robin artist colors and Kremer for earth pigments. Go look for the pictures yourself. Until you post something that would suggest you could use planes for fine set work, i have no intention of mapping my posts for you.

You give people terrible advice unless they want to make large blocky test pieces. There are actually people who do neat work and who would gain from better advice instead of being told to forgo 20 minutes of work on an old plane.

OK I found it! If you're working on something mostly hand tools....updated
Not bad.
Design a bit crude - it's always a good idea to copy a good example rather than trying to work it out for yourself for the first time - design is always first priority however good/bad the workmanship.
Colours and finish a bit blotchy - possibly over ambitious?
Well done!
PS - horrible hinges!! Surprised to see all those electrical devices kicking about on the floor - they'll be the apprentice's I imagine?