Thread: garage sale find, again

Ws, why is it not a 'skewed rebate plane'?

I'm asking because despite a bit of searching, I don't know myself what differentiates a "shoulder plane" from an ordinary everyday rebate plane other than the term seems to have come into general use with the old (metal) "shoulder planes" of the latter part of the 1800s which have BU blades on beds around 18*. Your plane looks to have its blade set at the high angle common to most moulding planes. With its light body & high cutting angle, I suspect it will be rather disappointing at cutting cross-grain. I know Terry Gordon calls his rebate planes "shoulder planes" but I had one for a while & it was a great little rebate plane, but in my hands that 60* blade & light wooden body couldn't hold a candle to a low-angle, bevel-up job with a bit of mass when it came to planing across the grain. The skewed blade will help a bit, so on softer woods your plane may perform quite acceptably and it will excel at cutting cross-grain for jobs like cleaning up panel bevels, but I suspect it will be not so hot at cutting across bare end-grain.

The subject of why a low-angle BU plane cuts end-grain better than a BD plane using essentially the same cutting-angle has come up for discussion before, but I don't recall there were any completely satisfactory answers. My own vague idea is that the blades of BU planes tend to be a little thicker and the mechanics of the low bed angle mean the cutting force is directed more along the axis of the blade than with a BU plane, reducing the chance of blade flexing & minute chatter, but that's all conjecture on my part.

Whatever you call it, I reckon you have got yourself a very nice little plane & I predict you'll find it very handy. Some of those older planes had relatively soft blades compared with the modern alloys we've become used to, so it may not be happy planing woods like ironbark or gidgee, but should be quite happy planing "sensible" cabinet woods...

Cheers,

Thanks Ian,i have Terry Gordons 18mm Shoulder plane purchased many years ago, very useful in many circumstances, and its similarity is one reason to call mine a shoulder plane also the lack of a fence, but Terrys rebates also lack a fence so i ll just call my new plane a welcome addition. thanks again for your input and insights Ross

Ross, I think you'll find the skewed rebate a sweeter plane to use for jobs like cutting rebates across the end of a board, or trimming the cross-grain bevels on a panel, for e.g. Your HNT blade would probably be quite a bit tougher & hold its edge better, but you won't know how good the blade is until you put the new plane to some serious work. I've had quite a few old moulding planes go through my hands & found the blades a very variable feast - some were excellent, others soft enough to cut with a file at the business end. They still worked ok on pine & the sort of softer hardwoods you'd typically use for fine furniture, just needed sharpening more often than this lazy git likes....

Ian

Originally Posted by woodsurfer

what got me and I was unaware of is the boxing in front of the blade slides to open the mouth, what a great idea, Thanks RossIMG_7713.jpgIMG_7716.jpg

Hi Ross . Nice plane .
I read your post and was smiling thinking about "the sole slides to open the mouth " Yeah sure "It lost its glue" I thought .

But then I see this screw! Does it tighten the sliding sole ? That amazes me if it does . Ive never seen one like that. Can you take it apart and show more pictures please of what the screw does and how the sole works.

Rob

Hi Robert, the screw puzzled me,and you are correct, it turned further to 2 o clock, I unscrewed and removed the screw, the internal nut is only at the bottom half inch or so.If the boxing, if that it what it is called, is flushed with the nose, the iron will not sit proud of the mouth.I dont want to remove the boxing totally , as i have a long history of ,oops shouldnt have taken that off, Ross

IMG_7724.jpg

Thanks Ross .
Its a long Cheese head screw . It must thread through a plate that takes up part of the T in the T slot to tighten it up.
I sent pictures to one of my tool user / collecting Cabinet Maker friends and its a first seen for him as well on a wood skew rebate. That's a rare unusual one .

I find it a bit strange. As far as I can see, the front of the sole isn't so much "adjustable" as "removable". If it were meant to be fixed at different settings, I'd expect the screw slot to be elongated, but as far as I can see, it's just a clean, counter-sunk hole: Screw.jpg

It also looks like the blade of this plane can't be withdrawn through the wedge hole - eyeballing the depth of the wedge as it emerges into the escapement (orange oval) & the width at the top of the plane (arrow), the wedge slot looks too shallow to allow the blade to be turned on its side & removed that way: Picture1.jpg

Problem solved, I thought, the mouth needs to be opened to allow the blade through. But then I realised that with a BD blade, it will drop out through the mouth easily. What's more, it looks like a tapered blade, so it will come out even easier!

This is not the case with BU blades of course, if you want a fine mouth, the blade cannot be extruded more than a tiny amount through the available gap. I "discovered" this rather obvious fact a long time ago when I built my first shoulder plane. It's painful to admit how ignorant I was of plane design in general back then, and the only shoulder-plane I'd actually had in my hands (briefly) at that point was the Record (inherited from Preston) model. I'd seen pictures of the old cast bronze type, but never seen one in the flesh. I loved the look of the old planes so my 'design' ended up as a miscegenation of the two. But using the screw-tightened wedge/lever-cap design I came up with meant I couldn't remove the blade without disassembling the thing each time, so I added a moveable toe-piece so the blade could be pulled out from the sole end. This is the plane as I first made it: 1 SP.jpg

Yep, it looks a bit odd to me now, too, but I was as pleased as Punch with it back then The dovetailed nose-piece was my first (& most unsuccessful) attempt at metal dovetails (I filled the gaps with lead solder, making them even more visible ). The most difficult part was making a slot for the retaining screw. I did that by using a 1/4" drill as a router bit in the drill press. I had a cheap cross-slide table & by taking very shallow cuts I was eventually able to produce an elongated hole: 2 SP.jpg

This shot was taken many years later, after I'd cut off that abominable job of a nose-piece & attached a new one, much more neatly!

So I'm back to wondering why Ross's plane has that removable (adjustable?) nose-piece? I can only guess you must be able to fix it over a small range to close the mouth as the sole wears & is re-surfaced, and to compensate for the slight thinning of the blade as it is ground away.

An elaborate solution to a problem that was more commonly ignored!

Ian

I think that it could be as simple as a previous owner replacing a worn out sole on the plane.
The toe seems to wear faster as evidenced by the wear on the existing plane, and it could simply be that the screw attachment was to allow easy toe replacements when needed.
Here is an adjustable mouth rebate plane by ECE - not a canted blade though.
The whole toe can be adjusted forward and back and the adjusting screw sits in an elongated hole for the purpose
Cheers
Tom

TS_210409_020.jpgTS_210409_009.jpgTS_210409_006.jpg

What I think it has. My guess
If this yellow part of the T in the plane body has a small 3/4 length ( guess) section of brass plate then on tightening it clamps the sole where ever you want it.

IMG_7713a.jpgIMG_7713aa.jpg
The screw probably goes right through the plate a touch and a bit of an extra slot in the sole would handle that . It'd give the sole a range back and forwards to work at and it wouldn't come right out unless the screw was raised above the bottom of the plate.

Hi and thanks for the interest in the plane. It is hard to believe it has been modified in any way, the boxwood sole , if that what timber it is ,is factory fitted to the highest level of precision and shows compatible wear to the rest of the plane body.Google comes up with a Preston plane,same size and function ,but lacking these features,nice to have an element of mystery, thanks Ross

Hi Woodsurfer,
I am willing to bet that the removable boxing in front of the blade is a home-made modification to a standard skewed-blade wooden rebate plane.
Why?
Because I did the same type of modification to a standard straight-blade wooden rebate plane back in the 1980s when I wanted to make a "poor man's" shoulder plane. The main differences in my plane was that the top of the sliding boxing was just a straight groove and there was a straight tongue on the matching part of the plane body - so the tongue fitted into the groove.
I drilled a hole down from the top to take a threaded rod and I tapped a threaded hole into the sliding boxing to secure the rod. I used a wing nut on the top of the rod to tighten up the sliding boxing hard against the plane body so it did not move.
For adjustment of the sliding boxing to open and close the mouth, I just widened the hole in the plane body so the rod could wiggle back and forth about 2 to 3 mm. Shoulder planes are supposed to have tight mouths so it didn't need to move much in order to get a narrow mouth in front of the blade. Basically a very crude adjustment mechanism - check how much wiggle you have back and forth when the screw on the plane is loose.
It worked OK for me but was never as good as a metal shoulder plane.

Terry Gordon differentiates between shoulder planes and rebate planes in that the rebate plane has a 4° skew to them and he calls them "Skewed Rebate" planes. I has always assumed (stress the assumption) that the skewed blades were a refinement for pulling the plane into the timber on long rebates with the grain. However, if that is correct, a left and a right skew would be required to always plane with the grain and he only offers one orientation. Also I note that Terry maintains they are suitable for planing across the grain too.



Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Scribbly Gum

I think that it could be as simple as a previous owner replacing a worn out sole on the plane.
The toe seems to wear faster as evidenced by the wear on the existing plane, and it could simply be that the screw attachment was to allow easy toe replacements when needed.
Here is an adjustable mouth rebate plane by ECE - not a canted blade though.
The whole toe can be adjusted forward and back and the adjusting screw sits in an elongated hole for the purpose
Cheers
Tom

TS_210409_020.jpgTS_210409_009.jpgTS_210409_006.jpg

It makes sense to have the mouth adjustable when there is a chipbreaker on the blade. I kind of wondered if it was necessary on a rebate plane but looks like its been done that way for a long time in nothern europe. I found this clip of a guy in Finland rebuilding an old one.


Making a Wooden Rabbet / Shoulder Plane - YouTube

Regards
John

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

.... assumed (stress the assumption) that the skewed blades were a refinement for pulling the plane into the timber on long rebates with the grain. However, if that is correct, a left and a right skew would be required to always plane with the grain and he only offers one orientation. Also I note that Terry maintains they are suitable for planing across the grain too....

Paul, imo, skewing the blade is primarily for improving the quality of cut when planing cross-grain, pulling the plane against the shoulder of the rebate is sort of a secondary benefit. Whether you need a left & right model to cover all eventualities is a moot point. Most of us would use a skewed rebate with the leading edge against the shoulder - it seems sort of natural, but when I made my dovetail plane, I followed (very loosely) a plane a bloke on some American site made & he insisted the trailing edge should go against the shoulder. I was a bit reluctant to copy the idea but decided I'd give it a go. The plane works really well. It has a nicker, which helps, but I would have to make mirror image of the plane to see if having the leading edge against the shoulder makes any difference, & since it took 20 plus years to get around to making the one I have, I don't thing that's likely to happen.

Some day when I have nothing better to do I will rig up my skewed dado planes with temporary fences so one can cut a rebate with the leading edge against the shoulder & the other trailing to see if there is any different in cut quality one way or the other....
Cheers,