setting chipbreaker in wooden planes

[Noah Wagener]

I have problems with this. The blade is bent when tightening the screw. Because of this only the part of the screw is in contact with the blade. It is the part towrds the edge so it wants to push itself, and the chip breaker with it, away from the edge. I can pinch it pretty tight to hold it in place and i guess i could use a vise grips pliers to make sur it does not move. But it will still not hold well and any tapping of the blade while setting and the breaker slides back. I can not adjust the blade in reverse accurately. Should i be able to? I give light taps and nothing happens and as i give progressively harder taps nothing happens till suddenly it slips below the sole and the wedge is loose.

[Steve Voigt]

On a lot of old cap iron sets, especially those with a nut brazed to the cap iron, the threads are not perpendicular to the cap iron. Or the underside of the screw is all messed up. I've never found much of a cure for this, other than to make a new cap iron, or get another old one. You can try filing the underside of the screw, but it's easy to make the problem worse.

If the wedge fits just right and the iron is bedded properly, you should be able to back the blade up by tapping the heel or the strike button. If the fit is less than perfect, the wedge may still hold the blade securely, but adjustment tends to be difficult and unpredictable.

[Reinis Kanders]

I can't help you with this.

I do like wooden planes, but eBay seemed to be too much of a hit and miss with the really old ones. I ended up using eBay, but buying older Ulmia and Emmerich planes that have wedge, they are cheap on Ebay, but made pretty well and seem to work well. Emmerich primus line is more expensive and not worth the bother IMHO.
I have bought four planes so far and after flattening their soles they all work really well and I am all set for the moment. I got smoother, jointer, jack and rabbet plane, all with double irons for around $250.

[Jim Matthews]

Two things to verify first - does the blade assembly travel freely though the throat?
My dedicated chute board plane is VERY difficult to adjust, by design.

If your smoother has a blade that can't travel freely - adjustments will be difficult.

Does the chip breaker screw clear the body of the plane? Some of my first
smoothers had replacement blades that didn't have clearance.

Setting the blade deeper pushed the chip breaker back from the cutting edge.


******


Steve was good enough to illustrate this problem for me recently.
Most of us overset the wedge on woodies.

When getting the blade to 'back out' and reduce the depth of cut,
keep the forefinger of your freehand on the wedge.

This seems to keep everything in place while the blade 'settles'.

I try to get the blade set a scosche thin, and lightly tap the wedge until
things are at the proper depth.

This works if the wedge is set to what I would have considered light pressure.

*****

While the following video from Terry Gordon shows a single iron plane,
the soundtrack may help you to register what seating a wedge sounds like.

Note 0:25 0:45 for removing and seating the blade.

Note 1:22 and 1:38 for adjusting the depth of cut - while holding the wedge with
a free finger (or thumb) - this is the part that had escaped me until recently.


https://youtu.be/fWUiu6tCFRE

[Kyle DuPont]

My wood try plane chip breaker moves upon tightening it with a screw driver. I have worked out a way to do it by hand that I don't think will work for you, but my old way might. Set the chip breaker where you want it by hand and just seat the screw. Carefully put the chip breaker and iron into your vise where the top of the vise is just below the screw. Tighten the vise, check your chip breaker distance, and tighten the screw a lot. Remove from vise and install in the plane.

With the vise clamping the chip breaker and iron tightly, you can get more torque on the screw to keep the setting. The chip breaker should not move after this is done and you make your adjustments with it installed in the plane.

[Noah Wagener]

I do not have a vise Kyle, but i'll try that with a c-clamp or vise grips pliers.

Steve, i think the threads are alligned properly because the underside of the screw is in proper contact before i start tightening it. But then the cap iron bends the blade with the screw as the fulcrum so that only the front of the screw is in contact with the blade. Maybe i need to lessen the bend of the cap iron so that the assembly can be squeezed together tightly without bending the blade? I am a little scared to do this as i think the cap iron is hardened tool steel because it takes a nice edge. I am worried about it being too rigid to bend. It bends the thicker blade. I am also worried about messing up the joint where shavings could get jammed.

If a wedge is fitted properly should it be able to be removed by hand? I push this one in with my heel and it takes quite a bit of side side wriggling and force to remove it. I do not tap it tight with a hammer as it seems pretty snug. My other plane feels even tighter with hand pressure and has a squishy feel to it going in. is that desired? It feels right to me. I pared the abutments to a lower angle (about 7) on this one giving me a problem and now it feels a little more squishy whereas it used to have an abrupt end being wedged like it was steel going into steel.

Jim it travels freely and the screw groove is long enough.It is the wedge that holds the chipbreaker in place while the blade travels in. It takes me so much fiddling to get it set real light that the breaker is completely backed off and the moveable toe plate is loose from tapping the body. Thanks for the video(the auto play one that followed he used a shooting board to joint an edge. That could save me some frustration.) I try light taps like that and nothing happens and when i hit it harder it becomes loose. I am going to get a better hammer than the wooden one i have been using. I try to do the same things you describe. Set it a little shallow and hope the wedge pushes the blade just right.

I like wooden planes as well Renis. I have not tried any of those German (?) planes you mentioned as i have a bit of anglophilia. Two hundered dollars is a lot to me though. I get English planes for the cost of shipping which is not cheap.

[Jim Matthews]

I'm no plane maker.

I suggest you drop Steve Voigt a line - his wedges fit properly and allow easy adjustments.
I am only guessing that the problem lies there.

If you've got lateral clearance and the set screw moves freely,
only the wedge and bed contact the blade assembly.

Getting that right is more an art than Science.
(Which is why I'm no plane maker.)

[Steve Voigt]

Steve, i think the threads are alligned properly because the underside of the screw is in proper contact before i start tightening it. But then the cap iron bends the blade with the screw as the fulcrum so that only the front of the screw is in contact with the blade. Maybe i need to lessen the bend of the cap iron so that the assembly can be squeezed together tightly without bending the blade? I am a little scared to do this as i think the cap iron is hardened tool steel because it takes a nice edge. I am worried about it being too rigid to bend. It bends the thicker blade. I am also worried about messing up the joint where shavings could get jammed.



When you screw the two parts together, how much daylight is there between the cap iron and the blade, at the spot where they are furthest apart? It should be about a 1/16" more or less. If it's a lot more, maybe that is the problem.
I very much doubt your cap iron is hardened--they are mild steel or wrought iron in very old ones. Some of the really old ones might have a laminated bit at the end, but in the middle where you would bend it won't be hardened. It's no problem to bend them. But there are two different scenarios. If the cap iron is convex with a hump in the middle, that is easy to bend--just put a couple shims under it and bend it down onto the bench with a c-clamp. But if the problem is that it has too much "hook" at the business end, that is very hard to bend out. I have solved that problem by grinding away a bit of the edge, thus shortening the cap iron, and then reshaping the business end. But be careful--that's a one-way ride.
The cap iron will always bend the blade--it has to be that way. But if you are having to torque the screw super-hard, then it might be too much. Hard to tell without a picture.




If a wedge is fitted properly should it be able to be removed by hand? I push this one in with my heel and it takes quite a bit of side side wriggling and force to remove it. I do not tap it tight with a hammer as it seems pretty snug. My other plane feels even tighter with hand pressure and has a squishy feel to it going in. is that desired? It feels right to me. I pared the abutments to a lower angle (about 7) on this one giving me a problem and now it feels a little more squishy whereas it used to have an abrupt end being wedged like it was steel going into steel.



No, you should not be able to remove a wedge if you've pushed it in hard. I usually give it a light tap, then check it, adjust if necessary. Then give a harder tap to seat it.
It's hard to say whether the fit should be "squishy" or "dead." Sometimes it's a function of the cap iron--if that has a lot of give in it, then the "squishiness" is the result of the cap iron flexing as you tap it in. If the cap iron has very little give, then a "dead" fit might be good, but more likely it means that the fingers of the wedge are bottoming out first.




Set it a little shallow and hope the wedge pushes the blade just right.



No. If the blade moves when the wedge is tapped in, something is not right in the fit. I generally put the plane on a flat, clean spot on my bench, insert the double iron, then push the wedge in. If it looks good, I give it a tap. If that causes the iron to advance, something is wrong.

Good luck! Keep at it, you'll get it!

[Jim Matthews]

Listen closely to what Steve tells you.

His planes work beautifully.

[Stewie Simpson]

Hi Steve. I just checked out your website. You do some excellent work building traditional handplanes. Well done. We share a common interest.


regards Stewie;

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks Stewie, I sure appreciate that.

[Noah Wagener]

Thanks for the great info and encouragement.

I wish i knew what observations to give you that are relevant.

With my high tech calibration i would say the gap is 3/64" at the widest. It seems to maybe get a hair narrower when tightened.
I can get a feeler gauge (my thumbnail) to slide between the irons the complete length of both sides. I put a washer on and the cap did not regress when tightened. The washer is also flat to the blade and the underside of the screw is flat to the washer. Maybe the washer is able to stiffen the soft iron of the blade so that it does not bend as much there?
I have not seen if it will fit in the slot with a washer on.

I am glad you asked me to check if it was the screw head that was being hung up Jim. It made me notice that the screw is not even remotely close to the bottom of the groove. It is actually almost up the bed so far as to be not completely in the groove if that makes any sense. This plane must be significantly thinner than originally. I am thinking their is just not enough contact areas. You don't have to tell me to listen to Steve. He is an excellent teacher and if he is bored with green questions he doesn't show it.

[Noah Wagener]

I just realized that shortening the blade would move the screw back up the bed too so maybe the plane is not been thinned. It is a coffin smoother about 2 and a quarter thick. I do not know standard thicknesses.

[Jim Matthews]

Some pictures might help.

I'm enthusiastic about your problem, as I've gone through the same trial.
This design is well worth the trouble - it's the best performing
plane style I use. They're deceptive, in that there are few parts.

The complexity comes in that they must all work together, at the same time.

I'm guessing that either your iron or the cap iron have twist in them.

I had a nice Sheffield iron and cap that I could not get to join properly.
The iron had 5 - 10 degrees of twist along the length.

Photos, please.

[Noah Wagener]

Here are some pics Jim. Not sure if they'll informative.

this shows the set screw finger tight.

312566

and the humped top of the cap iron, still finger tight.

312567

Here is the screw tightened with the blade edge to the right.

312568

And overall the hump stays pretty much the same. You can feel the cap get sucked down by the screw but the front of the blade gets bent about as much. I think that shows in the pic.

312569

I have not checked the cap for twist yet.

The abutments were broken of towards the back and after patching the wedge is much tighter. I can retract the blade a little more finessily but still not accurately and quickly.

[Steve Voigt]

Noah,
When the double iron is assembled, you want both sides -- the top of the chipbreaker and the bottom of the iron -- to be concave, not convex as in your picture. That way, the iron will seat at the top and bottom of the bed, and the chipbreaker will seat at the top and bottom of the abutments. It's kind of amazing to me that you are able to get it to work at all!
So, you need to either bend the iron, bend the CB, or both. Disassembled, both of those surfaces should be pretty flat. The top of the CB can be a little convex (again, only in its disassembled state), but only a little.
Like I said before, this is easy to do; just put shims underneath the ends and bend the middle down onto your bench with a C or F clamp. Start with 1/8 shims, then gradually increase the thickness until you get what you want. If you overbend, just flip it upside down. Don't worry about bending the iron--only the bottom 2" or less is hard. If your CB has a nut welded on, don't put the clamp directly on the nut--you can break the weld. Guess how I know this.
As Jim mentioned, the irons can sometimes be twisted. To fix that, I grab the bottom of the iron in a vise, put a pipe clamp on the top, and twist in the opposite direction.
Regarding the height of your plane: you didn't say how wide the iron is, but if it's 2", then the plane should be about 2 5/8 - 2 3/4 wide, and 2 3/4 - 3 high. My understanding, which is admittedly a little shaky, is that 18th c. planes were basically square in section, then got taller through the 19th c. Someone like Don McConnell or Warren Mickley or George Wilson might be able to give more precise info on that. But anyway, it sounds like your plane is severely worn down.
It is a bit of a crap shoot, buying old woodies on ebay. A lot of planes aren't worth saving. You might be better off trying to get a plane from someone like Josh Clark (hyperkitten). That would be a little more expensive, but still pretty reasonable, and you would probably save money in the long run. If you are determined to go the ebay route, you really want to make sure the plane is very close to full height, the iron is close to full length, no cracks in the plane, etc. There are a gazillion of these old planes, so you can afford to be selective.