smoothing plane

Mostly it's the small opening, but the cutting angle is important too. For figured hardwoods you want a steeper angle like 50 degrees or even more.

Steve's planes are adjusted by what he calls a mouth block. For more information on this feature see:

Yes. :-) For nasty woods, you need a plane with a small mouth and a solidly-bedded, extremely sharp, thick iron (to reduce chatter). You also need to be able to set it for a very light cut.

There are lots of variables, including the presence or absence (or positioning) of a cap iron, the flatness of the sole (actually, a sole that is "coplanar"), the bedding angle of the iron, and how you hold your mouth when you plane. :-)

But those should work for a start.

Steve's planes have an adjustable mouth only in the sense that the mouth block (positioned in front of the iron) maintains a constant mouth opening. This would be so much easier to explain with visual aids, but let's see if I can manage: On a wooden plane you might need to lap the sole to maintain flatness, and each time you do this, you open the mouth a bit (however tiny that may be). With Steve's plane, even if you remove stock on the sole, the angle of the mouth block makes it so the mouth opening stays the same.

Chuck Vance Just say (tmPL) OK, so that wasn't the best explanation.

Dmitri wrote in news:bj6nqq$14b$1 @news.Stanford.EDU:

The function of a smoothing plane is different from that of stock preparation or jointing, so the size of the plane is different. In order to be easily worked in whatever direction the grain is going, you want a short body and light weight, and perhaps a narrower iron so you can focus on a small area; and in order to give the finest possible cut you want a narrow mouth and perhaps a higher pitched iron.

John

"Conan the Librarian" wrote

This gives me an excuse to say that yesterday I upgraded my web site page 'Planing Notes' - 'Coping With Gnarly Grain' with an extra pic of some maple prior to planing with a standard Stanley #5, fulfilling the criteria that Chuck outlines.

Jeff G

-- Jeff Gorman, West Yorkshire, UK Email address is username@ISP username is amgron ISP is clara.co.uk Website