Veritas scrub plane issue

[David Storer]

In my locality, I have access mainly to very rough sawn construction lumber. The underlying stock is good, however, and well worth the trouble of dimensioning. I do this by hand, partly out of choice ... but, if it were not out of choice, I would be in the same place out of necessity.

My Veritas scrub plane has served me well as first line of attack. But it's now playing up.

The blade is slipping back in use. I set the plane for a suitable cut but after a couple of passes it has receded into the body of the plane and is no longer making chips or shavings. The cap iron is correctly in place. The thumb wheel/screw has no further adjustment and is hand tight. The grub screws to prevent lateral movement are not loose. I haven't dropped the plane or had any other mishap. I have been careful not to overtighten things and have always adjusted only by hand ... I'm seventy, never was a muscle man, and have the first twinges of arthritis in my hands ... I don't think overtightening or any similar abuse is the cause of the problem.

I can get the plane to work by shimming one or other of the cap iron contact points. But I shouldn't need to do that.

Most woodworking problems I encounter can be attributed to 'user malfunction' and I'm sure this must be the same. But I'd appreciate ideas and advice.

[George Yetka]

In my locality, I have access mainly to very rough sawn construction lumber. The underlying stock is good, however, and well worth the trouble of dimensioning. I do this by hand, partly out of choice ... but, if it were not out of choice, I would be in the same place out of necessity.

My Veritas scrub plane has served me well as first line of attack. But it's now playing up.

The blade is slipping back in use. I set the plane for a suitable cut but after a couple of passes it has receded into the body of the plane and is no longer making chips or shavings. The cap iron is correctly in place. The thumb wheel/screw has no further adjustment and is hand tight. The grub screws to prevent lateral movement are not loose. I haven't dropped the plane or had any other mishap. I have been careful not to overtighten things and have always adjusted only by hand ... I'm seventy, never was a muscle man, and have the first twinges of arthritis in my hands ... I don't think overtightening or any similar abuse is the cause of the problem.

I can get the plane to work by shimming one or other of the cap iron contact points. But I shouldn't need to do that.

Most woodworking problems I encounter can be attributed to 'user malfunction' and I'm sure this must be the same. But I'd appreciate ideas and advice.

David, have you been re flattening iron every sharpening? I cant think of how it no longer will tighten properly unless the iron has gotten thinner. You can check that the cross bolt that the cap levers against may have bent slightly

[Cameron Wood]

I had a scrub plane at one time and had that problem- seems like a poor design- heavy cut, larger forces, but only a small amount of friction holding the iron in place.

Maybe scuff or grind the mating surfaces to roughen them up.

[Frederick Skelly]

David, I think Cameron has a good idea about roughing up the surfaces. But I think I’d call Lee Valley and discuss the problem. They may already have a solution at hand. Couldn’t hurt.

[Jim Koepke]

The blade is slipping back in use. I set the plane for a suitable cut but after a couple of passes it has receded into the body of the plane and is no longer making chips or shavings. The cap iron is correctly in place. The thumb wheel/screw has no further adjustment and is hand tight. The grub screws to prevent lateral movement are not loose.

This is one of those instances when a picture could be of help.

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The bold, underlined sentence in the above quote is what piqued my thoughts. The threads on the lever cap should be long enough to not run to the end. This could indicate an improperly inserted part or something being bent.

If all else is good, I would try inserting a penny or nickel under the screw where it sits against the blade.

jtk

[Cameron Wood]

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05P3501-scrub-plane-with-hcs-blade-d-0002.jpg

[Jim Koepke]

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05P3501-scrub-plane-with-hcs-blade-d-0002.jpg

This is a nice image. What would be helpful is to see the OP's plane with it more of a full side view instead of a slightly turned view. Though this view does show the piece holding the lever cap allowing to see if it is bent or has moved. The cause could be a damaged screw holding the cross bar in place.

A straight on side view would help to determine if the blade has been bent or overly thinned from continuous flattening of the back.

It will not show if the blade is improperly sharpened or inserted. If the blade is inserted bevel up or if the bevel is rounded from buffing, that could be causing the problem.

jtk

[David Storer]

OP coming back. Apologies for radio silence. Just coming out of an 8-hour power outage ... another regular feature of my location. I'll take some pictures in the morning. I think everything will look perfectly normal, however ... but no harm in showing that.

A couple of points now in response to suggestions:

1) I lapped the back of the iron out of the box ... but nothing heavy (it's a scrub plane, after all, no need to try to refine things too much). Since then, the back of the iron has been lightly lapped just to remove burrs on sharpening ... but nothing that could possibly explain this issue. Mostly, I like to hone often but very lightly using just a strop and, when I do use diamond plates, I like to waste as little metal as possible. For what it's worth, there is a good edge on the iron ... it's not getting stopped in its tracks through being blunt.

2) There is no hint of visible damage to the cross bolt and the fixings are tight.

For what it's worth, the plane is about two years old and hasn't received nearly as much use as I would like due to other diversions in life. It's more-or-less 'mint'. It's working OK shimmed with three layers of painters' masking tape at the back of the cap iron (maybe 1/32"). It seems like the turn-screw is maybe a couple of millimeters or a 16th too short.

One recent change is that I have been taking more care to wipe down all my tools, including the irons, with a very lightly oiled rag just for rust protection. But I can't imagine that would cause such a problem.

That said, I'm thinking roughing up the mating surfaces might be the way to go. It worked for my hold-fasts ... after I also foolishly decided to oil them against rust.

[David Storer]

'User malfunction' confirmed.Bent cap iron.jpg

So you don't have to be a body-builder to bend a cap iron. The base of the cap iron is supposed to be flat. Mine isn't anymore.

There's even a warning in the user manual: The lever cap has tremendous mechanical advantage ... it needs to be tightened only a quarter turn after full engagement ... you may damage the plane.

Advice appreciated on how best to fix this. I think the simplest solution is just to put it in a vice and ease it back a fraction using an adjustable wrench to restore the correct shape ... with soft wood or similar to prevent marring. Alternatively I could maybe reverse the thumb-screw and use its tremendous mechanical advantage working backwards.

Then try to be a little less heavy handed in future.

[Cameron Wood]

That may however, be a symptom of the problem of the iron tending to not stay in place, leading to overtightening.

I would bend it back with wood blocks and a hammer.

[David Storer]

Thanks. That's basically what I did. I set the cap iron in my vice, which has softwood lined jaws that I don't mind getting beaten up, and hammered it with a 2lb rubber faced mallet. I felt that I would have more control with a mallet than with a wrench and would be less likely to mar the cap iron. It worked, anyway.

I might roughen some of the mating surfaces just in case a slipping iron was causing me to over-tighten the thumb-screw, as you suggest could have been the case.

[Jim Koepke]

If something has always worked, then stops working like it has been working, then it is upon the user to determine what has changed.

This looks like a case of not realizing our own strength.

Setting a lever cap (the piece above the blade that uses leverage to hold the blade in place) can be done methodically. It starts with the blade being slightly loose. This allows free lateral movement of the blade without the use of a lateral lever. While applying pressure to move the blade, the lever cap holding screw is tightened until the blade is difficult to move. With a bench plane this is a fairly easy operation. Set a piece of 1X wood in a vise to plane the edge. Set the blade so it is cutting evenly across the width. Then take three or four strokes using one side of the blade, check the other side to see if the blade shifted. Adjustments to the cap holding screw are fine tuned at about 1/16th of a turn at a time to get it dialed in to suit my work.

jtk