Need help understanding plane use

[Bryan Bear]

Yes with the bevel up plane and low bed angle you have a lower cutting angle. A higher angle is helpful on hard woods and really squirly grain. Cedar shouldn't be too hard to plane but it does like to split so if you are planing against the grain you are asking for trouble. Make sure the iron is sharp, and adjust the mouth really tight to the iron, take look that shavings with the grain and see if you get better results.

you have to deal with the edges of the iron diggeing in if they are not rounded. Also many people use a toothed iron.

[Brian Evans]

I've not used a 62 (low angle jack plane) but I have a low angle palm plane. The blade angle for a bevel up blade is the sum of the bedding angle and the bevel, so a 30 degree bevel with a 12 degree bed is 42 degrees - not a lot different than your 4 or 4 1/2 with their 45 degree bed angles. If you are getting tear-out on a top, try paying more attention to grain direction. If you have a book matched top, one side will have a different grain direction than the other. Grain sometimes turns around in the space of an inch. I am using a toothed blade veneer plane for thinning stock, it is impervious to grain direction. https://anthonyhaycabinetmaker.wordpres ... -our-time/ While a very different idea, you can get a toothed blade for your 62 and it will help with tearout. Lastly, try a scraper instead of a plane. Try skewing the plane at up to 45 degrees to the direction of travel. Try closing or opening the mouth, if it's adjustable.

Brian

[Ron Daves]

Last night, I tried my #62 with a 30-degree grind on my plane iron. No joy. I ground this blade to the 30-degree angle using a high speed grinder and finished up with japanese water stones. It was very sharp. I decided to try out my bailey # 4 1/2 with a 30-degree blade. I tried regrinding the 25-degree grind to 30 on my wet grinder, however, it is impossibly slow. I next tried the high speed grinder. The Bailey blade is thinner than the #62 and doesn't like high-speed grinding. Even though I have a Norton white grinding wheel, it was too easy to burn the tool.

This soundboard that I'm working on is weird. It is two pieces, glued in the center. One side planes beautifully, the other tears out, no matter which end I plane from. I'm going nuts.

[Brian Evans]

The back bevel angle of a bevel down plane iron is virtually irrelevant to the cutting action, within reason. A steep angle like 15 or 20 degrees can induce chatter and create a weak edge, a shallow angle like 40 or 42 degrees can create a clearance issue behind the blade and a poor micro-bevel, but that's about the extent of it. 25 degrees is the normal for no better reason than it's around half of 45 and is easy to judge by eye. You grind to that, you then hone a micro-bevel of around 30 degrees, you then polish with leather and rouge, de-burr and get on with it. I refresh blades for a long time just with my 1" leather belt on a belt sander, and green compound.

At this point I would try a 60 1/2 palm plane with an adjustable mouth set tight, or a scraper. The trick of skewing the plane should be tried as well. Palm planes can be a lot more controllable. 95% of my regular plane work is with a Sargent equivalent of the Stanley 60 1/2 pattern plane. My no. 4 doesn't come out until I am smoothing table tops or something like that, it's just too big. Come to think of it, most of my planes are curved bottom, or set up for roughing.

Edit: If I had a 62, with a 12 degree bed, I bet I would have a blade with a 20 degree bevel on it, and try it for very soft wood. If it doesn't have an adjustable mouth, you can always adjust the mouth by moving the frog, if that is adjustable (usually is, I find, on bigger planes). Also, since you have a new blade for one of your bevel down planes and like to grind blades, grind a 5 degree bevel on the front of one of the blades, that will raise it to 50 degrees from 45, and see what happens. That is called York pitch.

[Barry Daniels]

Plane cross grain. This will totally eliminate tear out. It will leave a rougher surface but that can be cleaned up with a scraper.

[Bob Gramann]

Cumpiano describes this process very well in his book. If you haven't read that section, do it now. He uses a toothed blade on the soundboard and planes diagonally across the grain.

"Very sharp" on a plane blade means that you can plane a shaving infintesmally thin--you can see through it and it disappears into dust if you try to pick it up. When you get the blade this sharp and the protrusion that small, you have to be patient and let the blade do the work. I use very fine grit sandpaper (the final sheet looks like it has a semigloss finish) glued to a glass plate and a honing guide to do my plane blades and chisels. I never could get an edge I was satisfied with using a stone. My good tools never go near the grinder.

Personally, I use a thickness sander so I don't have to do all of that plane work on a precious soundboard.

[Mark Fogleman]

I would follow the line Barry suggested and try rotating the board to attack the grain from behind the rise instead of head on. I'm not sure if this will work in WRC but in curly hardwoods I use a liberal splash of mineral spirits or denatured alcohol in the areas prone to tearout to get the fibers to behave. Some boards are too prone to tearout with any plane or scraper (no matter how sharp or expertly the plane is adjusted) and a belt/drum sander is your only option if that board has to be used. I could see this happening with a softwood very easily.