Thread: Flattening/Smoothing the base of an electric plane.

I don't think a few scratches are going to be a problem. A trough worn into, maybe. These things are not exactly precision tools as you might well know, so if they are a little rough around the edges, prolly not going to hurt anything.

Does it have an ally sole behind the blades, or is it steel of some kind? The big Makita I have (on loan) have a replaceable steel sole plate, while my smaller Ryobi has ally, with a couple scratches in it too.

And to adjust, you need to look at the cutter head. Unplug the thing first (saying that as someone who nursed 6 cuts within 5mm at one point...) and take a good old Captain at the thing. Maybe you have to play with it a little, or if yer lucky, there might be some adjustment/jacking screws that will adjust them easily. Just make sure the blades will cut in the same plane (straight line, you have had a few, right?) as the sole, and tighten up the clamp bolts, each one a little at a time. If you do them up tight one at a time, the adjustment is likely to be thrown off. The closer you get the blades cutting to the line of the sole, the better the thing will work.

So, what were you planning on planing?

Ah, hehe.

Im not planning to plane anything with the Makita. It was given to me (like 90% of my tools) and its in reasonably good condition. Its just something that came up in the conversation yesterday that I couldnt give an honest answer to.

I havent had a chance to look at the thing (mine or my neighbours) today (sober) yet but I will a little later this evening. It was a curiosity rather than a need to know life/death situation.

I'll mention the layout on the thread later.

J!

The're not accurate things like hand planes so it probably wouldn't matter if you didn't flatten the base as long as you clean all the gunk off

I have smoothed off the base of a power planer before. Reason I did it was because the two sole plates (the front one and the rear one) were not aligned so that if you set the blade aligned to the rear base plate then it cut crooked when you started the cut off on the front sole plate. It seemed to me that both plates should be in perfect alignment when you set the depth of cut to "0", so I unplugged the planer, set it to zero cut, turned the blade by hand so that neither blade was showing, then ran the base over a sheet of sandpaper on the bench a number of times till any wonkiness was gone, it didn't take long and there was a big improvement in the cut. Not a "precision tool" I guess but when set up accurately and used carefully, pretty accurate. After doing the sandpaper trick I then reset the blades to match the base.

Chris.

Thanks for the info peeps. The model I have doesnt have screws on the bottom to drop the sole, but the neighbours does. I told him what you have said and he shrugged his shoulders and said cheers.

Will look further into pulling it down when I have some spare time.

Thanks again.
J!