Hello
In the process of stock preparation, the last part gives me difficulties. Basically, when I have a piece of wood that has to have true edge and true face, I go with Stanley 6. This is not very long plane, but the pieces I work on are not big either so there is a lot of registering anyway. I use winding sticks and sole of the plane to check for warp and flatness. I move the plane along the piece to detect the high spots and remove them. I do use traversing when I have to remove a lot of material.
The problem is that I am not able to get very flat surface on the true face. So, light is coming between plane sole and the surface when checking for the flatness. It is not much, but it means that the surface is wavy. Futher planing seems to move the problem to other places, so if the center was a little bit high, next time the high spot will be moved not to the edges, but somewhere inbetween.
How to tackle this? The wavy surface gives me further problems when I want to finish the surface with the smoother plane (Stanley 4 or 4 1/2). It cuts non-uniform and tends to bump over some high spots. I guess the smoother should “arrive” on almost perfect surface to make the final touch.
Thanks.
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Replies
When using handplanes, there are many variables that could cause uneven surfacing. Stance, leaning more to one side, overcorrecting with the right or left hand, uneven blade, blade protruding out of the mouth being crooked, ... I think nothing replaces experience and practicing. The grain and type of wood are also factors. Some boards are straighter grained than others and easier to plane. What kind of wood are you working with? Does it have knots?
I worked with wild cherry and oak, with some small knots in it. I also worked on pieces without knots but it is the same problem.
If the cherry is quartersawed and not too knotty, you can achieve a true face. Same with the oak. Another thing to consider is the moisture content. The wood is going to move until it achieves equilibrium with the humidity level where you are working (especially the oak). Otherwise, you just have to overlap your strokes and spot plane and cardscrape the difficult spots.
It looks like my plane is riding over the high spot when I am traversing. Or I can't target the high spots properly when I do overlapping going along the fibers.
I suspect that your planes are not in perfect condition. Is the bottom flat? (I flattened mine about a year ago and it made a huge difference; I didn't realize how much they were worn (from previous users.)) Is the blade really sharp? If so, the plane should never ride over the high spots. My smooth plane will now cut shavings 0.0003" thick (that's about 1/10th the thickness of a piece of paper.) To do that, the iron can't have been heavily stropped on the bevel side; only light pressure when stropping, or you will round over the edge enough that the iron won't catch the wood well. And when the iron dulls again, it will start jumping and riding over high spots again...
Contact points on the Frog should be flat where it contacts the blade. I also would like to hear how the blade is sharpened.
As others have said, your plane needs to be in perfect condition if its being used as the instrument to establish flatness of the workpiece.
Personally I'd also use a longer plane that spans the whole workpiece for most strokes.
It helps a lot to use pencil strokes over the workpiece surface to indicate more clearly where there are high spots; and to use a long and high quality straight edge spanning the whole workpiece to find the bumps and dips as you work; then make more pencil marks to plane away, until no dips and bumps are left.
Lataxe
Flattening a board’s edge or face requires a truly sharp blade and flat sole along with the correct amount of blade exposure and mouth opening (if adjustable). So, first of all, be sure that whatever method you use to sharpen, the blade is really sharp. The goal of sharpening any plane blade or chisel is to get the back and top of the blade to meet as close to a zero point as possible and to do that with as fine a scratch pattern as your stones will allow. To that end, I now hand sharpen using a good jig (Lie Nielsen) and Shapton stones up to 8000 grit.
Equally important is the skill with a hand plane that is only developed with practice.
Years ago, when I started woodworking, I tried hand planing an edge which was flat enough for gluing. I found that it was extremely difficult to get and gave up. I bought a jointer for edge jointing and flattening one face. If you want to use hand planes, that’s great, but plan on a lot of practice to get the result you want, as well as a lot of practice sharpening. These are both valuable skills but not so easy to develop.
Look on YouTube for a video from Mike Siemsen on flattening using your hand planes. Mike is a master worker by anyone's definition and his video takes you through the process in great detail, without lulling you to sleep.
Most of the good advice has been said. Only think I can add would be to take a good high quality square that you own and rest it on the surface. Then, go to the auto store and get some feeler gauges (should be less than $20) and measure how big those gaps are across the surface. If you find they are on the order of a couple thou, then you have a surface that is within one plane shaving of being flat. In other words, it's flat. I had read in one Toplin's books (Euclid's ..... I think) that light can seen down to half a thou. This approach may help you understand where you are at. If the gaps are bigger, you can get roughly how big from the feeler gauge, then use calipers to measure thickness of your shavings which then will allow you to guestimate how many plane strokes you need. I very rarely ever do this. Might be worth trying as you learn how to hand plane.
Personally, I can't imagine using a feeler gauge on wood. I have no interest in working like that, or worrying about it. If something looks flat, it's flat. Worrying -- it's just making it not fun.
Neither do I. I see it as a tool to help the individual sort out if he has a real issue or not. I do recall in the early days of my woodworking, there were I lot of things when working by myself in a garage I didn't know if what I was see was a real issue or not. I've done it just a few times to understand how flat I was or wasn't.