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Thread: Help tuning hand plane
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10th December 2019, 11:13 PM #1Senior Member
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Help tuning hand plane
I've been having a hard time getting the blade right in my jointer plane. There's no easy way to explain the issues, but with the lack of other options, I'm going to try with a few pictures.
20191210_223603.jpg
This is the plane. Earlier version Bedrock. I was lucky I found it in reasonable condition from a seller who didn't know Bedrocks are a Stanley special edition! Hell, I wouldn't have known - it doesn't say Stanley anywhere!
20191210_223641.jpg
This is the gist of my problems: the blade, at normal depth setting doesn't reach the bottom of the mouth, the mouth is too narrow, or both. This is the blade set at a very deep setting. You see the front of the mouth almost closed up. Shavings get stuck there too often when I'm jointing. The following pictures will elaborate.
20191210_223908.jpg
This is the depth setting with the blade removed. You see that when you're starting out at a relatively deep setting, the wheel becomes very hard to turn. Especially with a 1" knob (the later revision replaced it with a 1.25" knob). Now, this is either to do with an incompatible blade, the blade thickness, or the size of the mouth opening.
20191210_223929.jpg
Here's the depth setting at the knob. Ok, just move the frog back if the mouth isn't big enough, you might say. Because Bedrocks' frogs are at an angle, moving the frog back will also be moving it up, and the blade is too shallow to begin with, so moving the frog back means I have to set the blade deeper, which means closing up the mouth more. Moving the frog forward, of course, means closing up the mouth. This is the optimum setting to get the blade to protrude with the minimal amount of effort in my tinkerings.
20191210_224020.jpg
This is the blade, which may be the culprit - HSS blade that's a bit thicker than the stock Stanley blade. You can see here how much the cap iron is backed up. This is a bit more than my usual setting, but I want to get the blade as deep as possible. I'm jointing, not smoothing. What do you think of this cap iron setting?
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HSS blade (sorry for the blurry pic - it's a Titan)
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Side profile of HSS blade
So, what's the diagnosis? Incompatible blade? File the mouth wider? Or completely standard?
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11th December 2019, 12:00 AM #2
Check that the end of the cap iron hasn’t been shortened; maybe try an assembly straight out of another plane if you have one.
The slightly thicker Titan iron shouldn’t adversely affect the plane; I have Titan and Stanley HSS tipped irons in all my users and they only needed the frogs backing off a tiny tweak to keep the mouths open enough.Nothing succeeds like a budgie without a beak.
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11th December 2019, 09:33 AM #3
What the Chief said. To elaborate, it's the cap-iron/chipbreaker that does all the blade setting on Mr. Bailey's creation, the blade has nothing to do with depth setting, otherwise you wouldn't be able to use it up. A thicker blade can cause trouble with short cap-iron screws, but won't alter setting range, as long as it's not so thick the cam can't reach through to engage the slot on the cap-iron properly. That's highly unlikely, the after-market blades are thicker than the old factory blades, but usually not thick enough to put he cam slot out of reach unless the cam is badly worn or damaged (which does happen, so check that aspect as well).
The slot on the cap-iron that engages the cam of the adjuster yoke has to be just the right distance from the end of the cutting edge of he blade. The Bailey adjuster doesn't allow much blade travel so it's critical that you use the correct cap-iron for your plane. Cap-irons get switched & swapped & fiddled with and there are a lot of planes out there with mis-matched irons, so your situation is far from unique (in fact there was a discussion along these lines not so long ago, but I can't find it - maybe someone else remembers where it is!)! Having to wind the thumb-wheel almost off the stud to get blade exposure is a dead giveaway that the cap-iron is a couple of mm too short - that's all it takes with the Bailey adjuster.
It can be enormously frustrating when you first strike a bodgie cap-iron. I know only too well, because I had a similar situation with a #4 I found in a junk shop, way back when my knowledge of how the adjuster actually works was vanishingly small. After much fiddling & faddling & getting increasingly annoyed & frustrated, I sat down with a cup of coffee and a clear mind, stripped the thing down & studied the mechanism for a minute or two until the penny dropped. I then compared the cap-iron with one from a similar model - there was not a lot of difference, but I tried the slightly longer one in the dud plane, and problem solved. A lesson was learned!
It's not quite so easy if you don't have a 'proper' sized cap-iron you can just drop in to test - dimensions seem to have changed a little over the years, and/or cap-irons get damaged & altered, so don't assume that any old cap-iron from a similar sized Stanley will fit, it may or it may not. At least one Forumite I know of has got himself into trouble by over-vigorous filing of a cap-iron to get a better edge & angle, which serves to illustrate how close to correct things need to be for it to function properly.
The safest approach is to figure out what length the cap-iron should be to get the right blade travel, i.e., from comfortably retracted to the greatest amount of blade exposure you are ever likely to dial up. To do this, I screw the thumb-wheel to approximately it's mid-point, which should have the cam sitting more or less perpendicular to the blade-bed. Starting from here, the cam is operating at maximum efficiency over the normal adjustment range - when it gets near either end of its travel, you have lost a significant degree of leverage, and the wheel gets very hard to turn under normal lever-cap pressures. Now set the cap-iron several mm back from the cutting edge & sit it in the plane, engaging the cam in its slot. Adjust the position of the cap-iron by trial & error until the cutting edge is just on the point of exposure. If you have a very good eye & score it in a single go, good for you, but it can get a bit tedious because you have to take the blade assembly out, loosen the screw, adjust & replace & check again, but I don't think it's ever taken me more than 3 or 4 tries to sort it out.
Once you have the cutting edge sitting at the point of exposure when the cam in its 'neutral' position, carefully measure the distance from the cam-slot to where the edge of the cap-iron should be (just shy of the cutting edge by your preferred amount of set-back), and then all you have to do is find or make a cap-iron which matches that dimension. If all else fails, cap-irons are fairly easy to make if you have a little bit of metal-working experience and a bit of gear (like the right size tap for the screw hole). I like to use 3mm stainless steel, which solves any rusting issues forever more, on that component. In fact, I'm making one atm, using my Heath-Robinson bending jig: CI second bend.jpg
Very basic, but it does the job, with much care setting up for each bend, particularly for a skewed iron! This one only needs a screw-hole drilled & tapped, no lever-cap screw hole or cam-slot required. I'm not sure exactly where I want to put the screw yet, so I'll leave it here until the time comes to fit it in the plane: CI sanded.jpg
Cheers,IW
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12th December 2019, 12:13 AM #4Senior Member
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Thanks! It did turn out to be the chip breaker. I found a longer one, but unfortunately it's chipped. Is this an issue?
20191211_234234.jpg
Anyway, the longer chip breaker definitely helped but it didn't turn it into the smooth turning dream that I hoped for. Definitely easier to turn than before, though, but the mouth is still a bit closed for my liking.
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12th December 2019, 08:19 AM #5
Might be. The edge should fit tightly all along the blade, you may find that it's a good starting point for shavings & chips to work their way between the cap-iron & blade. This causes a very rapid & noticeable decline in performance! Anyway, it will get you going & you can keep an eye out for a good one if it does give you any bother.
Is the adjuster cam starting out more or less perpendicular to the blade bed when the blade is right on the point of exposure? The arc of travel a bit either side of that gives the most efficient push or pull on the cap-iron. Is the fit of the cam in the slot comfortably loose (i.e. not binding)? Is the cam itself reasonably smooth & not damaged? Does the wheel spin freely with blade removed? A bit of judiciously-applied 'dry' lubricant on the thread & yoke axle can be a big help (avoid oil, it's a dust & dirt magnet). And finally, how much pressure are you applying with the lever cap?
The lever-cap cam should press down fairly easily, it doesn't take anywhere near as much pressure to do its job as I used to think when I started out. We were taught at school to always keep the adjuster wheel in its "forward" position, so that it resists any tendency for the blade to be pushed back by a heavy cut. Out of habit, I still spin the wheel back faithfully after backing-off he blade, though I occasionally forget and the blade doesn't seem to move, so that may be another hoary chestnut that's never been fully tested.
The tight mouth should be a relatively easy issue to fix. As CT said, the difference in blade thickness between the Titan and the original Stanley is nothing like some of the significantly thicker blades kicking around now. From the pic of the back of your frog, it doesn't look like the locking screws have been touched in a while - have you tried adjusting the frog? The good thing about the Bedrock like yours is you can adjust the mouth with the blade in place, so it's a very easy job (as long as the locking screws haven't seized!).
Ideal mouth size is a matter of personal preference. You don't need a huge gap to let the shavings through - 3-5 thou is a pretty heavy shaving, and 5 thou is a pretty small gap! However, some woods wrinkle up more than others and will pack in a too-tight mouth which can cause you much annoyance & frustration. Jointers & jacks are often expected to take heavy cuts, and the quality of the surface they leave isn't all that critical (within reason), so I maintain generous mouths on my jointers & jacks....
Keep fooling with it, you're gaining some valuable knowledge. I'm sure you'll get it sorted eventually, and have a superb user - my #7 (Bailey frog) is one of the most-used planes in my kit. I got it at a flea-market at a bargain price probably because it looked a bit rough, but the roughness was only superficial; a good clean, a new Hock blade, and it worked a treat!
Cheers,IW
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12th December 2019, 02:08 PM #6Senior Member
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oh yea, just a random question - in the case of totes without a screw at the front, instead just a hole for the metal nipple - if that gets loose, how do you tighten it?
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12th December 2019, 06:36 PM #7
Never encountered the problem, meself, or at least not enough to try to do anything about it. It's not a particularly tight fit on any of my planes without toe screws. I assume the nipple is there just to help prevent the tote from twisting. The angled main stud also resists twisting, as long as it's kept tight.
I guess if I decided it was a problem, my natural impulse would be to make a new tote, unless it's a pre-WW2 job with good Rosewood woodwork. But if I decided I had to repair one, I'd consider one of two approaches. The simplest & crudest would be to clean out the over-large hole, wax the nipple and bed, mix up a dollop of builders bog (or similar stuff), part-fill the nipple-hole with bog & quickly drop the tote in place & press or screw it down 'til the bog goes off. Once the bog has set, tidy up any squeeze-out, & Bob's your aunty. The 'sympathetic' repair would be to splice in a piece of matching wood drill a new nipple hole. It's a cow of a job, getting that hole in precisely the right spot. The large hole in the tote for the boss (if there is one), or oblique stud-hole if there is no boss, makes it very difficult to get accurate measurements to set it out. I've lost track of the number of handles I've made, but still haven't figured out a fool-proof method....
Cheers,IW
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13th December 2019, 10:11 AM #8Deceased
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