A Veritas Miss?

[charlieb]

If you own - and actually use - one or more hand planes you've probably damaged the lever cap screw while tightening or loosening it - with the nearest, close enough, screw driver. I'll admit that I have done that - more than once.

So when I see that Lee Valley has a special tool, specifically designed for the lever cap screw tightening and loosening - think grear shift knob shape, with brass collar - and inside the collar - a short slot head screw driver blade - (Plane Screwdriver 50K39.01 $14.50)

- and it's right next to the Veritas Side Rabbet Plane I was ordering - I added it to my order.

Having now used both - I really like the Side Rabbet Plane. The Plane Screwdriver - not so much. The screwdriver blade barely sticks out beyond the brass collar so you can't see that it's engaged the slot in the cap lever screw. So there's a lot of fishing around and guessing "Is it in the slot - or not?" And if you THINK it is - and it isn't - you can damage the screw slot.

Now - if the blade were spring loaded - so it stuck out far enough so you could see that it in fact was in the slot, then retracted a little so the collar could fit around the screw head - then bottom out so you could safely turn the cap lever screw . . .

OK - so it's "just" an under $15 tool - but it's from Lee Valley!

[Lowell Holmes]

I have the screw driver and like it. Mine fits the screw that holds the breaker to the iron. I've never tried it on the cap screw.

[Scott Lurndal]

strangely, lv calls the chipbreaker screw the cap screw (whereas I consider the cap screw to be that providing tension to the lever cap).

I've never had a problem using the leading edge of the lever cap as a screwdriver for the chipbreaker screw.

scott

[Lowell Holmes]

I have Hock Irons in some of my planes and a 4 1/2 LN. I couldn't bring myself to use the LN lever cap as a screw driver. The LV screwdriver fits the slot in the breaker screw exactly.

[charlieb]

Ah the ambiguity of woodworking terms.

The text describing the tool in question, the Plane Screwdriver, says "We designed this screwdriver to make it both safe and easy to remove, replace or adjust the cap irons."

There are two removable parts held with screws on my bench planes - more specifically the metal ones (I've got s few Steve Knight early woodies too). One holds the chip breaker ( called that because that's what it's designed to do) and the other holds the lever cap. Now, having looked a the photo next to this tool's picture I see that it's intended for the screw for what I call the chip breaker. Now, having used this tool on THAT screw, I find it works really well. So now I suppose I should wait and look for an upcoming special screwdriver for the "lever cap screw"?

Is what is known as the chip breaker here called a cap iron acrossed the pond? Bad enough with rabbet/rebate, joiner/ jointer, board/timber, planer/thicknesser - and the pronunciation of the word schedule (sked-yule vs shhhhed-you-el)

[MikeWhy]

Is it really as complicated as all that? I appreciate a good plane and all, but just fish a coin out of my pocket to snug up the screw.

[Norman Billingham]

It's pretty much always called a cap-iron in the UK - Joyce, Salaman and Hayward all refer to it as a cap-iron in their books and it's what I've always called it. For once, the US description as the chip-breaker is probably more accurate.

I have a nice short screwdriver with a wide blade which was sold as being for undoing chip-breakers. I bought it at Woodcraft Supply in Boston in

1976, though it's labelled as made in Sheffield UK.

The top bit of the plane is the lever cap.