On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 02:12:18 GMT, "Dave"
wrote:

In the discussion comparing handplanes, reference is made to the extra
effort required to tune an older or pooer quality hand plane. I have to
confess ignorance....
Is anyone up to a step by step description as to how it is done?

I'm still a relative newbie to the world of hand planes, but the one
thing I know for sure about the whole tuning situation is that it is a
whole lot easier to have someone who knows how to do it help you get
started. I must've worked on my old bailey plane for about 30 hours
using various articles in magazines and website descriptions of the
process, and got almost nowhere. Sure, it'd cut wood, but it wasn't
pretty. I took the thing into a voc. ed course, and had the
instructor give me a hand with it, and he had the thing shaving little
curls of wood thin enough to read newsprint through in about 15
minutes. Most of the problems he spotted with my setup were not even
mentioned in any of the articles I found, and I learned more in that
15 minutes than I did during countless hours of frustration. The
moral of the story is not to mess with text descriptions of handplane
tuning- IMO, it's much less time-consuming and more rewarding just to
find someone who knows what the heck they're doing to at least take a
look at your plane, and tell you how to fix it up!

Aut inveniam viam aut faciam