Sharpening a number 4 plane
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lately I been getting a strange looking shaving out of my number 4. The shaving seems to come out of the throat looking like its gone through cheese grater. It looks all sliced up. It’s not a silky smooth uniform shaving. I took a look at the blade and mouth opening of the plane thinking that there was damage to the mouth or plane blade but they both look smooth with no nicks. If I increase the cut then the shaving comes out fine but to get this its a very coarse shaving. I do all my sharpening by hand and don’t own a grinder so I have never ground a new bevel on this. Any ideas what might be causing this?
1 October 2014 at 12:19 am #118736What does the surface of the planed wood look like? Are there scratches in the surface? Does it do it on all woods? Have you taken a look at the leading edge of the cap iron?
Greg, the surface of the wood looks scratched and it does this on all wood. I thought it must be the blade but it is smooth and I can’t figure out what would be causing this. The cap iron is tight on the blade with no gaps. It can’t be the cap iron because the shavings are torn as they come out of the sole/throat.
1 October 2014 at 1:05 am #118738Dang Dave, it sure sounds like the blade. I don’t suppose you have a spare blade to try in the plane? Have you checked the frog? You may just need to move the frog forward a hair. Why? The last sharpening may have shortened the blade just enough that it’s binding on the throat opening when you are trying to take a shallow cut.
I suppose an overdeveloped burr could be to blame?? Last time i had an issue i went back to the little honing guide to make sure i wasn’t way out, just because my eye is not trained enough. Then i went back to freehand paul style. Worked for me. Hope you get it right.
1 October 2014 at 10:33 am #118762Dave, it almost certainly is the blade, I would say. Tiny nicks and imperfections in the edge that are practically invisible to the eye can develop quite quickly and easily when planing hard woods. I would sharpen the iron but would also check your frog setting as Greg suggests. Good luck with it!
I’m going to do a plane maintenance project after work today. Last night I checked the bevel and surprisingly it was not quite at 20 degrees…I guess after a couple years of sharpening I must have unknowingly honed it down to this. Time to pull out the honing guide and get it back to 30 degrees. Hopefully this will create a new edge and will take care of the problem.
1 October 2014 at 6:01 pm #118782I’d like to see Paul sharpen a plane on an old Norton India stone.
For those of use that can’t afford diamond plates. 🙂Ian, on the rare occasions I use something else other than diamond stones,
I follow this simple procedure :I also have the problem you are describing I think. It’s as if there are narrow but visible sections of the wood surface that the blade does not cut, even with a fresh edge. I couldn’t figure it out either.
Then recently I changed strops. I made a new one out of a thinner, softer leather I had lying around because I wanted to try my old bar of Flexcut Gold compound again, mainly out of curiosity. My old strop was thick, hard leather and Veritas green compound. I also modified my stropping technique, bearing down with my upper body weight about 30 times the way Paul advocates. Before I would not use that much down pressure, depending on the compound to do the cutting, and only stropped til the burr was not felt. The main reason I did this was that I believed all that heavy stropping would round over the edge.
I noticed a difference right away. Visually and to the touch, the edge was more refined. And those streaks in the wood were absent. So I think that was it, that the edge was not perfect enough. The next thing I noticed was that this edge did not last very long, and the streaking would come back sooner than I’d like due to wear and tear on the edge. But I could also now identify the tiny imperfections caused by wear that corresponded to the streaks.
But at least it was progress in the right direction 🙂
Ian, I wouldnt think it would make much difference, ive seen something on this, can’t remember this site or another… this is a blog link from this site. I used a granite tile and paper for the first long while, but then paper gets expensive. As long as the tools get and stay sharp!!
https://paulsellers.com/2011/12/sharpening-on-hollow-stones/I got it sorted out. I reground the bevel to 30 degrees using a guide, this took a long time on my diamond stone. If I need to do this on a regular basis then I’m going to seriously look at some sort of grinder. I can easily see a person wearing out a diamond stone if one had to regrind the bevels on all the edge tools on a regular basis. Hopefully I don’t have to do this too often.
I took a mill file to the edges on the sole and profiled them all slightly just to get the rough bits off. 2000 grit sandpaper smoothed it all off. Readjusted the frog and did the usual fine stone honing followed by the strop and the plane shaves great now. I am guessing that due to my honing the bevel down to such a low angle over time, it just fractured when I started to plane which created a sort of irregular toothed edge resulting the cheese grater effect. Oddly tho, I could not feel this when I ran the edge over my fingers.
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