I thought woodworking sounded like sooo much fun, right? And I’ve been reading all these great books about making my own furniture and stuff, and I’ve been getting tools together, and tonight I actually set plane to wood. Total complete utter failure.
I just started, I didn’t win the lottery, I don’t know anybody with a jointer and planer and anyway, I like doing stuff by hand. I’ve been working from this book, which has a ton about using hand tools, I’ve read it two or three times, feel I understand it now, went to put Exercise 1, Squaring a Board into action. I was doing fine until I got to the “planing the face” thing. I’m working with poplar, by the way. The board is actually already pretty square, but I’m trying to learn the skill.
I got a plane - not a super cheap one, but not at all a nice one either. It’s a 14 inch jack plane - this one, I think. I tried planing with it out of the box - no go. It just tore into the wood or scraped, no planing. (I tried it both ways, it’s not me going against the grain - it just rips a blade-shaped line, is what I mean.) I took it apart, sharpened it a bit (not enough?), put it back together the only way it would go - same thing. I played around with how far the blade sticks out, nothing. Am I not strong enough to hand plane? Does my plane suck ass? Because if you need to spend four hundred bucks to get one of those good planes I might as well buy a machine and skip all this working with your hands crap. I had visions of perfect little curls just falling off my plane, and this is kinda discouraging.
The local community college doesn’t offer any woodworking classes, and the wood store doesn’t seem to really have anything I’m looking for in the next few months either. I’m trying to learn from a book basically because that’s one way I learn best, and I don’t know anybody who does this, so nobody can show me. I know people who could show me how to feed a board into a planer, I mean, but nobody who works with hand tools at all. Help!
I’m not an expert, but have done a lot of this over the years.
First, you do have to make sure that the blade is really sharp, and has no nicks. Do you have a good sharpening stone? Use oil on it. Use the courser side first, then turn it over and use the fine side. If that is still too course, get a finer stone.
Then, adjusting the blade is really tricky. Just a tiny bit one way or the other can make it too far out or not enough, so you have to sort of feel it with your finger (carefully) underneath, and then try it on a scrap of wood.
Then you have to practice on a bit of scrap wood for a while, to learn the proper pressure and how to keep the strokes very straight. You should not use short strokes, but long, smooth ones, as far as you can reach.
You don’t want to try to take too much off each time. so keep the blade out just enough to get thin shavings, and keep going over it.
I’m sure a carpenter or wood workeer will come along with some better advice, but you can start with this.
How do you clamp the thing so you can plane it but not run into the clamp? I just came back in from sharpening the hell out of it part 2, which included sharpening myself a little bit, and I was finally able to force it down the board a bit and make some ugly curls. Surely that isn’t right, though - all the guys who write the books say you shouldn’t have to use force, but then they’re big burly guys. I’ve never sharpened anything before, really, though - I do my knives in one of those little things with the grooves - so maybe I’m drastically underestimating how much sharpening it needs, or doing it wrong? It seemed pretty dull when I started out. I tried to flatten the back, too, but I’m not sure I’m doing that right. Either that or it’s supposed to take hours.
Yer gonna sweat a bit before you make board length curls.
Learning how to sharpen is imperative,and there are a number of methods.Pick one and stick with it 'til you get results before you try another.
A jack plane actually should have a very slight radius,or should I say the blade represents an arc of a very large circle,which prevents gouges at the sides of the cut.
The cap iron should be set further back for a heavy cut (1/8") and closer to the edge for finer shavings.Jack planes aren’t typically finishers,but if that’s all you have,whatta ya gonna do.Make sure the cap closes all along its length.
The throat also should be closed up for finer work,but that might involve going over the rough milling with Dykem and a scraper or filing,to improve the fit.
You can wax the sole with paste wax to ease the friction.
I did mention sharpening,right?
Try raiseing the blade until it does not touch the wood, make a few practice strokes and gradualy lower the blade until it just barely touches wood. Continue makeing strokes as you slowly lower the blade untill you hit the sweet spot. use even pressure on both handles nither push nor pull more than the other. As for clamping plane aganst a stop block instead. Practice practice practice.
By planing against a stop block I mean screw down a scrap piece of wood set the piece you are working against it to stop it from sliding. you may also want to block the sides so your working piece does not move sideways. You want the blocks to be thiner than your working piece but not so thin that the working piece skips over it. push against the stop and away from yourself. I hope this helps.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. For some reason they don’t show in any of the books I’ve read how exactly one is supposed to hold the work down while you plane it - that’s very helpful. I assume a stop block would have to be at least as long as the distance between the front of the plane and the blade?
Make sure you are reading the direction of the grain well. Some woods have grain that changes direction a few times – curly maple is one particularly nasty one. Even if the grain dips ever so imperceptibly downward, it will be like petting a cat from tail-to-head instead of from head-to-tail.
If you must go against the grain, you will want the sharpest blade possible and very shallow cuts. You might be able to get away with planing in one direction for part of the board and then the other for a different section.
The bit about raising the blade completely and then lowering bit by bit while testing is good.
Hold the plane up and sight down its sole against a bright light. You should be able to see the blade appearing as you turn the screw. Make sure it is square to the sole surface. If it isn’t, use the thumb-widget above the thumbscrew to square it up.
Some people stone the corners off of the blade to avoid a sharp gouge line at the edges.
I will typically clamp a stop block to my bench, usually a scrap of wood that is slightly thinner than the wood I am planing and big enough so that my clamp isn’t in the way of my plane.
For longer pieces, I will simply move the clamp around on the work as I plane different parts.
Sharpening! The perfect sharpening technique is the wood plane holy grail.
Not nessisarily, just be careful not to let the plan rock forward as you finish a stroke off the far end , by keeping downward pressure on the back handle. otherwise you will round off the end.
I’ve just managed to get a handplane to work. I’ve been doing woodwork for years without attempting to use one. It’s damn hard. There are much easier ways to get into woodwork.
What are you doing to sharpen? I’ve been using the scary sharp method and a Veritas sharpening jig to get the angle right. Spending a whole weekend on sharpening (getting the back and front perfectly flat, plus then sharpening) gave me something that I was proud of as a first effort but still not that sharp compared to what I understand is possible. And with all that effort I was able to plane reeaasonably well but I still found it took concentration.
It mightn’t be bad to start out on something easier to get some quick satisfaction before moving on to hand planing.
Zsofia, I’m with you. Sometimes and get a hand plane to work exactly like it should and other times, I get so much tearout I lose ground. I’ve yet to figure out what I’m doing differently.
Hand in there and keep trying, because when it does work correctly, it sweetness.
Any explanation concerning planes and sharpening and using them fills many books. You have gotten some good advice here though. I would like to point out that no plane will work well out of the box. Truing and sharpening the first time took me the better part of a whole weekend. A sharp blade will easily shave the hair on your arm when I first accomplished this I looked like some weird burn victim with bald patches all over my arms and legs. My wife couldn’t stop laughing. Also note that when you finally combine a sharp blade with a correctly set up plane and good technique it will glide over the wood like butter. I can’t describe the pleasure of producing those first foot long thinner than paper shavings of wood.
Zsofia - I have several old Stanley Planes, old meaning circ. 1940’s-50’s. They work just as well now that they did then…they take some getting used to, but my suggestion would be to practice on some pine two-by’s and then move to the more expensive stuff. Also, you’ll get as good at clamping as you are at using your own tools, one thing my woodworking kinsfolk told me early on, is to learn how to clamp properly before you touch steel to wood…otherwise you can screw the whole job to heck!
Have fun and post pics when you get into some cool stuff. let us know when you are making stuff like this
Probably one of the best, if not the best inlay and joining I have ever seen is here. BTW, that’s a floor. Probably took several years to make. I envy guys’gals that can do that stuff.
Can you believe people used to do that all the time, and with no power tools? I think it’s crazy that the tools used to build my 1928 house probably had more in common with the ones they used in the Middle Ages than the ones they’re using to build my garage right now.
Understand that some woods are not plane friendly,either having rowed grain, mineral embedment,or just HARD.Maybe all three,like azobe.
But lots of tearout can be eliminated by having the smallest aperture-throat- before the blade.Not easy to accomplish with some manufactured tools,admittedly.And a bit of fuss if you’re making your own for the purpose.
Zsofia,flattening anything by hand does take a while;are you doing the plane sole,the blade back,or both?
