Restoring Wooden Body Plane - Tight Iron?

[Jason Dean]

Yesterday I crossed over into the realm of wooden bodied planes and all the personality that comes with them. My acquisition is a wooden coffin-style toothing plane that is bedded at 90 degrees. The iron has a clover leaf trademark stamped near the top.

The largest issue (other than dirt and rust) that I have so far identified is that the cheeks of the plane body are tight against the iron. (Maybe due to wood shrinkage?)

How does one correct this? Is it better to remove material from the plane or the iron? How much clearance does there need to be side to side?

Once I get her all cleaned up, I will post some before and after pictures.

Jason

[george wilson]

Since I don't want to widen the area that the wedge sits in in the plane's escapement, I usually just grind off a bit of the width of the iron. It depends upon how rare the iron is, but you have to modify either the plane or the iron if you want to use it. Or are concerned that the plane will shrink enough to split open from the tight iron. Since you do not have an old or rare plane,it is up to you.

[Steve Voigt]

I'm with George, I'd rather grind the iron. Re your question about clearance, most old woodie irons are tapered in width (as well as in thickness), so there is more clearance at the top than at the bottom. I would aim for around 1/16 at the top of the escapement and 1/32 at the mouth.

[george wilson]

Agreed. You need the iron to be tapered towards the top so you can tilt the iron a bit to make the cutting edge parallel across the bottom of the plane.

[Jason Dean]

I've got it all cleaned up and gave the bevel a quick run over my stones. The plane got one coat of BLO and beeswax.

It seems to work (I get little ribbons) but I am not quite sure what to expect. With the bedding angle so high, shall I expect it to act like more like a scraper than a plane?

The advice so far is much appreciated.

Jason

[Steve Voigt]

I've got it all cleaned up and gave the bevel a quick run over my stones. The plane got one coat of BLO and beeswax.

It seems to work (I get little ribbons) but I am not quite sure what to expect. With the bedding angle so high, shall I expect it to act like more like a scraper than a plane?

The advice so far is much appreciated.

Jason

Yep, that's right. A traditional toothing plane like yours is used for two things: one, to plane particularly nasty grain, and two, to prepare veneer for gluing. The serrations both prevent tear out and provide a toothed surface for gluing. If you use it for planing difficult grain, you can easily scrape the surface smooth with a card scraper after you planed down to your desired thickness.

Yours is a pretty fine-toothed iron, so it would have been used mainly for veneer, I believe.

Make sure you never work the back of the iron on your sharpening stones; only work the bevel. There are various ways to get rid of the burr; one good way is to take a mallet and drive the iron into some end grain.

Nice plane BTW!