Ross No. 4 plane

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I repeat, again, if a cap iron will cause a plane to cease cutting at a very close setting then it will function to break a chip when moved slightly back.

I've never seen one that won't do either.
 
Since the Clifton 2 piece chip breaker has been mentioned multiple times, will the present owner of Clifton make them available for sale?

I have a Clifton #3 that is my favorite Bailey/Bedrock style smoother. Some don't like the 2 piece chip breaker, mainly because some have trouble with it falling off. I find it very convenient for a few swipes to hone a new edge. I have to add I had about fifteen minutes of "fettling" time on the chip breaker to get a good fit when assembling, plus touched up the flat that goes against the blade and a slight polish on the opposite side. All in all, a very nice set-up.

I have also heard that those that don't like the "falling apart" part of the 2 piece design sometimes put a dab of silicone caulking in the groove before reinstalling the chip breaker to the blade to the plane. When the caulk cures, it effectively stops pieces falling apart, yet is fairly easy to peel away to return to the original design.
 
CStanford":2vah3l5l said:

If I'm not mistaken, I believe David Charlesworth has a section in one of his books, showing the same methods for preparing a chip breaker. I also believe Garret Hack has some similar advice in "The HandPlane Book" (not positive about the title!).
 
I think Vann's comments above about the Bailey chipbreaker and its contact with the blade are really quite interesting. And worth a more prominent place than tacked on the end of a thread about a-n-other cheap make of Bailey style plane ! I almost missed it.

It makes a lot of sense; sitting in contact with the iron without distorting it, it would function very like the two piece cap iron in where it applies pressure - the lever cap and cap iron work a bit like the linkages of a car windscreen wiper in spreading the contact pressure.
 
Vann":3lfxg34j said:
I tried a number of cap-irons in an old damaged No.4 to see if any seat the way Leonard Bailey intended.

This week's award for the most creative use of a broken piece of junk goes to...

Vann! =D> =D> =D>

BugBear
 
At the other hand, it is not really a problem when the blade and chipbreaker don't sit exactly like the bailey patent. The plane still works perfectly allright. Maybe that's one of the great virtues of the design, it has a large margin before a defect becomes a problem. None of mine are perfect in this regard, but they are clearly not as bad as some of the examples in Vann's post. Maybe you should just tighten the lever cap screw a bit more?
 
CStanford":3kzt2ugw said:
I find the statements made by some of 'giving up' and 'not being able to plane wood' rather far-fetched...
Why do you find such statements far fetched? I've said that it happened to me. If I wanted to mar the finish on a piece of wood, my 1973 new Stanley UK No.4 was the tool for the job. For 30+ years I avoided using my handplane.

There are plenty of almost unused handplanes on evilbay, suggesting a large number of people have failed to get satisfaction from their new planes - so it's not unreasonable to presume that many new owners have had difficulties and given up.

I feel that you are too quick to dismiss anyone who has more difficulties than you as idiots, and to similarly dismiss anyone who strives to buy anything of better quality than you would buy. Sure, if you know what you're doing you can get a common-or-garden Bailey type plane to plane very well. But for those of us who struggle to work out what's not working with our "plane shaped objects", please don't trash us for trying to eliminate some of the variables by fitting thicker irons, "better" cap-irons, or purchasing more expensive planes that will work out of the box.

Cheers, Vann.
 
One can move the cap iron to a position where they are basically doing nothing but sitting there and the plane will still work. Whatever happened years ago most likely had more to do with a dull iron set rank and honed with no camber or corner relief at all. A dull iron, taking too big a bite, with the corners digging in as icing on the cake.

It's understandable, but it is not the plane's fault.

My first outing with a plane was horrifying until I realized how little material each pass was supposed to remove and I either read, or somebody told me, to take some metal off the corners. Then the gates of heaven opened up and this was late model Record with cap iron screws instead of lever cap -- planes made when quality was supposedly a distant memory. But for a shop fire, I'm sure I'd still be using the very same ones. I bought jointer, jack, and smoother in one order all from Garrett Wade back when they and Woodcraft were the go-to mail order outfits in the U.S.

My difficulties had virtually nothing to do with the cap iron though I do recall keeping them set at less than a sixteenth or so. Don't know why, I must have read it in the Garrett Wade catalog or somewhere else at that time.
 
I'm just thinking this through. When I arch the iron, which is what tightening the cap iron screw does to the iron on my '60s Canadian made Stanley #4, I turn the iron into a flat spring under tension. Maybe there is enough meat between the cap iron and blade that it doesn't matter? Or may be that tension reinforces the cutting edge? It's something to think about in tuning up that forlorn piece of rust.
 
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