I told a neighbor that I would rehab and sell a hand plane that he owns. First, I removed some rust, flattened the back of the plane blade and sharpened it. I then tested it to see how it worked. In a word; HORRIBLE!

I am not sure if this was ever used correctly, the blade was upside down in the plane when I took it from him, and it would never have worked as configured. Also, the blade was very very dull. The back flattened pretty quickly.

The "bad" behavior:

I advanced the blade a bit at a time until it would just start to take a shaving. I would take a very very small shaving and then the blade would dig into the wood. This is a very well behaved piece of cherry and inch or two wide.

I did nothing to tune the chip breaker and I did not adjust the frog. The bottom is high at the front and back with at least a 0.007" gap in the middle (with my straight edge). Could this be the problem?

I know that I need to tune the chip breaker, but I don't think that is the problem here. To my eye, the gap between the blade and the plane mouth looked OK; not that I have much experience with this.

I have never used a plane this badly behaved.

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