Thread: Widening the throat on a wooden bodied plane due to swelling

You could use a narrow chisel and the edge of a coarse file to widen the edges of the blade slot - it's not a critical surface, so it doesn't matter if it's not perfect.
However I would be making a careful appraisal of the situation before I started chopping bits out of the plane body! There isn't a whole lot of wood at that point of a typical woody, so you don't want to make it very much thinner than it is. There ought to be quite a bit of room either side of the blade, to allow for lateral adjustment. The spare room should be far more that I would expect to be taken up by seasonal wood movement. I wonder if the blade is a ring-in that's a few mm wider than the original? It might sound a bit heroic, but I reckon I would seriously consider taking the blade to the grinder & reducing its width, rather than risk making a plane that flexes when the wedge is tightened up. Easier to replace a blade than a plane body.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

it's not a critical surface, so it doesn't matter if it's not perfect.

That didn't even occur to me. This is my only wooden bodied plane, so I've been a bit precious about it.

Originally Posted by IanW

I wonder if the blade is a ring-in that's a few mm wider than the original? It might sound a bit heroic, but I reckon I would seriously consider taking the blade to the grinder & reducing its width, rather than risk making a plane that flexes when the wedge is tightened up.

Took another look at it, and the iron is smaller than the throat, it's the chipbreaker that's too large, and looking closely at it, it does look like something someone's knocked up themselves. Looks like I'll be taking it to the grinder!

Thanks Ian!

A too-tight blade should be the result of a drying blank. A damp one would increase the size of an entire blank, but the outside more than the inside parts.

Chisel, file or float - all of those things will do what you want to do.

I have had wood that has had a chance to dry (wood that was advertised as dry, but winter still makes it dry more) get a tight grip on an iron and wedge, and subsequently make it difficult for said iron and wedge to get back in the plane.

I agree on the comment suggesting it sounds like the metal parts aren't the originals.