Hand Plane Frog Adjustments - Setting the Throat

hi I'm Rob Koz and welcome to my shop hand playing frog adjustment I'm gonna take you through the process of setting the frog on your plane now in case you're not familiar with those terms how do you adjust that gap where the shaving comes out and what value is it we're going to cover the bedrock style we're gonna cover the traditional Stanley and we're also gonna do a low angle block plane stay tuned this will really help you with your handling I'm Rob gozman and welcome to my shop so the throat or this opening in the sole of the plane you look at it from this side it actually will consist and we have this set up ready to use the most important part will be this edge where the arrow I've drawn and the actual blade so the blade and the chipbreaker combined are going to sit on the Frog by the way that's 45 degrees so with a bevel down plane you're always planing the wood at 45 degrees now of course that opening Chloe I closed a little bit but then I added the plane in I'll put the lever cap on now here's the function of this gap if you allow this edge of this square to act as that part of the plane where the arrow is you have your blade and they're positioned however far apart but as you're planing along and the grain happens to change direction as the wood fiber starts to want to lift up if this gap is small enough this part of the plane again where the arrow is will function in a manner that it'll help put pressure on that fiber and not allowing it to lift up while it's being cut so in effect you can actually plane against the grain without leaving a torn surface now we'll cover that adjustment in another video but the big question that remains is for general work where do you need to set that throat setting and how do you do it okay before we get into the actual adjustment but I want to show you the three different types of frogs or frog adjustments that you find and commonly use planes I'll start with the easiest one first so on a low angle plane and the most common low angle plane you're gonna deal with is gonna be your block plane instead of a frog you just have what I might call a frog surface so that's that milled surface on the sole - plane typically on a low angle it's gonna be 12 degrees the blade is going to sit in there just the bevel on the topside that's the difference so if you're calculating at what angle are you planing you have to factor in that 12 degree betting surface and the 25 degree which is typical of a primary bevel on the blade plus any micro bubbles you have but in order to open or close to throw it on this one you simply have a toe plate down here so you loosen that front knob and this lever I'll turn around this way so you can see it better this lever moves that throat or that toe plate so that you can either close that throat down or leave it open whatever the setting happens to be that you need this is typically what you're going to buy today this is a Bailey style adjuster so if you take the lever cap off I already move the blade take these two screws out and you can look now actually before I go any further I want to show you the difference because it's quite dramatic so this is the bedrock style take the lever cap off take the blade and chipbreaker out now you'll notice that a set of screws like they have on this one these are actually pins and you access them from the backside so on this plane of this style and here's a five number number five Jack I'll show you the same thing there's just a single screw there as it is over here on this one on this dial there's actually three screws you have that Center one in the middle and you have two on the outside these are called frog retaining screws so I'm gonna loosen those back them off a few turns the center one is the one that used actually moved the Frog forward or back in both cases this one happens to give you a lot more control you will make all this makes sense by the time this is over I'm gonna pull that out the first thing I want to show you is this the primary function of a plane is to hold a blade at a fixed angle well it planes the wood and not allowed to vibrate if it vibrates we call that chatter and it's going to really degrade the surface so the better the fitting the better the machining is the better support that blades gonna be offered and I might add the thicker the blade so if you look at the old-style planes look at how thin they were now we actually miked that and that's somewhere around seventy-five thousandths of an inch this one is a hundred and forty thousands almost double makes a huge difference so here's what you have for contact surface II remember we're trying to dampen any vibration so here's the Frog out of the we'll call it the typical plane and for contact surface you have this one this one and then since this is a broken surface over here you have this one this one this one in this one add it all up and then if you contrast that to the bedrock style you have this big milled surface sitting on that big milled surface so all available surface areas there to make sure that there is no there is no vibration or it's almost entirely eliminated so on this particular plane in order to make that adjustment now I'm gonna instead of going through and putting this all back together I'm gonna use this one because it's the same style if I want to close that throat what I would do is come in here and loosen these two screws now you'll remember the throat adjustment is actually an adjustment between that part of the sole where the arrow is and the blade but in order to adjust this one my blade has to be sitting here on the bench I have to have access to these screws loosen them up slightly use that screw in the back by turning that it pulls that pushes the Frog forward or it can retract it either way but you get it where you think you want it think it's pretty much a guessing game at whatever point you think your there you go in and tighten those two screws down put your blade blade on the bottom blade and chipbreaker back in place and you really can't tell until you've actually got everything squared away that means put the lever cap back on check your adjustment because depending on where the blade is that's going to affect the opening get that so that the blade is just starting to poke its self out that gap and then you can look well if that's where you want it fine but there's a good chance if you're trying to get a real super fine adjustment that you're never gonna get that on the first try now contrast that with this I'm gonna take a time to put this back together I'm gonna show you this while I have it apart these are called frog retaining screws and they're hardened and you'll notice when I show you what the get that out of there they're pointed on the end now these frog retaining pins that go down through the Frog have cone-shaped holes on the bottom side these are hardened as well so when that's put in place they don't actually engage like that which what you might think they actually engaged just below Center so as you tighten this screw that cone bears on the bottom of that cone shaped hole and it pulls that pin down firmly and holds it locks it in place but it also allows you to do that with everything in place let me show you and by the way there's little divots on the top of each pin so that when you put it in place and by the way when you put it in place you want to make sure that that tab fits in those that slot on the back of that screw set that in there you want those holes to line up with those pins on the backside I forgot to put this one back in put that in there by the way that's a milled opening so when you put that in there it prevents this thing from wiggling side-to-side now as I was mentioning those holes need to be lined up with those pins so when you put this in place you just look at this where the those divots are and you want those as I'm standing you're looking that you want those at three o'clock now I always like to keep my finger on there as I tighten up this screw because you'll feel it engaged and it'll write itself okay now I'm gonna put this all together and then we'll show you how the adjustments made put my blade and chip breaker in blades always on the bottom side make sure the yoke comes through and the lateral adjustment lever sits in the other way it should make sure that's laying fat flat on the face of the Frog put your lever cap on now I'm gonna adjust that blade I need that I want the blade parallel to the sole and I'm doing that by sighting down here and I can see the blade shows up right there is a really thin black line get that so it's just just visible I used my lateral adjustment lever to get it parallel to the sole now I can see my gap and the gap is a lot wider than I want so I would come in I would loosen each of these frog retaining screws about an eighth of a turn that's all it takes using the center screw and you typically want a smaller screwdriver here because the tote or the rear handles in their way of it you have to access it from the side but here's what you get to do with everything in place you simply start turning that and you watch the gap closed now you also have to remember this that frog is sitting on a ramped surface slope surface so as you move it forward the blade is going to project so I'm going to retract that again if I have a really fine setting I want that to be as accurate as possible so I'm gonna pull that blade back again so it's just barely projecting now I can still see that I'm my gap might be wider than I want I can go in there and close that down a little bit more when I get it where I want it I simply go in and I tighten each of the Frog retaining screws right and left and then I can go through ahead and get my final adjustment for the projection of the blade getting it parallel to the soul so as far as precision goes this allows you to do it quickly and accurately the old-style plane takes a lot of trial and error it might take it ten times actually get that set exactly where you want I wouldn't exactly want call that fun actually can be quite frustrating I've spent a lot of the last 20 years travelling in many different locations teaching folks these aspects of hand planing and I'm surprised at how few times I've actually found people that knew that function of the throat in its ability to prevent terror I'd be interested here in the comment section whether or not you already knew about this or is this coming as a surprise to you well in now closing this off by telling you where to set your plane for general purpose know that the limiting factor with having the throat really tight is the amount of Shaving that you can remove if I'm in a situation where I've banded a piece of plywood meaning I've glued solid lipping on a piece of plywood and now I have to flush them up if I've got to remove 1/32 of an inch I don't want to do it a half ass out of time so I want to be able to take a fairly heavy shaving so for that reason I would keep that opening and again I'm going in and loosening the two outside frog retaining screws and I'm gonna pull that frog back now before I tighten it up I'm gonna go in here and get that blade so it's just starting to protrude okay so there that's about where I would leave my setting if you can tell by that if I guessing at it I'd say it's probably somewhere around 1/32 of an inch and I'm typically not gonna pull shavings off that are more than 1/32 of an inch so I would then tighten up the two frog retaining screws and by the way one of the things I like about this particular plane is that there's just enough movement between those two milled surfaces on either side that you can adjust tightening this you can just line it up so that that gap is parallel that means when I do want to close it down tight I can make it so it's uniform side-to-side all right now I always like to fully retract the blade before I start planing a little wax to reduce the friction just makes it so that my effort is spent pushing the blade through the wood instead of pushing the plane over the wood and while I start planing I like to spin the adjustment knob with my index here in my right hand till I start to see where the shavings coming out it's on the right so I need to make a little bit of an adjustment with the lateral adjustment try that again went too far I'm a little heavy in the left so I'll move it over and now the shaving is coming out and it's pretty much staying right in line so that's exactly where I would want it now just for the sake of seeing how heavy of a shaving we can get [Applause] probably wouldn't have reason to have it heavier than that but we still can with that setting so we'll move it a little more that's approaching actually I got a pair of calipers here let me tell you what that is so that's five five so that's just a little bit thicker than a sheet of paper we'll do one more this woods expensive and that one which is more like cardstock is coming out at ten thousand and I typically we're never gonna have shaving that heavy I try to get my lip things a little closer than that but the flexibility of being able to open and close that throat you know in a 10-15 second procedure is a huge advantage and a good reason to spend the money and get a bedrock style plane love this stuff if you like my method of work and my style of teaching I suggest click on any one of these videos and it'll help take your woodworking to the next level now I've always said the better the tools the easier it is to master this if you click on that picture of the hand plane with the chisel it'll take you to our website you can see all of our tools as well as our online offering and our in-person classes

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 17,998

Rating: 4.9808979 out of 5

Keywords: hand plane frog adjustment, hand plane frog, hand plane, frog adjustment plane, frog adjustment screw, hand plane for beginners, Hand plane throat sdjustment, hand plane tutorial, how to set the frog on a hand plane, setting frog on hand plane, adjustment, frog, hand planes, hand tools, scrub plane, bailey, bedrock, handplane, rob cosman, woodworking

Id: 3lhu3rmk0RU

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020