I’ve fettled a few planes and picked up a Stanley Bailey #3 off of eBay recently. It tuned up pretty easily but the test cuts were odd. I started off with the blade apparently square in the mouth and the cut was strongly biased to one side. I ended up moving the lateral adjustment lever quite a ways towards the side that was cutting and this yielded a lovely full-width cut about 0.002″ thick. But the blade is obviously skewed in the mouth. I had disassembled and carefully cleaned the plane prior to this, and went back and re-set the frog and ensured that things looked square. But the blade still has to be skewed to produce an even, full-width cut.
I’ve not encountered this on half a dozen previous planes. What am I missing? And granted, the proof is in the pudding and the plane functions well. It just bothers me that the blade must be so skewed! Thanks.
Replies
Is the sole square to the frog? Perhaps a prior owner overflattened it out of square. Retract the iron and check it for flat and square with and without the lever cap in tension. (Assuming the grind of the iron is square) The frog might also have been "helped"... look to see if Stanley's machining marks are still on all mating surfaces.
Good thoughts. I went out and looked it over again. Happily everything is generally square and not previously "fixed". I found two things. First, if the front of the frog is placed parallel to the mouth, the body of the frog is just slightly canted. Easy fix. Second, this is a post-WW II Stanley Bailey and I realized that with the chip breaker appropriately placed on the blade, the notch in the chip breaker for the blade advance dog is not quite centered and squared with the blade. The plane cuts well (with a newly sharpened blade) so I'm not inclined to replace the chip breaker or blade yet.
But with the frog squared up, now the blade is parallel to the mouth. The lateral adjustment lever wants to be about 10-15 degrees to the right with everything centered (due to the offset on the chip breaker) but I can live with that. It's making full-width 0.002" shavings and my OCD tendencies are mollified by the blade being centered and parallel with the mouth. Thanks! Now I need to mill some 4/4 white oak for the next project. This cute little #3 will be a good plane for the grandkids to try.
It sounds like the issue is between the frog and plane body, but its hard to say. MJ has good advice.
Could it be that the iron itself has been ground / honed off square through the years? I have had that issue with a second hand baily before. Put a square to the iron.
The good news is that you know how to get a whole shaving. The bad news is that it will bother you. I would personally leave it alone myself.
Check the iron for square. This is where I’ve had this happen. Even a slight amount of error is magnified over the length of the iron.
That said it doesn’t matter where the lever is so long as it’s parallel,
I had a similar issue with a #5. I had to move the lateral adjustment almost fully to one side. Checked everything, replaced the iron, checked again. Then I remembered the difficulty I had in removing the frog adjustment screw and the yoke/tab that rides in it. I carefully looked at it and discovered that it was not quite centered. Even with the frog tightened down, the off center yoke/tab skewed the frog somehow. Once I took care of that my lateral adjustment lever could return to center.
Mark
Sounds like Azimuth error to me.
Frog surface slightly twisted relative to sole.
As long as you can set an even shaving, probably best left alone.
David Charlesworth
I have a Bailey No 3 that does the same thing. Tuned 30 years ago, a sweet little plane, but if the blade adjuster is set dead center when I pick it up, I know someone else has been using it. It’s on my list to correct, but I’m still waiting for a cold winter night with nothing more important on my to do list.
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