Plane squareness to sole

[D_W]

Indeed! I’m having to restrain myself from running out and buying stuff I don’t need! Too much YouTube viewing!

Eventually, if you're making things, the desire to make them instead of buying them creeps up - and then you're left with piles of things that you purchased and don't need and selling it isn't that much fun (though it's not hard with quality goods). "it" being the commercial stuff.

If I ever criticized anyone for buying anything woodworking related, lightning would strike within 15 seconds - even on a clear day.

 

[Cabinetman]

@IanB yes as you say in your first paragraph, it’s just practice I suppose, plane to a line, Not sure why but it can help to steady it if you have a couple of fingers of your left hand underneath the plane running along the side of the piece of wood. Ian

 

[IanB]

@IanB yes as you say in your first paragraph, it’s just practice I suppose, plane to a line, Not sure why but it can help to steady it if you have a couple of fingers of your left hand underneath the plane running along the side of the piece of wood. Ian

OK that's a good tip, thanks!

 

[deema]

You say your plane is out by 50 microns or 2 thou for those across the pond. Well, that’s a good plane. An awful lot of engineering stuff is made to that tolerance.
You will be shooting stuff probably half the thickness of the width of the side of the plane ie less than 25mm or 1” so your error is 25 microns or 1 thou. When you get down to stuff 12mm thick or 1/2 thou your error is 12.5microns.
A planed wooden surface with a perfect setup plane won’t be that flat. Not many things are outside a calibration temperature controlled room.

 

[Trafalgar]

By the time you get the thing adjusted square, by shooting scrap boards and the like, you could have just knifed the workpiece, shot it in the vise, and moved on.

The advantage of working with hand tools is that accuracy is inherent in the marks you make and not in the tools you use. The only tool that you need to be 'perfect' in your shop is a square or two.

Having a shop full of appliances and jigs that must be extraordinarily accurate (and stay that way) in order to do good work is really no different than buying machines and counting on them to impart their accuracy, while you're more or less just along for the ride pushing the material through and over them.

And don't even get me started on the guys who make sure their shooting boards are accurate by using their $12,000++ European sliding table saw to make them. I've learned to laugh is all I can say. If that's 'hand tool woodworking' I'm Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Good to see you haven't changed any in your absence.

 

[Ttrees]

What sort of a knife do you use @CStanford (Charlie?)
I can never get them to line up perfectly, say for a few tenons.
It could be a matter of not paying attention to the orientation of the grain, say going easier on the flatsawn face, compared to the grain on the quarter.

Noticed others think the same and shoot the end grain for marking a shoulder line instead using a gauge.
That makes sense to me now, or using a retractable pencil instead with the help of a shoulder plane.

Tom

 

[Jacob]

I'm struggling to visualize exactly what those who advocate just putting it in a vice, or a bench hook, mean and how that gets accurate results - at least without years of practising planing technique? Do you just mean planing accurately to a marked line?

.........

Yes. And/or doing the same as you have to do, which is to check the line with a square. Then adjust with a pass or two of the plane if necessary. It's simpler than you think!
Come to think - it's very rare that I would ever want to plane end grain on a component of something to be made, until the thing is made. Then I'd plane off through tenons, or edges of the front and back boards of a dovetailed drawer, and so on.
If hand sawn I guess I might first shoot the ends of drawers sides to a pencil line, to give a nice edge for a precise line from the cutting gauge.

 

[TheTiddles]

There’s no one way of doing any of these types of operations, one of the best options is to look at the work someone does and if you like it, do what they do, then you’ll be able to make things like that too.
This is why I use shooting boards.