Thread: Stanley's instructions with new planes

A few weeks ago, I ordered a new stanley 7 just to see how far off it would be once flattened, etc, vs. the planes even of the later "undesirable" type 20s, which I'm fond of.

I figured it wouldn't be that far off, but it's got a collection of little flaws (the new one) that make it not worth having at all, and none would've been difficult to avoid.


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But the more interesting thing was something I never do - read the instructions, especially on something modern. The instructions that came with the plane were actually excellent - better than the plane, talking about setup, adjustment, grinding and honing.

And...wait for it...

....setting the cap iron close for finer work. For the instructions that come with the jointer, they suggest targeting 0.5mm. By my estimates, that's about 2 hundredths - their definition of fine work might be off a little bit from what we think, but that would limit tearout for moderately heavy jointer shavings without issue.

...unfortunately, one of the design issues is how the lever cap applies pressure to the cap iron and it's really not that easy as far as I can tell to prevent the newer plane from allowing a shaving through here or there, which is intolerable. Something that generally never happens with type 20 and earlier unless there is a problem arising from replacement or damaged parts.

Since few of us have an older stanley plane with the paper instructions still included, I guess we may not know if stanley - who know makes a plane not really worth having unless you would like to replace the cap iron and augment the gap between the frog and the casting (and file the relatively thick casting ledge that will contact the iron if the frog is set back) - has always been including these bits about the cap iron.