Router Plane Q&A | Paul Sellers

hello everybody I have been inundated with questions about the router plane and I've gathered together a few router planes here just to confuse you because there are so many different types and sizes home aids and manufactured that it can be confusing but in my view you can get away with just one router plane and it might be a homemade one it might be a vintage one it might be a brand-new one they will all do what you want them to do so we're going to discuss some of these issues that people have sent the questions in because I think they're very good questions I've gone through them we can't answer all the questions that you sent in because there were literally hundreds but what we can do is take a group of them and the ones that are probably causing the greatest confusion or the most misunderstood or whatever so I'm going to try and answer some of these questions for you so the first one is from Dwayne in Manitoba Canada and he says what would do you recommend for making extension plate for the base of the router plane how thick should it be well this one here that's quite thick this is a borrowed one that I borrowed from Hannah and hers is quite thick but she has enough depth for the depth of the work that she's likely to do where the thickness of this isn't going to impair her if the base is in the way and it's too thick you can just take it off and just use it without the base so it's not really an issue for any others really so we take the base off but I've been using a wood called sapele and the reason I'm using sapele is because it's stable and once you've planned it flat and Gothic parallel it works perfectly long-term and it doesn't mark the other wood that's the important thing whereas you could use some of the other woods the more oily woods will leave a mark on the surface of light hardwoods so that's what you don't want so 3/8 of an inch thick you can extend the length a little bit if you want to as I have with all of mine I've given myself an extra two inches here it's quite handy to have especially when you're doing Tenon's and usually about the same width as the footprint or the same depth as the footprint so I've got different planes here but they don't usually go wider than the plane as in the case of this one or all of them so it's appealing but you can use just about any wood I don't need to think you couldn't use oak you could use a variety of different you can use maple you can use a variety of different hardwoods the hardwoods tend to work better and give you longevity whereas the softer woods do tend to wear against the abrasion of the edge of a housing data or something like that so but you can use pay at plant and pine in an emergency if you're stuck on a job and you need something that gives you an extension then just go for a piece of pine it will work fine this is Bill from Georgia and he said that recently the floor of some elements I have chucked have been deeper than the Stanley router playing reaches is there a way to extend the depth of the reach there is an extension on the plane itself on this particular plane I've got this set with this adjuster here if I flip this over I can change the depth I can get out of depth I've got this on the maximum depth now I don't know on the shallowest depth if I turn this over this little bit gives me the extra that gives me an extra quarter of an inch deep but on some planes like this record version you get another eighth of an inch you get more with this one so if you flip this over you can get the extra depth if you want to go very deep beyond the extension of this adjuster rod and everything it's really to do with the length of the cutter itself I don't think there's a way of going deeper and generally it doesn't work too well because when you're routing it out there's a tendency with that extra leverage on the length of the cutter to trip the plane as it goes across the wood or in the recess so probably yeah you are limited really Pete from Yorkshire having just bought my first router plane I was wondering what basic maintenance should I do to restore it to good working to a good working till he's bought his first router playing and he wants maintenance but he's actually talking about two different things here he's talking about restoration and maintenance the two distinctly different areas basically if they come and they're full of paint and rust and maybe some brick dust mixed in there with some concrete you just have to get all that off so if you took the plane and trued up the sole got it as flat as you could and then just break the edges all the way around with a file or some abrasive paper that will usually do it all the components clean off any rust that's got into the moving parts the components the threads and so on and then sharpen it so it's it's going to be up to you really how much work you want to put into it and this is for include Staffordshire what is the best way to set the UD noticed or effort Luud that's the Welsh pronunciation of fluid so what is the best way to set the height to make sure you don't play in too deeply boo-boom do you recommend attaching a wooden support screwed to the base of the place are two separate questions what is the best way to set the height to make sure you don't set the plane too deep there's a variety different ways you can simply measure it with a rule you can if you were to establish a depth of let me see if I can show you more readily this one here for instance if I set this with a rule I can just measure from the sole to the cutting edge get the three-eighths depth that I need or I can take the rule and a knife set the blade to the three-eighths deep that I need and make a mark here and then I can set the cutter to that depth so I just then simply wind dial in the depth that I want there's best I can and then once I've got that depth then I've got the depth that I need so you can do a couple of ways if you have something that already gives you an existing depth like this one for instance say I want this depth in this groove here in this recess here I would set this down dial it in again till I get the right depth so it's not Rocking set it and then go to this one and I've got the depth that I want to route that one to so those are a couple of ways that are practical do you recommend attaching a wooden support screw to the base of the plate I do for most things weight wherever you have metal approaching wood there is usually a marring to the surface no matter how smooth or well made the plane is it seems to always be able to Mar the surface especially on softer woods so whereas wood on wood very very rarely does so I would say definitely have a plate attached to it wouldn't play not metal and I think then you can always take it off if you need to for whatever reason okay now the next questions are using the router play and this is from John in Utah USA my verities router plane changes depth during the cut will boom once a question the shank of the iron slips in the collar is there a trick that will prevent the slippage and help ensure an equal depth across the entire surface some planes do that and if you look at the Lee Nielson plane they've got this little trick piece here that slides up and down and when you like when you pull this down lock it off you've got this one locked off - it won't move it'll stop it from going deeper which is what you want it if it goes shallower if it pushes up because of the pressure then you just have to push it back down but once you've locked this stop off then you're fine with it and varus's has done the same thing on there as they've got an adjuster here that locks off as well and it's a good addition the thing is I've noticed I've never come across a router plane the didn't shift it's just that you're exerting so much pressure on the router very often that it tends to do that and it can be that you've got an angle to the grain that you're routing that is commensurate with the bevel of the blade so when you're routing it tends to pull the blade into the surface of the wood as you exert that forward momentum and that's when it starts to go pear-shaped because then you are actually routing and you can be routing before you realize you've got another sixteenth deeper than you wanted to usually when it's critical so yeah is dead there is no trick really to preventing the slippage if it doesn't have those lock off colors on there except to really cinch everything as tightly as your fingers can go often I think the very best ones are the the thumb screw variety because you can get a lot of pressure on there and if you want to you could even use something that will give you added pressure so the thumb screws are definitely definitely the better rather than the nailed nuts that we have on on some of the players that engineers think we need that are better but very often are not better at all so definitely the thumb screws win for me this is Edie in Canada how does one prevent terror when routing tear out this there are a lot of reasons that wood will tear out one can be that we just go into this this thing Bulldog idli and we put the router to the task and then we and we're just bulldogging this we're not really at all sensitive to the surface of the wood whereas we should be using this more like this and feeling for the grain like we would with a paring chisel and altering the corner of the the the router blade into the wood and even turning the router around and working it from the other side so now it's not tearing for me and I'm feeling for that and I've not got the torn surface on this section and you'll see you'll see so I just did the bottom half of this is a smoother silk when I was coming from this side and just bulldogging into this it was just a tighter the other thing is not to take off too much wood often we want to take something down 1/16 of an inch it's too much we should only be looking at somewhere around 30 1/32 of an inch or even less much less in some cases so it's more becoming sensitive to the grain the grain type of the wood the tool making sure the edge tool is pristinely sharpened those kind of things making sure we got the right depth of cut so we're not taking too much off and it's less about bruising and being forceful than it is about being sensitive and using this as you would a chisel feeling for that edge feeling for the corner the optimum cutting edge and working through the surface that way dowel carson sprog River Oregon USA one thing I've noticed by watching your videos Paul is that the only that you only use the router plane to put the finishing touches on tenon tEEX dedos and the like was the router plane design for more than this or is this where the router shines the router plane really was designed for you can have it you can either completely use the router plane and in that case if I was routing this depth out here I've got quarter of an inch to go down I might take a 30 second off at a time so I set my depth of my router to 1/32 route out the mid section then alter it again another 30 second and go down incrementally and then for the very final throws I would probably set it at a 64th of an inch and just skim that surface off to get this pristine bottom outer bottom out in the in the finished curse so I use it on the tenon as far as I know I've never ever saw anybody else use a router to trim a tenon or even to form a tenon and we got some amazing videos on how to tenon using a router and get the pristine results that you need so I've focused on the router plane because when I first started to write about the router plane everybody thought it was a router that you could cut molds with like you might use a power router but the power router of course was the adaptation making it useful for making molds onto wood whereas this this router will never put mold on road that's not what its intention was it's purely for routing out the bottoms of recesses so it could be a data or housing they don't like this it can be a an enclosed recess on all four sides you can use it for inlay work that type of thing and also you can use it for sprucing it getting a pristine surface with a guaranteed parallelity to the outside face of say a rail you can use it for that it's a perfect tool for that and actually when we started blogging on this you could buy this plane on ebay for about nine pounds and since I started writing and telling people no it's got much more to it than this you can't just use it for routing out today they'll use it for this and this and this and then people started loving this plane and now the this plane or this one will sell for a hundred pounds it's gone up and up and up and then some of the more rare versions like this one will sell for four and five hundred pounds so these are very rare but I just introduced a few scoops a few planes here just to show you the variants but you only need one probably okay alright this is Dave parson in Cambridgeshire I think grain issues cooking out channel tannin I often dig in no not taking big cuts lightly due to the grain you've mentioned feeling for the grain with the number four plane how do you address this with the router plane please let me flip this over and see if I can give you a little bit of insight with her route the plane so if I set this plane too near flush to the surface so it's taking nothing off now it's just taking off a little bit so there the grain is tearing it's in the surface so what I'm doing I've got torn grain I can see the surface is tearing and and what I want to do is really what I just did a few minutes ago is come in from the other side and I just work my plane this way and then I'll work the corner of the blade like this and then I'll do a skew cut like this and what I end up with is these paring cuts and this is a smooth as silk so I'm using the corner of the blade but I my initial response is to this and suddenly where I am on the soft element of this growth ring suddenly I've hit this darker color here that's the harder element of the growth ring so when we look on the end here the dark part is harder than that soft part I sense that when it hits that surface and I stop I don't try and force it so when I get to that hard point there then I come in and I work the grain with the point at the corner of the blade and I get through it so now what I've got is I've got this super smooth across this whole surface by simply using the corner of the blade so I use this instrument which is what it is to tell me what's going on with the wood and then I alter my attitude towards I alter the presentation of the blade to it use the corner and I work through it so we've got this beautiful smooth surface now inside the bottom of a dado perhaps that doesn't matter so much you don't have to be so pernickety about it but when it's on the surface or in here where I might only be going 1/32 deep I can add a veneer in there it might be more important so it's always important always remember it's not what you make that's important it's how you make it and that's going to determine the outcome so that's what I of advocated for so long this is Mick from Hilversum in NL so I don't know where an hour where that's the Netherlands or somewhere else in the world Paul the main issue I have been using I have when using the router is that the shavings end up between the sole of the plane and my workpiece this shaving scales the wood how to prevent this okay I've got you on this one and this is where sometimes you're there's a couple of places here if you are routing out the bottom of a dado you have to constantly be altering so I'm routing here and I've got to count on routing out here I've got to be constantly aware that if I do this without that wooden so long let's take this one for instance here so if we set this plane oops not quite what I wanted if we set this plane and now this is just a vintage plane that's never been shortened so bear with me just for a second so if I'm routing here and I'm routing out the the base of this radar here these particles come onto the surface they spring onto the pond to the surface they weren't there before I started so I'm routing here and I'm pull and then I skip up and I pull back on the surface this is between the on the sole you just have to be constantly aware it's this sensitivity thing again we keep working the surface we feel something jarring we've got these little pieces it's constant blowing the whole time but there is another element to this if I take this plane and I set this to the depth like here and I'm routing out a stopped housing dado like this one like that this wood inside here let's put some of this inside here this wood in here can come to the fore edge like this wood is here and when I keep pushing that wood and I'm routing the whole time so if I go deeper now and create this problem this is now at the fore part of here so I hit that and it's damaging that four part that's the problem this was the problem with this type of play and this is a record number seventy one and a half this was the alternative to this one you can see on my left it's got the hump in the middle on the right it's just a flat sole all the way across so when you're routing with this fellow here you hit this with the 4 part it's damaging that open edge there and and we have a problem because this piece of wood is going to be seen later this was where Stanley came in and invented the hump so we don't have that issue unless as we mostly do we add the wooden sole then we eliminate the benefit of this and we end up with the wooden sole again but if that is the case if you are routing there just give it a blow and you're back in action so it's just a question of being conscious of that ok I Paul this is from Brian McGregor in Valdivia Chile I probably I'm not pronouncing that right hi Paul is the router play and effective for making a groove with the width of the iron or the rebate as you do with the plow play thank you it isn't it isn't really the the router plane is not intended for plowing a groove they're not two integers it's not an interchangeable plane whereas I you can do it and you can take the marking gauge you could saw down the sides of the groove a quick quick example so if we were wanted say a groove in here like this and this you can take the saw and sawed down the length of the side walls but what we're really doing here is we're adapting these tools these are not what they were intended for so all we're doing in actuality I'll guarantee that nobody at record or Stanley and visited anybody doing something so we take out some midsection like this we don't have a guaranteed depth so we take a plane that has a narrow enough plane iron in it like this one and we can now set this so this is adaptation not intent and we can take this now and run that down the groove so this is just Paul getting on these ideas level so we can take that out and we can use it that way but it's not intended for a guaranteed surface the other planes you can do that with you can do that with this one but then you say well doesn't this drop over and it does but they have an adapter in here that goes in a stem on the for path of the plane levels off on this surface with the underside of the sole and so you can use it for that as well because there are places where we do such things such as the plight of the woodworker we're going on to what works better Liam new jersey is it important to get a router plane with a micro adjust heat a height wheel for that extra position or will a model without the adjustment wheel do the job just as fine thanks Paul this is what I call a pinch type and this is where you it could be a homemade one like this this is one I made out of an allen key or an hour and this is where you pinch it up and down lock it off at the back with just a thumb to screw thread it into the wood or it could be this type here that's a bit more to it and you can adjust your height and you just pinch it when you've got near to depth you slacking off and you just pinch it and you can adjust it you know by a thousandth or whatever very sativum makes this one this is their version of it and this one again you slack enough and you pinch and you can lower or heighten that blade this one is very good because it has a spring-loaded washer in here that keeps pleasure pressure applied to the break blade so even when you slacken this off half a turn its movable but it's locked it's also arrested in a certain pressure under a certain pressure so I would say no you can go both ways and the reason I say that is because I have yet to find even with the modern makers where the the blade is arrested at a certain height and it doesn't move even after when you're locking it off sometimes you have set the depth you lock this off and you go back and exchange the depth so often we're adjusting this and sometimes it doesn't move at all and there's no rhyme no reason for it not to move these fairly tight tolerances and so on for some reason they just don't move so it's really an engineering trick to get that just right but none of them nobody has got it I haven't found a single manufacturer that did it successfully just in my psalm of Washington DC are there specific times when you would reach for a router plane over a plow plane and vice versa the plow planes are generally not I'm not saying exclusively but generally they're intended for cutting along the grain or with the grain so that means that would be going along this way and and I think that that's important to recognize the plow plane cuts grooves going with the grain not across the grain generally now you can adapt them to go across the grain but that's generally not what we do the router plane is generally for cutting across the grain so we're going across this way and and that's important because we've somehow we've severed the walls and we've gone across the grain the plow plane doesn't cross the grain cut because it's cutting with the grain the blade itself because it's commensurate to the direction of the grain so the grain is running this way you don't need to sever across the grain but with a housing data or any cross any housing curve you always have elements that are cross the grain so you have to cut those walls whether it's with a knife a chisel or a saw or whatever you have to cross grain so it's intended for a cross grain cut so they're too dedicated Plains really but I did show a little while ago that you can if you need to adapt them to do different things and that's just a question of adaptation this one is from Greg burr is from Georgia in the USA and Matt Newman Minnesota Johann at Washington Gordon Clark Vancouver you basically asked him the same question diamond point versus the square blade so we've got a diamond point like this one this is a plane blade that's used for you can use it in the plow plane in the router plane and you can use each side to run along the surface of a groove like this and this by just skewing the plane so you get right into the corners right into the edges and this is really a leveling tool it was designed to level the bottom and perfect the bottom of a groove it doesn't work as in my opinion I haven't really found it works any better than the square cutter if he's well sharpened and me Trude up according to the patterns that I've given for chewing up the blade to the plane itself so everybody's asked the same question about the diamond and then the other bit was preparing the wood for the soul all you need to do is make sure there's no twists in the board that you're doing so you plan it out of twist by using winding sticks on one side run a marking gauge all the way around and playing the next surface parallel to it use a vernier if need be to get the kind of accuracy you want but it is important to get it perfect and that's all you need I've really enjoyed the questions everybody and I don't want you to ignore this I'm not this is not a hard sell this is just me I have written about 30 pages just on the router playing alone and it includes everything you need to adjust it alternative uses for it it's a wonderful this is where I put all my original thoughts from my working with the router plane but with a you know a few other tools in there too that I consider essential this is my book I wrote it couple three years ago and it's been a great book it's been a good resource for everybody so you can go to my blog you'll find more information there drawings pictures photographs of router work but this is we're talking about the Hann router not the power router remember so this is where the real hand power is is in hand tools and that's what I advocate for most woodworkers I think that's what they're really looking for so thank you for listening to this I've enjoyed doing it enjoyed pulling it together the router is an amazing tool [Music] you

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 68,952

Rating: 4.955132 out of 5

Keywords: router plane, hand router, paul sellers, hand tools, woodworking, DIY, workshop, joiner, carpenter, craftsman

Id: gUyDYbIdq2E

Length: 30min 21sec (1821 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019