Woodwork Tools: Introducing the 78 Rebate/Rabbet Plane

[Music] hello in this video I'm going to introduce the useful hand tool which newer woodworkers may not have come across yet it's a rebate or rabbet plane I'm going to be using this tool in future project videos so I thought it was worth taking a look at here a rebate will rabbit is a recess or groove cut into the edge of a piece of wood there are many ways of cutting a rebate and I've shown several of these in my project videos for instance using a tenon saw or a chisel or even a table saw a rebate plane is specially designed to cut accurate square and clean rebase or rabbits this particular one is made by record and it's their zero 7/8 model rebate planes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes each specifically designed for a different job however one thing they all have in common is that unlike a bench plane the cutting iron is flush with the outside edge of the plane the 78 design has been around since the middle of the 20th century and many manufacturers have their own versions the good news is they are readily available second-hand and not very expensive this one I just bought from a flea market and it cost me about 10 pounds that's less than $15 u.s. before I can use the plane it's going to need a good clean and a sharpen so I start by stripping it down this first piece is the fence which governs how wide the cut will be it looks to be nice and flat this design of plane allows for the cutting iron to be in two positions the front bullnose configuration is great for when cutting into an internal angle such as inside a frame next I remove the fence post which just screws out and then I remove the cap iron I put all the pieces in a little pot so it's not to lose anything it doesn't look like the plane has seen much use but it has acquired quite a lot of dirt and also some bits of paint and cement as it's probably been lying around in a shed or garage the cutting iron isn't sharp but it also doesn't look like it's being used very much it's possible it's in exactly the same state as it came out of the factory this is the mechanism which is used to advance some retract the cutting iron on the other side of the plane we have the depth stop this is a small fence which is used to control the depth of the cut this all looks pretty Square to this little thing here is a spur sometimes called a nikkor in the US it's a circular piece of metal with three blades on it when cutting across the grain the spur can be rotated into a position where one of the blades will score the wood making for a cleaner cut the edges are completely dull so I'll have to do something about that later so that's the plane dismantled I just put my square across a sole just to make a rudimentary check it looks okay for now but at some point in the future I will flatten the sole to my own standards with the plane disassembled the first job is to clean it up I start by using a paper towel and some white spirit to degrease everything my aim isn't to end up with an award-winning showpiece of a tool but rather to get it clean enough and comfortable enough for practical daily use I like to see highly polished shining gleaming metal work as much as the next man but my main concern here is to remove any dirt or debris which will interfere with the efficient use of the tool it's important to make sure that all of the parts are attended to fit together can do so cleanly if parts such as the fences and especially the cutting iron don't fit flat as they're designed to do so it will severely compromised the tools ability to make accurate curse I use some very fine steel wool and a high-grade glass paper to remove any stubborn bits of dirt or corrosion I wrap some high-grade glass paper I think this is about 1600 grit around a steel ruler so I can polish the Frog where the cutting iron is going to sit I'm being very gentle here I'm simply trying to remove any imperfections I certainly don't want to abrade anything so much it starts to change the shape the fencers need to be free of dirt both so that they can work efficiently and so that they don't mark the workpiece I clean any of the screw threads and lubricate them with a light machine oil so that they work effectively I'll make sure to clean up both sides of the cap iron and the retaining screw for now I'm just going to clean up the spur or nikkor using some abrasive paper to remove the corrosion I shall reestablish the cutting edge at a later date I'm also cleaning up the cutting iron in the same way as I did the body of the plane this will make it easier when it comes to sharpening I want to make sure that the cap iron is completely flat where it meets the cutting iron so I'm going to use my diamond plates to flatten it I have three grades of diamond plate attached to a board running from coarse to fine I start by grinding on the coarsest plate and then work my way along the board I spray a small amount of glass cleaner onto the place this is a couple of essential things firstly it stops the plates from getting clogged up by lifting all the particles secondly it makes it a lot easier to clean everything after use and thirdly unlike using just water it's less likely to cause any rusting problems on the plate or the workpiece we now have a nice flat surface on the inside of the cap iron this means it'll distribute its force equally when clamped against the cutting iron now it's time to turn attention to the cutting iron itself there isn't much evidence of this ever being sharpened I can see a slight burr on the cutting edge but is highly possible this is how it left the factory after its initial grinding the first thing I'm going to do is flatten the back side of the cutting iron this is an extremely important process and really it should be done for any new plain iron or chisel and here's why you can see from that initial grinding that the back surface of the cutting iron is concave ie it is lower in the center than it is at the edges so why is this important well to get a good cutting edge you need to have two completely flat surfaces coming together at an angle if one of those surfaces isn't flat the angle is compromised and you'll never get a truly sharp cutting edge I was constantly frustrated as a new woodworker that I couldn't get my chisels nice and sharp I assumed it was my sharpening technique and so I read about and watched many examples of how to sharpen things in the end I realized my sharpening technique was fine and it was the lack of a flat edge on the reverse side of my cutting irons and blades that was stopping me from getting a truly sharp edge once I flattened the rear surfaces have all my chisels and cutting irons I was able to cut a piece of paper from the edge and shape the hair for my arms and all the other impressive things that people do to show you how sharp their blades are so this looks like a monotonous effort but it's well worth it the good news is that you should only ever have to do this job once per cutting iron when it's done you're good to go for the lifetime of the tool and you'll only ever have to worry about sharpening the edge I'm getting there now with this cutting iron and I've moved from the course through the medium and on to the fine grade diamond plate and that's looking considerably better nice and flat to sharpen the cutting edge I'm going to use my slightly more expensive diamond plate I'm also going to use a honing guide I make no apologies for this many skilled craftspeople that I know are able to grind a cutting edge by hand after many is a practice I too have developed this skill and usually I won't use a honing guide when re-establishing a sharp edge in this case however I'm adding a cutting edge for what could be the first time ever in history of this cutting iron I have no idea as to the accuracy of the current angle also establishing the cutting edge for the first time takes a lot more time and effort than resharpening or honing an existing cutting edge and so the honing guide will help to keep things accurate as my arms get fatigued I'm using a light oil as a lapping fluid this time I start by drawing the blade backwards along the length of the cutting to distribute the oil before continuing with their forward and backward motion the job of the honing guide is to maintain accuracy it holds the blade with precision in two planes firstly that the cutting angle is maintained and secondly that the angle is square across the width of the entire blade one of the problems when cutting by hand is the tendency to lift the blade at the beginning and end of each stroke which effectively changes the cutting angle this can result in having a rounded rather than flat bevel I would certainly encourage everyone to develop their skills so that they can sharpen a blade without the use of a honing guide but if you do use a honing guide don't let anyone tell you you were a lesser woodworker this is a lengthy process and there are no shortcuts here but you can see that we've got the startings of a nice sharp flat edge here you can also see that the slightly rounded edge that was in there before was not perpendicular to the side of the cutting iron whereas this new one is this is important because when the cutting iron is inside the plain body it is held flat against the side of the body of the plane therefore if the cutting edge is perpendicular to the edge of the cutting iron it will also be square across the plain meaning that we can get a nice square accurate cut across the entire width of the plane we can see that there are still some defects at the cutting edge here but that the surface of that cutting edge is nice and flat and parallel I gently rub the back of the plane against the diamond plate to remove the burr I'll clean up my diamond plate now and flip it over onto a higher grade I started with the 400 grit and this is a thousand grit and then going to repeat the grinding process I check progress at regular intervals when you starting get sharp I'm going to finish with the diamond plate for now I'll give it a few passes on my water stone to be honest in my day-to-day woodworking I very rarely used the water stone I usually go straight from the thousand grit diamond plate and then hone on a leather strop but I thought I'd include this here for the sake of the video with the cutting line in the honing guide I only draw backwards along the surface of the stone as it's very easy to gouge chunks out if you're pushing forward to be honest I find that using water stones I spend more time maintaining the surface of my water stone than I do sharpening on it but it can get things nice and sharp so finally I use the leather strap I add a bit of compound clean everything off and then draw the blade backwards along the strop about 20 times the strokes just a piece of soft leather glued onto a piece of wood for a truly sharp cutting edge this that really shouldn't be underestimated I'll go back and sharpen this blade more before I use it on any project but this will do for now for testing so time to put everything back together first I'll screw the spur in and then add a little bit of a light machine oil to the depth stop slide and screw it into place the cutting iron goes in and on goes the cap iron you can see how the mechanism advances the cutting edge here so on with the bull nose screw just so it doesn't get lost and then the fence post a finally defense and there we go time for some testing there just a depth stop so I can cut something about a centimeter deep and move the fence in to control the width of the rebate or rabbit in much the same way as molding planes the received wisdom is to start cutting at the end of the workpiece and then slowly moved the way back along the length he's cutting quite nicely although I think I'm taking too thicker cut off at the moment I've adjusted the depth stop so I can keep going to practice some more so after that first try I flipped the workpiece in the vise and I'm going to see if I can take a shallower cut keep playing with the mechanism now I'm starting to get some nice shavings I've managed to get a range of shavings with different depths of cut all of which are nice and square which is good and through to this one that's really quite thin as I mentioned earlier I've got a few projects coming up which you're going to use this plane as part of the build so keep an eye out for those after a bit more fettling and honing and with a bit more practice I started to find this tool really useful and very effective to the extent that it now lives on my bench next to my other regularly used planes well I hope you found this video useful it was after all mostly fifteen minutes of a man grinding a piece of metal but thanks for sticking with it I've got a bunch more videos coming soon which are getting back to doing some actual projects and they should be more exciting in the meantime please check out the channel for the other project videos and if you like what you see please press subscribe [Music]

Channel: Adventures In T-Shirts Woodwork

Views: 6,126

Rating: 4.8863635 out of 5

Keywords: rabbet plane, rebate plane, wood work, wood, work, hand tool, make, record 078, stanley 78, 78 plane, sharpening, adventures in t-shirts

Id: t5FhwHoj1GA

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019