Stanley #4 not cutting
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Great to see you up and running!
I totally agree there is an almost indescribable feeling when you’re using a well tuned plane effortlessly.
Now to turn it up a notch :
make sure you’re planing equal shavings from both sides. You can plane your toothpick a bit further and take a shaving with the plane overhanging on one side and then the same thing overhanging on the other side. Your shavings should be of equal thickness.Another thing is to not try to make too thick a shaving . It’s all too easy to overshoot a gage line and your blade will dull much quicker. it’ll also be much harder to work the plane.
Keep practising, you’ll develop a feel for it, soo rewarding.
Isn’t this place wowonderful?
Your problem was solved pretty quickly and now you’re on your way!Have fun
Diego16 February 2015 at 8:39 pm #124712@bobcoz Brilliant well done 😉
Good advise from Alien8.
Try doing a bit of end grain that is the real test to how sharp you have got iron.
set plane on end so it dose not cut and gradually increase depth of iron so it barely cuts take stroke just to middle of board then come from other side you should end up with a silky smooth end to your board.you come from each side as if you went all the way to other end you would get brake out and that something you do not want to do.
for best results doing end grain really should make a shooting board. 😉
for now just have fun 😉Mark….The end grain didn’t come out silky smooth. I guess I have to refine my sharpening techniques. At this point though I’m pretty happy to be getting shavings, but I’ll continue working on the details. I think after I build the bench the shooting board will be built, that is not a good sound hearing the breaking of end grain!
thanks again for all the help
Bob
If you can’t plane end grain nicely, you might have a problem with sharpness…
As Paul puts it : “it’s always worth it to sharpen up before planing end grain”
You didn’t mention a strop. If so that would be my tip for the day. Get some leather and some chromium oxide wax and you’ll be on your way.
If you’re really sharp, then you can get ‘shavings’ from end grain as well.
Have fun
Diegothanks for the tip Diego. I have some Lee Valley honing compound on it’s way. I’ll have to make a new strop. For the quick fix I glued an old leather belt to a piece of wood and used some metal polish I had laying around, it’s all I had while waiting for the buffing compound to arrive and couldn’t find anything else locally. Hopefully my order will be here soon and I’ll make a new strop and see how it goes!
thanks,
Bob27 March 2015 at 12:31 am #125958Well I’m a total noob despite having been here a year.
I am still trying to figure out my tools. Don’t even have a bench yet. Plus I can’t work in the winter.
I want to take the time to learn my tools; plus I need the plane to plane out some of my wood for my workbench.
I’ve put 6 hours at least into one #4 hand plane from eBay, mostly in trying to flatten the sole and figure it how to set it up. The sole is still not flat. I’m not sure my EZE plates, the newer ones, are as good as Paul’s. I may have count it an expensive loss and try DMT. I just got some sand paper wet/dry 120 and 240 to try too but it’s not worked as well. Wet/dry 120 took forever to find too.
But at least I’m not the only one? And it seems like you eventually got it working.
I’m not sure if I’m getting 25-30 degrees on my plan bevel or sharpening it correctly but I think so. I’m not using any kind of guide, just eyeballing the 30 degrees and following Paul’s YouTube video. Of course without a completely flat sole I’m guessing it will never cut right.
Honestly I think the blade edge on this iron is not even square with how it came via eBay.
Maybe one of these days I’ll manage to get a shaving. I’ll keep trying.
Ben,
Just keep at it. Take this post for example. A month and a half ago I couldn’t do anything with my plane. Fast forward to today when I sharpened my iron after I was done in the shop it took me 3-4 min (wasn’t counting) and I was shaving hair off my arm.
Maybe a honing guide will help you. Check this one out I used my sliding bevel gauge set to 30 degrees (after I learned what 30 degrees actually was) and used the bevel gauge as a reference. You could be right and the bevel on your iron is way off. It was suggested to me in this post to correct my mistake (too steep of a bevel) to rough it out on a bench grinder and if I didn’t have a bench grinder to make friends with someone who has one.For flattening I used 100 grit regular sandpaper on a glass shelf from a refridgerator. That was after a long time trying to use 220 wet/dry. I don’t know why I thought starting off with 220 was a good idea. After the 100 grit I went up to either 240 or maybe even 600 (I cannot remember) to make it nice and smooth.
Just keep at it. It’s taken me over a month and I still don’t have a workbench. I’ve made 8 legs I think. I always seem to find something to screw up with them. Recently the mortise holes were screwing me up. I got some advice from some fine folks on here and I think I may my problem solved. Hopefully this all helps.27 March 2015 at 6:32 am #125971[quote quote=125964]Check this one out.[/quote]
Your hyperlink ‘a’ tag had no name associated with it. Fixed in the quote above I think.
27 March 2015 at 6:34 am #125972I have several sliding bevel and a protractor, though. I should be okay maybe? I really want to be stubborn and learn how to do it manually even if it’s a little slow. Hmm, I could really use something to watch videos on in the garage. I may have to post about that to see how folks are set up there.
@bfisher
I dont think a plane needs to be truly dead flat. My number 8 jointer isn’t flat, raises on one side of the heel probably somewhere between 1/16 and 1/32…doesn’t seem to hinder it in making flat straight and square stock. Perhaps the tuning of the lateral adjustment helps compensate for that somewhat.For everybody using sandpaper…of any type… i highly recommend you go to an auto body shop and buy “P grade” dry or wet/dry paper. The composition over the the entire sheet is vastly superior to common hardware store stuff. The granules making up the grit are of equal size so you dont get the random gouges from the one or more grains protruding higher than the rest. This is especially true for coarse paper, helps reduce the amount of time spent on the finer papers to remove the coarser grind marks.
p.s. Only being able to hone on the pull stroke with paper is a myth!
28 March 2015 at 9:32 am #126012My 2c…. When flattening the sole of a plane, make sure you have it completely set up, with the iron and chipbreaker in, and the blade retracted. When moving it over the sandpaper, grip it not by the knob and tote, but gently at the heel and toe, moving it back and forth. This ensures you don’t flex the plane out of true when flattening. It’s not necessary to push the plane into the paper, the weight of the plane should be ample.
With regards to honing blades on W&D paper, it’s not NECESSARY to hone only on the pull stroke, but you’re certainly less likely to tear or damage the paper. That said, using W&D sandpaper for sharpening will quickly ran up a cost equivalent to an acceptable quality norton oil stone. Definitely worth investing in one of them, if you don’t plan on acquiring diamond plates soon.
Hi Ben,
Your eze plates will be fine, don’t spend more money on DMTs. I know this is a bit heretical on Paul’s website but I would advise getting an eclipse honing guide to get you started (you can get them at screwfix or toolstation). Flatten the back of the iron until you have a regular scratch pattern around the cutting end (don’t worry about the rest of the iron. Then set the projection on the iron to 30 degrees and keep going on your coarser plate until you can feel the bur on the back of the iron. take the iron out and rub the back on your finest plate. Repeat this for all the grits you have up to the finest. Then try the blade in your plane. It should now cut. You can then try freehand later and leave the guide in a drawer.
Let us know how this goes.
Paddy31 March 2015 at 5:21 am #126121The Eclipse honing guide is discontinued.
Also, screwfix and toolstation are UK companies and so won’t work for me. I should put my general location in my signature.
I didn’t find any of the Eclipse anywhere online.
It seems that Lee Valley and Lie-Nielson both make something similar for $15?
Today was another failure. I feel like I may not be getting the frog right or maybe something else isn’t refurbishes well enough. Flatness of the frog or plane sole is STILL out of whack. Not sure.
I’m sure I’m not sharpening the blade right as well though. Honestly, regarding the guide, I have no problems getting 30 degrees for the most part by hand right off the bat. I think I just don’t know how to sharpen anything yet.
To that point, I have no idea what it feels like to “feel the burr” or what a burr is. I did some online research and will be trying again tomorrow or in a day or three, we’ll see. It is entirely possible I am sharpening to the burr but not getting rid of it. Or maybe I’m too impatient with the sharpening to get a burr in the first place. Watching Paul, it’s an existing blade whereas mine is from a plane I’m having to refurbish from eBay due to cost, so the blade may need a lot more work than I’ve got so far.
I also posted my own thread here:
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