Unsquare plane blades

[C-Dave Thompson]

Hello folks
I have just aquired my hand planes. 4 in all. And I kid you not every blade looks like it was ground in some part of the world where everything slopes down hill. I don't own a bench grinder or a belt sander. I have attemped to use my honing jig and some 40 grit sand paper to square them. Needless to say my arms are pretty strong now but still the blades are off.
Anyone have solution? The planes are #4,#5,#606,#8

[nic obie]

This is going to seem rude...

but you will get there. That really is alot of planes to take on at once.

Send me a iron and I will do it for you for free.

nic

[Ron Brese]

When I hone irons I tend to take more metal off the left side than the right, I guess I'm trying to overcompensate for being right handed. Once I realized that, I've not had nearly as much problems with out of square plane irons. When I do have to make a correction I use the trusty Tormek to set things right again. It sounds as if some of your irons are pretty bad, but the worse thing you could do at this point would be to get impatient and starting grinding away at these irons with a bench grinder. It is so easy to overheat plane irons on a bench grinder even some of the slow speed grinders have to be used with some care to avoid overheating the irons. Once you see a straw color on the edge or worse blue you've gone too far and will have to remove a good bit of metal before you get back to the properly hard material. Before I had the Tormek I would use 80 grit cloth back sandpaper with a honing guide to resolve issues that required a good bit of material removal. Use water and perserverance. Once you have them back in shape the hard work will be over.

Ron

[Mike Henderson]

You don't indicate how much out of square the blades are but on the planes you indicated, you can use an out of square blade by using the lateral adjustment. That way, you can straighten out the blades over time - a little bit each time you sharpen.

Mike

[C-Dave Thompson]

Mike they are pretty far out. I can almot get the #4 straight when moving the lateral adjustment all the way over the the left. The others are worse

[David Carroll]

Try grinding the edge off square (do not remove the entire bevel, just blunt it so it is square). Then set it in the jig and check after every few strokes. Make corrections as necessary to bring the grinding marks all the way to the edge.

I have also set irons cockeyed in the jig to compensate for my natural tendency to grind more off of the left side.

David

[Derek Cohen]

Mike they are pretty far out. I can almot get the #4 straight when moving the lateral adjustment all the way over the the left. The others are worse

Dave

That is not necessarily due to the blade being out-of-square. This can also be caused by the capiron being attached to the blade at an angle. Play around with this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[James Owen]

Hello folks
I have just aquired my hand planes. 4 in all. And I kid you not every blade looks like it was ground in some part of the world where everything slopes down hill. I don't own a bench grinder or a belt sander. I have attemped to use my honing jig and some 40 grit sand paper to square them. Needless to say my arms are pretty strong now but still the blades are off.
Anyone have solution? The planes are #4,#5,#606,#8

If adjusting the cap iron, etc., don't work, and you don't have access to a grinder, try marking a straight/square line across the front of the iron and then using a file to remove the excess metal. This will avoid much sand paper work, and you won't have to worry about drawing the temper.

[Terry Beadle]

Another good tip is to use a black marker and mark the cutting edge. As you sharpen you can easily see how uniform you are keeping the edge. For blades that are really off, say 1/8th of an inch from square, mark just the part that's shorter and make sure you only sharpen where the mark is not. Use a carbide marker with your square along the flat side of the cutting edge, about 1/32 back from the shortest edge. Keep an eye on that as you go and you'll always know how close to square you are getting.

If you don't have a grinder, then the next time you go to the box store, look at those 1/4inch drive grinding stones. Any one of them will speed up the process. Don't worry with the grinder about the angle so much as getting the edge straight.

Good luck and enjoy the sharpening.

[C-Dave Thompson]

Well thanks for the help everyone. Looks like until I get something that is faster at grinding I will just have to stick with the sand paper/honing jig routine. Puts an whole new meaning to the phrase "Daily grind"