Thread: Accuracy of new No. 62 low angle Jack.

Originally Posted by IanW

I put "where it matters" in italics because I think we should distinguish.

That is a very good point to make, and one my Dad instilled in me long ago when he taught me how to do finish joinery in new homes. Some tasks require that extra effort (scribing architraves / skirting boards etc) to achieve a "professional look" and yet others can as you say be left "off saw" because in reality nobody will ever see them, except in the rarest of circumstances.

Anyone familiar with vintage / antique furniture construction or even classy fit-outs such as court magistrates benches can attest to the fact that one can find some pretty ordinary, in fact very ugly, stuff hidden under that very beautiful facade. I've seen timber recovered from a magistrates bench that was dressed two sides only with the other under / inside face left very rough off saw and the edge rough because it was covered by a moulding.

As can be seen in the photo there is no lateral adjustment and also the bed is machined so that the tolerance is so tight that there is no wriggle
room to move the blade laterally.

IMG_0769.jpg

Safari, it's a bit hard to see exactly what the situation is from the pic. It looks like there are a couple of mm each side between the blade & sidewalls, but I'm assuming the bed is machined too closely down toward the toe & the blade is trapped by the edges?

If that is the case, all I can say is that this plane must have been designed by someone who never uses planes seriously! If you sharpen blades by machine to very fine tolerances to maintain perfectly even blade protrusion you could get away with not having lateral adjustment. But I defy anyone to sharpen so accurately & so consistently in everyday usage and there will always be reasons why you may want to make minor corrections, particularly if you are a 'hand' sharpener like me. I can keep my blades very close to square but rarely perfect, so I always have need of some lateral adjustment. As I said above, any 'out of squareness' on a low angle blade is 'amplified' compared with a 45* bed, & takes more lateral movement to correct. A plane without lateral adjustment would drive me insane (well, more insane, if you like)!

So I don't think I could live with your plane, no matter how perfectly it was made if I couldn't move that blade over...

Cheers,
Ian

Originally Posted by IanW

Co-incidently, that's the year FWW kicked off, or did you choose that date for that reason?

I was taught to shoot ends where it mattered, in the 1950s so it was a well established practice with me long before 1975 (and often necessary given I didn't yet own a tablesaw). I put "where it matters" in italics because I think we should distinguish. Ends that aren't going to be a reference surface or need to meet another surface precisely can usually be left "off saw", & as I've argued many times before, a good cutoff blade in a decent tablesaw can eliminate the need for much end-shooting. Most end-shooting I do these days is on long edges like carcase sides where I need to use the edge as a reference to lay out the joinery - these won't fit on my shooting board anyway & have to be done by hand.

Long edges can be dealt with pretty effectively with machinery too, though high quality long-bed jointers aren't in every weekend warrior's workshop, and as far as I'm concerned, it would take a very good (&very expensive!) machine to match the fit of hand-planed edges , so being able to shoot these is a skill well worth acquiring, I think.

But of course much depends on what you are making - I have been doing some fitting of dividers & internal bits in boxes & desks quite a bit this last year or two & found myself using a shooting board for the first time in a very long while. My shooting board was covered in dust & starting to delaminate, & needed a bit of maintenance, but it got the jobs done. I'm ashamed of the thing & really should make a new one but I'll most likely forget about it 'til the next time I need a shooting board, which could be anything from months to years from now...

Cheers

I was just guessing when hobby woodworking started to hit its stride again here in the states. Point about the shooting of ends is in hand work, it's little discussed 125- 250 years ago. Edges were probably critical due to the desire to have rub joints and gluing thin stuff that we've replaced with plywood.

If that's the year fww came back, it's a pretty good guess!

You keep saying that there is no lateral adjuster.

If I remember these planes correctly then it is true that there is no dedicated lateral adjuster. However, the lateral adjustment integrated in the adjuster for blade advancement. The blade is engaged with a pin and the adjuster has a pivot point. By moving the adjuster know side to side you can squareness cutting edge up.

At least that is the idea. A bit fiddly and a small hammer works better, I admit.

Off course that all doesn't work if the blade has no room to move in the bed.

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

pictures of the plane show the adjuster wheel right up against the top of the iron. How practical is the lateral adjustment set up like that and how much does it affect the projection of the blade to jostle it around?

Thinking even of the long norris adjusters, the problem with those is that when you want to change one thing, both things may change. So inevitably when I had a norris adjuster plane and used it for a while, I ditched the idea of using the later adjuster and then had to be very sparing with adjusting blade depth because you could accidentally mess up lateral, and the converse, etc.

Originally Posted by safari

As can be seen in the photo there is no lateral adjustment and also the bed is machined so that the tolerance is so tight that there is no wriggle
room to move the blade laterally.

IMG_0769.jpg

Check the width of the blade. The plane is an LN, and the blade should be 2" wide. I bet it is a little oversized. It's an easy fix - just run the side of the blade along a stationary belt sander. Remove 0.5mm from each side. That will offer sufficient wiggle room using finger pressure.

Regards from Perth

Derek

From the ad copy quoted and a google search, this is the Australian-made plane with a 10V iron. If it has been designed so the iron has no room to be adjusted laterally, that's really strange. I suppose the expectation is that you need to have some sharpening contraption so that the edge is perfectly square.

Does anybody else has one of these planes? Is it possible the iron shipped with the OP's plane is actually too wide? It sounds strange as well, given all the emphasis on high tolerances for flatness and squareness in the ad copy. They didn't get the iron width right?

Rafael

I take that back. It is a Henry Eckert and not a LN. The HE blade has rounded corners and the LN has clipped corners.

Fix is as before. Or contact David Eckert.

Regards from Perth

Derek

My expectations of a plane purchased from a modern boutique maker and for the sum mentioned would be that it is spot on. And I am sure that the HE company would have intended the same. This is not a rusty, broken handled, chipped blade, sawdust encrusted $20 "bargain".

Originally Posted by Cklett

....... If I remember these planes correctly then it is true that there is no dedicated lateral adjuster. However, the lateral adjustment integrated in the adjuster for blade advancement. The blade is engaged with a pin and the adjuster has a pivot point. By moving the adjuster know side to side you can squareness cutting edge up.
....

Ck, the ad copy sates specifically that there is no lateral adjuster. As you can see in the posted pic, there are no holes in the blade for an adjuster pin. I assume the depth adjuster on the plane in question is something very close to what the original 62, has, which is derived from one of Stanley's early block planes. They use a fixed shaft for the knob and an L-shaped plate with a 'dimple' that engages slots on the underside of the blade. This allows for some lateral movement of the blade, but you have to tap it or twist it over with a screwdriver blade.

I'm assuming from safari's description, the blade in the plane in question is trapped by very close machining of the bed, preventing any lateral movement, which seems like a very silly idea to me, but may have some benefits I'm missing....

Cheers,
Ian

Originally Posted by IanW

Ck, the ad copy sates specifically that there is no lateral adjuster. As you can see in the posted pic, there are no holes in the blade for an adjuster pin...

My apologies, I must have missed that. I thought the pin hole might have been under the sticky tape.

Anyway, I agree a plane should always allow for some lateral adjustment.


Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Thanks for all the new replies.
Ian said "I'm assuming from safari's description, the blade in the plane in question is trapped by very close machining of the bed, preventing any lateral movement, which seems like a very silly idea to me, but may have some benefits I'm missing" which is correct. The machining is so tight that there is no lateral room at all.

Derek is right, it is a Henry Eckert plane. I bought it because I wanted to support an Australian manufacturer.
I will talk to David Eckert but when I originally talked to him about it he did not think 0.15mm was an issue for woodworking. He also said that if I was concerned I should post it back for inspection which is very good of him.(as I said originally I am only an amateur so my measurements may not be up to engineering standards)

I originally posted because I was hoping that the forum experts could tell me if I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Thanks once again for your great replies.
Safari

if someone sends you a CNC tool and:
1) there is a 0.006" error in machining, or
2) there is no ability to adjust the iron laterally (you can grind it, but it's 10V - it will be a bear to grind dimensionally without a high speed belt grinder and ceramic belts)

I'd return it. If it turns out to be a measuring error on your part, I'd make the decision myself if I were you - grinding is not impossible.

if the error is correct and shooting was important to you, it's a principle issue - the boasts of accuracy and process and an error of that size don't go together, and you're not getting what you paid for.

The combination in this case seems to be - my opinion - someone making tools and outsourcing some of the work without either party using woodworking tools or viewing this from the customer's focus.