Flattening the sole on a $9.95 Plane

[Glenn Samuels]

After reading a current thread about HF, I found myself in Richmond and decided to splurge on one of their planes. I plan on using it for cleaning up dried glue on panels. What is the best way to flatten the sole? I have Stu's Sigma stones but don't know if I will do damage to them or if the 1000 grit would even be effective. I have read suggestions about using sandpaper glued to granite. I have a couple of questions about this method:

1. What type and grit are suggested?
2. My fiance will probably not be too keen on me gluing sandpaper to the kitchen granite countertop. Can I glue it to something else and what type of glue is used? Should I use aerosol contact cement?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,

[Chris Griggs]

DO NOT flatten a sole on your waterstones.

DO use sandpaper glued down to a flat surface.

Get a smooth granite 12x12 floor tile from Home Depot or Lowes (~$10) and glue the paper down to that.

Use aerosol adhesive to glue the paper to the floor tile.

[Glenn Samuels]

Thank you Chris. What grit do you use and do I need wet/dry paper?

[Gary Hodgin]

Glenn,
The floor tile is good but I've also used mdf and melamine. The advantage of these is that they're cheap and you can cut to whatever size you want. My starting grit depends on the condition. I've started with as low as 220 grit wet/dry and as high as 400 grit. So start as low as 60 or 80 grit adhesive back sandpaper or get an appropriately sized belt for a belt sander, cut it and glue it down with some of that spray adhesive. A couple of times I wish I'd started with something like 60 or 80.

I precede from 220 to 400 to 600 or 800 and stop at 1000. You can go further but 1000 does nicely. You definitely want to get it flat on the lowest grit. From there it's just polishing out scratches. Don't be stingy with the paper or you'll be there a while. You can tell from the sound when it stops cutting. I've used water and wd 40 as lubrication. Either works fine. In fact, some people don't use lube at all.

[Chris Griggs]

Thank you Chris. What grit do you use and do I need wet/dry paper?

80 or 100 grit as a starting point. I don't remember how high I went up in grit last time I lapped a sole, but I know I didn't bother going any higher than 220. I wouldn't waste money on wet/dry for this. Just get a good quality AlOx paper. Use it dry and periodically use a magnet to clean off the metal. Be prepared to change the paper when it starts to cut too slow (for this reason use a low strength adhesive). If you don't you will waste time fighting with worn paper, and since the paper wears more heavily in the center you will be less likely to get a flat sole. Use only moderate pressure and vary your lapping motion. If you use too much force and and only go front to back there is a tendency to put more pressure on the heal and toe and you may end up with an iron banana.

[Casey Gooding]

I would suggest sharpening it and giving it a try before you flatten the sole. If you are using it for glue cleanup and such, a completely flat sole isn't really necessary.

[Chris Griggs]

I would suggest sharpening it and giving it a try before you flatten the sole. If you are using it for glue cleanup and such, a completely flat sole isn't really necessary.

Diddo that!

[Jim Koepke]

I would suggest sharpening it and giving it a try before you flatten the sole. If you are using it for glue cleanup and such, a completely flat sole isn't really necessary.

+1 on Cnris's ditto.

My question was going to be, what makes you think the sole needs flattening?

Second would be, does it need to be flat for knocking off the glue?

When it comes to flattening plane soles, it has to have a real problem that can be traced to an out of flat sole before my sole flattening set up is put to work.

jtk

[Gary Hodgin]

I agree on not messing with the sole until you see how it works for what you intend it to do.

[Glenn Samuels]

I purchased it on a business trip and won't be home for a few days. I will definitely take all of your advice as flattening doesn't sound a fun way to spend an evening (unless I absolutely have to). I just was not expecting too much from a $9.95 plane.

[Jacob Nothstine]

A think piece of glass works great, just don't drop it like I did.
Most Auto parts stores carry good cheap self adhesive sand paper strips.
I like to take a pencil and draw a squiggly line on the bottom of the plan so I can check on progress of flatting it.
+1 magnet to clean off the metal on sand paper.

[Kevin Guarnotta]

I wouldn't glue the sandpaper down, it will be a pin in the butt to remove it afterwards. Try using wet/dry sandpaper. Spray the surface of the granite or thick glass with a water spray bottle. Put paper down, spray sandpaper again, it will stick and not move.

[Sam Stephens]

i'll further support the not to bother flattening the sole. i think much time is wasted here in general. a sharp blade will get you 90% there!

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I wouldn't glue the sandpaper down, it will be a pin in the butt to remove it afterwards. Try using wet/dry sandpaper. Spray the surface of the granite or thick glass with a water spray bottle. Put paper down, spray sandpaper again, it will stick and not move.

Sometimes this method results in a lot of curling of the paper which can be a pain - the curling is most pronounced if the one side of the paper backing is wetter than the other . What I always did when using wet-dry paper to wet-sand finishes was to soak the paper in water for a while before use. While I wasn't doing it primarily to fight curling, this also seems to cut down on the curling of the paper once it's saturated.

If you want something coarser than what's easily available in wet-dry and do use the spray adhesive to hold down paper to a tile or whatever, a bit of heat from a hairdryer or heat gun can help peel the paper off easier, then any remaining residue can be quickly cleaned up with some suitable solvent.

[James Scheffler]

After reading a current thread about HF, I found myself in Richmond and decided to splurge on one of their planes. I plan on using it for cleaning up dried glue on panels. What is the best way to flatten the sole? I have Stu's Sigma stones but don't know if I will do damage to them or if the 1000 grit would even be effective. I have read suggestions about using sandpaper glued to granite. I have a couple of questions about this method:

1. What type and grit are suggested?
2. My fiance will probably not be too keen on me gluing sandpaper to the kitchen granite countertop. Can I glue it to something else and what type of glue is used? Should I use aerosol contact cement?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,

I start and finish with 100 grit wet/dry sandpaper, lubricated with a little water. There isn't a reason to go higher, because by the time you're done, the abrasive will have broken down to the point that it will be far finer than 100 grit. The sole will end up pretty shiny.

If the sole is out of flat significantly, you're likely to need more than one sheet of sandpaper.

I use 3/8" plate glass, which is available from just about any glass shop. A 12x12-inch piece will likely cost less than $10. I use spray adhesive (3M or Elmers, but there are probably other choices that are ok), not contact cement. When you need to change the sandpaper, it comes up easily with a little acetone and a razor blade scraper in less than two minutes. The adhesive is necessary if you go with 100 or 150 grit, because the sandpaper will just slide around.

Check the sole often with a good straightedge to make sure you're not making it worse. It's really easy to make it worse. :eek: If the sole is convex along its length (i.e. high in the middle), you might want to start with cutting down the high spot by going crosswise with a file. The file is faster and makes it easier to hit just the high point(s) and not surrounding areas that you don't want to knock down.

[Brent Ring]

I have obtained for free from granite counter top shops - off-cuts and scraps that work great.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I did the same thing as Brent when I wanted something flat - got an offcut from a granite shop that does monuments and countertops and such. The size of what they'll give you for free or cheap is surprising at times. I got a something kind of long and narrow. I'm sure it's not machinists-reference grade flat, however. How important that is, I can't say.

On the spray adhesive front, another thing that helped me when I was doing "scary sharp" was using something not designed to be as permanent as say, Super 77. I used a spray adhesive from the art store designed for decorative stencil painting, where you want the stencil well adhered to prevent bleed through, but also want to be able to remove it. It held up well enough to the water I used as a lubricant. No idea if this stuff would hold up for sole flattening.

[steven c newman]

Ok, I DO have one of those $9.99 planes ( actually, paid $9+tax) and used a little sometning different to flatten this little plane255132255133This is another, larger plane, also about the same price range, but a #4 size. 255134255135Be sure to work on the cap iron as well. Mine needed flattening, as well. Also, check the iron's bed area255136You can take that bolt out, and use a nice wide file to get all three points co-planar.

[Josh Pelletier]

I wouldn't glue the sandpaper down, it will be a pin in the butt to remove it afterwards. Try using wet/dry sandpaper. Spray the surface of the granite or thick glass with a water spray bottle. Put paper down, spray sandpaper again, it will stick and not move.

This is what I do and works great. I stopped at a place that does granite counter tops to inquire about buying a piece and they gave me one probably 10x14ish free of charge. I guess it was cut during an install and was scrap to them.

[Sam Stephens]

1) so how far "out of flat" would the sole need to be to affect its accuracy. it's a smoother right, not a jointer? jointer beds are certainly not perfectly true, but the "average" of the highs is what counts (yeah i realize this is not the power tool forum)
2) realistically, how much material can you remove w/ sand paper? (the sole of even a small plane has quite a large surface area)

just thinking out loud here....

[steven c newman]

This shot is when the plane was still a smoother ( since reground into a scrub plane)255157This was before any tune up was done. This was right out of the Windsor #33 box. Adjusted the iron to make a thin cut, and pushed it along. It is kind of a small #3 size, in length, though it is the same in width as a #3.

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

I've been planing end grain this morning with a small Japanese plane - I'd call it a block plane, not sure what it should be called - and was noticing it was not as easy to control as I'm used to. It seemed to grab more at the ends of the planed surface. Sure enough, the sole is no longer flat, I can see a hairline of light in each of the places you want it to NOT show. This has happened with this plane before because I use it on a lot of odd and smaller parts. It works great but is not good for the plane.

I have a crappy plane that didn't work well at all, flattening the sole made a big difference, but seating the frog and the blade and fixing the fit of the chip breaker all helped as well. I mentioned this plane (new stanley no 5) in another thread yesterday - I got it free when someone tried it out of the box and it didn't work at all, as shown by the chunks of paint and wood that were jammed in it. I learned a lot about how to plane from fettling the above plane so I don't think of it as wasted time.

I'm surprised to hear so many people say planes don't need to be that flat. In my admittedly limited experience even a rather small amount of - uh - non flatness - can make a big difference in how a plane works. If you're knocking off glue don't you still want it to leave a nice surface and not skip or dig?

Here's a photo from the web that shows the areas you need to flatten on most planes (smoothers being the exception - they need to be fully flat, or so I've read). You don't need to make the whole thing perfectly flat, just flatten until those areas are fully coplaner. Mark bottom with marking pen and sand until those areas are shiny.
255159


Do a search on flattening plane soles and fettling planes, there is lots of info you there. The long list of stuff you might want to do: http://www.jimdavey-planes-sharpening.com/42e7fbb9-7023-43f4-8964-52a10966c65e.aspx

[Sam Stephens]

i'm well aware of the littany of fettling that many folks describe as needed, many of which are, but I'd suggest that a sharp iron, properly set including bedding of the frog and polishing the chipbreaker will take care of 95+% of your plane's abilities. Try these first before you attack the sole and see what i mean. The photo above (which I agree with) clearly indicates how very little of the plane sole needs to be coplanar b/c it's all about sufficient area to register on the board (toe and the heel) and keeping the wood fibers from lifting/tearing away from the blade (i.e. the area surrounding the mouth). if the plane wobbles b/c the sole is so out of flat that you can't register the plane, then of course, flattening the sole would be needed, but that's a bit extreme don't you think? why would a smoother not "work" if there's a hollow 2" behind the mouth? how would a plane w/ a corrugated sole work if this notion were true? Polishing the sole (via sandpaper) probably has more to do with the perceived improvement than any removal of metal which is probably far, far less than 0.001" YMMV.

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

Yeah, to be clear, I was trying to point out that it doesn't need to be completely flat, making doing so not a big deal. I have limited experience, but what I have has shown me that having a sole not flat can make quite a difference in how the plane works, even when it isn't out of true enough to rock around.

I should have emphasized the "might" in "stuff you might want to do" where I linked to a list of plane tuning steps. It is a LONG list.

[ryan carlino]

I bought that same plane a while back. I used wet-dry sandpaper on my granite surface plate. I just sprayed it with water and the paper sticks good enough. My plane's sole was pretty out of flat and it took A LOT of sandpaper to even put a dent on it. If I was to do it again, I would draw on the back with a sharpie and take a few passes on some 220. If there is a section not touching, drop right away to 80 and hog off the extra metal. 4 sheets of 220 wasn't enough for mine.

I used it for the first time this week for what you want to use it as: a glue scraper with 2 handles. It worked ok for that. Of course I was wishing I had that hour back that I spent flattening it, since the globs of glue didn't really care. I think in my mind I was hoping this would be a smoother one day. It didn't really happen.

[steven c newman]

It might not make a good smoother, but it does make one very hungry Scrub plane! Grind that thick iron into a 3" radius, sharpen that. Mouth is open enough to take a few BIG bites.255190Or just save up enough to buy a Stanley #40, or 40-1/2?

[Frederick Skelly]

I use a 1/4" thick piece of plexiglas instead of glass or granite. I have also used my cast iron table on my tablesaw.

[Kemil Pepin]

Glenn, You might find it faster and easier to use a scraper, either handled or a card type, to scrape glue off of panels.

[David Weaver]

If you plan on doing this to more planes in the future, about $50-$60 or so is worth spending on these three things...

a glass shelf from a glass shop (call around, I only mention a shelf because it'll be pre-made, long and fairly narrow - what you want to lap a plane - and it'll be cheaper by a factor of 4 or so vs. a piece of custom glass). A piece 8x42 and a little less than 1/2 inch thick cost me about $20 here.

And two rolls of 4 inch wide psa adhesive backed stick down paper - 80 grit and 220 grit.

[Noah Wagener]

I have ground a file to about a sixty degree bevel to use to scrape the bottom of planes. It works great on the soft iron. Scraping steel i've found it better to sharpen the scraper with rough sandpaper to give it some teeth. Hold at low angle to avoid digging in. You can remove metal very quickly and leave a pretty good finish scraping. I have created huge piles of iron dust and even shavings. I have not created a flat sole though. I rub it on paper adhered to glass like many suggest to indicate where to scrape. It never matches what my straight edge says are the high spots.My straight edge is cheap aluminum variety but i have 2 of them and all four edges say the same thing so i think the glass is the suspect cog. I support the glass with a piece of mdf on two by fours. I tried the prussian blue method for spotting also. I really think you need something sturdier than glass. I think if you had three of those granite tiles you could check them against each other with prussian blue. If all three match than they are in a plane. a hill and a valley could match but another hill could only match the valley.

Here is a link on scraping a sole:http://www.antiquetools.com/scrape/

good luck.

the guys who say flat sole are overvalued are probably correct.



01-18-2004, 12:40 PM #10 (http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general-archive/how-flatten-plane-sole-96628/#post287418)
Forrest Addy (http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/members/forrest-addy/)
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Sandpaper (abrasive sheet lapping) on glass is a procedure that will not die. Hand planes are not high precision tools. They do not have to be made to NIST standards to perform satisfactorily. Much of the discussion on flatness and lapping of plane soles is a product of excalating ignorance and hysteria much in a class with magnet therapy and fad diets.

I've milled, surface ground, hand scraped, and abrasive sheet lapped dozens of hand planes in my day. Every one of these planes stayed put and every one got good reviews from knowledgeable woodworkers who used them.

The only practical requirement for a hand plane sole is they have to be flat to very slighly convex and fairly smooth - 63 micro-inch or better. I've flattened hand plane soles to 0.0002" in the full length and discovered they worked not quite as well to my personal taste as those with a slight convexity.

It's a curious situation. Hand plane owners will put themselves through incredible labors lapping and scraping on the theory that perfect flatness will ultimately come to them if they do something laborous enough for a long enough time - like it was a flagilation pilgrimage. What few fail to realize is that glass even in commercial door thicknesses is somewhat flexible. Maybe the prevailing feeling is that the deflection of the glass will somehow go away if it's supported on a wood bench.

If your goal is to make something flat you need a reliable flatness reference. While glass is a material with a high modulus of elasticity its actual stiffness is low because of the commercially available thicknesses available.

I was invited to a man's home shop for a professional consult. His plate glass home shop lapping surface I examined was 6" wide and 2 ft long by 3/8 thick. I demonstrated for the shop owner on my granite flat the several Stanley/Bailey pointer planes he had lapped on his plate glass were infact convex by 0.005 to 0.008".

I set his glass plate up on the owner's saw table on sticks at its Arey points and determined with a dial indicator and magnetic base the plate deflected 0.010" or so with only a few pounds of hand pressure applied in the center of the plate.

By comparison a low cast 18" x 24" granite surface plate is 3" thick. Since deflection underload varies with the square of the thickness of a member and directly with its width a 3" thick 18" x 24" granite flat is 192 (theoretically) times as stiff as the 6" x 24" plate glass 3/8" thick I refered to.

The man whose shop I violated with metrological rigor was angry with me. He'd spent hundreds of hours "flattening" and in ten minutes I proved with a granite flat and a box of tools I brought along that all his work came to nothing. His dozen planes were not flat. They were convex. He'd lost faith in them; they were sullied as though they were sacred relics fallen into pagan hands.

Absolute flatness does not in my experience make a plane perform any better. I pointed that out to the man but it made no improvement to his mood. There was no consoling the man so I picked up my stuff and left. That was 13 years ago and the man is still short with me. Shoot the messenger.

What was sad was that his not-flat hand-lapped planes worked perfectly but suddenly they were no good because they were not perfectly flat.

So a glass reference won't make a plane sole flat but a hand plane sole abrasive sheet lapped on it may still function well.

There's been mention of loose abrasive lapping of the plane's sole directly on glass. Don't do it. Glass has a much lower rupture strength than cast iron. Glass laps VERY easily. Cast iron is much tougher than glass; it preferentially laps glass. In a loose abrasive lapping situation about 6 to 8 times more weight of glass is lapped away than the cast iron which is lapped against it. Without accessible flatness references the process is entirely uncontrolled and there's no telling what shape your plane soles will be in when you finally decide you're "done".

My point is, popular belief can be far afield from practical reality. Before one invests in the helpful suggestions offered by a self-promoting "experts" in woodworking magazines (they have to fill pages somehow) or touted by popular culture it never hurts to check out the practicality of the suggestions with somone of demonstrated expertize and cool competency and maybe run some controlled experiments.

Those of you who wish to lap their hand planes soles and desire to obtain the maximum practical flatness get rid of the glass. Plate glass as a lapping surface is a yokel's tool accepted on blind faith and easily debunked by the simplest apparatus. Instead get a cheap import 18" x 24" granite flat. It costs $40 - $60 and weighs just over 100 Lb thus it's easy for most able bodied men to move around. Shipping can be a significant cost.

Do yourself a favor. Hand file and scrape the plane's sole to the flatness you desire. Use the discussion listed in several links above as a "how to". Abrasive sheet lap only to obtain the final finish. Two hour's work with a hand file and a scraper will accomplish more in efficient flattening than 10 hours of abrasive sheet lapping.

[This message has been edited by Forrest Addy (edited 01-18-2004).]

[David Weaver]

There's one thing where a flat sole is really handy, a jointer to joint edges, especially longer edges. A matched edge will fit dead nuts every time with good technique, without having to take matched boards out of clamps, vises, etc to check them, and without having to put a lot of pressure on them.

It's nice to have a smooth plane flat around the mouth area so you have contact ahead of the iron, the front and back do not need to be dead on coplanar.

AS fun as it is to always say "no expert ever needs a flat sole", what is true is that a plane that is hollow along its length will be a pain in the rear end. You can check for that pretty easily, but if you pick up enough used planes, you'll eventually find one like that or with a twist, and lapping it will make your life easier.

Otherwise, lapping the coarse planes is generally a waste of time, but having one dead flat long plane is nice if you're working from rough stock and don't own a jointer. Not necessary, but nice.

[Bill Houghton]

How out of flat is it, and what problems have been created by its out of flatness (if any)?

I have yet to flatten the sole on any of my planes, including the No. 8 battleship, and they've worked fine. I will confess that I gave away one plane that was out of flat right in front of the mouth, but giving it away (to someone who wanted the idea of a plane more than he wanted a working tool) was a lot more efficient than hours spent flattening it.

[David Weaver]

I'm not sure it's an issue of problems so much as it is better use if a bottom is closer to flat, like an ease issue.

If you're match planing two boards for a panel and you finish with stop shavings and then one through shaving you can literally put boards down on a flat surface and glue them as a rub joint with no clamps.

That means no checking with a straight edge, no need to clamp with magazine clamping pressures, no edges that are falling away on those joints.

if the question is then, should someone send a vintage jointer to be surface ground? To me, that's a waste of money, and it removes some of the casted material that there's no reason to remove unless you're trying to do something really really specific. But if a plane has a notable problem, like concavity, it's pretty easy to fix it with a lap. It doesn't need to be fixed within a thousandth, it just needs to be fixed so it functions right. Is it easier to get a no pressure rub joint with a plane that's dead dead flat? Sure. Can you do it with other planes if you check the joint? Of course. I'd just rather not have to check. An LN #7 makes all of the jointing tasks really easy.

I wouldn't be afraid of a plane that had some relief in front of the mouth if it was due to wear, as long as it wasn't relief because the entire bottom wasn't concave (I would expect a discount for it, though). I had an old 8 that was worn hollow in front of the mouth before I learned to use a double iron and it still proved capable in use, it was otherwise very flat. Someone had just been using it for some abusive task, and the chipbreaker literally wore through in the middle. I think that whoever had it decided at that time, they'd discard it.

[Jim Koepke]

My thought on this is if a plane really needs work on the sole being flattened it will be evident in use.

Too many assume they shouldn't use a plane until it has been first taken apart and had the bottom run over some sand paper. In many cases they are likely to make a good plane worse.

Why fix something that isn't broken?

jtk

[steven c newman]

All this talking about this little plane needing flattening, made me go and check mine. Had it for awhile. Laid a square on the sole, to check across in three places: toe, mouth, and heel areas. No daylight showing under the square. Hmmm, ok. laid the ruler part of the square along the sole's length. No light showing at the mouth, the heel, and the toe areas. A VERY thin light was showing elsewhere. Seems to be workable to me. 261236261237261238Of course, mine is set up as a small scrub plane.

[Rich Kelly]

Got a couple of counter top sink cut outs from a guy next door. He works in construction (electrician) he got them from a job site (free) said they were doing 2 hundred units. He had a couple of small stacks said he only got a few so SHMBO could have a stone path. Just an idea for a flat surface source.