David Hostetler
07-09-2009, 12:40 PM
Simply put, I needed a decent plane, and with LOML out of the workforce all of my $$ is going to household bills etc... So I went with the Groz SP4 knowing, or at least thinking I had a LOT of tuning to do...
For starters I wound the iron back in as far as it would go so that none was exposed below the shoe. I glued down some 320 grit wet / dry paper to a piece of hardboard, took a carpenters pencil to the sole to see where the low / high spots were, took 3 light passes accross the paper, and to my amazement, the sole came back clean!
My guess, the sole was as close to flat as physically possible.
Check the mouth castings. about 10 seconds work with a needle file to get the small burrs cleaned up and I was good to go.
Another 5 minutes on the honing guide with the iron and some reassembly and I had a well honed (no buffer to polish it up though, and I kind of goofed and didn't try flattening the back of the iron...) and was able to shave whisper thin even shavings.
Is this a Lie Nielsen? Uh, no...
Is this a workable tool? Yeah, I think so...
I honestly think I got exceedingly lucky. But... This plane is definately going to get me going with the constraints of my budget.
For starters I wound the iron back in as far as it would go so that none was exposed below the shoe. I glued down some 320 grit wet / dry paper to a piece of hardboard, took a carpenters pencil to the sole to see where the low / high spots were, took 3 light passes accross the paper, and to my amazement, the sole came back clean!
My guess, the sole was as close to flat as physically possible.
Check the mouth castings. about 10 seconds work with a needle file to get the small burrs cleaned up and I was good to go.
Another 5 minutes on the honing guide with the iron and some reassembly and I had a well honed (no buffer to polish it up though, and I kind of goofed and didn't try flattening the back of the iron...) and was able to shave whisper thin even shavings.
Is this a Lie Nielsen? Uh, no...
Is this a workable tool? Yeah, I think so...
I honestly think I got exceedingly lucky. But... This plane is definately going to get me going with the constraints of my budget.