Choosing and Tuning Your Hand Plane like a Pro

hey I am back so the new studio is working out great unfortunately it's not free so I've been working on in online class making this beautiful coffee table to help pay for some of the costs now the video has five hours of detailed instruction I even have a chapter on making jigs and fixtures for the bill so there should be no reason why anyone cannot complete the project those of you that have bought my class I want to thank you for your support these lights flooring electrical everything that goes into the studio costs money and I don't make enough from YouTube to pay for all this so if you want to support my channel go to my website WN we're working school.com and get the online class I put a lot of effort into it showing you the hows and whys of every step I think you're going to learn a lot from it besides building the table they in this video I will be talking about hand planes what a few years ago I was a demonstrator at the woodworking shows and a lot of attendees come up to me and ask me why are you still using hand tools where there's a lots of power tools here that can do the job faster and better well that's partially true hand tools are finesse tools so for like if you want to get into the more finer part of we're working it can take very thin shavings here and there to finesse the drawer to get that piston fit or if you have a whiteboard that you cannot put it through your jointer or a planer well a nice hand plane will flatten up very quickly now there's a lots of reason why people use hand tool some they feel safer with hand tools and power tools you don't have to worry about cutting themselves some because they enjoyed the quietness of it getting into that Zen mode hearing the whisperings coming off the the hand planes now maybe they live in an apartment where noise would be an issue so there are many reasons why people use hand tools now for me I use hand tools because it makes a lot of people think you know what you're doing now I'm not gonna lie it's great for my business in my school I mean take a look as you can see I have an assortment of planes here varying in different sizes and also configurations now I'm going to go over briefly what each one does and you can decide which one works for you now there's a numbering system here that I think originated by Stan Lee tools they make a number one plane all the way up to a number eight plane and the number basically corresponds to the length of the plane and also the width of the blade the biggest plane they make is a number eight which I don't have one of those I do have a little brother number seven this is also called a jointer plane is mainly used for flattening boards it's about two inches shorter than the number eight and the blade is about a quarter inch narrower so the blade this one measures like two and three eighths and the length it's about 22 inches so the next size they make is a number six which I don't have one of those it is also called a four plane because of its design is used before the other planes now I'm not making this up because this size is faster to flatten the board or get it close to flat before you go to the big boys like the number seven or then I'm a to finish the job so next we have the number five plates I have three different configurations here I have a standard angle low angle and the in the five and a half now the five and a half the blade is just a little bit wider I'm going to explain the difference between the low angle and a standard angle a little bit later so these planes also call Jack planes like the jack of all trades where these are like the jack of all planes it does a little bit of everything so the number five planes these measures around fifteen inches okay so next we have the number four planes same configurations have a standard angle low angle and a four and a half now these planes also cause smoothing planes this is a plane you use to make the last pass on a piece of wood to get it nice and smooth so these number four planes well I know it measures nine and a half inches because it just happens to be the same size as my you know shoes now they also make it number three and number two and also on number one these are like novelty planes feel a little bit small for the adult hands but I still use my number two for small projects these are great if you have like a son or daughter who wants to get into were working it would be perfect for them in fact I think this is what I started off when I was a young boy so you know I think I have a clip of it of me when I was young what a cute kid huh okay so here I have a collection of small planes so I have a couple of block planes this is the low angle pretty much standard this is a one of my favorites from cheer making it's as fits right in my palm and my fingers right here and I get this point and start shaping my chairs I have some protocol shorter planes I have a three-quarter inch this is Stanley ninety three I have a lineal sin' this is the five eighths and also this is a half-inch I don't really consider these are planes but these are my spokeshave great for chair making I have one that's round this is made by Lee Nielsen and this one's by Veritas and also have a router plane very useful so the most asked question is where do I start with so many choices what's the first hand plane I should get well it's a toss-up between a number four and then and number five and it really depends on the type of work that you're planning to do now if you're gonna be making projects that's bigger than a breadbox then go with a number five and anything smaller than that then go with a number 4 now me personally I would go with a number five if you just get into hem tools and this will be your first hand plane I would recommend the number five low angle Jack plane by Lavallee Veritas now there's a couple of features in here that will help you get good results very quickly the main reason why I prefer to Veritas over the other brands is because of this skew here so this is a skew adjustment this one here see how it makes the break goes back and forth schemer you know like this this is a great little option now the other brands doesn't have it you're gonna have to use a like a mallet to adjust now if you're used to it it's not a big deal another good thing about this plane is that they has these little set screws right here on both sides here and here what that does is kind of keep the blade in place so when you do skew it it's still like a little pivoting point to me that's ingenious and then also the cap they added this big flat so that keeps the blade a little bit more stable the other ones just have that little screwed that this kind of holds the blade down now when you buy this plane what I recommend is getting all the planes all the blades that comes with it you have a serrated blade that looks like this this is actually used for roughing out a board this almost acts like a scrub plane so when you're using the serrated blade you want to actually go against the grain like this cross grain like this it takes that material a lot faster so now you have a scrub plane and then another blade that you want to get they come for the 25 degrees standard another one is a right here it's at 38 degrees you can see that it's very steep and also it comes with a 50 degree blade if you want and you can see that the blade it's almost very very blunt so when you're planning into a board that's really highly figured like Tiger maple quilted maple the greens and go up and down up and down that's what gives you that those figures so here you're going with the grain but right about here you're going against the grain and then you're going with the grain and then against the grain and then with the grain so when you have a low angle like a 25 degree it's time to try and dig into here and then tear it out so if you're working with highly finger width you want to go with a higher pitch like a 50 degree the angle is a little bit steeper so it doesn't have a chance of digging into the the grain in such area now so the curlier the Woodward gnarlier the wood the higher the pitch so if you buy this plane and buy the three extra blades now you have a square plane this is the 25 degree which is standard it comes with a plane this will be your smoothing plane and then this can be your scraper plane different options so now you almost have like four planes in one so I'm going to show you the difference between standard angle and a low angle so this is a standard angle and to show you the parts this is the cap and then here we have the chip rigor and this is the blade or sometimes we call it the iron we have the Frog we have the the knob the tote or the handle this is the body this is the soul there's not a whole lot to this plane the most important thing about the plane is really the blade so the first thing I would do for my first adjustment after I sharpen my blade now I'm going to do another video on my sharpening system and how I actually sharpen plane blades and chisels or what have you so the first adjustment that we make is I would make sure that my chipbreaker is right up against the the tip of the blade I like to get it close that this is a number five so I wanted to have some my shaving so I am going to put it about 1/32 of an inch away from the tip I'm gonna give you a close-up of that tighten it down so this is how it's supposed to look like so the reason why I want the chip we're good to be really close to the blade is because the chip burger the function of a chip rigor is what is called to break the chip so when you're cutting a shavings the second it cuts you want look at this one love wood the second I cut the trip rook is right there to basically break the fibers of the wood kind of like that that's why I won the trip we're good to be as close as possible the second it cuts I want to start lifting it up you know wood is like a bunch of straws the second you grab it and you break it it loses his integrity and is you can play a little bit easier now the next adjustment I want to make I'm going to put this one back the next adjustment is this opening of the mouth or the throat it's right over here next thing I would do is I would advance the blade so that I can see it coming through the second it comes through I write about what there it is I can see the blade sticking up I can figure the blade and I want to lower the blade back until it just barely disappears like that now I want to adjust the opening of the mouth now there's three screws in the back here there's one there's two and this three now the two outside screws is to loosen the Frog so this is this in the Frog now the middle one here is to advance the Frog up so you can close the mouth a little bit so I'm going to adjust that you can see it move closer closer close the right about there and then I'm going to tighten the two outside screws and that would lock it down now with a less expensive plane like the Stanley's the adjustment is a little bit different you're gonna have to take the blade out now these two screws here holds the Frog down so you're gonna have to loosen this up and then make the adjustments here in and out and then you're gonna have to kind of tighten it back down a little bit put the plate back and then check the opening now hopefully these are like 16 inch threads I mean 16 threads per inch so you can say that's about okay I need to advance it a little bit more so maybe I'll go half a turn and you see what you get is this kind of play with it a little bit so that's the difference between a good quality plane and a fairly good plane reason why I want the throat to be really small like a 32nd 7-inch is because when you're cutting you have to imagine how the shaving is coming through so if you're cutting and then the trip record lifts it up what's happening here is that all these fibers want to hang on to each other so now he's going to be pulling it up like this because you're the chipper is pulling up so the fiber wants to come up but he's pulling the other fibers underneath it also wants to come up so now if the throat is way back here so that all the fibers now lift their way up so now the blade doesn't have a chance to cut it so if the blade that the mouth is closer like this it's keeping the fibers down then this way the blade has a chance to cut it before actually lifts up so that's why I want the throat to be as close as possible so if you want to go out to the free market than buy a plane for like I say $20 or $30 the first thing I would look for make sure there's no cracks on the on the body or so and next thing is you want to make sure that this area here is not too worn out because if this is worn down you're gonna have a hard time flying it back out again now you could send it out and have somebody surface grinded and find it out for you because if this is worn out basically what's happening here is that the mouth is actually open like this because it's not fat and holding the fibers down so when you're cutting again if the mouth is way open the fiber wants to live up and so now you're cutting instead of a thousandth of an engine by by cutting two thousand three thousand depends on how far the fiber is actually lifting up so that's why I like to have the throat as close as possible so he has nowhere to go the plate has a chance to come in and cut it off before actually lives up just like this so I'm going to show you the difference between low angle and the standard angle so the low angle just a cap I'm gonna show you that the Frog it's the only thing that's really different the Frog is actually cast into the body you sit at 12 degrees now a lot of people get confused is the low angle plane is the bevel up or is it bevel down well this is blended at 25 degrees for smoothing plane so if you're sitting at 25 degrees and the Frog is at 12 degrees when they actually resting on the Frog the blade is actually sticking up so for low angle planes it has to be there for up or the standard angle is actually bevel down and then the trip breakers on top now because this blade is bevel up the Belleville actually acts as the chipra here so it doesn't need one so the blade is actually thick to compensate for the chip rigor like the other one so you can see the difference right about now you're probably saying well William your close-ups of your demonstration is so timely I'm gonna hit that like button and I'm going to subscribe to your channel so I adjust it the same way I put my plate back in my plane then we put my chip breaker on and the first thing I do is I'm going to advance the blade until it pops up from the soul right there I can see it sticking up it's a little high in that side but I'll make that adjustment later then I'm going to lower the blade so it just disappear like this and now I want to adjust the opening of the mouth and the way you do that is because the Frog can't move the mouth has to move so you lowered you loosen this up and this little screw here are just as the opening so you can see that I can open up the mouth and I can also close the mouth right about here then I'm gonna lock it in okay so now the next adjustment is I want to make sure that I'm cutting evenly because if I cut heavy on one side a couple of passes on the board that's square well it's gonna be out of square pretty quickly so the way I do it is a little bit different than what I see other people do is I trying to find a piece of lumber that's almost at the width of the mouth because I wanted shaming to come up evenly on both sides so let's go see if we can find some lumber so I was scrubbing through my shop and I found a really nice piece of Ebony I also found a really nice piece of hard maple now I have to be real careful about which piece of wood I'm going to be using here because if I choose the this white wood here well people still think I'm a racist and if I go with the black wood well I'm sure I'm gonna get a bunch of emails accusing me at the same thing labeling somebody a racist seems like the hot thing right now so I'm gonna go with something safe I'm going to be using Alaskan yellow cedar so the next step before I cut anything I want to back the blade up so that I don't cut anything so I'm just cutting nothing but here so do you know what you call this when you cut nothing but here it's a airplane okay I'm sorry they have to be painful so when I'm moving in the plane forward I want to advance the blade at the same time so I want to see where a start will right about here is cutting a little bit on the my right-hand side and I see the shaving coming off on my right-hand side I'm gonna push this to the right like so I think a little further it's coming up a little bit on this I - let me see yeah somewhat even maybe a little bit more on that side whoops maybe too much oh isn't that bad right there oh that's coming out pretty even now look what happens if I scale it to one side if the shaving comes through this way that means this side is heavier the heavy side always pushes to the side as weaker and nicely if I see my shavings turning this way that means this size heavier than this side so let me just finish this and then we'll start again now once I get the board flat what am i doing now is I'm going to back it off and get a thinner shaving looks like it's a little bit heavier now screwing this way it's a little bit heavy on on my right side so I'm just gonna just have to really really be sensitive you try that I think I got it see how it's coming nothing anything got it says coming straight out like I said if the shaving is going to my right that means the left side is heavier and if it's going this way the right size heavier I want to mention one last thing if you're thinking about purchasing your first hand plane do yourself a favor and get a good quality playing like the Lee Nielsen's would be valleys Veritas because it's really important that you experience what a good plane feels like from the get-go now it's not easy to refurbish a let's quality plane and make it work it takes a little bit of experience and you're gonna have to put some English into your planning and if your first experience is a bad one getting tea routes and it just won't cut the way you want you're going to save yourself why would anybody want to use this crap and just set it aside now if you do that you're really missing out because hand tools will separate you from the boys hand tools will make your work look cleaner crispier it will have soul because soul comes from within translates into your hands and into your work now you can contact the Nielsen V Valley and I'm sure they will send you a catalog or a brochure like this now Lee Valley makes more than just hand planes they make a lot of great clever tools so now be careful don't let your spouse see this because some people call this wood porn and I can I can see why because every time I flip through these pages I just feel so dirty so until next time don't forget to hit the like button and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: William Ng

Views: 40,491

Rating: 4.9565091 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how-to, building, tools, school, learning

Id: 032t7RLu5tE

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020