In this video I conduct a test to see if the popular belief that a plane bottom must be lapped while the plane is assembled and the iron locked in place. This myth is BUSTED!
Glad you made this video. I've flattened over a dozen planes not knowing you are supposed to have them assembled when you are doing so. At some point I went back and checked the soles on all of them fully assembled and they were all perfect.
Hello, Mr. Bradfield; Thank you for another excellent video. I was introduced to planing over 50 years ago as a kid in high school. But I didn't take to it then. I'm old, disabled, & medically retired now but I've started doing some woodworking. So I'm learning about planes & planing. Thank you for your contribution to my continuing education. This video answers some questions for me but I'm still trying to get my No. 4 'flat'. It was really not 'flat' but it is getting closer. I've got a coarse Shapton coming so I can get my iron in shape. I know how to sharpen but the iron was strangely uneven, whatever, I'll grind it. Thank you, may you continue to prosper as the Plane Collector. Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!
Hey been checking on some of your older stuff , as a know it all does not exist, we go with what works best for ourselves!!! Before boring a motor block a torque. Plate as this is where the metall works it's best under load. Some people Will not go the extra step as it requires time!!! My obsession with thee level of restoration is out of control🤣 and love it. Keep on passing these vids so some people can learn there are different ways to do things. Learn by doing was my dad's Last words!!! Thanks 👍
Excellent video, you really have me something to look for with the iron resting on the throat. I am going to make sure my frogs are adjusted to prevent cracking.
Yeah, me too. I have little experience yet and actually made sure the iron rests on that small part of the throat, thinking any added support would help. Definitely going to set it more forward now. And while its dissasembled, take the time to lap it 😉
That was a good test. I just found you and I like your stuff. One question. Why don't you japan? Maybe you do but I haven't seen you do it yet. Love the wigs.
I believe you are mostly correct, however there are a few important details that are incorrect. On type 9 and newer Bailey planes, the frog screws are forward of the frog seat creating a lever that transmits the force of the screws to the front or tongue of the frog where it rests on the bottom of the plane. This is a non-cantilevered frog design. In this style plane the portion of the casting just behind the mouth is extremely thin, the thinnest section of the entire bed of the plane. Over tightening the frog screws can create more force behind the mouth than the casting can withstand resulting in cracks behind the mouth. I agree, an iron sitting too far back may also contribute to cracking of the mouth. This is not an issue with pre-type 9 Bailey style planes as they feature a cantilevered frog design than bears all the force on the frog seat. It is much less common to find this style plane with cracked in the mouth of the casting. As for flex, yes, the type 9 and later Bailey planes do flex about 0.0003” when the frog is installed. This can be demonstrated by lapping the plane with no frog until flat and polished. Then installing the frog and making 1 or 2 passes on the lapping surface. You will then see a pattern of contact on the sole of the plane that matches the frog tongues behind the mouth. I have photos of this phenomenon. It is not necessary to lap this style plane with the frog in place, as the subsequent protrusion of the sole of the plane after assembly is minimal or can be lapped out with just a couple passes on the lapping surface. The pressure created by the lever cap is not sufficient to affect the frog or sole of the planes. If it were, you would be h able to adjust the depth of the cutter due to the pressure exerted by the lever cap on the cutter assembly. Good video.
Just saw this comment. I think people do the lapping with the frog installed because of how unnecessarily tight the frog screws are installed on some of these planes. I only tighten just enough so the frog doesn't move even if say hit a knot. Over-tighten anything on softer metal is always a recipe for short and long-term issues.
I work as a machinest by trade and love restoring old tools especially hand planes, I always surface grind the soles of metal planes, on a smaller planes like the no.4 it's OK to grind without the frog mounted, but on thr 4 1/2 and longer planes it will afect the flatness if u lap or grind the sole without the frog. Ultimately flatness affects planing performance in the sense that u can achieve thinner cuts with a perfectly flat sole I am taking about getting less then 0.001" shavings.
I agree. I never have the blades in when I lap. Gets the particles all over the place. I can always get 1-cell thick (well... thin) shaving. Metals also flex, in different places for different designs. One should always set up a plane for its intended purpose instead of thinking a perfectly flat sole or a perfectly flat. A scrub plane only needs a relatively flat centre. A smoothing plane with feathers sides only needs to register on sole in front of the blade. Anything behind it only requires the two primeters and near the tail to register. Jointers or shooters also need different areas taken down. A great craftsman can naturally compensate, but no one should believe that a single plane should be set one way and should be able to do it all.
Completely agree with your video! I simply can not believe that tightening TWO SCREWS, not bolts but SCREWS into cast metal I might add, can have any impact on the surface of the sole.
Ha, seeing that makes me feel better about my new no. 5 after my lapping. I think the next time I lap either a new plane or give the no. 5's sole a touch up a year or two down the line, I'll just make things easier on me and just tear it down. Thanks! That and get a long wooden or transitional so I can just plane them flat instead of having to deal with all the metal dust.
Let me begin by saying that I have a lot of respect for the experience you demonstrate on restoring old planes... Putting old abandoned antique tools back to work is something that I'm very passionate about even though I'm relatively young at 35 years old. I first fell in love with planes and began restoring a busted "Wards Master #5" that I bought at an antique mall a decade ago in 2010 and I've very proudly taken several more out of retirement since then. At this point, I hate to be "that guy", but I can easily demonstrate the difference that assembly makes...as you pointed out, the difference is small enough that it won't be noticable on even the finest woodworking build...but when I restore smoothing planes...I get them dead flat on the scale of a couple ten-thousandths of an inch... because it's relaxing and it's beautiful! Since this is an older video, I'm not sure if you're still keeping up on comments but if you respond and you'd like to see it, I'll post a video on my own channel and demonstrate the rather significant difference it makes. You may find it interesting. Keep up the great work!
Oddly Ive had most success flattening soles pulling the handle instead of pushing (like your pulling your plane apart) Maybe it evens out the force of the push and sandpaper drag or maybe I'm just special :)
You may be right in practice (given how planes are used) but your testing method is faulty. Put a straight edge up against the sole while it's assembled. Then take out the lever cap, blade, and chip breaker. Then check the sole again with your straight edge. It'll be quite different. You exert force downwards while planing, so the additional flex doesn't affect the plane's performance. But they DO flex.
Very well done! Flat right down the middle where you are actually planing. Even better was learning about the position of cracks. Excellent knowledge when buying a plane at an estate sale or flea market. Thank you..
I stumbled across your channel by accident Mr. Woodwig and I must say that I learned a lot about planes these last few days. Thanks for all the work you put into those videos!Very informative. ATB from Belgium Marc. BTW I like you the most without the wig ;-)
Thanks for putting that to the test for us. Special thanks for the information on the cracking of the planes mouths when the blade rest on the opening angle.
Thanks for this. I heard this "requirement" for the first time literally 20 minutes ago. So it is great that this was right there for me to learn more.
You are right. There has been mountains of misinformation spread by well-meaning folks working without objective data, passing on as fact impressive seeming nonsense from others in the same boat. I'm a machinist of wide diversified experience. I possess a Grade A granite flat, a 0.000050" (50 millions) resolution dial test indicator, and a precision transfer stand in the form of a bench gage. With this equipment I can map the sole of a hand plane to 0.0001" contours. I support the plane sole up on three points, one at the knob and two just back of the tote. I selected these points as zero reference for sole mapping purposes. On a Stanley #7 jointer plane the presence or absence of the frog, lever cap, adjustment of screw tension etc in any combination makes less than 0.0003" difference in the contour of the sole on a long jointer plane. My experience is the sole of a hand plane should be flat to convex but not concave. The acceptable departure from flat makes some difference in the plane's performance but is nowhere near as crtical as iron sharpening and setting and operator skill. Flatness and smoothness of the work depend 90% on technique and in-progress checking and 10% on the tool. I derusted an Anant garage sale jointer plane and millied the sole flat with a single cut on my milling machine. After sharpening and a bit or tweaking, it performed about as well as a friend's Lie Nielsson jointer plane and it was a full pound lighter. The $350 Lie Nielsson was a clearly a better made tool and a pleasure to use but it had no measurable productive advantage over the $5 Anant except for cutting edge longevity. They both could be adjusted to make wispy thin ribbon chips and they both jointed board edges in roughly the same number of passes. As in politics, second and third hand information is dubious at best. If you wish to know something for certain like the effect of assembly on the deflection of a hand plane's sole - go to a source of objective data and determine actual facts. Further, don't believe me or anyone else. Follow scientific protocols: conduct reproducible experiments. Gather the resources and determine causes and effects of hand plane sole distortion for yourself.
thanks for debunking this myth, will save me some hedache thinking i need to have them fully assembled before lapping (and then take them apart again to get all the grit out)
Thank you for taking the time to make this video, especially now I know how much time is involved making it. The myth is busted that is very clear. What is also clear is that your pile of planes is huge, once a bottom has a crack, you just replace it with another one from the pile. I should not be jealous, but I cannot help being it, haha. Keep them coming Keith, I enjoy every one of them. Paul
Well done test. You are right in that it doesn't make much difference. There is flexing of metal, but at the pressures put on by the 2 screws it will be minimal. Pushing the plane will flex it more (the reason for the side cheeks). Heck, changes in temperature would cause a temporary warp. Good job.
Thank you for explaining it, I did this and ended with a low point of about half an inch on the front and back, so i stopped thinking that it need it to be 100% flat, and by doing so, I was going to remove so much metal, that it will ruin the plane, in fact, I wasn’t sure if it was already ruined. Now i can put it back together an use it!
Im sure the old story of needing to have it assembled is one of those stories someone heard from someone else and passed on etc. Thanks for taking the time to get to the bottom of it.
Nicely done. So many people simply say that lapping while unassembled will not yield the same results as when assembled. You neatly put that myth to rest by showing ACTUAL DATA. Many people are too lazy to show you actual evidence!
I love your videos, Plane Collector, but I would like to point out that on planes with the blade oriented bevel-up such as on block planes or on #62's, the lack of a frog means the lever cap applies pressure right behind the throat of the plane, which does indeed warp the sole outward, Even with minimal pressure from the lever cap. Low-angle block planes are effected the most because the cast iron is quite thin under the blade at the throat. I have seen it bow the sole outward about 1/16" on a #65! For bevel-down bench planes the myth is busted, but for your bevel-ups.... You had better lap them with tension or they will not be flat in use!
John Nickels, I think the main point is, and you'll probably agree...the test is what matters, and a test of a bevel-up may indeed give a different result. The important thing is that people base their beliefs on these tests, rather than "conventional wisdom" which is often neither. I'll probably try this myself next time I'm touching up a bevel-up block.
I've got some planes that are pretty out of flat, and the metal abrades very very slowly. I attributed the cause of one being that it's a steel-bottomed block plane (old clone of the one stanley made to be "unbreakable" - forget the number) but it doesn't explain the others, none of which are longer than a smoother. They're cheaper planes and out of flat considerably with low, deeply scratched spots from... I'm not sure if it's the machining process combined with ravages of time or what, but they were probably only used as household tools and never touched by woodworkers. I've been using 120 grit silicon carbide sandpaper (just one sheet as I don't have the space for a massive 4ft cut of stone) to try to get them down but it doesn't seem to be going at any appreciable speed. I'm talking on the level of hours. To make it worse, these scratches are, in all cases, deepest across the middle and around the mouth of the planes and so they're generally flattening from the outside-in. I inherited most of the planes so I really would like to get them in working shape. PS: I constantly see notes on planes needing flattening, is there something about the old metal that makes them go out of true over time, or is it just that most planes currently found were like the ones I had, and never really touched anything more than rough work?
Great video! I agree that you don't need the entire length to be perfectly flat, but the entire width you do! I use the very edge of my plane A LOT when correcting a slightly out of square planing. I only put one side of the plane on the higher side of the surface. If this side is not flat then it's not going to be a straight edge on that board...
I only put a very slight camber on my blades. Just enough for being able to eliminate plane tracks on the finest setting for smoothing. If my edge is out of square that means I'm not yet in the finest setting and I will have more of the blade out. Therefore I won't be using the middle of my plane on the high side, but use the side of the blade and the side of the plane. If you only take super fine shavings or put a more significant camber on your blade than you can get away with not treating the sides, agreed. We all have our techniques and preferences... Cheers.
Great video and that exactly what I did years ago, if the plane body can be flexed by mounting the frog and blade set, throw away that plane! If you've ever seen a "How to tune a Japanese hand plane", you will find exactly what your conclusion was at the beginning, the plane sole touches in the front (toe), in front of the blade, and the (heal) or rear of the plane. The blade should protrude ever so slightly for a fine cut or for an aggressive cut, more protrusion... Since Japanese planes are made of wood, it is suggested to use a wood scraper and "hollow" those areas in between for best performance. Thanks for this video.
New subscriber here, if you haven't already stated, what do you use to mount the paper to your lapping substrate? I have tried using photo mount and while it works dry, it releases when i'm wet sanding. Thank you for your service, Rollie
Great job Keith :) I have wondered about this and I'm glad someone did it and especially yourself. You are breaking all those myths and obsessions that people get stuck in. I don't know where it all starts :D I use my old Wooden Planes a lot and they work every bit as good as anything I've seen. It's not so difficult to set up and sharpen with a bit of knowledge and practice. Keep up the fantastic work :) ॐ
Yes, the side cheeks on most planes give an effective beam section of about 2 inches by 2 1/4 - the idea that any human could flex a 2 inch deep cast iron beam by hand tightening screws on a plane enough to affect the line of cut in wood is a bit bonkers. Lets face it most planed wood surfaces will move far more with ambient humidity as the seasons change than any error in flatness caused by the minute flex in the plane sole. Here's a more important issue, as soon as you drop the iron to normal cutting depth you have effectively turned even the flattest plane into a three point convex plane - which is why we have different lengths of plane in the first place - the longer the sole, the bigger the radius and the flatter the cut. The front part rests on the un-cut wood so it is higher than the back part , so the sole is always trying to push up away from the wood, while the iron digs in to the wood and tries to pull downwards. Planing is hard work because you are effectively pushing a weight equivalent to the cutting force uphill the whole length of the cut along a ramp created by the front and back parts of the sole. How steep it is depends on the thickness of your shaving. Where flatness would matter is if the sole in front of the blade was moved to set depth, like with electric planers and jointers.
Agree with 90% of Keith's points. But, do want to point out it all depends on the quality of the castings. There are castings that do flex and some quite easily. If the casting does flex you are probably wasting your time trying to tune them. The plane will work on pine but it will never work properly on "hard to plane wood". Unfortunately, the planes that don't work right are very likely listed for sale. So, be careful thinking plane castings don't flex.
Thanks for doing the vid. I’v always torn down the plane before lapping. First time someone said that myth to me I nearly laughed. Cast metal doesn’t like to flex. It’s much too hard.
Plane Collector I’v often thought that when I was told. But I was a mechanic before I studied carpentry so I’v always trusted what I know about metal, rather then any other chippy.
This did get me thinking when I saw you lap without blades fitted. My initial thought was you were doing it wrong and then it occurred to me that there is no tension transferred to the body from the frog.
My only objection to all of this: I bloody HATE "hang-holes" drilled in the tail of a plane body. Thanks for pointing out the real cause of the throat cracks. Also: I wanna see some kind of vid./info about that "mast-axe" style of broad axe you've got hanging on the wall behind you there in the last shot. VERY little practical info available on those. I only knew there even was such a thing from their mention in one of Howard I. Chapelle's books... I believe it must have been his title "Boatbuilding" (1941, W.W. Norton & Co.)
Well, if it's indeed the "Mast Axe" type as it appears from here, it's meant to be hung with a handle offset to one side like the regular wide-blade single-bevel American broad axes. Difference is, it's sharpened with an asymmetrical double bevel like the more common modern "Swedish" style of broad-axe (which are not as wide as most of the older American ones, and neither of those are as deep as this). Meant for doing large timber tasks in shipbuilding, like making initial flats on side of mast logs, as name implies, in process of going square >octagon >round when making a round solid-timber mast. So even if not doing any boatbuilding, it should be eminently useful for regular hand-worked timber framing. Especially something like a log cabin in the square-log German style (if one was masochistic enough to do a project like that with all hand-tools in this day and age).
Nice. The old timers didn't have access to as many, nor as perfectly, flat surfaces as we do, and yet they managed to make stuff just fine. The "perfectly flat" mantra has bothered me for years; I'm glad people are starting to realize it's mostly OCD.
I always figured that this was a myth, after all plane makers grind the soles flat without installing all the parts - there's a video on youtube of lee-valley making planes and it shows quite clearly the surface grinding being done sole-only.
There is a ton of myth and "conventional wisdom" associated with plane usage and restoration. I am guilty of accepting a lot of it as gospel but I enjoy anyone who challenges one of those "religious" assertions. Especially when they devise a common sense test to validate or bust the belief. I have long believed that removing metal from a plane is fundamentally bad. Yet you have to to make a proper distribution of support. The key is to minimize the removal of metal. Great video! Now lets talk about sharpening angles and wait for the flames... ;)
Love it! I hate lapping planes fully assembled. I never wanted to risk it because starting all over in case it was necessary is just too much work. Thanks for testing this
Has anybody else had an issue with the audio in this video “fast forwarding” on its own and seemingly at random times? I’ve tried all the obvious fixes with no luck including watching other vids with no problem. Weird.
Thank you for all the content! The speed issue occurs on my iPad and iPhone. The speed is normal on my PC. This is the only video that I've experienced this on..
Having the sole truly flat isn't about it being able to plane a shaving from a piece of stock. Its more for referencing. So you are not as right as you think you are. I use to do a half ass job like you are showing here and then I used a guys plane that was truly flat. HUGE ASS DIFFERENCE in its performance. So no myth busted here at all.
There's more to taking a clean shaving then just a flat sole. This just shows that "flat enough" is subjective. If you were "half assing" like your said, you may not have done the rest of your plane set up as well as the guy's plane you worked so well with. A lot more than just a flat bottom.
