Originally Posted by
Don Rogers
That is a good point. A 3/4' slot should not overtax the small plow plane for that reason - unless one tries to hog out too much.
I ran into a problem with the Stanley #78. that is keeping the plane straight so the rabbit does not lean. I suppose this is a matter of practice.
I'm glad for this posting - I'm learning lots of good information.
The lean was an issue at first with my wooden moving filletster - even with a perfectly square fence, there's still a little "english" that comes to play. I generally play pretty rough with my fillester and refine with a rabbet plane if I need something a little more presentable or if things get too out of square. I've been tuning it a little bit every time I use it, though, and it's pretty spot on at this point, although still not "point and shoot".
A couple thoughts - making sure your fence is square helps a lot, as does a larger fence. Can you attach some wood to the fence? whether the blade is honed spot on is also key.
Outside of physical approach, the main thing I've found to look at is the blade itself - obviously, if the cutting edge isn't parallel to the sole, it'll cut more on one side than the other, making some problems, but the bigger problem in my experience is a blade that cuts evenly across the width of the sole, but projects unevenly along the sidewall - you don't have a lot of blade against the sidewall on a 78, but if the blade projects more from the side away from the cutting edge than it does at the cutting edge, it will subtly push the plane away from the rabbet. Often on wooden fillester planes, the blade will have a slight lean to it, in combination to the skew, to keep this from happening. On a non-skewed blade, any attempt to compensate for an out-of-square honing on the iron can result in a blade that projects more at the top of than the bottom of the iron and make problems. If the 78 has a notched blade as I recall, I'd think making sure that the area that extends out to the edge narrows as it moves away from the cutting edge might help, as long as you aren't so drastic you can't move the blade to the edge.
Last edited by Jessica Pierce-LaRose; 03-31-2014 at 10:28 PM.
" Be willing to make mistakes in your basements, garages, apartments and palaces. I have made many. Your first attempts may be poor. They will not be futile. " - M.S. Bickford, Mouldings In Practice