MIMF

This worked so well I had to share it. In preparation to joint Osage Orange plates (which usually give me a lot of trouble with the variable grain directions), I honed a micro-back-bevel of 30 degrees on the top of the blade for a Stanley #4 plane after honing a normal 25 degree bevel on the bottom of the blade. The plane didn't even grab once when jointing. In a short time, I had a perfect joint. I wish I had done this years ago. I picked up the extra plane cheap at an antique store and spent a little time tuning it up. I will keep it set up like this just for the very hard woods.

Bob, I've had trouble planing osage as well. My solution was to simply flip the plane blade over making my 45 degree jointer plane into a bevel up plane with I guess about a 70 degree angle (45 +25 or so). I could only take the finest of shavings, but had absolutely no tearout. I had to move the chip breaker back quite a ways to make it all fit, but with that high angle, its only puorpose was to hold the blade in. I use that trick a lot now with any figured woods and anything that likes to tear. Sort of a no-cost scraper plane.
-Jim

Yep. That increased the attack angle without having to change the bed angle of the plane. With a bevel-down plane and no back bevel, the attack angle is the same as the bed angle, so altering the bevel just changes the clearance and bevel angles.