Scratches on plane sole

[Jeff Dickie]

I flattened the top of my work bench last night and found that I now have
6-7 scratches on my LN BU #5 plane. I have not found what caused this yet, but am concerned how this will affect the plane. The scratches are severe enough to feel as I rub my finger accross them. It would be alot of work to smooth on glass and sand paper. Do I need to remove all the scratches? Thanks for your input!

[Mike Henderson]

In my experience, no, the scratches will not affect the operation of the plane, unless they're a whole lot worse than I think they are.

Mike

[Matt Hankins]

It should not affect the performance, but what ever scratched the sole can nick the iron. Check over the surface of your bench.

Matt

[Tom Veatch]

The effect on the iron by whatever scratched the sole would be the only concern wrt performance.

Remember there are some pretty deep "scratches" purposely machined into the sole of the Stanley "C" style planes.

[John Schreiber]

I once ground, sanded and polished a plane sole so that I could see my reflection in it. It didn't plane any better. If there are any raised burrs or rough spots, you should sand them down, but you'd know if they were leaving marks on the wood.

I wouldn't worry.

[Tom Adger]

I had a similar thing happen with one of my planes. I made a few passes on 220 grit paper on glass, then 400 grit, then waxed the sole with paste wax.
Concerning the cause of the scratches, I would carefully check my workbench with a Little Wizard metal detector(if you don't have one, they can save you a lot of grief, and they are cheap). Then take a brass wire brush to the whole surface. If you have some ground in sand or grit, or a tiny pebble, it will play hell with your tools. After all, sand, grit, whatever you call it are tiny pieces of rocks, which will win in a contest with metal.

[Eddie Darby]

Ah you just experienced the Law of Accidental Scratches, Dings, and Dents.

Anytime you have something brand new and shiny, the chances of it escaping for very long without a scratch, ding or dent is directly prportional to haw new and shiny it is.

My LN 4 1/2 lasted about 10 or 12 swipes before picking up some real beauts!

The good news is that it works just fine, and has not picked anymore scratches since.

Just consider it character building!

[Butch Hayes]

It seems to me that some planes come with a whole series of deep scratches running the length of the sole. They call them corrugated soles, I think ;)

[Tom Adger]

Brilliant observation Butch! I have a #5 jack plane with a corrugated sole. Note that where the surface that meets the wood has a little round over down into the corrugations. Now, if you had the scratches that the original poster mentioned on the surfaces that meet the wood, to the extent that you can feel the roughness, would you ignore it, or do something about it? That was the point of the original post.