Low Angle Vs Standard Plane - The Last Word

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop low angle versus standard plane in this video i'm going to contrast and compare my favorite the five and a half bedrock to the low angle jack if you're thinking of buying one of the other stay tuned i'm going to tell you what i think the differences are i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop i get a ton of questions about the low angle jack should this be the plane i start with or should i go with the traditional bevel down plane so i decided to do this video and i'm going to do my best to give you an honest and fair evaluation but you got to know up front if you've watched any of my videos i'm extremely biased towards the bevel pardon me the bevel down bedrock style five and a half this is my go-to plane and if anybody asks it's always one that i recommend but i think i can set that aside long enough to go through and tell you the benefits of the 62 tell you the features compare them both so that you can make an honest evaluation and knowledge is key especially if you're making a buying decision stay tuned we're going to cover it all here are the two planes we're going to use i'll identify them a little bit further this is the number 62 made by wood river which is an in-house brand of woodcraft this is a almost a direct copy of the stanley number 62 two inch wide blade this is the five and a half bedrock style made by wood wood river also the wood wood craft in-house brand now the only difference is this the original stanley bedrock five and a half only had a two and a quarter inch wide blade by the time stanley switched to making a two and three eighths inch wide blade in their five and a half they were no longer doing the uh the bedrock style so minor difference for those that are really wanting to know exactly what we're doing so those are the two in the race let's start with the major differences the 62 weighs right around four and a half pounds the five and a half weighs just over seven pounds 62 has a screw on or screw titan lever cap blade no chip breaker because the blade is actually bevel up meaning it's on the top side that blade measures about an eighth of an inch it doesn't have a traditional frog instead it has a bedding a frog surface we'll call it that is 12 degrees so if you're trying to factor in the angle that you're planing wood if you just polish your primary bevel and leave it at the 25 then you take the 12 degree bedding angle add the 25 degree primary bevel and you're planing at 37 degrees the the advance and retract mechanism is just operated off of this adjuster knob there's two little teeth right there that engage the slots in the back and there are multiple slots to account for blade wear over the years probably the best feature of the 62 is the way that you open and close the throat you loosen the front knob and this lever slides that toe plate forward and back so that you can get in there and close that throat down and in case you don't understand why that is a function that you want if you check out the video down in the description down below where we talk about adjusting the frog to control tear out and just to tell you really quick as you get that part of the plane right here closer and closer to the blade edge it puts pressure on the wood fiber and prevents it from lifting up and tearing in circumstances where the grain is reverse direction on you now the rear tote or rear handle is designed for a full four finger grip that's a little bit different on a bench standard bench plane and some like that certainly it accommodates a large hand the blade is two inches wide as i mentioned so that's going to make for a narrower plane which is the reason why it's considerably lighter now if we look at the five and a half as i mentioned oh by the way stanley made that for approximately 50 years first half of the 20th century give or take a few years they made the five and a half the two and a quarter version meaning the blade being two and a quarter was made for approximately the same amount of time again give or take a little on the standard bench plane you have a lever cap nice thing about that by the way when you put it back into position it always goes back that same amount of tension whereas on the screw type it's up to you to get it exactly the same if you are worried about it the blade has a chip breaker the bevel is on the bottom side so it doesn't matter what angle you grind down here that does not change the angle of attack and while we're talking about that if the frog is 45 degrees then that is the angle that you're actually planing the wood as long as you don't exceed 45 degrees underneath here the angle of the primary bevel doesn't matter now in this case you have a bedrock style frog that means that you access the frog from these two screws in the side they're called frog retaining screws and as you loosen them slightly you can use that center screw to move the entire apparatus and when i say apparatus i mean the frog the blade and chip breaker in place the lever cap on and now that whole chunk can move and you can close or open your throat according to whatever it is that you're going to need and when it's where you want it you simply tighten up the two outside frog retaining screws and you're back in business so while this one is a little bit quicker the amount it takes to adjust this one is not much of a difference certainly what i would not call a game changer the rear toe to rear handle on the five and a half is designed for a three three-finger grip i keep my index finger i actually tucked mine underneath here but you can lay it on the side as well and that's over seven pounds that's one of the reasons as i mentioned that i really like this plane so those are the uh what we might call the the major differences now we're actually going to get into using them and i'm going to show you how they perform and that'll even help you further make your decision on which plane you want to start with we'll start the comparison by planing a piece of maple now this is rather gnarly piece there's a little bit of grain twisting around here there's a knot there more or less a piece of junk but it'll really tax it and i'm going to start with the 62 i need to get the blade set and by the way there's no lateral adjustment on this plane so you've got to tap the iron one way or the other whereas on my five and a half there's a lateral adjustment lever which i think makes that a lot easier so i'm sighting down the sole got a light colored background makes it easier to see i can see more blade on the left side than i can on the right so i'm going to tap that blade over what i want is to get it parallel to the sole so that my shaving is uniform thickness across its width and i don't throw that edge at a square by taking more off of one side than the other now once i get the blade what appears to be parallel i'm going to retract it all the way so i can start planing without any exposure and then i'll just sneak up on it now i've got the lever cap somewhat loose so that it makes it easy to do this adjustment i'm going to put a little bit of plain wax on here and this simply reduces the friction between the sole of the plane and the wood so that your effort is spent pushing the blade through the wood instead of pushing the plane over the wood so we'll start it off and i'll just spin that a little bit until i engage watch to see where the first bit of shaving comes out now i like to be able to do this on the fly and this is not the easiest another comparison i've got a little bit of shaving on the right side so i'm going to tap it a little bit to the left a little more blade a little more blade another tap that might have been too much still heavy on the right i'm going to tighten that lever cap down still heavy on the right i know it's moving because i can see it a little more blade one of the things that i notice in using this plane is it does not have the same feel and i think it may be because there's such a difference from where the handle is of the rear tote compared to the blade the balance is just not what i'm used to now in fairness this blade has been sharpened to the same level as the one in the five and a half use a sixteen thousand grit stone and i'm going to stop right there i struggled with that plane now let's compare the five and a half a little bit of wax spin that adjuster knob until the blade comes up now i'm high on the left side so i'm going to take my lateral adjustment lever and i don't push what i do is pinch my index finger is pushing on the side of the blade my thumb is pushing against the lateral adjustment lever and i find that that gives me a lot more control now that i see the blade i'm going to retract it until i don't see any blade and as i'm planing i will start spinning the adjuster knob watch to see where the first bit of shaving comes out which is a little bit on the right a little more on the right i should say now remember both of these planes were sharpened to the same level this is maybe it's just my familiarity i don't know but this is so much more comfortable so score a big one for the five and a half i've got a piece of fiddleback maple nice figure and if we wanted to plane that and prevent any tear out that's how i want to start this segment so from freshly sharpened i'm going to go through i'm going to load the blade adjust the throat show you how we do it with both planes so i've just put a new edge on this we've got these little pieces on the adjuster knob that we have to engage in these slots in the back of the blade and the multiple slots are there so that it'll compensate for blade wear so when you put this in you want to be careful not to bump anything so i'm going to open up the throat pull that get it completely out of the way make sure the face of the frog is nice and clean you don't want any debris on there bevel up set that in carefully carefully make sure you feel it engage those little slots put your lever cap on now i'm going to close this up just a little bit just to make it a little easier to adjust get my piece of paper bring my blade out by the way that adjuster knob spins clockwise as you stand behind the plane in order to advance okay there it is tighten that up a little bit now remember we don't have a lateral adjustment lever so we need either to tap it with a hammer which i find is a heck of a lot easier than trying to do it by hand that looks close now i want to pull that blade back so that it disappears and when i get it really close in other words almost ready to disappear now i'm going to go in loosen the front knob and again with a light colored background just makes it easier i'm going to close that throat down until i just barely see light lock that knob a little wax and then we'll start planing a little more exposure this by the way is another area where the extra weight is nice in dealing with figured wood just watching the shaving to try to get it i'm heavy on the right so swing that around went too far okay not bad i can actually close that throat down even more now you may not be able to pick it up in the camera but i want it so that it's just barely the thickness of the shaving now if you wanted to fine tune this with the blade set parallel to the sole verified by a shaving that's the same thickness on both sides if and i'm looking at it right now because this is new out of the box the blade is almost touching that sliding plate on the left so i would go in and i would file the leading edge of that toe plate so it matches the blade and that just will make it work that much better now this is all right i still find the balance is just a little less than what i would prefer all right now let's load up the five and a half having just sharpened we have a chip breaker to deal with so the chip breaker goes on i do it like this pull it back slide it over and then holding onto it like this i can slide that chip breaker so it's about a 30 second maybe even a 64th away from the cutting edge when i get it there snug up and snug it tight because part of the adjustment of the blade is done to the chip breaker and has to bring the blade with it so you want to make sure that is snug make sure the face of your frog is nice and clean if you don't want any debris carefully set that blade in place now when you put it in there's three points of contact you want the back of the blade to lay flat on the face of the frog this thing is called the yoke that engages that connects to the adjuster knob and that engages that little rectangular hole in the chip breaker and then this little bearing on the end of the lateral adjustment lever has to go into this long slot on the back on the blade so all three of those need to be properly seated and you can tell it'll feel solid put your lever cap on now with enough pressure and that pressure is adjusted by how wet how far in you turn that screw enough pressure so that you can make adjustments but but you don't want the blade to move accidentally so your balance is between holding the blades securely and yet still being able to make adjustments okay light colored background tip the plane down just a little bit advance the blade i see more on the left than i do on the right take my lateral adjustment lever move it over so the blade now appears parallel now i'm going to retract it okay so i'm just at the point where the blade is starting to protrude now i want to close this throat down so what i'm going to do i'm going to loosen the two outside frog retaining screws and it's usually only a quarter maybe a half a turn required then i'm going to use the center screw to close that throat down so again i'm going to put the light background in there and when i get that where i want it it's sometimes hard to get out because you the adjuster knob is in the way so oftentimes i'll use a much smaller screwdriver to make it a little bit easier but i can do it with this one okay now when i get that where i want it i tighten up the two outside frog retaining screws now you have to remember this the frog sits on a ramp surface i'll take this apart at some point and show you so if you advance the frog the blade is actually going to project so before you start you're going to turn this over and pull that blade back in a little bit so we're not starting with the blade out any amount a little bit of wax to reduce the friction and then start planing actually i didn't have it all the way in i'm heavy on the right so i'll move the lateral adjustment lever to the right still a little heavy on the right now start to advance now normally i would have my thumb right here behind the the front knob finger on the underside and that allows me to go in now this is a heavier plane and you notice that i don't pick it up and come back here each time for a couple of reasons i like to get in that that movement if you pick it up you got to be careful because if you accidentally bump it or jar it you may change the setting of that blade so instead of risking that i simply pull it back it doesn't bother the blade and away you go now with that throat down tight and a nice sharp blade that surface is flawless now i gotta hand it to the five and a half on that test this is the big test for me how it performs on the shooting board i'm going to use a piece of red oak which is not the easiest wood to uh plain end grain on so in this function planes are going to operate on their side now the first thing you're going to notice and you want stability is how much surface area there is on the low angle versus the bedrock style considerably more that's not that's one factor the second factor is the weight coming in at just over seven versus four and a half that's going to be huge uh the weight helps carry through the board and the third thing that you really want to consider is how you're going to hold onto it now there are devices that you can buy to help that but in trying to grab hold of this there really is not much and this is a difficult pass when you're cutting through the end grain of something like a piece of red oak on this one i take that portion of my palm and i jam it in that wedge-shaped area and although it creates a callous blister first at least gives you something solid to hold on to so let's go ahead and try it on this one by the way this is the shooting board that we actually make and if you're interested in that and don't want to make your own you can check out a link down below so i'm going to put a little bit of wax take the cover off first a little bit of wax on the sole a little on the side just help it move a little easier and if you're not familiar with a shooting board its primary function is to hold the work piece and the tool at right angles in this direction and right angles in this direction so you can square your stock up with relative ease first thing you have to remember is in planing across the end of a board these fibers are going to break off unless you do something to prevent it so what i do is turn the board around pull it out from the fence back here and create a bit of a chamfer on this end so now when you turn it back around with the reference edge against the fence it'll produce a little bit of a gap right here and you simply come in i can use a little more blade and plane until that gap disappears now this is not particularly easy and for all those reasons i mean you're still getting a good shaving because it's properly sharpened but for all the reasons i mentioned really can't hold on to it very well doesn't have the mass and doesn't have the stability that i would like because of the limited surface area so let's switch over and use the five and a half do the same thing a little bit of wax on the sole and a little bit of wax on the edge that's going to run on the shooting board flip it over get yourself a chamfer flip it back this way now again part of this is due to the fact that i'm so familiar with this plane but the majority of it majority of it is due to the fact that you have lots of mass it's easier to hold on to and you've got that extra stability from having a big or relatively large amount of surface on the side most folks talk about the fact that the angle of attack is lower it should be better for end grain but i'm telling you that if you sharpen your blade properly it's not going to make much of a difference in fact let's figure out exactly what we're dealing with in terms of angle of attack and if you look at the shavings they don't look any different i can't remember which one that came out of but they're all relatively the same this one is 45 degrees we already know that simply because the frog is 45 degrees the bevels on the bottom side real easy to calculate this one we talked about this earlier 12 degree bedding angle 25 degree primary bevel sitting at 37. however most people have discovered that if you're having to polish the entire bevel it's an awful lot of wasted time and effort because the only part that touches the wood is right up here so if you introduce micro bevels and if you haven't seen our 32 seconds to sharp check out that video in the link below and that'll walk you through that process but by elevating that blade a few degrees off of the primary bevel you can quickly put a secondary bevel on there i do that with the thousand grit stone and then going over to my finishing stone whatever it may be in my case it's 16 000 you simply raise up another degree or two and now you're working the only just the leading edge a mere 10 seconds on that fine stone and you're good to go now if you felt calculate what i just said you've got your primary degree primary bevel at 25 you've added two or three degrees on the secondary and another couple on the tertiary so if it's four degrees that means you're now planing at 41 degrees as opposed to 45 and trust me the 4 degrees just not make a difference like some people might think a lot of folks who look at the 62 hear about the fact that you can simply change the blade to change the angle of attack now first of all we have to address the question why would you want to change the angle of attack here's a nice piece of fiddleback maple i'm convinced with my experience that you can plane that wood almost without doing anything other than having a really sharp blade and having a light cut but when you get into some exotics here's a little example here's a piece of cocobolo you start getting into these really hard exotic woods sometimes it's better if you increase your pitch that was meant to be a joke by the way but same idea what you do with this plane is you simply take out that blade that has a 25 degree primary bevel and you could have a second blade that might be ground at 40 degrees and now when you put that in there you're planing at a minimum of 52 40 plus 12 plus any of your micro bevels and you can do whatever you want you can go right up to having it square which would give you 90 plus 12 102 degrees bear in mind when you increase the pitch it also gets harder to push another big plus for having a heavy plane so how does the five and a half compete well simple what we've done we take a regular blade and on the back it's about a millimeter and a half wide we grind a 20 to a 20 degree back bevel we go through the process of polishing it just like we would the back of a chisel meaning go through multiple grits until you get to your final one and leave that a nice mirror polish sharpen it the way you normally would except you can't turn that over to remove the burr i usually will just use my hand or a piece of wood to work that any burr that might be on there now when you put that in with your chip breaker on and i actually leave it just like that chip breaker already is that already set leave it in my tool tray and i've written on the back ha which stands for high angle so i can relatively i read it readily identify it when you put that into your plane now you've got your 45 degree frog but you have to add in that back bevel of 20 degrees so you're planing at 65 degrees again a lot harder to push but on exotics or anything with really nasty interlocking grain it's absolutely amazing what it'll do 62 or the five and a half now i tried to hold my bias on the sidelines but this one wins hands down i can't think of any reason why i would ever choose a 62 over the five and a half you have to make your own mind up i'd love to hear your feedback if there's something i've forgotten please leave that in the comment section and we'd address it on a future video but try them both and i think you'd be convinced the bedrock style five and a half wins hands down hope this has been beneficial hope you've given you the information to think about to make that informed decision because that's what it's all about enjoy your woodworking see you again soon if you like my work if you like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level and i've always said better tools make it a whole lot easier if you click on the icon with the plane and the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you all of our tools and also talk to you about our online and in-person workshops good luck in your woodwork

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 47,197

Rating: 4.9205956 out of 5

Keywords: low angle vs standard plane, low angle vs standard hand plane, low angle vs standard jack plane, low angle vs high angle, low angle vs high angle jack plane, low angle vs high angle plane, low angle vs regular plane, low angle jack, low angle jack plane, low angle plane, low angle plane vs standard, plane, bench plane, hand plane, high angle plane, jack plane, rob cosman, woodworking

Id: DqXINyj3rB4

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020