Hi everyone, i’m brand new to wood working and new to this forum. I just got a shoulder plane, (Wood River No. 92 Medium), and I am having trouble getting it to shave the wood. I used the blade knob to lower the blade into position and then I used the second knob to tighten the blade in place. Then when I put it on a test board and slide it across, nothing happens. It makes some sawdust, but when I see videos of people using planes, strips of wood comes off, not fine dust. Am I stupid? Should I send the plane back? Thanks for any help!!
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Replies
Did you sharpen and hone it before trying to plane with it?
Second tier(compared to Lie-Nielsen and Veritas etc.) planes such as Wood River, Stanley, Bench Dog, etc. don't usually work well straight out of the box but can be good values. Honing the blade is an absolute must starting with flattening the back. And then the bevel making sure it's square followed by the secondary bevel which determines the actual cutting angle. You may also find you need to flatten the sole and in worse case even square the sides of the plane with the sole all important elements especially on a shoulder plane. If the sides are terribly out of square I would return the plane for another checking it before I left the store.
My personal recommendation to new woodworkers is to invest in a quality plane like a Lie-Nielsen or Veritas for your first plane so you get a good benchmark of how a plane is supposed to work. I can take a Lie-Nielsen out of the box and make decent shavings with little effort, hone the blade and it absolutely sings. Other planes can get close but it takes some tuning which most new woodworkers don't really know how to do. The FW archives are full of helpful articles in this regard.
Buying a bladed tool without buying sharpening system is only buying half a tool. Keep the shoulder plane and do some forum research on sharpening. Most blades are not ‘shavings’ sharp right out of the box — they all need sharpening and honing. Enjoy your new journey!
The above advice is good and necessary advice .... but why is it so?
Is there any other tools besides the less expensive plane and chisel that needs the user to know and practice a somewhat esoteric skill with additional expensive equipment (sharpening, flattening et al, in this case)?
In woodworking we expect router bits to be sharp and well-formed; ditto drill bits, saws and most everything else. In tools (and all other goods) other than those for planing & chiselling, it had better be fit for purpose out of the box or we return it toot-sweet
Isn't it time we made a fuss about these unfinished planes and chisels? Or perhaps we can take the converse tack and insist that router and drill bits are 1/3rd the price albeit the makers can supply them in need of sharpening too?
Personally I think that the makers/suppliers of unfinished tools should be had-up before the trading standards Beak for a good telling off followed by a Very Large Fine.
Lataxe, pondering the inertia of bad traditions.
While I agree it would be better if planes and chisels came sharp out of the box, there is a significant difference between planes/chisels and router bits/etc.
Most users don't sharpen their own drill bits or router bits. Planes and chisels get regular sharpening so it is not like the average user doesn't need a sharpening tools anyway.
It's true, as you say, that many users don't sharpen router bits or drill bits. But these too need sharpening eventually. In fact, there's a good case for sharpening a router bit after use making one piece of furniture, if you want that router bit to perform in an optimum fashion. Drill bits can be re-sharpened too; and that's a better way to own them than chucking a blunt one then buying a new one.
The same is true for saws and various other tools - they all need the user to bring them back to optimum from time to time, which generally requires the skill to do so and often the special tools as well.
Would we accept a car in which the engine, bearings and so forth needed tuning & fixing-up before we could drive it? It'll need those service procedures after a few thousand miles, just as a plane or chisel will need fettling after a few hundred cuts. But we wouldn't accept a car that needed servicing immediately after it comes out of the showroom.
No, there's no excuse, really, for the non-working planes and chisels. It's just a bad tradition that's taken root because we let the manufacturers get away with it.
And proper tool makers, such as LN & LV, don't do it.
Lataxe
I've never sharpened a router bit, or paid to have one sharpened. It's not worth the time, trouble, or money. They cost little, and last a long time. I'm not sure I've ever worn one out, or made one dull enough to care.
I send table saw blades out to be sharpened. They get far more use, and cost a lot more, than any router bit I own.
I sharpen my own drill bits, except the very wee ones. Too much trouble, and they're cheap.
I sharpen chisels and plane blades often. I would never, ever, ever pay someone to sharpen them for me. Never. Getting plane blades and chisels razor sharp from the manufacturer costs money, and would increase the price of a new tool. Why on earth would I pay them to sharpen my tool? I'd rather do it myself and save the dough. Those edges are going to be sharpened, by me, hundreds of times. One more is no trouble.
If you bought, for example, an LN or LV plane, you did indeed pay them to not just sharpen your blade but make the back dead flat, the sides of the plane square to the sole, the sole flat, the mouth regular, the screw threads fine and .....
If you buy one o' them inexpensive planes, you'll do all that stuff yourself, not just the blade sharpening. Moreover, after you've fettled away for maybe hours the thing will still be inferior to a proper 'un.
You know this is true, doncha? :-)
Some lads enjoy fettling; and also paying little. Some just want to do woodwork, with minimal sharpening when the blunt comes and not before.
How about the motorcar? Did you buy a Trabant 'cos it was cheap and would only take a few days and a vast armoury of tools to make it go (maybe)? :-)
Lataxe
"If you bought, for example, an LN or LV plane, you did indeed pay them to not just sharpen your blade but make the back dead flat, the sides of the plane square to the sole, the sole flat, the mouth regular, the screw threads fine and ....."
I paid for a tool that was ready to be honed and put to work. Never, ever would I expect to take a plane out of the box and start making shavings. Never.
The only hand tools I have ever bought "ready" to cut have been carving tools. They are honed and will slice wood. But the edge geometry is almost always off, and I regain the edge to make it work right. Especially on vee tools. They always take a bunch of work.
Chisels and planes? A premium tool takes me three minutes to put to work. I don't need anyone to do it for me, any more than I need someone to wipe my bum. Your needs, or wants, at least, are obviously different.
Indeed - this puzzles me too as sharpening the blade is not really that expensive.
I was chatting with a non woodworker who had bought a NZD90 plane from the local big box store and knowing that I do woodwork, was lamenting it's inability to cut anything. He was surprised when I explained it had to be sharpened, and crestfallen when I told him what that involved.
Tools should be 'fit for the purpose' and 'fit for the purpose' in a plane means a razor sharp blade.
Sure, people might want to custom grind them, but the people most likely to want to do that probably buy LN or Veritas planes.
Similarly, a friend who has a lot of woodwork experience bought himself a set of cheap chisels and got upset with me when I suggested they would be nice when sharpened. I made it up to him by honing them, after which he understood what had been missing all those years...
I agree that there is no excuse for blunt planes or chisels in stores and 'they' ought to do something about it. Whomsoever 'they' may be.
Hi Rob,
Perhaps the answer to the poorly-finished planes & chisels lies in the history of the post-war market for such tools, when fellows began to consider DIY but couldn't afford anything like the good quality tools of that period, which typically required "a month's wages" at a time when those wages barely bought the rationed 20z of butter and a small piece of fatty bacon. Stanley, Record and some others began to produce "tool-shaped objects" which were cheap but had the singular disadvantage that they didn't work without the user remaking them .... and even then they were very poor.
But this habit of manufacturers became established - cheap tools that were badly made, unfinished and relied on many customers just giving up the whole idea of DIYing because the tools weren't up to it; and they weren't up to fixing them. A bit like gym memberships today. :-)
Despite various responses suggesting that no one should lack the skills, time, inclination and tooling to put these sub-standard items right, there's no case today for putting such stuff in the market. Or, if there is a case, the marketing should be far more honest about what the cheap tool is and how much skilled work the buyer is expected to put into it to make it usable. (It isn't just sharpening, as we know).
Some suggest that a buyer should not complain about having to fix up such tools as they'll have to sharpen them anyway after use. This is not a cogent argument really. Whilst an LN or LV can be honed to the buyers requirements when new, this is more akin to adjusting a car seat to one's personal comfort (a matter of routine needing a couple of minutes). The sub-standard tools are more like a car that needs the wheels tracking, the brakes re-assembled to make them work and the seats not just adjusting but re-stuffing!
And, as your story of your chisel-victim friend illustrates, a tool sharp and otherwise fit for purpose out-of-the-box is a lesson in itself as to how the tool should work, when it comes time for the user to re-sharpen or otherwise maintain it.
Lataxe
Rob, I've known several people who were decent woodworkers-- power tool woodworkers -- who were using block planes and chisels that were dull beyond belief. I never said anything, because they didn't ask. But it stupefied me. Did they really not know they needed to sharpen them?
When asked, I compare it to a razor. For folks that shave their face every day with some sort of shaving cream and a sharp blade on a stick, you learn pretty early on what it feels like when it is getting dull. Your face FEELS the lack of sharpness, and a fresh blade is like night and day.
If woodworkers use the same plane and chisel every day, they ought to know what dull and sharp feel like. But still, some don't.
I recently finished dovetailing a blanket box. I used two chisels, and sharpened both after each corner. I can't imagine trying to use them for the whole project. Much less, what still trying to use them a year later, without sharpening, would feel like. I suspect that's why so many old chisels end up opening paint cans.
I agree wholeheartedly that chisels should be sold with backs that don't need flattening. Planes should not need plane backs flattened, or soles, or sides squared. Frogs should be mated to the plane bed. I would never advise a new woodworker to buy one of the crap brands, because they would probably get turned off from hand tools forever.
With a well made tool, I will never have to flatten a back or a sole. Everything this is supposed to be square, is square.
But sharpening a blade? I still don't see why I would expect a blade to be honed razor sharp out of thebox. Even if it were, I'll need to hone it again, very soon.
I find that not much arrives truly flat. I just picked up a Bridge City Flushing Square (FC-1) that was pretty much unused. I think it will be at least an hour on the lapping plate to get it flat. It looks like it was "finished" on a belt sander.
Bridge City has really changed since they were sold.
This is an older, discontinued tool from JE's prime.
Sounds like its not sharp.
Did you put the bevel of the iron up? A shoulder plane is the opposite of a bench plane.
I must have bought my 92 at the worst possible time in its life-cycle because it's nickel-plated on the sides. So when I trued them up, the tool now looks pretty homely with plating intact in some spots and ground away in others. It appears that the newer ones (at least the Sweethearts) are not plated.
As others have said. Sharpen it.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/handplanes/ep-3-handplane-sharpening tells you how, really, really well.
This video series alone is worth the unlimited membership fee.
Free content:
https://robcosman.com/pages/secrets-of-hand-plane-sharpening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBFfFhQzkhY
I've never bought a new handplane, so in that regard I don't know what I'm missing. I have older planes acquired from flea markets, ebay, given to me, and one found in an old barn. After reading lots of sharpening articles and this forum from FWW and other sources, I managed to get them all sharp. I use a cheap, top clamping honing guide and put both a primary bevel and a small micro bevel on plane blades and chisels. It doesn't take that long once you develop a system and stick with it. I use a hand cranked grinder when I needed to re-establish a bevel on badly handled, used chisel or plane blades or to create a hollow ground bevel. I use Arkansas stones I picked up along river beds in the Ouachita Mountains with water (not oil or kerosene) and a naguru stone to clean and flatten them. This is not optimum, but it works and is inexpensive.
Ha, I thought I was the only one in the world who uses a hand cranked grinder on my edge tools! Besides never overheating my steel I'm starting to have forearms like Popeye.
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