On 17 Mar 2004 11:15:51 -0800, Alan W wrote:

Need some real world advise on an issue:

No 4 Stanley Handyman smoother, stock blade. Very small mouth
opening, around .005 pasing shavings around .002. The sole is flat to
under a .001 according to my starrett straight edge and a source of
light.

Very hard wood, purpleheart in my case, 3" x 12"

How many minutes of smoothing are you getting from stock stanley
blades before you are rehonning the edge? Is this a 5 times and hour
event, or 10 times an hour? Or once every 3 minutes.

I find I get 3-4 good minutes of shavings at a stroke every 5-8
seconds, and then I need to advance the blade just a fraction to keep
shaving.

Thoughts a

The blade is advancing back into the plane because the lever cab is
not terribly tight.

My money is on this. If I'm facing something that's tough then I make
sure to tighten my lever cap. As somebody else mentioned it may
possibly be a loose frog.

Also I bet there's so much backlash built into that plane that it's
not funny, which is something you should be aware of.

The blade is dull already.

If your blade is dulling that quickly then the steel of your blade
must have a hardness not much above that of purpleheart.

My blades dull but the only noticeable effect is that it's harder to
push the plane - it's still taking shavings. Eventually I get sick of
it and re-hone.

My irons will hold an edge longer than yours but an iron becoming
unusable in a few minutes beggars belief even if it's a crappy iron
(and it's likely to be).


I'm off to pick up a flat tip for a dial indicator today, and will
pull a blade next time I have to advance it and see if it still shaves
arm hairs or if the edge has dulled.

You'll find that it probably wont take arm hairs but it's still sharp
enough to take shavings, which is what your report seems to indicate
ie. you just need to advance the blade.

Even my A2 irons wont cut arm hairs after I've used them for a short
while.


What's the wreck's consensus?

Dump the Stanley and buy a Lie Nielsen if you're going to be doing a
lot of work with hard hardwoods. Planing purpleheart with a Stanley
strikes me as certifiable.

--

Frank