I need to flatten the sole of an old Stanley #5 I have. It’s a tye 11, if I remember correctly, and is in great condition other than a convex sole. I don’t have a piece of float glass large enough for the task. But my table saw is very flat. So I was thinking of using a sanding belt (cut open of course) and using spray adhesive to stick it to one of the extension wings. 3M 77 is what I’m considering. I don’t have any experience with it and am having trouble finding info on how permanent it is and how easily cleaned up. How hard will this be on the table saw surface? Thanks for any input.
David
Replies
Hehe, I love puns anyways on to the question. In my experience that spray cleans up pretty well with some sort of solvent (can't recall which one although it's probably mineral spirits or acetone) and it holds pretty good. Also I couldn't foresee any problems arising with your tablesaw as long as you don't get any overspray in the motor area where it could gum up the works. Oh yeah and it's hardly permanent (especially when pulling something up as big as a sanding belt where you have leverage) just yank it up when you're done. BTW type 11's are my favorite, corrugated to be exact. Is it your first type 11?
-Ryan C.
Ryan, thanks for the reply. While doing some searching last night I discovered 3m #75 adhesive which is even less permanent than the 77. I'm not sure if I'm going to do anything to the plane (Hammer got me thinking) but if I do I'll try to find the lower tack stuff.This is my only type 11 as far as I'm aware. I also have an old #7 but I think it is significantly newer than a type 11. To be honest, I'm not really an old tool guy (I know this is blasphemy). I'd be happier with a bunch of LN planes. Unfortunately, my bank account wouldn't. But this #5 is a very nice tool. A little slop in the depth adjuster but not too bad.David
Don't mess with the plane. All this plane tuning stuff is hog wash. Sharpen the blade, fit the cap iron and have fun. There won't be a Stanley left that is worth a cent after all the present day hobbyists screw them up. Don't listen to the so called experts. The original owner, that pushed that plane everyday, would have made it work better and easier if it was necessary. The sole should be linished, not sanded, if it is terribly out and that is reserved for the finest of smoothers. Be strong, don't cave in, join the Stanley Bailey preservation society and stop the madness.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Hammer, you got me thinking. Aside from the part of your post where you use "hobbyist" as a slur, you make some good points :) The "so-called experts" I'm listening to are Garret Hack and Chris Schwarz. I don't want to give the impression that they convinced me I should go for micron-level flatness. I see both of them as advocates of practical tuning.What you got me thinking about was just how out of flat is the sole. The other night, after doing some reading, I decided to check the sole of my #5. I've had it for a few years and must have had a look at the sole at some point but couldn't remember. So I hold the straightedge to the sole and am blinded by the ray of light that comes shooting through the gap. Much worse than I had expected. I decided that I needed to take action.After reading your post I decided to quantify the convexity. It's amazing how much light can pass through a very small opening. That huge gap is, in fact, only about .004" over the length of the sole. Plenty flat enough for a jack plane, I think. Thanks.David
Hi David, my blunt response to your question wasn't meant to slur hobbyists. I'm a pro woodworker but I'm also a hobbyist. It was intended to emphasize the difference between someone who uses a hand plane for recreation and someone who pushes one day after day to make a living. Anyway you want to look at it, hand planes are hard physical work. Don't you think that the cabinet and furniture makers, that originally owned the Baileys, would have found a way to make them easier to use and more accurate, if it was necessary? It seems odd that occasional users find the need to flatten soles, replace blades or otherwise alter tools. I think this "culture" has been generated by what people have read or heard, not actual mastery of the tool and analysis of it's limitations in use. If that was the case, there would be a lot more talk about blade adjustments and the ability of planes to make and hold the lateral and depth adjustments. The Stanley hand planes limitations have a lot more to do with the use they are put to as well as the species being worked. A more appropriate alteration would be extra blades in different bevel angles.The corrugated soles you see on planes are there to reduce contact area. Full contact actually creates a bit of a vacuum, making the plane more difficult to move. Nothing the average user would have to worry about or would even be aware of. You would know it if you pushed a plane all day for years. If you were lucky enough to have electricity, you would welcome surface planers and sanders. Gossamer shavings are fun to make but the market for them doesn't exist, to my knowledge. I prefer to concentrate on the piece of furniture rather than the process.If you have an interest in playing with planes, get a cheap block plane to start with. Start the flattening process with 800 grit not 80. Eat your Wheaties. Just make sure there isn't a speck of dust on your work. If you hang out on forums like this one, you read all kinds of supposition, theory and over analysis. It's obvious to those of us that have been there, done that, that the folks asking the questions haven't. This isn't a judgement, just a recognition. Make something and do it again and again. Eventually, you may reach the expertise level of a Garret Hack, figure out how difficult making a living from woodworking is and take to authoring books to pay the kids college tuition.Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Hammer,I didn't mean to offend. I put the smiley after my comment about the slur because I was joking. I didn't see your comment as an actual slur at all. I don't have time now to fully digest your post but I wanted to post a quick response to make sure there are no hard feelings.David
One thing I would add... Try not to assume too much about those asking questions. For example, I asked a question about flattening a plane sole, which I have never done. This doesn't mean that I'm a novice woodworker (I'm not), or that I think that making a living at woodworking is easy (I don't). I know very talented woodworkers who have to teach and/or write to get by. It's a tough business.David
I was more concerned that I offended you or others, David. As Red Green says, "we're all in this together". Someone would have to be a little long in the tooth to have experienced every aspect of woodworking. From the experience I have flattening planes, I can't say it makes a whole lot of difference unless the plane had a large hump or valley that effected its use. It's a lot of work, fraught with difficulties and the plane may not stay that way. For Stanleys and the average woodworker, blade sharpness and adjustment is the largest part of making them sing. A luthier may need and be able to recognize the miniscule difference. Here is a company that will linish a special plane. It's the way to go when your work requires it.http://www.dick.biz/cgi-bin/dick.storefront/41e1e11f001fcac0273f50f33609063d/HomeBeat it to fit / Paint it to match
It is very easy to demonstrate that a degree of sole flatness is necessary for fine cabinetmaking work.
1. A hollow sole won't plane a straight edge with a fine shaving.
2. If there are 3 thou" bumps behind the throat, (usually caused by frog fixing), the plane won't take a 2" thou shaving.
I would agree that careless flattening can result in huge convexity which is not desirable, but minute convexity (bump) in either direction does no harm.
Concavity (hollowness) in either direction is not helpful.
The assumption that the plane was used by a highly skilled cabinetmaker in the past is dubious. All manner of craftsmen used planes in all manner of different ways. Sole flattening is essential in the majority of old planes, if you want the best performance.
best wishes, David Charlesworth
Hi David,
Flattening the sole will unquestionably improve the performance of this plane. The process will take less than an hour.
Find a flat surface 1 1/2 or 2x the plane length. Check the surface for flatness. Get some silicone carbide PSA paper available here http://www.woodworkingshop.com/cgi-bin/DD5FBE12/mac/qryitems.mac/itemDisplay?qryType=STYLE&itemSt=AR13000SC , or many other sites. Wax the flat surface, or coat with WD40 and wipe dry. This makes the paper easy to remove. Rip off a length of paper and stick it down. As you work, use a vacuum often. Put a grid on the bottom of your plane with a marker. Work with the blade in and tensioned, but retracted, so as not to cut the paper. Work for 30 strokes, and change the plane 180 degrees and go again. Repeat the process until you have achieved the desired flatness. Check your progress often. Start with 100 grit, and progress to 150. Go further if you like. Finish by thoroughly cleaning and waxing the new sole.
As far as the flat surface is concerned, glass is best, followed by jointer bed. I would also like to recommend David Charlesworth's outstanding DVD's on the subject, available from Lie-Nielsen.
Regards, John
I am also of the opinion that it it of dubious value to lap the sole of a Jack plane, depending of course on what you will use it for.
If you are using the plane to remove a fair amount of material in a hurry (what a Jack is commonly used for) it likely is fine the way it is.
If you are using it as a general purpose plane, meaning sometimes you are using it to dimension, but occasionally you are shooting edges or smoothing wood, then it should be trued up if it is out more than a few thousanths.
But a better idea might be to save this plane for rough work and look for another in better shape for finer pursuits, or go with the more traditional types for the job (i.e. smooth plane for smoothing, jointer for jointing).
David C
It's not permanent, is probably stronger than you need and cleans up with lacquer thinner or acetone. You will need to re-wax the table top, or use whatever you have been. You don't need a lot of adhesive- just a quick spray along the belt and the same for the top but let it dry to the point of barely being tacky. If you buy Super 77, don't buy the small cans- it's a lot more expensive than the big ones and it's pricey enough as it is. Cheaper spray adhesive will work fine but with all of them, watch for overspray- it gets on everything, including your forearms.
As far as a piece of glass large enough, you only need the belt to be about 1-1/2 times as long as the sole you're flattening.
One thing I would do before using a table saw top as the surface is check it to see just how flat it is. If it's not as flat as a piece of glass, it's not going to be the best surface. All glass is going to be flatter than a saw table. Go to a glass shop and see if they have anything that they removed from a job. It may have a couple of scratches but if it's thick enough, it'll be a lot cheaper than a new piece.
Go find my block plane article on this page. Al the same stuff.
A hand plane is simply a chisel in a glorified jig, and none of them work worth hooey without dead-flat iron backs, sharp cutting edges and soles that are flat with each other in the areas I've circled.
Quoted from my article:
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Few are as bad as that Sargent, but when they [i]are[/i] that bad, keep in mind that soles don’t have to be absolutely perfect like iron backs do. Just the toe, both sides of the mouth and heel need to be in the same plane to do fine work. In fact, Japanese planes are purposely set up with hollows in between my ink marks to reduce friction. Much of the chattering experienced woodworkers complain about in Stanleys isn’t because the iron is dull, but because the critical area behind the mouth is in a hollow and is unsupported by the work piece. Indexing dye makes a huge difference in how well you flatten. If you aren’t using it, you may not be flattening as well as you think. Unquote.
Here's an example of why one doesn't work:
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This Stanley 110's sole won't flatten with anything short of a machine shop surface grinder. Note the index fluid still present in front of the mouth. And as the mouth is too wide to begin with, major grinding will only worsen that.
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As a result, the plane won't take a full-width shaving and is real hard to push in White Oak. It's suitable only for softwood framing lumber.
The kid who comes around to pick up a load of pine to make his toddlers bunk beds may get this one...but the kid getting hard maple for his first child's cradle definitely won't. It'll just convince him he needs to spend 150 bucks to find a block plane that works.
“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
Edited 7/4/2007 3:57 pm by BobSmalser
dmath,
Go ahead and flatten it. It's not the sacred scrolls. In woodworking there are enough variables that where possible I like to remove them even if small. Sometimes a little tweek or tune-up on a tool can have a positive affect on your attitude and therefor your work. So, do what gives you pleasure and have fun with it.
Paul
David,
Since you are using a sanding belt it should span across the table saw with room to spare. You don't have to go to the mess of gluing the belt down. Just use a couple of spring clamps and clamp each end to the vertical apron of the table extension. I do it all the time, in fact I did it just today, lapping the sole of the new woodie I just finished.
When you are lapping a metal body be careful where all the iron shavings go. You don't want them down inside your tablesaw.
-Chuck
What was the temperature of the plane when you measured it? What do you think will happen when the sole heats up from use? How do you think the plane got that way in the first place? Manufacturing defect? What does the gap measure when you are pushing down on the plane in use?
My planes heat up in use and flex in use. The center seems to get hotter than the ends. It seems reasonable that you'd want your sole flat. But how flat? You may be better off with a little hollow to compensate for a warm sole.
Honest ingun, I don't know. I'm asking.
Adam
P.S. Don't ever use acetone again (you too Ryan). Mineral spirits will do a fine job with 3M 77. You may need the 77 to keep a belt sander belt stuck down. Those things have minds of their own! A razor blade can help too.
Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to respond so far. There is a lot of very reasonable-sounding advice in this thread. Some of the messages contradict others so I'm not sure how much it's helped... :)Some background: the plane has always cut well as far as I can tell. I don't use it for final smoothing but I also don't take HEAVY cuts with it, certainly heavier than with a smoother. I'm not one for putting a micrometer on shavings so I can't quantify this. It is in remarkably good condition for a tool this old that it's obvious that it has seen use (BTW Ryan, it is a type 13 not a type 11 as I indicated before).Yesterday I spent some time on the iron (the Sweetheart iron that was in it when I bought it). I won't say that it's perfect but it's in good shape now. And the tool seems to be working very well. I am going to take the conservative route for now and not do anything to the sole. When I'm better able to evaluate the effect that the not-quite-true sole might be having, I'll reevaluate.Thanks again to everyone (and I'm not trying to cut off discussion here just acknowledge those who responded).David
I would love to take some planes and block them up on a surface plate and guage how flat they really are after people do the flattening on the abrasive covered glass bit.
Here's something that's been rattling around in my mind. Lets assume you want to take a shaving .003-inches thick. So I assume the iron must project out of the plane by .003-inches? Right? So now you are edgejointing a board, you start from one edge, the iron cuts the shaving and you stop halfway through the board, dead stop.
The width of the remaining wood ahead of the iron is now .003 greater than the width behind the cutter- right? If you are pressing down equally on the toe and heel of the plane and they both make contact with the surface of the board, you must be flexing the plane body. So it is no longer flat.
But that isn't the way it works. You are not pressing down equally on the toe and heel, when starting the cut you have pressure on the toe (and iron) only and as the cut progresses toward the middle of the board the pressure shifts to be equal toe and heel and as the cut finishes most of the force is directed toward the heel. (Thats how I was taught anyway).
So at the beginning of the cut, with pressure favoring the toe, the heel as it rides over the cut is not making contact with the freshly cut surface but is offset the thickness of the shaving. As force transfers through the cut,the plane must rock backward like a see-saw and the toe must leave the surface (or the plane sole must flex).
So a the edge of a board so jointed cannot be straighter than the iron projection at best.
In a powered jointer of course the outfeed table is flush with the knives so a truly flat surface is possible.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the dynamics here and I haven't taken into account the wood compressing under the downward force just ahead of the iron, but it seems that while flatter soles is better, having a dead flat sole to aerospace tolerances doesn't assure flat work and that for flatter work, downward force shouldn't ever be applied to the heel of a plane.
I think I need a beer...
David Carroll
David,
....And just to add to the confusion.... :-)
Having only recently learnt to use a handplane, the experiences are still quite fresh in my mind. For instance:
I noticed that a fine-set blade in the plane often (but not always) cuts better (ie takes a full, even shaving) when the plane is held skewed to the direction of cutting. In this instance, the front and back of the plane sole are both still riding on relatively large areas of unplaned wood, either side of where the blade is cutting it's swathe.
However, even when the plane is held straight with the line of the cut, the sole edges (both back and front) are riding on the uncut wood immediately adjacent to the swathe. (Unless the plane is a shoulder or other plane with body the same width as the blade).
So, the plane doesn't pivot (see-saw) on the blade and the shaving (as well as the swathe-depth) should, indeed be equal to the projection of the blade, as you describe.
Ideally, you would want the sole to be and to stay flat, then....? You might get away with a slightly convex sole, as long as the part where the blade projects is the part riding on the wood. But surely a concave sole means that the blade will have to project more to catch the wood - with more chance of chatter and digging in....? Or you will have to lean on the plane a great deal to force the sole to flatten. How easily will a short metal smoothing plane flatten, I wonder, under a human push?
In the case of the Marcou S15A, continuous sole-flatness seems to be the case, especially as its own weight means it can be used with very little downward push from me, the user. Is this another reason why a large, heavy and thick-soled plane seems to cut better than a less weighty/beefy one - in difficult woods at least?
I suppose you could get the same effect if the plane sole was flexible and your downward push forced it to flatten. However, the initial flatness (or lack) of the wood being planed, as well as potential iregularities in such a flexible sole, might tend to make this situation more prone to poor planing, I would have thought.
Conclusion: surely a plane is, generally, going to work better if it's sole is stiff and flat per se, without the action of the human planer having to somehow correct its geometry?
But I'm a plane novice, so these are mosty speculations - but with those experiences I mentioned in mnd.
Lataxe
I'm still thinkin' on it. With the exception of the beginning of the cut, for most of the stroke there would be only two points of contact between the plane sole and the wood, (the iron is not in play as it is buried in the cut). The first contact point would be the heel of the plane and the second is the area immediatly before the mouth, which would be a bearing point. The toe wouldn't make contact because force is applied to the heel, which after the cut is lower than the mouth which is the pivot point, see-sawing the toe off of the workpiece.
This accounts for the wear that I often see on the leading edge of the mouth of old planes...I think.
David C.
Edited 7/5/2007 3:12 pm ET by DCarr10760
Hmmmm...
I don't think the heel of the plane is in contact with the wood once the plane is "in play"; the toe and sole-edges are in contact but the heel is floating over the swathe, the gap between heel and wood being the depth of cut.
Of course, when we are talking of a cut that is merely a few thou, the weight of plane and user pushing down on it probably squish the wood flat before they flatten any bendiness in the sole.......
Perhaps this is one of those phenomena that are best understood via the application of techniques and their effects, rather than via the intimate mechanics of the action?
Lataxe
........or two. Wow, David. I thought I had a tendency to over analyze things. :)
Paul
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