Thread: Dual Record 405/ Stanley 55 kerfing blade

I previously made a kerfing blade for a Record 405.
It works very well but of course the time came when I had the 405 set up as a kerf plane, wanted to use one of the special bases on the 405 and had to disturb my kerfing set-up in the middle of a job.


I also have a 55 which I’ve seen elsewhere online used as a kerfing plane. I could have repeated the process and made a second kerfing blade for the 55 but I might have ended up with a slightly different sized kerf. Ideally I wanted to use the same 405 kerfing blade in the 55 as well since I have saws set-up with the same kerf to complete the re-saw cut.


I knew that the bar spacing on the 405/45 is different from the 55 so I wasn’t hopeful. I didn’t want to end up with overlapping holes which would weaken the blade.

405bladeon55.jpg405 blade on the 55

However on first look things were very promising. I slipped the blade onto the rear 55 bar and found that the position of the rear bar and the blade holding assembly are pretty much the same on the 405/45 and 55. A few minor tweaks were required at the handle end for clearance but the blade lay flat against the main body and best of all the front bar on the 55 is significantly further forward. I could drill another hole to accommodate the 55 front bar well away from the 405 fitting. I was surprised how easy it was to drill the hole second time around. The first time I made the kerfing blade I agonised over the process and it took me some time to mark and drill the holes to match the 405 body. Second time around it was a five minute job to mark the centre point on the second hole for the 55 with a 9.5mm drill through the body, then complete the drill and ream it out to size. Thankfully the 405/45 and 55 are the same diameter bars (slightly larger than 9.5mm, probably 3/8”)



The problem came when I went to fit the sliding section against the blade. Big gap between the sliding section and the blade over most of the length.
Looking at the sliding section on the 405(left below) compared to the 55 (right) it’s easy to see the problem. The 405 slider sits flush to the main body but there are are a couple of flanges on the inside of the 55 sliding section which fit into recesses on the main body.
405flush.jpg 55slidingflanges.jpg


I sought out the online examples again to see how they had coped with this. One site said to use a screw through the 55 sliding section to push the blade against the main body.
I didn’t really like this since it would only pinch the blade at one point at the bottom of the skates.
I wondered if I could fit a spacer to completely fill the gap.
My eye cast about the shed and fell on an old Epson scanner, destined for the recycling yard since it failed the Windows 10 compatibility test. The top fold-over cover was a bit of plastic the right thickness.


Easy enough to mark out an outline from the blade, the holes to suit the sliding section flanges were drilled with a ¾ auger and then filed to size, the flanges are between ¾ and 20mm (my two available drill sizes).

55spacer1.jpg 55spacer2.jpgFitting spacer to sliding section flanges

Result is that the blade is firmly sandwiched across the entire space between the main body and the sliding section.
55spacer3.jpg

I'll probably need a deeper fence and making a new fence for the 55 is not as easy as the 405, the 55 fences can swivel so have a curved rear profile. However I’m not trying to replace a missing fence, I have the existing ones to measure and if I can’t cut a suitable profile on a piece of deeper fence material with the 55 then I should probably give up.