Wooden Plane Blade Back Flattening
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2 April 2015 at 2:22 am #126188
Hey guys,
I recently bought a wooden jack plane for $10 off craigslist. The plane blade is tapered and very thick and it has the cap iron. I began flattening it and worked on it for about 45 min and the blade is about 2.5″ wide and still has 1/4″ or so on each side that hasn’t been flattened yet. It is higher in the middle meaning I have to take off all the steel in the middle to get it down to the level of the edges.
This could take another hour or two as it is visibly lower at the edges (maybe 1/32″). To avoid this could I widen the “wings” that paul puts on his blades when he sharpens to cover this area of the back that isn’t flat? Or could I put a 10-15 degree back bevel on it to make it a high angle bevel? Or should I suck it up and go buy some 60 grit sandpaper at lowes and flatten it?
I am excited about using this plane but I’m losing motivation after flattening the back of the blade for an hour and still not being close to having it flat yet.
2 April 2015 at 8:55 am #126189You only need to flatten the last haft inch or so, behind the cutting edge. Could the blade be cupped ? 1/32 is a lot, I have several plan blades of this type the backs can be very rough,with hammer marks from a black smith, but the end is flat . How are you doing this? Use 60 or 80 grit paper if by hand. A belt sander or grinder would be better for that much.
Frankj3 April 2015 at 1:53 am #126211Thanks Frank… I am only flattening the last half inch but it’s still taking forever. I am doing it by hand, but I have a drum sanding attachment I could try in my electric hand drill. Im not sure how well it will work but will definitely be quicker. I don’t have a bench grinder… I might try the drum sander and see if I can take out the bulik of the material with that and then go back to hand methods for flattening. It appears that a hollow is much easier to contend with than a belly.
If the whole blade is cupped you might want to consider Paul’s suggestions in this blog post…
Older plane blades are thicker and possibly more brittle, but might save you a lot of time if you are feeling brave.
But on a really old style thick iron, you might have to be very brave to do that, I can’t tell. I mean, even if they weren’t that brittle it could take considerable force to actually alter the flatness. However, for all I know a similar approach might sometimes be used on Japanese plane irons, so it might work nevertheless. Just depends on the way you’re doing it and on the actual material, I guess. I think I will try this out, but up to now I got almost everything flat with a very coarse diamond plate, also old English jointer plane irons and such. I don’t like the Eze Laps too much for that, although they’re great for bevel sharpening. I had some flatness issues with one of those plates. DMT offers some even coarser grits at about 120. The dia-flat lapping plates I’ve tried were always good and flat, although not all of the finer DMTs were. But no deviation to worry about there. I recently came across those Tsuboman Atoma plates from Japan with the stick on thin plates on an aluminium base. I avoided those first because of that, but truth is the one I have now (140 grit) is dead flat and it cuts very fast on the backs of blades, might be due to their distinct pattern (much denser than the DMT dots). All my coarse stones wore down a little quicker than the fine ones and I’ve had the Atoma only for a very short, so I don’t know about it. It looks promising for now, so I guess, if the hammering is not successful I would recommend a very coarse diamond plate like that.
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