Help with wooden smoother tuning

[Steve Voigt]

Jack, you can't just "try it without the chipbreaker." Western planes don't work that way. You would need to make a new wedge, but it would be way too thick and possibly wouldn't extend down far enough.

[Don Orr]

Certainly no expert here but it appears there is some kind of gunk (highly technical term) built up in the front corners of the mouth in the 2nd pic in the original post. If jamming often happens in the corners maybe just a good cleaning might help.

[Derek Cohen]

I bought a New York Tool Co. smoother at an antique store this weekend. After flattening the sole, sharpening the iron and mating the chip breaker i gave it a test drive. This had an Auburn Tool Co Thistle Brand laminated iron in it and boy did it get sharp, it might be the easiest iron to raise a burr on that I have had experience with. This is the first wooden smoother I have ever used and I didnt have much success. The chips were jamming in the thoat, I took a pic of the chip, the mouth and the iron/chipbreaker. Any ideas why it is jamming?

Attachment 287319Attachment 287320Attachment 287321

Hi Cody

If your throat is jamming with shavings, there can be three possible causes:

1. The mouth is too small and the shavings taken are too thick (blade projection is too great). From your picture the mouth is not small. Are you trying to take thick or thin shavings? Try a shallower setting.

2. The chipbreaker is too close to the edge of the blade for the size of the mouth, with the result that shavings jam (as per #1). Pulling the chip breaker back allows shavings to flow more easily towards the rear of the mouth.

3. The angle of the escapement is too high to permit shavings to flow - again essentially closing up the mouth. You could open the escapement more, however this plane work properly once upon a time. So, if all the parts are original, the issue you are facing has to be in the way it is set up.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[David Weaver]

A reasonable test to see if it's the wear or the wedge (if it's hard to tell where shavings are caught first) is to camber the iron off at the corners so that no shavings are made at the corners, set the cap iron close and then try it again. If it catches in the wear, you have an issue with the wear that can sometimes be solved as easily as cleaning the wear (if the wear is caked with something and not smooth, it might be a problem). I always scrape or lightly pare (not removing wood) the wear and wax it first before I adjust it if the wear is proving to be a problem.

I have had planes that were vintage that were clean and where the double iron set close didn't work. That's not an acceptable situation and suggests that the plane wasn't made properly (on the more vintage planes, it's never been the wear, always a shrunken wedge or something like that that creates a snag).