Getting frustrated by hand plane tracks...

[charles mathieu]

Okay I've spent again another hour today to eleminate my plane tracks while finishing maple with a veritas low angle jack... Here's what I've done so far but I still can't eleminate the damn tracks.

I'm using a cambered iron and taking very very light passes to make sure the corners don't dig and from the width of the shavings I'm taking, the corners of the blade are definitely not involved. I freshly sharpened my iron up to 8000 and then removed the wired edge with the 8000 grit. This was followed by a couple of strokes of on the strop.

I was still getting very small little tracks so I sanded the whole base of the plane with a 400, 1000, 3000 and 8000. I can't feel any nicks except a tiny scratch below the tote area but the nick is not protuding, it's like a valley and since it's right in front of the blade, the wood it is touching is removed anyway. Again, the whole base seems very smooth, there's no nicks, no glued up dirt or whatever. The edge of the blade is nice to the naked eye, I can't see any nicks or burr either. I'm lost so if you could please help, would be appreciated.

Here's the best pic I could take. The big scratches are not that bad, it's mostly the very tiny ones that I can feel with my fingers. Very annoying.

The forum is resizing my picture, the original one has a much better definition, is there a way to avoid this compression ?

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[Bob Glenn]

Could it be that you are skewing the plane? I have had a plane leave tracks when I skewed the plane. When I ran the plane straight it left no tracks.

[David Eisenhauer]

If you extend the blade (to take a deeper cut), do the tracks get worse?

[Brian Holcombe]

Charles, that looks like a nick in the blade.

[charles mathieu]

Okay after carefully inspecting the blade, I did see a very tiny nick, so small that I could not feel it. I sharpened it once more and the tracks are almost gone ! Turns out I just need to spend some more time on the stone. Astonished at the size of the nick versus the tracks it made on the wood, they were quite huge and rough

[Kevin Hampshire]

Charles, Did you say if this is a PM-V11 or an A2 blade?

[Jim Koepke]

Charles, One of my planes likely has something similar to yours. Though no tracks were noticed since the work still has a way to go before that is a worry.

Anyway, long time ago in my reading was something about 'reading the shavings' made by a plane. Here is what mine was doing today:

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The shaving on the right is full width indicating a decent working edge. The shavings in the plane on the left are a bunch of ribbons indicating a lot of nicks on the blade's edge.

If your light shavings tend to come out split, you may have a nick on the edge. This can also show up as tracks on your work.

jtk

[Tony Shea]

It appears you figured your issue out but thought I'd put my insight in anyway. Those marks are def due to a tiny nick in the blade. These nicks can be very frustrating as they can show up after one single pass after a sharpening session and you have to start over again. Hard maple is some of the most difficult wood to plane in terms of leaving no marks behind. Because of the super fine grain hard maple becomes glass smooth after planing. This super polished surface is really susceptible to leaving these tiny tracks. I've also run into some maple having pockets of some sort of grit that just instantly nicks my blades. In these cases I'm stuck using sandpaper for the final surface, just the nature of the beast.

[Jim Matthews]

Is the "track" described actually a raised ridge?

[Jim Koepke]

Is the "track" described actually a raised ridge?

This confused me at the beginning of this thread. My understanding of 'plane tracks' is those left by the outside corners of a plane blade's edge. But then what are the marks left by a nicked blade called?

jtk