Hi all,
I have an old 22″ wooden plane I bought a year ago. I took the iron and cap iron out at that point to clean and sharpen it, but it sat outside the plane for a whole year. Now the iron doesn’t want to fit back into the body of the plane. It jams up on the sides before i can even get it 1″ into the opening. Even the wedge is super tight and will barely fit back into the body.
So do I sand/shave the inside edges of the opening until I can get the wedge and iron back in? Or do I hammer it all back in as is?
I’m afraid to force it because its so tight I feel like I’m going to split the body. But I’m so new to this stuff I just don’t know what is too tight or loose.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dennis
Replies
Work on the iron, not the plane. You should also slightly reduce the width of the wedge, sand paper on a flat surface should do that quickly.
Wooden plane's shrinkage
There is a sidebar note in the Sept 2010 Lee Valley & Veritas catalog on page 77 that tells you that if the humidity is low in your shop, the irons in their asian wooden planes might not fit and to shave down the sides...
"...these planes will react to local humidity levels... in a heated shop wood contraction can bind the blades...shave a bit of wood from the throat sides..."
There is more but that is the gist of it. Might be your problem.
Thanks for your responses. I was figuring that the warm/dry house was causing the problem. Maybe I'll leave it out in the shop for a while (not climate controlled) to see if it relaxes that plane a bit. If not, I'll start making adjustments.
Cheers,
Dennis
While this may be accurate for the Asian planes LV,imports, For an old woodie, I'd certainly listen to lwilliams to work on the iron not the wood. He is THE expert on wooden planes around here. .
That's right. The LV info was only for Asian planes. I had never tried one 'till the other day at the Woodworking Show in VA. Tried a Taiwan Ebony seven inch one. Liked it a lot and bought one for $34.95 show price. Took it home and worked on it for about 20 mins on an 8000 stone. Lots of fun using a plane on the pull stroke, but it works the other way too. This one was bought from Woodline USA but for a few bucks more I now see I could have had an LV. I never knew they were so cheap. Blade is heavy A2. Getting perfect .0012 thick shavings. I kinda like this.
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