Needs more lateral adjustment
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Tools and Tool Maintenance/Restoration / Needs more lateral adjustment
- This topic has 11 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 3 months ago by Salko Safic.
-
AuthorPosts
-
24 January 2016 at 11:27 pm #134164
I apologize if this question has been asked before but I’m having a hard time describing my problem in a short and accurate way to get a search result.
I have a few second hand planes 2 no. 4s and a no. 7. All of these planes bias the lateral adjustment one side or the other. Two of them “bottom out” in one direction and I’m still unable to get the iron even along the width of the plane when I test it on a thin stock of wood.
The iron edge is square in each situation.
I’ve tried setting and resetting the iron cap in a bunch of different configurations (as square and centered as possible, biased one way or the other, skewed slightly) and this doesn’t seem to resolve the problem.
I have tried to realign the frog with limited success but it’s still heavily favored to one side.
Any pointers?
24 January 2016 at 11:41 pm #134165I would believe the culprit lays with the chipbreaker, I believe the chipbreaker has been tampered with and for good reason. You see there is a consensus out there that is if you hone a secondary bevel on the chipbreaker higher than 45deg. you will be able to plane any timber even against the grain with zero tearout. Now I know how unbelievable that sounds but it is true as it does work and I’ve seen it work but if you hone too much you will shorten the chipbreaker and you will not be able to protrude the blade through the mouth. If you have another chipbreaker install it and see if that fixes it, if it does viola. You can always use that worn out one to make dowels with so don’t throw it away.
I hope this helps.
You mention “The iron edge is square in each situation”; just confirming that means the leading (sharp) edge definitely hasn’t been ground with a large skew? I’ve picked up at least one old plane that was like that (and the previous user had messed with the frog to try to – unsuccessfully – counter it).
Are the toes (I don’t know the proper nomenclature) of the frog lined up with the rear of the mouth opening (i.e. pretty straight)?
Can you swap an iron + chipbreaker from a “good” plane and test that (a #4 1/2 or #5 1/2 should also be suitable for the #7 I think).
Unlikely, but is the sole casting way out of square (i.e. is the sole flat)?
Could you post some photos showing the problem?
Salko- I’ve never heard of doing that with the cap iron. Interesting! If I’m picturing what you’re saying correctly, couldn’t he just move the cap iron way, way back from the edge and see if he can get the lateral adjustment right? If so, then he knows its the cap iron and can go looking for a different one (that can be placed at a proper distance from cutting edge)?
I’d take the plane apart and put it back together (see Paul’s recent video for restoring a plane) and look at everything….Is the frog lined up parallel to the mouth? Is the pin for the lateral adjuster centered? Is it centered in the slot on the blade assembly? Is the cap iron itself square across, or is it going on a little skewed? A bunch of “little bit off” on each of these could add up.
My planes always seem to end up with the lateral adjuster off to the side, not in the middle, but it doesn’t bottom out unless it is time to square up the iron again.
27 January 2016 at 11:52 am #134241Sorry for the late reply Ed, what you say is true if it is the cap iron then that is the only temporary fix until he purchases a new one. I’ve been planning on doing a blog on this topic as the findings are quite remarkable and revolutionary in planing. To give you a quick overview of what I’m referring to if you hone a secondary bevel on your cap iron you can plane any timber even against the grain resulting in zero tear out. I have tried this myself but ended honing too much and therefore shortening my cap iron rendering it useless. I was not able to expose the blade through the mouth all be it a tiny portion without breaking the glue bond on the adjustment screw which I did and later repaired. That’s why I made mention of it when I saw this post.
27 January 2016 at 1:09 pm #134245An update on my situation is that I took the whole iron assembly along with the lever cap from another plane of the same type and put it in the offending plane and everything lines up (not sure why I didn’t think of that myself). So I’m not sure what it is exactly but I think I can narrow it down by process of elimination and I would guess I need to find a new cap iron to use. I haven’t looked around yet but I doubt those would be that difficult to find new or used.
I’m looking forward to your blog post. What you say is consistent with a video I once saw showing a slow motion video of planing and the role of the chip breaker.
BUT!!! More importantly…..I have an idea for the original poster!! I tuned a plane yesterday on which the frog would not sit parallel to the mouth. This was a Bailey style frog, so it had two vertical bolts that hold the frog to the sole and then, back near the tote, a U-shaped piece screwed to the back of the frog. This U-shaped piece is captured on a specialized adjusting screw that is used to set the mouth opening. See Paul’s video around 1:00:40 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYyV6IUpsYk ).
On my plane, either this U-shaped piece was twisted or the adjusting screw wasn’t bored true. The result constrained the frog from sitting parallel to the mouth. Since this adjustability isn’t essential, I loosened the bolt that binds the U-shaped bracket to give it some play and then was able to set the frog correctly parallel to the mouth and then tighten it down with the two vertical bolts.
Maybe this is happening on your plane?
By the way, if the mouth is not square to the sides of the plane (maybe someone filed it?) or if the frog is not level on the sole of the plane (right side higher/lower than the left), those conditions could also contribute. The latter could happen if someone decided to file or grind the bottom of the frog or the pillars upon which the frog rests and didn’t keep it level or if there was crud that wasn’t noticed during reassembly. I’ve never actually seen this, but it could explain what you’re seeing.
You could split both the “good” and “bad” cap iron and iron pair and mix and match to see which part is the problem. You could also put two similar parts back to back to see if one of the problem pair is wildly different – i.e. perhaps the cap iron on the offending pair is badly misshapen (though if I understand the problem you’re having it still sounds to me like an iron with a badly skewed grind).
27 January 2016 at 2:32 pm #134250No, no Ed my issue was caused by me alone, it’s no.7 LN jointer a beautiful plane that’s engineered accurately in every sense of the word. What I did was an experiment that cost me a replacement cap iron and some lock tight glue, I don’t favour modern cap irons the old Stanley versions are a lot better but it’s costly to make so we all dip out. It’s all a learning curve a costly one but never the less a learning curve, if you don’t experiment you will never the learn the results. Just do it on less expensive materials, which I will look at getting some cheap ones on eBay just to see if this idea of honing a secondary bevel will actually work, but I know it does and so do you as it was clearly shown on that video and other prominent woodworking figures stand by this as well.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.