My recently purchased 2 sets of Blade/ Cap Iron are top notch but the .100 thick blades prove to be too thick for my Stanley Bedrock #4 & #5 planes.


The blades have extremely small clearance between the front of the blade opening when set downward to have the blade protrude below the plane base. Moving the frog back does not help because the bevel side of the blade contacts the back side of the opening and the front clearance amount is still too small to allow a decent chip thickness.


The seller’s Customer Service person said that their Blade/Cap Iron sets perform well in 80% of these planes but 20 % have a smaller opening which needs to be filed out to make a larger opening. Mine must be in the 20% category.


The #4 was my father’s who used it most of his working life and I really hate to modify it. The #5 is a Flea Market buy but is in excellent shape. Filing open it’s blade opening would be practical but I’n not too sure of my skill in doing this.


The seller offered to take back the set or sets and I could then replace the blades with the thinner (.080”) Stanley blades. This would leave me with no improvement over the existing blades (except the Original #4 blade was well used and has almost no sharpening length left - it needs replacing).


I would like to keep both sets but would like your opinions on filing the openings and just how to do that, For example, how much should be filed out? Will doing this affect the planes performance and could I later go back to using the thinner Stanley blades should I want to?

Don