How to get SILKY SMOOTH SHAVINGS from a PLANE

right so you've watch my place whoa that could have been bad never catch a falling plane blade that's one of the stupidest things you can I'm getting sidetracked you've watched my video on getting a stupidly sharp plane blade but now you like Matt how do I get it into the body of a plane well that is what I'm going to show you how to do in this video and take those silky smooth shavings off the top of timber because if you can't do that you're missing out on one of good workings finest gifts so let's get going okay so I've broken this plane down into its component parts so this is exactly what it looks like after you're finished sharpening so let's get you in close and see what we're looking at here okay so this videos gonna be very quick it's not a lot to it but those of you who are struggling to do this this should enlighten you so firstly in this plane here we've got what's called a frog and obviously that is what the blade sits on that's been at 45 degrees to the sole of the plane and that's the standard angle that most bench planes adhere to we've got the blade I've got the chip breaker and this is the cap iron or leave a cap depending on where you're from or who taught you basically so a lot of people get the plane blade and the chip break and mixed up here especially on line Neilson ones because they almost look exactly the same especially to a beginner usually the easiest way to tell them apart is literally the size difference between the two the chip breaker is usually the smaller one it's a very common mistake to make and I've even seen some people sharpen the edge of their chip breaker before yeah just double-check you do actually know which components you've got in your hand first so to get the chip breaker onto the blade you have got a screw head now this is removable but I actually keep that engaged in there so I don't have the risk of accidentally dropping it and losing it so that was poking out about five millimeters from the blade you know to get this blade attached to the chip breaker obviously this edge here is extremely sharp so the last thing you want to do is whack it with your chip breaker and blunt all of your hard work but a lot of people do this they just see the chip break it's meant to go on like that then they just drop it on like that slide it back whack their edge so the way to do this make sure that your blade is bevel down another way of remembering it they're not going to put the logo underneath the blade if they're going to have it on show so we've got a logo on top here so bevel down on the blade bevel up on the chipbreaker see you essentially creating a knife point with the two and to attach them what I'm going to do that's screw there it's going to drop through the hole on the plane blade at 90 degrees I'm gonna slide it back like that turn it round and then move it forward like that so once again that screw is poking up from the surface so I'm able to get the blade underneath it like that so I'm gonna flip it over screw as underneath 90 degrees into that hole slide it back around and then forward okay so now you've got chipbreaker on top blade underneath and you've got the bevel of the chipbreaker on top and the bevel of the blade underneath like that so I'll see that screw is loose in there still so we need to lock that down but the question that arises now is where'd you lock that chip break it down well this distance varies from plane to plane and that variation is caused by the fit between the chip breaker and the blade on a line eel someone like this that fit is very precise so I can afford to get this chip breaker right up to the edge of the blade and literally get that within a millimeter to half a millimeter from the edge and the closer you get that will give you a nice clean finish however if you have a cheaper one the chip breaker here has like an arch on it and that's where it mates with the blade usually the fit with those isn't as good so if you put that chip breaker right up close to the edge the shaving actually gets caught between the chip breaker and the blade and it just clogs up the entire mouth and the only way to get rid of it is to take the blade back out wipe it all off the chip breaker in the blade and then pop it all back together so if the mouth of your plane keeps getting clogged up that is why your chip breaker is probably a little bit too close to the edge of the blade and the fit between the two is not very precise it's like I said Lou Nelson I'm gonna get that right up to the edge so within a millimeter I get my plane screwdriver here I'm just gonna lock that down I'll go to that very firmly okay that's all locked in place so this another common mistake a lot of people make they put it in like this because they see the screw at the top do you think logically that screw looks like it should go on top but in fact it actually hides underneath and it falls into this recess right here so as you can see I'm now lifting the plane up to 45 degrees saves trying to put the blade didn't like that and accidentally drop it if you lift it up so this surface is level then it'll be much easier for you so I'm gonna carefully pop that in there now this screw here is gonna go through the hole in the blade obviously so put that in careful not to ding the edge okay that's through there now it looks like it's in but it's actually not you've got some times move it back and forward a bit until the lateral adjuster here locates on the blade there we go yeah that's moving side to side in there pop that down now just wider blade out so I don't smash it into my workbench and there we go lock it all in place so this that's the sound you want a nice snap when it goes down what you don't want to be doing every time you take out a blade to sharpen it's loosening this screw here no points of it this is your quick release here all done on that sometimes it's a screw thread here as well but you still won't need to adjust this it's all done up here so if I wanted to make that snap tighter I can tighten this down a bit there we go that's tighter however that has made all of these adjustments under here a lot tighter as well so it's all about finding the fit for you and then leaving it like that so a little bit less than that for me again so now all of my adjustments under here have a nice bite to them but they're not slack in there so it's all done with loosening or tightening at that screw there the next thing to sort out is the blade projection out the bottom of the plane to get yourself a nice even cut now I'm gonna come around to your side for this okay so looking at the plane from the side I'm gonna flip it over like this and we're gonna sight it from the toe to the heel of it so I'm gonna bring that in close and then we can see the mouth all along here it's easier if you have a white background for this but this workbench is going to work very nicely so underneath the plane blade there is what's called the thrust wheel and if I turn that clockwise look what happens see that shadow that's appearing that is the blade poking out the bottom of the plane but what you may notice is that it is uneven it's high this side it's low that side how do we sort that well you do that with the lateral adjuster which is also below the blade but just above the thrust wheel pushing that towards the high side of the blade is going to level it out so you see now it's relatively even and what going to do is bring this blade in so I'm going to turn the wheel anti-clockwise now and as I bring it in any of those in discrepancies between the height so you see now it looks even earlier now it's looking higher on the left-hand side than it is on the right I'm gonna push it towards the high side get it even keep bringing it in now it's looking a little bit high on the right side again ever so slightly this what I mean the more you bring it in the more those in discrepancy is going to show up because it's getting closer to the sole of the plane so I'm going to keep going we're going to watch to see when both sides disappear into the body at the same time if you watch my sharpening video you'll know that I put a camber on these blades so watching the middle disappear is somewhat accurate but watching the edges disappear is much more accurate so where we out there let's push it a little bit to the left a bit more cuz that looks to be a tad higher there we go keep pointing it in there we go so you see putting a camber on a blade it's so minuscule you're hardly ever going to see that curvature by let alone in the piece of material that you're playing afterwards so keep bringing that in and both sides from what I can see looking through the camera lens anyway I've disappeared at exactly the same time into the body of the plane so if both corners now even in the plane I'm going to bring that all the way back so that none of the blade is poking out at the boss with the plane now we've been winding this thrust wheel anti-clockwise and now we have what is called backlash so if I start turning this clockwise now within that screw thread there are some slack in the component that pushes the blade in and out that is called backlash but we want to get rid of that so if we didn't get rid of that backlash and had the wheel engaged in the anti-clockwise direction what would happen is as we push that plane forward into a bit of wood it's going to shunt the blade back and the reason for that is because the blade is not supported by the component that this wheel moves very difficult to explain but having a mess around with your plane you will feel this backlash so like say it was in the anti-clockwise direction if I turn it clockwise it's a bit loose and then I feel the thread engaged now that blade is supported from behind and if I was to take a shaving it wouldn't shut back and this is the reason why we bought that all the way back into the plane because now we can start advancing it out and we know that it is square in the body of the plane so now the thrust wheel is in the advanced position so it's locked in clockwise and now what I can do is bring that to my timber and start pushing forward now if see we wind it this blade all the way back in so it's not cutting what we can do is as we're pushing I'm going to keep winding that thumb wheel clockwise until we start taking a shaving yeah we go that's starting to dig in now there we go taking a lovely smooth shaving along there very fine but that is what it's going to give you a really nice clean cut and the camber on the blade means that if I was to send to my plane on the right-hand side of the bit of timber here and try and take your shaving it's not going to do anything similarly if I put on the left-hand side of the wood it's not going to cut the curve in the blade is only allowing me to cut if I Center it on the material like that and this is very useful say for example you were trying to square the edge of this timber and this right hand side here was high instead of just trying to balance the plane on here and try and take off the shaving what some people would do would tell you to change your last ruler justice so that the blade is slightly skewed and then it will take a heavier shaving on the right hand side than the left hand side but then in doing so you would have to do exactly what we just did with flipping it upside down bring it all the way out get it square in there bring it back bring it back out in order to get it square in there again so for that reason I don't mess around with the lateral adjuster at all other than when I'm first putting the blade in there after sharpening the camber means that I can Center the plane on this right-hand side of the material here and that is only taking material off the right-hand side of this edge of wood so once I've got that all nice and square I can Center the plane on there first ship through and then that edge is nice and square so there we go really not that difficult get everything assembled in there bring the blade all the way out check it from underneath get it square in there bring it all the way back in so it's not going to be cutting anything at all and then as you're planing along a long length of timber and just make miniscule turns at a time don't think that you need to turn that wheel half a turn between each adjustment the turns that you need to be making are allots all of them what you think so just play around with it and eventually you'll be taking off wispy shavings like that if your eyesight isn't great and you're struggling to look down the soul of the plane to check if the blade is square get yourself a little scrap of timber and just run that along the blade like say if you put a camber in there it'll take nothing off the edges but then it will gradually take off more as you work your way to the middle and that will give you a good indication of how square your blade is in the plane so there we go nice and simple have fun making those lovely shavings see you in the next video

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 267,213

Rating: 4.9021206 out of 5

Keywords: how to set up a bench plane, how to set up a plane, how to flatten wood, how to use a plane, handplane, hand plane, bench plane, hand plane basics, hand tool basics, hand plane setup, bench plane sharpening, bench plane assembly, bench plane technique, bench plane uses, lie-nielsen, smoothing plane, lie-nielsen bronze smoothing plane, lie nielsen plane, woodworking, woodwork, fine furniture making, fine woodworking, cabinet making, hand tools

Id: J0ZV8sSS1Jo

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017