Thread: When is a Handplane Not Worth the effort?

The sides not being square is unlikely to be a problem unless you are intending using it as one of the world's biggest shooting plane. Similarly, the trailing edge of the mouth has no real effect on a cut; it's the leading edge that should be square to the blade.

As for the sole not being flat; Patrick Leach on his Blood and Gore site indicates that a flat sole on a jointer is nice, rare and unnecessary.

I have a question though; I've never heard of a Record being made in Canadia. Stanleys were; could you have been mistaken?

Chris, I can take it off your hands and put it in the drawer with my other planes. It's live a quiet life, maybe seeing daylight once a year

Chris by surface grind will you be using the 9" or 3" hand grinder?

How far is it concave on the soul?
How far is it out of square?
Best get over to TTTG sale and hand it over to Jim Davey and let him sort it out for you.

If all else fails sell it as a curved plane

Hi Chris

If the plane can lie flat on a flat surface, such that the toe, mouth and heel are coplanar, then you are good. Any dips between are irrelevant. The mouth does not need to be closed up if you know how to set the chipbreaker - in fact, the mouth needs to be slightly wider than average to take advantage of this method.

Have you tried the plane as is? How lucky you are to have a plane of your dad.

Regards from Perth

Derek

To answer the last question Yes we tend to be a bit too anal about soles being flat to the last decimal point of a thou.
Flattish usually works. As you have shapened the blade check that the cap iron is a nice fit with the blade and give the plane a go.
Setting a Cap Iron

Chances are if the plane worked for your old man it should be fine.
My stanley No7 has some bad pitting on he sole where a previous owner let it sit in something damp. Rough as a gravel drive for about 3''. However flattish overall and still does a great job. The right side is not quite square to the sole either but I have used it on a shooting board and worked ok.
Regards
John

Are you sure it is not a Franken plane, Stanley "Made in Can" body with a Record blade/chipbreaker set?

Thanks for all the replies. It turns out this plane is a Bailey with a Record blade, unknown chip breaker and a rusty Stanley lever cap, talk about a bastard child might be appropriate. Anyway I took another look at the sole today and thought to myself it can't be that hard to flatten it so I did it with a diamond stone and being cast iron it only took about 15 minutes, it isn't perfect but the straight edge and a torch says it is damned close, at least for me. The chip breaker and blade were fitted and then the next problem surfaced, I discovered the blade adjuster was near its maximum limit to produce a shaving and I guess that is because the blade is the wrong one. When I started to try and actually use it nothing happened, no shavings came out of the mouth but it felt like it was cutting timber in a few spots so I pulled it apart again and the shavings had gone between the chip breaker and the blade, I had sharpened and fitted the CB to the blade before putting it all back together. I have never used one of these planes so I had set the CB pretty close which was a mistake. I set it way back (for me) and had another go and it planed a full width shaving really easy, I then retracted the blade and the shavings got thinner about .05mm which I was fairly impressed with because I have read about all you blokes and thin shavings from hand planes. It works but the blade adjuster is right on the limit to the point where the angle produces very large movements for minimal movement of the knurled knob and because of that it is really fiddly to adjust. I doubt I will ever use it seriously so putting a new blade and CB in it is most probably not cost effective and it will do the job as it is.

How are these planes generally set up, CB, frog position etc. I have not touched the frog position at all so I would guess it is in the position set by the factory. I doubt my father did more to it that sharpen the blade.

The blade is immaterial; the depth adjuster works on the cap iron/chip breaker/backing iron. If the adjuster is way out to the end of its travel then the issue may be an incorrect cap iron; but as I have a Record smoother with a Stanley blade and and iron set I don't think they're that incompatible. I think the issue is more likely that you have moved the cap iron too far away from the blade edge. Ease it back down to about 0.5mm from the blade edge and see how the adjuster sits then.

If that fails then The Tool Exchange sells complete blade and cap iron assemblies on E-bay; click here.

I wish I had known that plus known how long it was going to take to get the back of the blade flat before I started. I'll give it a go tomorrow and see what happens. I did notice before I moved the adjuster that it was wound right out snd sort of around where it is now.

Chris, the chipbreaker may well be the culprit. The adjuster slot may be further back on the Record than on the Stanley, and this will cause the blade to run out of length when the chipbreaker is moved forward. The solution is to try another chipbreaker, one that is appropriate for a Stanley. Alternately, use what you have but accept that the chipbreaker cannot be moved as far forward as one might want.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I'd also be checking the frog is correct to the body and is in the right position, after all it didn't come from the factory with a Record blade. Is the blade bevel side down? Here is a link to a scan of some original Stanley setup documentation.
tooltrip.com/tooltrip9/stanley/stan-bpl/edsheets.pdf

Chris happy to keep an eye out for right blade etc when at markets if you wish.

Can I just repeat what Chief Tiff said: "The blade is immaterial". Well, almost, a thicker blade also alters the point at which the cutting edge touches the wood for a given frog setting, but that is a minor issue and would actually help a too-short cap iron. Chris, the problem you are experiencing is extremely common because there is very little leeway with the distance between the cam slot and the cutting edge. I have a Record #5 which has a cap-iron swapped from another Record #5. Either someone got at that iron (doesn't look like it), or they changed a few dimensions slightly between models, or it's just an outlier that sneaked past QC, but whatever, it's too short.

The adjuster has to turn a small amount of wheel travel into a lot of mechanical advantage, which means the cam can only be made to move a short distance. The slot in the cap-iron has to be within a mm or so of the sweet spot, or you are in trouble. There have been a few threads on the topic, but a quick search turned up this one. There has been at least one other to do with an LN on which someone modified the cap-iron a wee bit & ended up with the same issues.

Living with an adjuster wheel that has to be wound to the full extent of the stud is not a good option. On the smaller Baileys, it will foul your fingers, but the worst aspect is that it doesn't work smoothly at the extremes of its travel, it binds, and the wheel becomes hard to turn. I'll just keep my eye out for a suitable replacement, or more likely, I'll simply make a new one. Making a cap-iron takes a bit of care, but requires only modest metal-working skills and no fancy gear.

With a jointer, you could probably get clean, glue-able surfaces with the cap iron set back as far as 2mm from the cutting edge, i.e. with cabinet-grade woods and watching grain directions, but it would be far better to find a cap-iron that matches your frog better, in the long run.

I also inherited a near basket-case Stanley 5 1/2, and because it had belonged to the old pot, I wanted to keep it, but there's no room for drones in my toolbox, so I spent time on it, plus a few $s for a new cutter and lever-cap (the original lever cap had about a third of the edge broken off!). Its sole is not perfect, it has a small dip just in front of the blade on one side, which would take me days of lapping to get out & take away far too much metal. The plane actually works very well despite the imperfect sole, it's a pest when you are sighting down the sole to get the lateral adjustment sorted, but it has become my go-to Jack plane and definitely earns its spot in the tool cupboard. I only wish I could stumble on an old lever cap of roughly similar vintage. The shiny new thing does the job perfectly well, but looks 'orrible on the old girl - 'mutton dressed as lamb' as my old mum used to say. Stanley 5.5.jpg

I would certainly persevere with your plane, besides restoring something that has connections with your father, the lessons learnt in getting it to perform as it should will be invaluable. We no doubt do different projects in different ways, but a #7 is one of the most-used planes in my shed.......

Cheers,

Originally Posted by wheelinround

Chris happy to keep an eye out for right blade etc when at markets if you wish.

Thanks Ray, that would be much appreciated.