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wrote:

The usual bench planes have the blade with the bevel down. The bed
angle is 45 degrees. With a single bevel blade, This gives a cutting
angle of 45 degrees which is good for long grain on straight grain
hardwoods like maple. For figured woods it is recommended that planes
have higher bed and cutting angles of 50 - 60 degrees. That means
owning different planes with different bed angles. Do we need to own a
smoother, jack, and jointer plane of higher bed angles or can we get
away with only a high angle smoother?

Could we play this trick? For an normal 45 degree bed angle plane, can
we put a 5 degree back bevel on the blade to make the cutting angle a
total of 50 degrees? Is there loss of performance with this set-up?

Yes, but the plane becomes a bit harder to push.

It works on reverse grain because the action becomes more of a scraping
action in which the blade has less tendency to lift and then break the
fibres.

There's something about this on my web site - Planing Notes - Coping
With Gnarly Grain.

Jeff G
--
Jeff Gorman, West Yorkshire, UK
email : Username is amgron
ISP is clara.co.uk
www.amgron.clara.net