Warped H/R Bodies

[Joel Thomas Runyan]

Just acquired a few hollows and rounds, the faces of the No. 2s are both slightly bowed ahead of the mouth. The sole is straight (or flat, if thinking about it like a flat surface), but the toe of the plane is not parallel to the heel. I've made it work in some short runs on pine (as I'm sure the previous user did, unless they somehow managed to move after arriving at my shop), but they of course don't want to track properly. Any ideas of how to straighten them, or are they junk?

[David Weaver]

I lap that out on a sandpaper lap. If the plane is particularly attractive to you and you don't want to expose fresh beech, then you may want to just set it aside instead.

Any warped plane I've gotten works fine after a minute or two on an 80 grit sandpaper lap, though you might need to hone the outside of the iron down a little depending on what the plane is.

If it's too much bow for that to fix it, it's a throw-away plane.

If a straight tree is chosen and the wood is dead quartersawn, it will not warp like that, but a lot of the later planes may have been made of trees that grew twisted or of sawn lumber where the straws of the tree aren't parallel too the plane. If the latter is the case, even dead quartersawn wood will twist or move in ways you don't like.

[Jeff Heath]

As David already said, you can sand, or plane out the twist with a finely set jack or jointer plane. The problem with removing material is that you will (as stated) definitely need to reshape the iron, which is not that big of a deal once you know the correct procedure. It's shown perfectly in Larry William's DVD on side escapement planes. The real problem comes in that as you remove material, you are also opening up the mouth on the plane.

A #2 is such a small cutting surface that it shouldn't take too much work to get it back to working condition. If so, you've got another piece of firewood for the stove.