After sharpening, plane won’t take shaving.
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24 August 2020 at 2:57 am #675222
Hello all,
I’m a bit stumped and hope someone can shed some light on what might be going on with my No 4 & 5. After sharpening up I am having trouble getting either of my planes to take a shaving. I do handsharpen and have not had any problem over the last few months so you can understand my confusion. It seems the irons bump off the leading edge (of pine no less) and never engages the surface.
I’m wondering if perhaps my angle has slowly changed to the point where it is not presenting correctly to the surface? I did spend quite some time with a honing guide to reestablish a 30° angle but am still having issues. This makes me think there is some user error going on.
If anyone has experienced a similar issue or might be able to provide me with some wisdom I would appreciate it.
24 August 2020 at 4:34 am #675228I did get a burr but it was smaller than I was used to doing it by hand.
24 August 2020 at 8:18 am #675234Hi,
Could you post a few close up photos of your plane with the the iron in place? 😁
24 August 2020 at 9:17 am #675240I had a similar thing. It may be that the burr is being raised on the curved part of the iron edge, but has not quite reached the back of the iron. Try a bit more with the honing guide until you get a good burr. That worked for me. I also invested in a good magnifying glass, that has helped a lot with my sharpening.
Logically, if you are raising a correct burr through progressive grits and honing it off, the result should be a cutting edge. Can’t be anything else. Why not check the edge? Turn it over and use it on some scrap wood as you would a chisel. If it cuts, then the edge is good and the problem is elsewhere.
However, as Colin Scowen said, the gradual effect of repeated hand-honing over time can be to gradually and imperceptibly raise the angle each time to achieve the desired burr which gives a rounded profile to the bevel – the tip of the cutting edge is honed at the correct angle but the remaining bevel behind it may exceed the bedded angle when it is mounted in a No: 4, which is usually about 45 degrees. This means that the blade is riding on a shoulder located behind the edge which is effectively raised up and can’t do any work.
You may be able to see any bump in the profile of the bevel, with good light and keen eye-sight, if you can place a 45 degree bevel along the blade profile. You can go further and it may be proved by inserting a piece of shim material – a card or similar – between the blade and the the top of the frog to raise the cutting angle of the blade from 45 degrees to somewhere near 50 degrees or more so that the edge is in contact with the work; If the blade cuts at this new attitude, check your bevel.
If you have this problem the only solution is to re-grind straight across.
Hope that this helps – I’ll confess to having the same problem some while ago!
24 August 2020 at 12:30 pm #675298Thank you all for the help! After looking more closely at the iron seated in the plane, it does appear to be riding on the back edge instead of the cutting edge. I’ll spend some more time with a guide to flatten the curve out and that should fix the issue.
Seems to me that Paul made a comment, at least once and maybe several times, about giving a bit of extra attention to the back part of the bevel. I took this to be specifically designed to address this problem. I had the problem you had a few times and now generally give a few firm extra strokes to the back part of the bevel on my course stone to keep the “hump” down. I have not had the problem since adopting this approach.
25 August 2020 at 6:21 am #675436I used a honing guide on a coarse diamond plate to take my iron back to somewhere around 25 degrees. This brought the hump back under control, and hand sharpening since then has worked well. I imagine I will go back and do the same thing again if the hump gets too pronounced in the future.
I still have to get my hand sharpening improved though, because I only have 50mm plates, and two of my plane blades are wider than that. -
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