Bedding planes at 60 degress

[Matthew N. Masail]

are there any downfalls to this? will they work as well in pine and non difficult woods? I ask because non of my blades have a chipbreaker.

[David Weaver]

It will leave a finish that's not so appealing in softwoods. Hard maple might be the minimum hardness where it would look good.

It'll also cause the blade to dull faster than lower angles.

You can use a lower angle just fine if you keep the mouth fairly tight. 50 or 55 would make a better general purpose smoother for hardwoods, and pine would prefer something more like 40-45.

[Zach England]

I am curious why you want to do this. Are we talking about wooden planes?

Details!

[Matthew N. Masail]

yeah wooden planes, I'm trying to make them.... knowing very little about it I thought maybe I'd be better off bedding a single iron at 60.... what would be good for a general purpose jack? 45,50? both soft and hard woods.

[Zach Dillinger]

For a true jack, which is never used to put a final finish on the wood except in unseen areas, use 45. The higher bed angles will be much harder to push and will provide no benefit to you. No reason to make it harder than it has to be.

[Larry Williams]

Raising the cutting angle of a plane increases the amount of wood fiber deflection ahead of the cutting edge and this increases the dulling wear on the face of the blade. So one of the downsides of increasing the cutting angle is shorter edge life. No, steeper cutting angles don't work well on softer woods like pine.

Either 45º or 50º will work well for a jack plane.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Thanks guys, I think I'll go with 45.

[Tri Hoang]

Most of the time one would get some small tear out spots that can be cleaned up easily with a scraper. 45-50* are probably most suitable for most NA species. Beside shortening edge life, it requires more effort to plane.

[Zach England]

If you are new to wooden planes don't re-invent them. Pick up David Frick's book and build from his plans or look at the plans from Ron Hock, et al.

[Jeff Heath]

I've made a few planes, and have bedded them at 50°. I work almost exclusively in North American hardwoods. At that angle, they perform very well. You will find that you will get less tearout with the slightly higher angle vs. 45°.

Jeff

[Zach Dillinger]

You might get slightly less tearout, but with a jack that is largely irrelevant. To me, ease of busting through the coarse stock removal far outweighs a minor (perhaps non-existent) increase in tearout. If you are making a jointer or smoother, then tearout might be an issue, but not with a jack. At least in the way that I work.

[Jeff Heath]

Couldn't agree more about a jack plane. I was speaking about a smoothing plane, even though I wasn't specific. When using a jack plane, I couldn't care less about tearout. I wanna remove stock fast, fast, fast.....my jack planes remove chips, not shavings.

Jeff

[Zach Dillinger]

Couldn't agree more about a jack plane. I was speaking about a smoothing plane, even though I wasn't specific. When using a jack plane, I couldn't care less about tearout. I wanna remove stock fast, fast, fast.....my jack planes remove chips, not shavings.

Jeff

I figured that's what you meant. I just wanted to clarify, since he was asking about a jack. Cheers!

[george wilson]

You can make a plane with a 45º iron. If you want to increase the angle of the iron,you can bevel the front of the cutting edge a little. It doesn't have to be beveled a lot,just 1/32" OR LESS will do. Bevel it no more than the depth that the iron will dig into the wood,and it will work as well as it ever will. You could have 2 irons for the same plane,and exchange them for hard or soft wood planing.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Thank you George, I might do that.. although having "twins" one at 45 and one at 60 seems like a cute idea to me... as you can tell I'm having a little fun with this