Quote Originally Posted by KahoyKutter View Post
..... not only does the skew of the blade impart a slicing action akin to skewing a normal blade, but the skew had the added benefit of pulling the blade and the plane hard against the shoulder of the rebate. I don't know if there's any truth to that but it certainly felt like it when I was comparing my LN skew planes with my HE rebate block plane but that could've just been the "placebo effect" on a handplane novice. Make of that what you will....
Mike, I applaud your honesty in assessing the skew effect - we do need to be aware of the 'placebo' effect whenever evaluating any new tool!. You would certainly expect a skewed blade to be forced from the leading edge toward the trailing edge side as it's pushed through the work, but there are a few other factors that could modify or negate that effect, so it's wise to remain somewhat agnostic about it, imo.

Apart from my natural skepticism borne of a working life in research, I have the experience of my dovetail plane to make me cautious about making too many pronouncements about the skew effect. I was inspired to make a second dovetail plane by an article I found on the web. Mine has a few departures from the one I was loosely following, but I did observe the suggested blade orientation & made it with the trailing edge of the skewed blade against the 'corner' of the dovetail:
Done.jpg D_T Plane.jpg

The bloke didn't give any theoretical reasons why it should be this way, as I recall, he just said something like "I've made several dovetail planes & found this way to be better than the opposite way". Having made only one crude D/T plane up 'til then I thought I'd follow greater experience, so I did it his way. I can report that my plane works very nicely and the "opposite" skew doesn't seem to want to throw the blade away from the shoulder, at least not noticeably. But having the corner of the blade in a trailing mode does seem to tear out a lot less than the other plane I made, where I oriented it with the corner leading...

Cheers,
Ian