Thread: Howard Adjuster?

Luke, I was idly checking my mail whilst having a cup of coffee this afternoon and saw the Eckert letter. I was also intrigued, & had a look, just to see what it was about. Well, like many good ideas, it's pretty simple, just a bearing pushed onto the knob in place of the usual turned disc which engages the slot at the back of the blade. My first thought was that it is a bit over-killish, but, on second thought I had to admit it's quite a neat idea that probably does just what it's intended to do! It's pretty obvious the way it functions is to keep the bit of metal that's actually pressing on the blade, static, while the knob goes back & forth - like the throw-out bearing on a dry clutch. With the solid disc on an ordinary knob, the friction of the disc turning against the blade can slew the blade to right or left as you screw the adjuster knob in or out. This is assuming that you back off the lever cap screw a tad before adjusting the depth, as I always do. It might not be so noticeable if you leave the lever cap tight, I don't know, I always reduce the pressure because I think it puts too much strain on the adjuster mechanism if you don't - there are a lot of old Norrises with very sloppy adjusters, & it's said that this is the reason why. Whatever, the slewing during depth adjusting is damned annoying, because every time you adjust the depth, you have to re-adjust the lateral setting as well. I have a couple of planes on which this happens all the time, and it is a right pita.

In fact, that quirk has always been one of my reasons for disliking the "Norris" style of adjuster. The other is that they are too coarse, particularly in their present LV incarnations. This gadget might solve one of the problems.....

Chers,

Ahhhh, ok. That actually makes perfect sense.

It also explains why I was unfamiliar with my #8 with the Bailey style adjuster.

I wonder if they would work with any of the LV planes. Probably not.