How to Tune Up a Block Plane

if you're going to introduce hand planes into your woodworking start with the block plane you're going to use it on almost every part of every piece of furniture you make everything from just knocking off edges to cutting wide bevels some champers to planing end grain from tabletops to flushing up dovetails but before we can start making shavings it's critical to get tuned up and sharp the good news it's not that tough to do with a new good-quality tool really all you have to do is get it sharp just the throat and you're good to go on an older plane you're also going to want to flatten the bottom so that's where I want to start if you don't have a flat sole you won't take a consistent cut and that's a real key to performance I flattened just on a piece of coarse sandpaper attached to a piece of glass but here's the key you want to flatten with the blade clamped in place this tensions the body so as we flatten it'll stay flat during use if we flattened without the blade in place and snapped it back in we could torque everything out of flat and waste a lot of effort one more tip go ahead and retract the blade so that it's not contacting the sandpaper as you flatten I'm using a hundred and twenty grit sandpaper here and after a few strokes I'll take a look at the bottom and judge the scratch pattern to see how flat I'm getting I still have quite a bit of a hollow at the toe and the heel so I'll work it a little bit more now that I have a scratch pattern consistent almost across the entire sole I'll call it good and I don't need to move on to finer grits because these scratches aren't going to impact the performance of the plane once the sole is flat I'm going to ease any sharp edges with a file I'll work the long edges of the plane as well as the back and then I'll set my blade to approximate cutting depth and adjust the throat to about 1/32 of an inch often this leaves little devil horns at the front of the plane that can dig in while you're planing I don't like these so I go ahead and file those off at this point - so now we're ready to get sharp if you have a new playing you're only about five minutes away from taking shavings on an older plane you might have to spend some time rehabbing the blade but a better solution is to go ahead and spring for an aftermarket blade this one from Ron Hawk is a two steel nice and tough it's already flat on the back all we need to do is polish it hone the bevel and we're good to go I like to sharpen with water stones I've got a set of three one thousand four thousand and eight thousand I'll start with the courses stone and we're going to begin by flattening and polishing the back of the iron this is critical because any scratches or mill marks on the back of the iron will translate to that cutting edge giving us a really rough cut that won't last very long so polish the back first before we hit the bevel I'm going to start off on my thousand grit stone the important thing is to keep the blade dead flat on the stone and work across the entire length of the stone to keep it from dishing out as I'm flattening the back I'll check my progress and once all the mill marks have been replaced with a dull Sheen I can switch to my 4000 grit stone repeat the process and finally finish off on the 8,000 grit stone for nice polish so now we can turn our attention to the bevel we're going to polish that exactly the same way we did the back now most plain irons come ground at 25 degrees from the factory I could polish with that angle but I'm having to remove a whole lot of steel in order to get sharp so instead I'm going to kick it up 5 degrees sharpen at 30 degrees this way I'm only honing just a leading strip which is going to make things go really quick the key is maintaining that 30 degree angle through all my grits and for that I'm going to use a simple honing guide to dial in the right angle I need a projection of about 30 millimeters to give me a thirty degree angle instead of measuring that distance every time I made a simple little block with a stop so I put the blade on slide it up against the stop I can go ahead and tighten it down I'll start honing the bevel on my thousand grit stone and I'm going to start by taking a couple strokes just on the back stroke before going back and forth I'll continue until I have just a thin line of polish along the front edge and I can feel a burr along the back edge then I can switch to the 4000 grit repeat the process and finally finish up on the 8,000 grit what I'm looking for is a nice thin line of mere polish across the entire blade now that bird is still on the back of the blade and to get rid of it I'll just flip it over and run it on the 8,000 grit stone and I'm good to go few minutes is all it took to get this nice and sharp the last step is to get it back into the plane I'll adjust a lever cap so it clamps ablated in place securely but still allows me to make some adjustments without too much effort the first step is to retract the blade all the way into the body so I can't feel it at all I've got one finger on either side of the throat to detect the blade I'll go ahead and extend the blade out now you know wait to feel the blade come out typically one corner will come out before the other so I'll make any lateral adjustments at this time and then I'll extend the blade until I can just feel it across the entire edge and I know I'm ready to take a nice light cut I'll go ahead and make some adjustments once I get out of board that's really nice just a little bit of work and this block plane is up and running give yours a try I guarantee you'll enjoy it

Channel: FineWoodworking

Views: 132,341

Rating: 4.9108992 out of 5

Keywords: 3568862116001, honing, free, block plane, fine woodworkig, YT1, tiv662, youtube, sharpening, pekovich

Id: eFw--HUkWTc

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 11 2014