Recently, my 94-year-old grandfather moved to Arizona to a home, and I acquired a lot of his old tools–one of which is a beautiful old hand plane. I’m one to think that unless it’s rusting pretty bad or is obviously unserviceable, it’s not antique just yet.
But I am hanging a door. I need to take 1/8" of each side. I’ve got this thing out in the garage, and think I’ve got it set up correctly, and start going to town.
All it makes are little chips and such. Isn’t it supposed to peel up thin layers into curls? Am I doing this right?
Tripler
I’m a handy guy! I just never used a hand plane before and can use some experience. . .
You might be planing against the grain which is very hard to do without a very sharp blade.
I was just planing an oar Wednesday and had two major problems, my plane was dull and the 3 pieces of wood we glued up had one board reversed grain from the other two. It made shaping very difficult.
What kind of door is it? Solid or a more typical hollow frame with thin veneer for surfaces?
Going against the grain, too big a bite, blade not sharp. Those will do what you’re describing. The blade needs to be honed on a stone. You need to have the blade square w/ the surface of the plane, go w/ the grain and take thin bites. Don’t plane over the end of the door. On the ends, go from the outside toward the center, or you will chip off the corners. If this is a composite door hand planing is difficult.
It’s a solid-core, exterior door with what I’m assuming is a birch frame with a lauan veneer. It does have what appear to be pieces jointed together, so I wonder if the change in the angle of the grain is causing me problems.
I will go find my knife sharpening kit, and hone up that blade though. However, it looks like I have a fixed angle for the blade itself. How do I adjust it?
A couple of pics of my hand plane (you can see it’s an antique!).
Tripler
But happily, I love putting good old tools to work.
The knob behind the blade should allow some adjustment of the angle. I find it a pain to tweak the tool and I am not too good at sharpening them. I actually prefer Drawknives.
It’s a jack plane and an old one all right, but it appears to be pretty run of the mill. Wood bodied planes and specialty planes are more what collectors are looking for.
First, you should never set a plane down like that, always lay it on it’s side.
Just eyeball down the surface, that should be adequate to see if the blade is square w/ the bed. With a really sharp blade and small bites, you shouldn’t have a problem, even across grain. Make sure the blade is honed squarely and evenly, if your stone isn’t perfectly flat you will have problems. The angle is important also. The blade should be sharp enough to cut the edge of a sheet of paper held in your hand. i.e. hold a sheet of paper in one hand and bring the edge of the blade down across the edge of the paper.
Here you go: http://www.hocktools.com/sharpen2.htm
Do not use a grinding wheel unless the blade is badly chipped or pitted, even then I’d just get a new blade before I tried to sharpen one that bad.
Ooh! Thanks! It had been sitting around for so long with the blade retracted, I thought it was okay.
What Exit?, I noticed the knob, and found that I could change the depth of the blade with it–I thought I could change the angle though. When I disassembled the plane last night to clean it up, I noticed the ‘housing bracket’ (for lack of a proper term) was bolted in place, apparently fixing the angle.
I’m still in search of a flat whetstone, but I did take a diamond knife sharpener to the blade for a little bit. I tried sharpening the blade, and it does seem to work a lot better: I’m taking longer runs down the edge of the door with a little less pressure on the stroke, all of which seem to be giving me more progress.
Side question though: would it have been more productive to use a rasp to rough down the edges, and then use a plane on it? I guess I’m asking, which is the best way to shape a door?
If the blade is sharp, you have excellent control with a draw knife, especially angle and then just need to do a little clean up with a plane or sander. I think this has more to do with the fact I can sharpen a draw knife fairly well and I have used them a lot. I am more comfortable using either the draw knife or an electric planer.
Not all planes have an angle adjustment. I always have troubles adjusting them any way, but I thought the front screw controlled the depth and the knob controlled either the gap and/or angle on most.
Honestly, I usually shape doors using a band saw, belt sander and then finishing sander. So, I cannot speak to the use of a rasp. I do not think the rasp would help much however.
Do a search on “Scary Sharp” for my preferred method of sharpening plane blades. A couple pieces of 1" glass I got from a local glass company, some good quality sandpaper, and a can of 3M spray adhesive and I can make double bevels that you can see yourself in and cut like Death’s Scythe itself.
Note that a plane blade is going to end up slightly convex, 1/32" or a hair more but it makes a difference.
However, This is the one tool I regret selling most of all, what a beautiful machine. I bought it at a garage sale back when they were out of production. PC brought them back after 10-15 years and they are still the best tool for the job. Mind you this was when I was installing dozens of wood windows a week and that adjustable bevel made reworking to old sills a snap.
As everyone else has said, with hand planes (and chisels too), the sharper you can get it, the better.
I gave up on sharpening stones a while back - to keep them properly flat after repeated sharpenings is actually more work than keeping your tools sharp. Then I read this: http://www.shavings.net/SCARY.HTM
(scroll down to the bottom for a summary of the whole thing)
(also, this is the “scary sharp” that MikeG is talking about)
I don’t use anywhere near as many grits as they suggest, I typically use the grits that came in an automotive sanding pack I bought at Pep Boys (I think it’s 400, 800, 1200 and 1600) and still get chisels and planes that can split hairs (quite literally). I’m also not using the $50 veritas jig they suggest, I use a $12 one that I got at woodcraft: http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=3114
Yep thats a jack plane, fixed angle, so no adjusting the angle there. Everyone elses advice is spot on. Good luck, and don’t forget to thank Gramps for the tools.
A few ideas:
Make sure the blade is sharp and lapped.
Make sure that the blade is in the right way., that is a bevel down plane. The bevel should be facing the back of the plane.
The chip breaker, which is screwed to the blade should be at most 1/16" from the edge
Setting the blade depth is a subtle business, start with nothing and adjust with 1/64 turns of the knob.
Really! When I pulled it out of the pack ‘o’ stuff from my Pop-Pop’s tools, the bevel was already facing up. . . so I naturally assumed that’s the way it was supposed to be installed.
That would explain the chipping. The standard bedding angle is 45 deg, IIRC, and the common bevel is 30 deg. Add them up when the bevel is up and you get a 75 deg cutting, er… scraping angle.
