How Flat Should Your Hand Plane Be

hey y'all I'm James Wright welcome to my shop and today we're going to be taking a look at how flat does a plain sole actually have to be let's start some arguments [Music] so recently I did a video restoring a number seven not this one but another one and in the video I didn't flatten the sole I didn't even put a ruler up it to check and see is it flat and honestly I don't think I've checked flatness on most any of my planes other than a few of them that need to be that way my stance on the subject is that if a plane does what it's supposed to do and gives you the Shaving that it's supposed to give you then it's flat enough if the plane is not performing the way I want to I'm getting a curvature in it I'm not getting a true and flat surface out of it or I'm not getting a consistent shaving or it's bouncing around then I might go and check it for being flat because sometimes they get out of flat though with these metal planes it doesn't happen very often with the old wooden planes though flatness was something you had to check all the time wood wears out relatively quickly and it needs to be flattened rather regularly often a couple times a year if you're using it quite often Steel on the other hand does not wear out very quickly and it's going to take decades before it needs to be flattened again once I know that a plane is working the way I need it to I don't even think about checking it for flat for 10 years or more so yes if you were to come over here and grab any of my planes and hold a ruler up to them you will see light underneath there and that's perfectly fine because this one a jointer really doesn't need to be that flat I'm sorry I just triggered a bunch of people because isn't the jointer supposed to be the flattest one because it's intended to flatten well yes and no it depends on what kind of Shaving You're Expecting out of this if you're expecting half a thousandth out of this this thing has got to be crazy dead flat but if you're expecting hundreds two hundredths out of it then really doesn't need to be that flat in most Traditions the jointer is not for smoothing and finishing the wood the jointer is for stock removal you are jointing the board you're taking off material here you're taking off material here you're going over the Gap in between you're hogging off material so you want to take a heavier shaving with if you're taking really fine shavings with this you're just wasting your time in this case mine's probably taking off about two hundredths of an inch or a little over 0.5 a millimeter once the stock removal has happened and I know that my board is flat and true then I grab my smoothing plane I take one pass maybe two just to clean up the surface a little bit and this this I want a fairly fine shaving on in this case around four thousandths of an inch or 0.1 of a millimeter every now and then once maybe twice a year I'll want to take something thinner than that honestly it's incredibly rare and it's incredibly uncommon and usually the only plan I'm gonna do that with is my finest of fine smoothers everything else in the shop is going to be taking a hundredth of an inch or more all of my Jacks and my jointers they're all taking a relatively heavy shaving and then when I want to clean off the surface and really detail it I come in with my smoother so if you want to actually measure flatness if I were to come in and actually measure this from Heel To Toe I would have a variance of about a hundredth of an inch and I know that's going to like most people oh that's too much that's way too honestly it doesn't matter as long as the tool is doing the job it's supposed to and producing the result it's supposed to I don't need to flatten this every now and then though I do get a plane that doesn't do what it's supposed to I can't get a flat surface or I'm having to put more pressure into it or it's causing a little bit of issue and in that case I'm going to check it for Flash case in point this Harbor Freight number 33 trash plane this was not flat and I was not able to get a good shaving and I was actually wanting to use this in a plane shaving competition so for this one one I flattened it and you can see I'm scratching here at the nose scratching here right in front of the mouth scratching here behind the mouth and then back up here everything else is a valley where it's lower and that's perfectly fine this is flat enough to produce half a thousand thin shavings there's no reason to flatten this any more than that when flattening the only things that matter are the heel the toe and the mouth particularly in the front of the mouth if you're going to be doing cross grain and you want to remedy tear out having it flat at the front of the mouth is going to help that the back of the mouth ah as long as it's out of the way that's okay but the heel the toe and the mouth those three locations should be flat within the variance of the thickness you want to create if you're putting a ruler up to your soul you're almost always going to see light through and I I really hate it when people tell me that they're checking it with a ruler because that that's that's not going to help you it's it's only going to give you more work than you need to do and it's not going to produce a plane that works better it might produce a plane that makes you feel better about it and in that case it might do a little bit better because you feel better about the tool you're using but anytime you're using one of these to check for flat it's in your head but every now and then you're going to get a plane that really needs to be flattened or you're wanting to make a really good smoother that does the amazing work in that case you're going to want to spend some time flattening it to do that I go get a belt sander belt now this is a little one I usually go get the bigger ones I get something with like a 36 or 50 grit something incredibly coarse the most coarse you can find and then I'm going to take the belt and I'm going to cut it this gives me a long strip that I can then tape down to a piece of glass I usually take the frog off of the plane it is an old myth that putting the frog on there is going to change the shape of it you don't need it if you want to have it on there great if not then oh well and then I'm going to set it on here and I'm just going to sand it and often I'm using a longer belt than this on a plate of glass and after a few Strokes I can see where is it hitting you'll often see this pattern on Old jointers where it'll be shiny on the sides but in the middle there'll be a big gullet coming through that is from years and years of jointing the edge of a board where it's just rubbing on the middle of the plane if your sole isn't as beautifully rusted as this one you can take a sharpie and just go back and forth across here and particularly right in front of the mouth I'm going to do a line coming across and then at the heel and toe then I'll do a few more passes on the heavy grip some people worry about this not being completely flat here that amount is not going to cause a problem it might roll the toe over just the tiniest little bit but not enough to really matter so I've had a few comments that say oh that's going to destroy it if this isn't perfectly flat if you want to you could spray glue it down but I haven't found what you need to foreign after a few more passes here we've gotten rid of most of the Sharpie there's still some Sharpie in here and there's still some Sharpie here and I can still see a little bit of that Sharpie going right across the mouth now at this point I may keep going until I get rid of that Sharpie in front of the mouth but at this point I'm really not going to worry about unless I'm wanting to turn this into a competition plane in that case yes I want this to be perfectly flat I'm not going to worry about that so much because I am getting scratches through it so it is well within the variance and I'm not going to be taking shavings thinner than the thickness of the Sharpie Mark after the 36 grit I'm probably going to go up to like 100 grit and then maybe a 200 and I'll usually stop there if I really wanted to I could take a 400 and polish it but you don't really need it to be polished it's going to get scratched up over time and that's okay now let's address the elephant in the room Guru so-and-so says that every plane needs to be perfectly flat within a few microns honestly it is a pile of Hui if the plane does what it's supposed to do it is flat enough there is no reason to take it anymore except for if it makes you feel good in that case go for it because if it makes you feel good then that's half the reason for doing things in the shop because if not having fun why in the world are you in the shop so if it makes you happy to polish up the soul and get it dead flat within a couple microns then have at it have fun I'm not saying you shouldn't flatten your planes there are times when it really needs to be flattened when I first got this number seven it needed to be flattened and it needed a lot of work because it was actually rocking on a flat surface and so I had to take down some material in the middle this plane was not performing the way it should perform because the sole wasn't flat in that case I flattened it took me about five or six minutes on a really high grit and done some of the worst planes I've ever had to flatten took me about 10 minutes so if you hear people flattening for hours and hours and days on end it's usually because they're using a really high grit they're not using something coarse like a 36 or 50. do with a 36 or 50 get through it grind it off it only takes a few minutes and then get back to work but if the plane is doing what it's supposed to do then why spend the time flattening it and now's the point you get to go down in the comments and list all the reasons why I'm wrong and why Guru so-and-so says I'm wrong as well and that's perfectly fine because that's one of the things I love about woodworking there is no right way to do it there are a couple wrong ways that are dangerous or cause problems to others around you but there is no right way to do it and you can do it any way you want and if you really want to spend hours and days flattening your plane then go for it there's no reason not to it's not going to hurt it as long as you don't grind all the way through it which I actually have seen someone do and if it makes you happy that's the whole reason for woodworking is finding the enjoyment in it and if it makes you happy then go ahead and do it so this is another really fun one and I'm really looking forward to seeing the comments down below these are always these are always fun so if you want to have fun go down read through the comments and find the arguments and jump in and enjoy the time so go on down below and have some fun and thank you that actually helps out the channel anytime you get a comment with a whole bunch of arguments going on it that it actually helps out so thank you if you would like to do more than that then you can think about the like share subscribe really those help us get in front of more people the more comments and things that happen the greater the chance that someone else is going to see us in the future if you want to take it even farther there are a bunch of names over here those are some of the Fantastic wonderful benevolent gorgeous people on patreon who are keeping the lights going who are keeping these videos coming and without you guys we wouldn't be here as well as people who've clicked the thank you button or the join button and become a member here we do have special perks for both patrons and members and we do special things every now and then so thank you for that if you want to help us out think about doing that and I think they'll do it for now until next time have a wonderful day I have to be careful which plane I use to tell this particular joke I don't want them to be incredibly true because if they are nice and true then the joke will end up falling flat

Channel: Wood By Wright How To

Views: 16,482

Keywords: Wood By Wright, wood By Wright 2, Hand tools, Handtools, Woodworking, how flat, how to flatten, flatten hand plane, flatten plane, plane sole, flattness, flattening, ruler, light under, light between

Id: j1YDaQdvI60

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023