A Restored #8

[Chris Griggs]

That looks like a potential nasty piece of wood in terms of planing, not just because of the curl, but also the knots. Very cool looking though and will make a nice piece, knots and all.

Can't ask for much more from a plane than to be able to flatten that with minimal tearout. Nice Work!

[Jim Koepke]

Andrew,

Lie-Nielsen has adhesive backed rolls of sandpaper listed under "Sharpening."

Supergrit.com has wider rolls and is where mine was purchased.

jtk

[Andrew Teich]

Jim and Jim, thanks for the heads up on sandpaper sources. I only hope my planes end up working as well and looking as nice as your #8.

[george wilson]

Agreed about square top irons.

[Kevin Foley]

Beautiful job. It's always a good feeling at the end of the process when you put your hard work to wood and it makes the shaving you hoped it would. Congratulations. Use my No. 8 more than I use my No.7. If I had to push a plane around all day I might appreciate a No.7 but that never happens (unfortunately).

I've uglied up a few if my planes with squared-off Hock blades and have been happy with the results. I hope to ugly up a few more.

[Gary Kman]

Thank God there is no tear out with a 15 degree back bevel.

Just so I understand, are you putting a 15* bevel on the flat side of the iron? If you are, I'm lost on your comment on tear out. The wood has already been severed by the time it gets past the cutting edge. If anything, I would think a low clearance angle behind the blade would prevent the wood from splitting ahead of the cutting edge and causing tear out.

[Glen Butler]

And I was worried about the state my recent purchase which is considerably more favorable than what you started with. Nice work! Puts me at ease.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Just so I understand, are you putting a 15* bevel on the flat side of the iron? If you are, I'm lost on your comment on tear out. The wood has already been severed by the time it gets past the cutting edge. If anything, I would think a low clearance angle behind the blade would prevent the wood from splitting ahead of the cutting edge and causing tear out.

Angle behind the blade has nothing to do with tear out. Adding back bevel (that is bevel on the flat side) changes the cutting angle and it changes characteristic how a plane perform on a given wood. Hence there are many planes, low angle to high angle planes, it's all about providing range and wider range of cutting angle in order to tackle variety of wood. Normally on a difficult grain and tear out prone wood, high angle planes are preferred (scraper, bench plane with back bevel or bevel up plane with high angle blade). Higher angle adds scraping action to the plane's function, incidentally it is less likely to cause tear out. It doesn't try to dig in and lift the wood ahead of the cutting edge then.

For soft wood, it's the opposite. If the material is soft and/or well behaving and straight grained, low cutting angle should provide cleaner cut. In this case as well, clearance angle has nothing to do with tear out or how plane behaves. Normally planes commercially available today already has plenty enough clearance angle to begin with, unless you are going way past reasonable setup, you are not going to gain or lose any performance by changing clearance angle. So forget that.

[Jim Paulson]

Great to have you join us Sam and thanks for offering many good points as usual.

Gary,

I might add that the back bevels I referred to on the IBC irons were added to have the effect of an increased bed angle. Stanley bailey planes feature a 45 degree frog and I'm a recent convert to using back bevels on the flat side of the iron to achieve the effect of a higher bed angle. Rather than purchase new bevel down planes with high angle frogs or a low angle jointer with a 50 degree bevel on the bevel up iron, I opted for a cheaper solution of grinding a 15 degree back bevel on the new irons for my #7 and #8 stanley bailey planes. I also use a LN 4 1/2 with a 55 degree frog and a LV Low Angle Jack with a 50 degree bevel on the iron. Collectively, taking shallow cuts and paying attention to the approach angle have given me great results on planing a fairly difficult, but quite beautiful wood. I am using all three planes right now to surface fairly hard tiger maple which features difficult grain and plenty of opportunities for tear out. Like Sam says back bevels aren't needed when working softer woods with more predictable grain.

Here is a great reference for using back bevels from one of the champions, Ron Hock, of using back bevels on plane irons. Ron has some great illustrations here.
http://hocktools.wordpress.com/2010/...lane-geometry/

Take care,
Jim