Nicker for home made grooving plane?

[transatlantic]

So I am on version 3 of my home made grooving plane now, and although for the most part it works as I would like it, I am not happy with the quality of the edges I get when making the first few strokes (PINE). Even when going with the grain, they are not as crisp as I would like, and when going against the grain, I get more or a inconsistent chamfered edge rather than a nice clean 90'd edge. I am fairly confident that my blade is sharp as the shavings come out nicely.

Is this normal with soft wood?

Having experimented with first using a marking gauge to mark the outer lines of the groove, and then using the plane, I get much nicer results, but this is obviously very time consuming and difficult to get spot on. So I am thinking of adding a nicker?

The plane design is like this :

[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Lx-oeIoiez8/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]

and I am thinking of adding a nicker like this :

are these nickers usually easy to set up? or just as time consuming as using a marking gauge?

 

[Trevanion]

Are you starting at the front of the board and working your way backward or are you trying to take big long strokes of shavings off? I've always found with plough planes it's best to start off at the front and work your way backward so you're always down cutting and working with the grain, rather than trying to take a full stroke of the board and dealing with all the variables in the board.

You shouldn't need a nicker for long grain work, they tend to make the tool much harder to push through.

 

[transatlantic]

Are you starting at the front of the board and working your way backward or are you trying to take big long strokes of shavings off? I've always found with plough planes it's best to start off at the front and work your way backward so you're always down cutting and working with the grain, rather than trying to take a full stroke of the board and dealing with all the variables in the board.

You shouldn't need a nicker for long grain work, they tend to make the tool much harder to push through.

I was doing it as you described. But when you come across a point where the grain is not straight, or close to a knot, I don't get a clean edge.

And you can't always go with the grain ... unless I make two with different orientations

 

[thetyreman]

a nicker won't improve things, it's only used for cross grain work, one thing that might improve it is using a mortise gauge set to your actual blade, this can create a neater looking groove, I do it on all my grooves, before cutting the groove. I have also found that setting the blade so it doesn't poke out too much makes a big difference, that can help prevent tearing chunks out.