Thread: Planing

I took the plane's blade to my local tool shop and the man said the edge was as "dull as dish water" which pretty much explains everything!

Proper sharpening explains PART of everything, but not ALL of everything. I've found it depends on the orientation of the grain to the cut. When planing against the grain, a slight skew angle helps to produce a cleaner cut. When shaving across end grain, a slicing motion is just about mandatory; ditto with chisels.

Joe

And slanting the plane a bit across the direction of travel actually reduces the angle of the cutting edge of the blade. So instead of say 30 degrees, the angled blade might present only say 25 degrees to the direction of cut. To take it to a ridiculous extreme, if you held the plane at almost right angles to the direction of cut, the actual cutting angle of the blade would be close to zero.