Reply To: Record 044. How to set it?
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Thanks Howard,
More good information for future readers of this thread. LOL – British Standard Thumbnail (BST) indeed.
As it turned out the critical problem on these two planes was the RHS blade offset. 1/2 a millimeter is a lot but I will probably try that experiment. What I did was fall back to scientific method. The punch line was that I places a 0.010″ shim on the RHS of the upper portion of the blade. This had the effect on my planes of moving the cutting edge of the blade to the right about the same amount.
At first I considered this a temporary test/solution however I don’t have an urge to do much more as I’ll explain below. There were a few other issues with the combination plane that I won’t elaborate on other than to say that the skate was higher than the blade on the RHS and getting the blade out or more to the right as you noted fixed the issue I was seeing.
I noted that the 043 and 044 had pretty much interchangeable blades if one was willing to forego the fine adjustment features of the 044. So I took the blade off my 043 which was a home made 1/4″ blade and put it on the 044 after removing the fine adjustment screw then I just set it the way I set my 043. Since I knew the blade was good I kind of eliminated that variable. Sure enough progressive cuts towards the outside and the CST (Canadian Standard Thumbnail) read pretty much like the BST that the blade was not protruding enough or at all. I inserted the shim and voila problem solved. I’m skipping over all the operator error bits of course including the part where the lower part of the fence was just touching the vice jaw therefore limiting my depth of cut – but I’m still on my morning coffee over here so…
I re-assembled the 044 with it’s blade and the shim and we have a happy plane.
Why no filing: Paul Sellers had noted that his blades don’t have a relief angle on the sides but as you noted above the factory blades I have do have this relief. Personally I think the relief would be essential for deep grooves but I don’t have any experience in wood to say if this is true or not so I am inclined to take your advice on this matter.
My blades do not have this relief, at least not after the first inch or so behind the cutting edge. The amount the blade had to move to get it cutting correctly was very small. Adding a relief, which I may do at some point would move the blade to the right because the step that clamps the blade on the RHS is only about 1/3 the thickness of the blade itself. I might end up with factory blades some day and I don’t really want to move it any further to the right than I have to. The shim is trivial to install and adjustable so if I wanted 0.5mm I could do it and have it reversible. (I also have commitment issues :-).
I’m still curious where Bow and Alan ended up though.
Pre-history? This information is timeless IMHO.
Best Regards.
Ian