Reply To: Reply To: Hand Planing

A toothed blade can be used when dealing with knots, but doesn’t need to be an expensive piece of additional equipment.  This is what I do;

1.  Prepare a spare 2″ plane iron in the usual way, then divide and mark the edge – using a sharpie – into 12.

2. Using a fine triangular file or Dremel cutting disc nick the edge so it’s grooved to a depth of 1/16″ – 1/8″.

3. Remove resulting burs from plane iron and re-fit the cap iron/chip breaker.

You now have a toothed blade that’s capable of dealing with gnarly grain and knots with, against, across or diagonal to the grain.  It can be fitted into a #04 or #05 plane at a moments notice, or you can keep it fitted in a spare plane for the sole purpose of toothing problem surfaces prior to finishing with a smoother. 😉

Grooving a plane edge will not draw or damage it’s temper and is fully reversable via grinding back to create a clean edge.

Another option I favour is to grind a radius the leading edge of your #05 jack plane iron, creating a cambered edge.  The curve/arc can vary, but I find an 8″ radius works well.  This provides a cutting edge similar in nature to that of a scrub plane and is ideal when preparing rough stock prior to smoothing and works extremely well when encountering knots.

I hope this helps in some way.