Toothing Iron

[lowell holmes]

Do any of you have and use a toothing iron? I'm just curious.

I have one for my Veritas bevel up planes. Since I've become lazy
and use a thickness planer, I don't use the toothing iron that much.

[Prashun Patel]

I have a toothed blade for my low angle jack plane. I like it a lot. But I wouldn't use it for thicknessing. I use it for flattening tricky boards because it doesn't care too much about grain direction, and leaves nice witness marks of high/low spots by virtue of its scratch pattern. The Veritas jack is heavy, and thicknessing with it is not fun for me.

One would think that the toothed pattern would create ridges that are a pain to subsequently smooth away. However, they disappear quite quickly. Using a toothed blade has educated me that the reason boards don't smooth quickly and evenly is because they are not flat enough, not because they are too rough.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Everything Prashun just said. I love it for flattening tough grain, which seems to be very much of what I do these days.

[Mike Brady]

I use mine to bring material quickly down to a rough thickness, while saving my sharp regular plane irons for the final smoothing. Toothed blades stay sharp for a very long time and they are the only plane blades I don't sharpen after every use.

[John C Cox]

Yep. Very handy though I dont use it much now.

I made mine out by slotting a cheap Buck Brothers iron with my dremel... Works like a champ.

[Jeff Heath]

My LN low angle jack with a toothing plane is my weapon of choice for crazy figured wood. Finish with a regular iron in your smoothing plane of choice until the teeth marks are all gone. Fast and very effective. My large, wide planer (power) is awesome, but it cannot produce the finish in high figured crotch wood or burl that a toothing plane/smoothing plane combination can.

[george wilson]

Violin plane blades that were made for planing curly maple, were toothed. I easily make these little blades by filing the grooves in with a checkering file. The teeth don't have to go very far up the iron, as it would take you forever to use up just a half inch of toothing.