Thread: problem with a 4&1/2 plane

It sounds like you have the wrong cap iron for your plane.

G'Day,

I had the same issue with an early "sweetheart" 4 1/2 which had been fitted with a later blade and cap iron.

You'll need to find a cap iron (otherwise known as chip breaker) with a shorter length from the lower edge of the adjustment slot to the bottom edge of the chip breaker.

I managed to get hold of one through sheer luck when going through a box of "rubbish". Though, my plane still looks "wrong" to me with a later "Made in Australia" blade/iron fitted. Got to get a nice sweetheart blade for it!

The early cap irons are shorter than the later ones in my experience. Perhaps if you go to a trash and treasure market you may find one? As a last resort try an internet seller, they tend to be overpriced but more easily available.

best of luck

Horaldic

Bummer. I thought there might be a catch. How much shorter are we talking here? It must be a matter of a mm or so. Is there a way to distinguish them without having to carry around the one I have now to compare it to?

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

Bummer. I thought there might be a catch. How much shorter are we talking here? It must be a matter of a mm or so. Is there a way to distinguish them without having to carry around the one I have now to compare it to?

Short answer - nope.
And it is a very small difference. Don't be tempted to enlarge the depth adjuster hole - creates too many problems.
Cheers
SG

I thought getting this plane back to working condition was going to be easy. Fool!
I had a look on Patrick Leach's Blood and Gore and he makes no mention of this change in design. Any idea when this alteration to depth adjuster position was made?

An alternative would be to make a cap iron but now we are talking a real mission, and being honest with myself, it just aint gonna happen.

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

I thought getting this plane back to working condition was going to be easy. Fool!
I had a look on Patrick Leach's Blood and Gore and he makes no mention of this change in design. Any idea when this alteration to depth adjuster position was made?

An alternative would be to make a cap iron but now we are talking a real mission, and being honest with myself, it just aint gonna happen.

One thing that you must remember when re-habbing old planes, is that "Stanley" became the "design" copied by virtually everyone making planes after the Stanley patents expired.
What this did not mean was that everyone copied everything about the Stanley designs in minutest detail. There were zillions of Stanley copies made by third parties - and to all intents and purposes, many of their parts looked just like the originals, even when they differed slightly.
Now, throw a few generations of Stanley and non Stanley parts into a box, and then try to assemble a plane based on what you find, and there are going to be issues.
As for The Superior Works website - that is devoted solely to US made Stanley planes, and it makes no claims to cover Stanley planes made outside the US. Virtually nothing on Patrick Leach's website applies outside the US made planes, except in the most general of terms.
Even if you find what appears to be a complete and original plane, there can easily have been replacement blade and cap-iron happenings over the course of its life.

Welcome to the wonderful world of plane re-habbing.
Fun isn't it.

Cheers
SG

Seems a lot like my experience in bicycle building. Just when you think you've got all the parts ready to go it turns out one component is not compatable with another. I guess this is why serious plane rehabbers get a bank of parts they can dip into to get to a complete plane.

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

Seems a lot like my experience in bicycle building. Just when you think you've got all the parts ready to go it turns out one component is not compatable with another.

Stanley made bicycles .............?.

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

I guess this is why serious plane rehabbers get a bank of parts they can dip into to get to a complete plane.

Hence the term - boneyard

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

Is there a way to distinguish them without having to carry around the one I have now to compare it to?

Measure from the leading edge of your cap-iron to the bottom of the rectangular hole (that the Y lever engages in). This is the critical measurement. Then you just need to carry a ruler with you when searching.

But an overlength cap-iron (as you have) is not the end of the world. Grind a millimetre off the end; reshape the hump if required, and try it in your plane. If necessary take off another mm, until it's short enough.

Experiment: have you tried your Carter double iron in the Stanley (and vica versa)?

But what you really need is a Clifton 2-piece cap-iron....

Cheers, Vann.

Originally Posted by Scribbly Gum

Short answer - nope.
And it is a very small difference. Don't be tempted to enlarge the depth adjuster hole - creates too many problems.
Cheers
SG

As SG has said don't enlarge the hole.

What I had to do was reposition the depth adjuster hole plus the hole for the plane blade screw. Yes it was only a few mm but it is really a PITA.

Have a mate who is a panel beater so he infill welded up the original holes then I cut new ones in the position that would make the adjuster work correctly and not have the blade screw jam at the top or bottom of the recess.

Took two attempts to get the right position for the blade screw so it wouldn't jam at the top of the recess.

This description might sound simple but it wasn't.

You may need some mates that have special skills.

The chipbreaker decided to warp badly after it was welded the second time. So had to heat it up and flatten it out. So off to another mate who is a potter and sandwitched between two massive blocks of steel put it in his furnace. Cooked it for a few hours then let it cool and it came out flat.

I thought it was just a simple thing to weld it up and cut/drill new holes .

BTW SG thanks again for the chip breaker the plane now works a treat.

As I said, too little time for another project of that complexity. I half considered making a cap iron as I have a half completed home-made plane blade at home which is the right width for it. By the sounds of it it is no easy matter though. Yet another half cooked project to put on the back burner. 'Sigh'

Sorry that you are having this problem i had no idea that it would occur with the part i sent you. Can you please take some measurements of the cap iron and i will check to see if i have one and send it on to you.

Originally Posted by Pac man

Sorry that you are having this problem i had no idea that it would occur with the part i sent you. Can you please take some measurements of the cap iron and i will check to see if i have one and send it on to you.

Thanks Pac man, That's very generous as it's really no fault of yours. An unexpected issue for me as well. I'll accurately measure and get back to you for a possible exchange.

Originally Posted by pampelmuse

I have been rehabilitating a #4 1/2 stanley to use and got a blade off a fellow forumite to use (thanks Pac man). Strangely, even with the depth adjuster at full retraction I have found I can barely get the blade to retract into the plane body even when I set the edge of the cap iron almost at the edge of the blade. I measured the distance from the base of the plane (i.e. the work surface) along the face of the frog to the top of the depth adjuster when retracted on a comparable plane (Carter #7) and the distance seems very close to each other (~102mm).
The plane is an english made model with "Bailey" cast at the front of the plane, "Made in England" at the rear. The only indication it is a stanley is that there is "Stanley" stamped on the lateral adjustment lever. So if it is a stanley I would have thought a standard 2 &3/8 blade and cap iron would have fitted it perfectly. Am I missing something here?

This suggests to me a few possible explanations: the base of the plane is unusually thin (although this would have shown up when measuring to the depth adjuster), the cap iron or depth adjusting lever are slightly different to other planes, or the frog is not matched with the plane body. The differences from other cap irons/frogs must be pretty small though as measurement with a ruler does not pick up major diferences.

As far as I can tell the only way around this is to shim up the frog so it sits higher in the plane body but given my measurements from the other plane I am not sure this is really the problem. The number of turns of the depth adjuster to get a plane blade to move a fraction of a mm suggests very small differences in shape of the depth adjuster or position of the slot in the cap iron will have a significant effect on the position of the leading edge of the blade at either extreme of the depth adjustment screw.

Any suggestions how to diagnose and solve the issue?

pampelmuse,
Seems to me the length between the front edge of the back iron and the TOP edge of the adjuster slot are too far apart. The blade wont retract into the plane...right???

This is usually the simplest of all problems to solve,
File 0.5mm off the edge of the back iron, and then reshape it to the original curve.

Next, and most importantly, adjust your back iron to the correct shape, so that when the hump of the back iron is pushed down onto the blade by the lever cap, there is just enough spring to get a firm contact on the cutting blade with the front edge AND ALSO THE BACK EDGE OF THE HUMP. A very common fault propagated by the hand plane guru brigade is to just bend it to get a firm contact with the front edge only. This is WRONG. It places a spring, or curve in the blade. So contact with the frog is only at the heel of the the bevel, and the top of the blade.
The back of the hump must bear down on the blade making good contact with the frog, otherwise the leverage resulting from the front edge of the blade with a pivot point at the heel of the bevel, is huge when only supported way up the top of the blade. When the blade starts to cut, a chatter can easily be induced.

This is often the reason that, from a group of planes, one is found to work better than all the rest. I have had thousands of Stanley type planed through my hands, and only a handful have had a properly adjusted back iron.
I believe a majority of the proponents of the thicker blade for a Stanley plane have little knowledge of the actual workings of this combination of blade and back iron and its proper adjustment They promote a thicker blade to solve a problem evidenced by bad adjustment of the back iron.
This was first patented in Dec 24, 1867 to make the thin blade in the plane function as a thicker blade does. It is worth a read.
Here is the patent by L. Bailey for this design of the back iron.

Regards,
Peter