Skewy Wabbit - Tricks are for Kids

[Doug Shepard]

and I aint figured it out yet. I'm using a LV Skew Rabbet plane to put a 1/4" deep, 3/8" wide rabbet on the 3/4' edge of some Borg Poplar. It's cutting great except I'm not ending up with a right angle. The floor of the rabbet is tipping down a good 10 degrees or so. After the first one, I was pretty sure I needed to concentrate on keeping the fence tight to the side of the piece but I just got done with the 2nd attempt and it's not a huge improvement. Blade is parallel to the sole. What am I doing wrong?

[John Keeton]

Doug, when I was at WIA, I played with that plane several times, and the first few times, I did the same thing. Finally, it seemed to click for me and I was able to hold the plane correctly. Not sure exactly what I did differently, but I was able to get a decently level cut.

If it makes a difference, I was going back and forth with the LN 140 and did the same thing with it. I ended up buying the LV because I felt it was much easier to set up.

Since receiving the plane, I haven't had an opportunity to try it in the shop. Hopefully, my success at the conference was not a flash in the pan!

[Robert Rozaieski]

It's common for that to happen with any type of fenced rabbet plane, not just the LV. Your hands naturally want to put more pressure on the outside of the plane because of the way you grip it, which makes it tip down in the cut slightly and take a thicker shaving from the outside edge of the rabbet. Try focusing on putting pressure on the inside corner instead of the fence. Trying to hold the fence tighter will just put more pressure on the outside edge of the rabbet. You want the pressure on the opposite side of the plane.

[Doug Shepard]

Robert
That sounds like a logical cause. I'm going to try that on the next piece.
Thanks

[Marc Casebolt]

I recently had the same problem making a long tenon for a breadboard end on a cutting board using a Stanley 78. The problem for me turned out to be the knicker (which on the 78 is not adjustable), seemed to be set for too deep of a cut in the hard maple. The result was that I had to put a whole lot of pressure on the inside (knicker) to get even close to square. I ended up removing the knicker and using a knife in its place every few passes, then clean up the shoulder with a shoulder plane. A pain in the butt, but it got me through it.

Check that your knicker is sharp and the depth is correct.

Marc

[Stephen Reid]

The way I was shown to use the nicker was to put it down then pull the plane backwards(78 45 55 whatever) to score your line.Make a few cuts then repeat.Then cut your grove.
I know this applys more to the old styles than the LV skew as they are able to set the depth of the nickers.Perhaps you can set them slim enough to work on every cut.But the principle is the same.Pull back on the spur then plow ahead.I know this is off the OP and I agree with the other guys on how to keep the rabate square

Ps Nickers only needed cross grain Still kind of off OP, sorry

[Stephen Reid]

Check out this site with a great tip on keeping your plane square . Look for the 45 section I think .Scroll down. She puts a "flag pole" on her combo. Good site
http://www.cornishworkshop.co.uk/combihow.html

(http://www.cornishworkshop.co.uk/combinationplanes.html)

[David Keller NC]

One comment is that hand planes intended for joinery (as opposed to bench planes) do not automatically produce an accurate cut. Because of the number of strokes necessary to cut a deep rabbet, even a slight difference in thickness between one side of the shaving and the other will produce a large error if one is just "blindly planing".

For that reason, it always necessary to mark a rabbet with a marking gauge, both the width and the depth. One then sets the plane up with an open mouth and a shaving as thick as one can manage. When you approach the depth line, adjust the plane so that the shavings are considerably thinner, and intentionally tilt the plane to take a preferential amount of wood off of either the inside or the outside of the rabbet.

It's also common to have the rabbet as deep as the marked line at one end of the board, and too shallow at the other end. One then takes "stop shavings" in the manner David Charlesworth recommends for adjusting the surface of a board with a bench plane.

There's another alternative that I've been messing around with that I first heard from Adam Cherubini - marking out the rabbet, then using a wide, long socket paring chisel backed up by your shoulder to clear most all of the waste from the rabbet, and using the rabbet plane to clean up the surface. The advantage to this approach is that there are fewer strokes necessary with the plane, and less accumulated error at the end of the process. It's also considerably faster.

[Doug Shepard]

... Try focusing on putting pressure on the inside corner instead of the fence. Trying to hold the fence tighter will just put more pressure on the outside edge of the rabbet. You want the pressure on the opposite side of the plane.

Well I had a chance to try this tonight and while I'm not quite there, it's definitely working. I've got a just barely perceptiple slope instead of the roughly 10 degree one I had before. Probably got a 90% improvement anyway. Another couple of practice pieces and I should get the hang of it.
I'm going with the grain so I didnt have the knicker extended for this.
Thanks everyone.

[John Keeton]

Doug, thought I would report in on my LV Skew Rabbet plane. Finally got some time to hone the blade, and set it up. Using the comments and suggestions here, I was able to get a respectable cross grain rabbet on walnut.
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As David noted, although I do not appear to have any slope on this shallow rabbet, it may be a different story on a much deeper rabbet. I bought this plane mainly for doing the "140 trick" that Cosman uses on his dovetails, but I am sure I will find other uses for it. It will be interesting to see if I can keep a consistent cut on deeper applications. Though I can say, that as easy as this plane is to push, I doubt I would be interested in hogging out the waste with a chisel.

All that aside, it sure is a purty thang, ain't it ....
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[Doug Shepard]

Well I got all of my rabbets done this morning with good results just mainly concentrating on leaning into the corner like Robert suggested. If I had planned this out a little better I could have just used TS and dado blade while the stock was still long but I had already cut the pieces to length (about 7") and they were short enough that they wouldn't span the opening on the dado insert or the cutout on the sacrificial fence. Sounded like an accident waiting to happen so I figured I'd use the skew rabbet. Worked like a charm once I figured out the trick:o and they went suprisingly quickly. Only took about 45 minutes for 6 pieces and that included re-cutting the 2 pieces I initially fouled up.