Reply To: Stanley #4 not cutting
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I had similar problems to you recently. Here are some points to check.
1) Screw together the iron and the chip breaker with the chip breaker between half a mm and 1mm away from the tip of the iron. Make sure it is on the right way. The chip breaker should be making contact with the flat side of the iron. Hold the whole assembly up towards the light and look through the gaps on the sides. You should NOT be able to see any light at all coming through the contact point between the chip breaker and the iron. Check from both sides.
If there is any light coming through, you have to flatten the edge of the chip breaker. Rub it on some sandpaper and it should flatten out so that you get no light coming through there.
While you’re working on the chip breaker, you may aswell polish out the front because this helps the shavings glide out more easily.
This is a major cause of the problems you are experiencing. When this happens the shavings get stuck in that gap between the iron and the chip breaker and then the whole plane gets stuck and just generally decides to not work properly.
2) Check the flatness of the frog. Take the frog out and take out the big screw. Rub it on some sandpaper one side at a time until you get to some fresh shiny metal. Don’t go too heavy on this.
3) Position of the frog. The frog should be almost right at the mouth. Try to get it as close as possible. Others have theirs right at the front but me I have mine a little further back where you can just about see the metal pads underneath the frog. Works perfectly either way but don’t go too far back.
After you do these things, the plane should at the very least be in the ballpark of usable and just need minor tweaking to get it to work to the best of its ability.