Closing the mouth of a block plane

[Derek Cohen]

Many years ago - 15 or more? - I purchased my first new plane. A LN #103. Actually, it was intended to be the purchase of a #102 but I did not have my reading glasses that afternoon! And it took me about 5 more years to realise this, which only occurred because I purchased a LN #60 1/2 and sat them side-by-side .... just goes to show that the common angle block plane does an excellent job of end grain with a sharp blade!

Anyway, the #103 had a large mouth. I understand that the #102 had a small, tight mouth. I assumed that LN had used the same casting and the higher bed angle increased the mouth size on the #103. Perhaps yours is different.About a month ago I decided to close up the mouth. Why? Because it is easier to set the blade for a fine cut - I judge by using fingertips, and a large mouth with a blade far from the mouth end is more difficult to assess.

This process is extremely easy and rather quick, so this is a heads up to those who with to do the same, not only with a #103 from LN but other makes and fixed mouth planes as well.All one does is add thin brass shim. There is no fixed number of layers. It depends on the size of your mouth. In my case I folded the brass shim 4 times and then attached it with epoxy (easy to remove with heat if one wants to reverse the process).

This is how my #103 looked after this was done ...



And the mouth ...




Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Koepke]

Interesting approach, do you use an adhesive or cut the shims to be tight across the plane body?

jtk

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Jim

I added my reply to the body above (the formatting disappeared, so I went in to correct it).

For the life of me I cannot recall the thickness of the brass shim. It comes in sheets. I think it was 0.02" thick. Anyway I used 4 layers - one length folded and then flattened. This was epoxied to the body - easy to remove with heat.

Regards from Perth

Derek