Super-tuning the Stanley 12-404 plane

so this is the Stanley 12400 for bench point it's just about the cheapest plane on Amazon I found out about this plane because this guy Oscar he's my friend on Instagram and he lives in the Philippines and he says that this plane is for sale in every single hardware store in the Philippines and it's also pretty much the only plane you can get your hands on if you live there and that sort of suggests to me that in a lot of places all around the world and probably parts of America if you want to get into woodworking and you want to get a plane this is it and it's also very cheap it costs 20 bucks give or take and this plane has some shortcomings but if we let those short come and stop us we're never gonna do any woodworking so we're gonna have to figure out what to do with this thing we're gonna have to figure out how to tune it sharpen it and get it working the best it possibly can now I know I know what a lot of you were saying you're saying wait a second Rex isn't this plane pretty much a cheap piece of crap and the answer is yes it pretty much is but it's never slapped me before so with any plane cheap or expensive one of the first things we have to do is make sure the soul of the plane is mostly flat and luckily that's not very difficult to do you need a flat surface I like to use a piece of glass and scrap glass is great for this you could also just use a granite tile from The Home Center that'll work really well too you need to glue a piece of medium sand paper down to your flat surface I use 100 or 120 grit and I glue it down with 3m super 77 adhesive it's my favorite for this sort of thing because it's quick and it dries really fast I'll put a link to it down in the description once I've got my sandpaper and flat surface set up I'm going to just color the bottom of the plane in with a sharpie that's gonna help me see what's going on then I'll make sure the blade is retracted up into the body because I don't want to mess up the edge on the sandpaper put the plane on my flat surface and rub it back and forth with some medium downward pressure no reason to crush it just press it into the sand paper a bit and move it back and forth a few times when you pick it up the places where the Sharpie has been ground off I'm going to tell you where the plane is flat and where it's out of flat you can tell from the Sharpie that it's pretty flat here and here but the middle of it is like banana shaped it's not really touching the sandpaper at all you can see that it's really just a very very toe and the very heel of the plane that it's even touching and the rest of it is just completely bowed so we're gonna have to straighten that out while we're talking about this let's take a quick second and discuss where the plane actually needs to be flat so we don't waste any time this is a pretty quality vintage Stanley plane and I've already flattened the sole on this now what's really really important is up here the toe you want all of this to be as flat as it can be especially right in the front of the mouth that's super critical behind the mouth is very important to now with this back part here you want the back part of the plane the very heel that needs to be touching and it's really good if the sides are also touching the work that's very helpful right in the middle here this whole part can be hollow and does not need to touch what you're doing if you've got the toe in front and behind the mouth the heel and a little bit on the sides that plane is gonna behave great no reason to kill yourself if you've got a hollow section here you can leave that the plane will still work just fine and to correct the bow that we have in our 404 12 we're just gonna put it back on the sandpaper and keep rubbing it back and forth to keep from overdoing it in one part I'll tend to flip it around I'll put the back side first I'll go sideways a little bit and I'll just keep going back and forth with medium pressure watching those milling marks and the Sharpie disappear over time as I work it down now your sandpaper is gonna get loaded up with sanding dust while you're working on this and that fine cast-iron dust is not good for you it'll give you the nastiest black snot you've ever seen in your life oh and lung cancer so we're respirator or a breathing mask or do this outside don't breathe that stuff in and just take a brush and brush your sandpaper clean once in a while you might think it's airing out when it's just loaded up with dust and it'll cut again really well if you just clean off what's already there I also took a few minutes during the flattening process got the plane up on its edge and took all the sharp corners off the edges of the plane and then I did the same thing by rolling the toe and heel against the sandpaper it only takes a minute but it gets rid of all those rough edges that might couch or Dayton your work and it's gonna make this plane produce a much better surface now that this is flattened I'll probably never have to do it again although it's possible and if you do it doesn't take that long but it's flat enough for now we can move on to sharpening it a lot of people take these planes and test them straight out of the package but that doesn't make a lot of sense because they really don't sharpen irons at the factory that's something you have to do luckily it's not very difficult even if you've never done it before and you only need a couple of things if you're just starting out with this I really recommend having some sort of sharpening guide this is the one that I like it's made by eclipse you can get it on Amazon for like 10 or 12 bucks I'll put a link in the description but if you don't want to spend any money on it that's fine too there's lots of plans online from making your own sharpening j-just out of wood and a couple pieces of hardware it doesn't make any difference what you use as long as you can hold the blade firmly at a consistent angle you'll be fine the other thing we're going to need is a couple different grits of automotive wet or dry sandpaper and I know that sounds very specific sandpaper is sandpaper but this stuff is different for one thing it's very tough for another thing it comes in really fine grits it goes up to like 2 or 3,000 grit which is gonna let us get a nice fine edge so you just need a couple of different grits you want to start with something a little bit coarse like 200 or 400 and then go up to something kind of fine like 1200 or 1500 for me what I had laying around the shop was 220 600 1000 and 1200 grit and that's perfect doesn't make a huge difference which grits you have as long as you start with something a little bit coarse and end up with something around a thousand or more you'll be fine to sharpen the iron the first thing you're gonna do is flatten the back of it on coarse paper so just put the iron flat on the coarse paper put some firm finger pressure towards the edge with the tips of your fingers and then just push the iron back and forth maintaining nice even pressure with cheap irons like this one you're going to have some low spots they'll be there someplace for instance this has one right by the edge and that tells me that I'm not done sharpening yet so I'm gonna keep on going until I have consistent shiny scratches all the way along the back then I'll repeat the exact same procedure on my wet or dry paper I'll add a little bit of water which helps lubricate the paper and carry away the little bits and I'll do the same thing just rub it back and forth check the back move on to the next grip when I'm done I should have a nice polished and shiny look on the back of my iron once the back of your iron is flattened you're gonna sharpen it and that goes in two stages grinding and honing grinding is where you establish the geometry of your bevel make sure everything is flat and even and honing is where you refine that bevel and make it really polished and smooth we already have everything we need for both the grinding and the Honan take your iron and set it up in your jig my jig actually comes with instructions on the side for how far out the iron has to stick to get the right angle I use a ruler to get my projection set up and then in the course paper I just rub the iron back and forth it's probably good to add a little sharpie just so you can make sure you get the whole thing all I'm trying to do here is grind the entire bevel and get it flat and even and straight on this coarser paper it only takes a couple of minutes I've got a shiny bevel all the way across and I'm ready to move on to the honing stage all the honing is gonna happen on my fine grits of wet or dry paper I'll add a little bit of water again and then sharpen on the first piece of paper just using firm pressure with my fingertips and going back and forth until I can feel a burr on the back of the blade a burr is where the sharpened metal has gone all the way to the edge and flipped over to the back a little bit it's a little flap of metal just hanging there and when I can feel that with the back of my finger that means that I've sharpened the entire bevel and I'm ready to move on at my next grit I put the iron flat on its back and just drag it a couple of times that's gonna flip that burr back over to the bevel side and let me hone it off on the next grip and I'm just gonna repeat that process through all of my grits keep going back and forth until I can feel the bird go to the next paper drag it on the back to flip the bird hone it until I feel a Burgin and repeat it's really not complicated when I'm done I should have a very shiny and polished looking bevel all the way across and it should feel very sharp to the top at this point you need to start being careful of your iron because you can really cut yourself on it one thing you might want to do during the honing stage is put a little camber on the iron and camber just means a little curve so that the center of the blade sticks out a little more and the corners are pulled back a tiny bit that camber is gonna keep you from getting big tracks in your work and keep the plain iron from digging into the wood it's worth a little extra effort to get it on there all you have to do during the honing phase is apply a little bit of extra pressure towards one corner with your finger and then towards the other corner with your finger and doing a little bit more grinding on those corners is gonna give you a really nice curvature it's gonna give you a better cut in the end it's really not complicated and you shouldn't hesitate to try it there's a final step with honing and it's optional but it really does a lot of good and that's called using a strop and the strop is just a piece of leather any piece of leather an old belt works fine and you can just rub the iron right on that or sometimes people add some honing compound to that I used this super cheap green chromium oxide buffing compound I rubbed that back and forth over my strop and then I go at it with the iron I don't have it in the jig anymore and all I'm doing is putting the bevel against the strop pulling it back with firm downward pressure and then lifting it up at the end of my stroke don't strop all the way off the back of your piece of leather because then you'll mess up your edge pull it back lift it up place it pull it back repeat do that 20 or 30 times then flip the iron over put the back of it on the strop give it firm pressure with your fingers and pull it back about ten times strapping with honing compound is going to give you an ultra polished super smooth edge it's the best you can possibly get and it's gonna make your work look the best so it's worth taking a little bit of extra time to strop but if you don't have this stuff don't let that stop you just go ahead and get to work so now our plain body is prepared and our iron is sharp ready to put the whole thing together and test it out so grab your plane grab your iron be very careful putting it in you don't want to Nick that edge against any of the metal parts of the plane you'll mess it up because it's very fine get it over the adjusters then get your cap and put that over the iron and snug up the screw until it's sort of medium tight no reason to crush it down it doesn't need to be held super tightly and then you're gonna use the adjusters to get the plain iron at the right projection out of the sole and also square back and forth and this is where things do get a little tricky because this adjustment system is I was gonna say it's not good but that's being too charitable it's bad this is a bad way of adjusting plans but either way you can sight down the plane usually from the toe and you want to see that iron just sticking out sort of above the front of the mouth and I think I've got that you can also rub your finger across the iron like this to get an idea of where it's going don't go side to side because you'll slice your finger open and what you'll need to do is just mess with those adjusters however you need to until you get the iron just sticking out of the mouth a tiny bit and also totally Square and straight and that's probably gonna take a little bit of fiddling around now a thing that helps a lot during this process is just grabbing a little scrap of any would get the plane in your other hand with the sole held up and run that scrap wood use the corner on the corner of that scrap of wood over the play knife and it should cut really easily and what I do is I check one edge and check the other edge and they should both feel kind of even they don't in this case so I'm going to pull this edge in a little bit now for this kind of plane a small smoothing plane the ideal setup is that you're not really gonna take shaving at the very corner of the blade on either side and then you'll take a light shaving in the middle and I've got that it's cutting in the middle lightly and not to either side and that should mean that I'm gonna take a nice shaving to whatever board I go to so let me get a scrap set up in the vise and we'll give it a shot I'm just gonna start off with this thin strip of pine I'll take my plane and I'll set it on the wood all the way over to one side and run it and what I'm looking for here is pretty much no shaving and that's what I'm getting there's nothing and then I'll check the other side and also no shaving and then let's go right in the middle now that is what you're looking for that's a really nice shaving and more importantly the surface of the wood feels smooth people get too bent out of shape thinking about the shaving shaving doesn't matter it's the wood that matters if you've never done this before go ahead and just take a few strokes you might be really surprised at how satisfying this sensation is and seeing those shavings come popping out of the plane that is a nice feeling this is exactly what we're looking for right here let's move on doing a face here's a small block of that same pond let's see if we can plane this face look at that that is beautiful there's a perfect surface look how shiny it is you can never get that with sandpaper and I think I went a little bit against the grain there so let me switch it around and going the other direction and that's a nice surface - it's even better now it's not perfect I have some scratches here I have some little tracks that are being left by something so as I continue to use this plane I'm gonna try and track those down I'm gonna feel and see if I have a sharp spot anywhere this toe still feels a little bit sharp the mouth could have some sharpness I might want to clean up with a file there could be a corner or a little burr anywhere that's leaving tracks in my wood I'll hunt that down after I've been using the plane for a little while for now I'm just happy to see that it's cutting well next thing we're gonna do is move on to some hardwoods I have a nice piece of walnut here and here I'm just going back and forth over the board and I'm kind of overlapping my strokes so let's start with it about here with the center of the iron on the edges board take a stroke and then the shaving I'm taking is about an inch thick so I'll move over about half an inch so that my strokes overlap and then I'll just keep doing this until I get to the end and it's just like the pine this has a really nice shiny surface but this is excellent this is what you get a plane for let's finish up with a nice piece of maple maple is a wonderful hardwood but it can be difficult to plane so it's a good test for this plan yeah you know there's just nothing there's nothing to be ashamed of here these are really good shavings the surfaces it's totally decent that same as the previous ones I'm getting some nice shimmer to the surface you can even see some flame figure coming out that I didn't even know was in this board it's a lot prettier than I thought and it's all because I'm using an edge tool to bring that figure to the surface okay so I'm gonna admit to being pretty impressed by this plane honestly when I got it to make this video I thought it was gonna be a complete piece of crap but it's not it actually works okay I wouldn't say it works as well as the planes I really like and use day to day but if you had to use this plane to start woodworking I don't think there's anything here that would stop you except there is one problem these adjusters they suck and it's not because they're badly manufactured it's because this is a stupid stupid design there's two ways that you can adjust a plane iron you can adjust it for depth how far in or out it sticks from the sole and also what we call lateral adjustment and that's keeping the blade square adjusting it in one direction or the other so that the edge is nice and even with the work and every single plane that I own that has adjusters it's got a separate adjuster for depth and for lateral this plane in a really boneheaded cost-cutting maneuver Stanly combined the depth of the lateral into these two wheels and the reason that doesn't work very well is that every time you try to change how far out the blade is sticking you also change its angle and that's pretty much never a good thing it makes adjustments take way way too long and makes the tool difficult to use honestly it would be better if this thing didn't even have adjusters actually let's give that a try okay so now I've taken the adjusters out I'm gonna be honest I like this thing better already I don't know what you're thinking well wait a second Rex you took the adjusters out how are you going to adjust it fair question here's the thing about mechanical adjusters they've only existed for like a couple hundred years tops planes have existed for thousands of years and for thousands of years they didn't have adjusters you just adjusted them by tapping them with a hammer and believe it or not that same approach can work right here even though the plane wasn't intended for that it's very simple let me show you you'll probably need two hammers metal one this one happens to be aluminum but brass or even steel is fine and you're also gonna need a soft hammer plastic or wood this happens to be a rawhide hammer for auto body work doesn't really matter this one is for tapping the blade the soft one is for tapping the body let me show you how if you want to advance the blade it's really easy all you have to do is tap on the back of the blade and then it'll stick out a tiny bit more so I feel it's just about there I'm gonna give it another little tap whoops I think I went too far what do I do now I can't tap it forward anymore well that's what the soft hammer is for interesting thing about physics is since the blade isn't really attached to the body if we hit the body the body will move relative to the blade and it'll actually go back up further into the body it won't stick out as far so if I take this soft hammer and I hit the plane either back here or on top of the knob right here it'll actually pull the iron back in and I can feel that I just pulled the iron all the way back in this iron will not cut any more see nothing now I want to advance it and give it a couple of taps there we go I think I just advanced it enough yep there it is you can see a little shaving in palm of my hand right there we are now cutting make it stick out a little bit more but now we're taking heavier shavings now I'm going to pull that back a little bit because I might think it's too much give the plane a tap right there and now I'm just taking very very light shavings oh now in doing that the iron is no longer as flat and even as we want it to be it's tilted to one side what do I do about that well lateral adjustment is actually really easy with the hammer too so right now I've gotten more iron sticking up on this side so this side of the iron is sticking up too much I'm just gonna tap that side a tiny bit with the hammer it's gonna shift the whole iron over and make it much straighter and that looks pretty straight let's have a look yep I've got no shaving on either side shaving in the middle now I'll make the cut a little heavier by just tapping it in the center wow that is a very very heavy cut so I'll lighten that up by tapping on the knob or the back and now I have a lighter smoother cut it's still pretty heavy let's back that off a little more that's pretty good nice kind of modest shaving coming out of it when you're using this plane you can just keep a pair of hammers close by and give it a little tap here and there anytime that you need to adjust it I know it seems a little bit weird but I swear to you it is gonna be easier than the adjusters we just took out of this those things are awful and they just make it way more complicated than they need to be if you're intimidated by hammer adjusting really give it an hour - I swear to god you'll pick it up it is just not that difficult so this video was kind of a goof I bought this plane for $20 thinking all make a video about it it's cute it's a $20 plan well it's ended up being a little more serious than I thought because once you prepare it properly and get rid of those stupid adjusters this is a decent plane this is a plane that I could recommend to somebody if they were very cash-strapped I've always been a big advocate of buying antique Stanley's and fixing them up but one thing I've learned since I've been doing YouTube is that a lot of people just don't live in places where antique Stanley's exist or are affordable and of course lots of premium makers like Veritas and Lee Nielsen make really wonderful plans I've used them before and I like them but they just cost too much money they cost too much for me and they probably cost too much for a lot of my viewers if you've got to get started on woodworking and you're on a tight budget the twelve 4:04 isn't a terrible choice it's gonna be pretty predictable out of the package you can return it if something is really the matter with it and with some really basic tuning you can get it taking decent shavings what I'd like to do with this is use it in a series of videos that I'm doing called woodwork for humans and it's a series of videos where I take the most basic tools imaginable and try to make functional useful interesting things I've already made a little rustic bench and mallet using just three tools a hatchet a saw and a drill now I'm going to include this in that series of videos and in my next would work for humans video I'm going to build a bench a real woodworking bench out of materials you can find at the Home Center and I'm gonna do it for about thirty bucks seriously we're gonna build a real bench for about thirty dollars now you might be interested in seeing that video YouTube had some sort of thing that you could click that would let you know when I was releasing new videos I wish there was just a like a button that you could hit a little icon or something no I'll email them and see if they'll add that anyway I like to close all of my videos by thanking my patrons on patreon they are the ones who make these videos possible making videos is time consuming and I have to pay for stuff like this and my patrons make it possible for me to turn out quality content and still pay my mortgage so I really appreciate if you're interested in supporting this work getting early access to my videos and exclusive content go over to patreon comm and check out the rewards and benefits that I have for my supporters and I have got a lot more good content like this that's going to be coming out in the next of weeks so make sure you stick with me as I keep trying to do more with less and less everybody who's watching thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 239,576

Rating: 4.9473319 out of 5

Keywords: plane, hand plane, hand tool, planer, wood planer, stanley, stanley works, 12-404, stanley 12-404, sharpening, honing, tuning, fettling, flattening, planing, smoothing plane, cheap, limited tools, make, maker

Id: OrMQrKn61kA

Length: 25min 53sec (1553 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019