Camber/Radius on #5

[Mark ten Haaf]

Do you fellas put a slight camber on your jack plane irons, a continuous radius, or leave them square? If a radius, what size is preferable?

[Johnny Kleso]

I have one No.5 for each..

But even my square blades have a slight camber of .003 (piece of paper) or more as its hard to get a blade to cut a .001 shaving across the whole lenght unless you really watch what your doing..

I do have a No5 with about .015 camber per side for semi roughing but I like to use a No 5 1/4 more with the big .015 camber as a big semi scrub..

Real scrub use a 5"- 8" raidus

[Andrew Gibson]

I like to have a camber on most of my irons. my 5 and 6 have a medium camber, I have no idea what it measures to I can take a 3 to 4 thou shaving without tracks. I have a bit less camber on my 7, and a bit less camber still on my smoothers. My LAJ has no camber and my scrub has a lot.

I find that when using the plane I will decide if it could use a bit more or less camber, then focus a bit more on either the center or the edges of the iron when sharpening next.

[David Peterson]

Like always, it depends on what you're using it for. I have a few blades for my No. 5 that get swapped out depending on the task at hand. I use mine primarily for flattening stock so there are two blades with a radius of about 10" (something I patterned long ago. Since then I've just copied what's there, more or less). That radius can range from 8"-12" depending on how aggressive you want to be. I keep a third blade squared off for more general work. That has only slight relief given to both sides to avoid tracking marks.