Hi All.

Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
magic? I am particularly thinking about wooden planes. Steve Knight's
planes come with adjustable mouth as far as I know, but how does he do
it, i.e. is it a front adjustable or it is done by moving iron up
front?

Dmitri

"Dmitri" wrote:
Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
magic? I am particularly thinking about wooden planes. Steve Knight's
planes come with adjustable mouth as far as I know, but how does he do
it, i.e. is it a front adjustable or it is done by moving iron up
front?

Mostly it's the small opening, but the cutting angle is important too.
For figured hardwoods you want a steeper angle like 50 degrees or even
more.

Steve's planes are adjusted by what he calls a mouth block. For more
information on this feature see:
http://www.holzwerken.de/museum/pate...th_block.phtml

Wolfgang
--
"Holzbearbeitung mit Handwerkzeugen": http://www.holzwerken.de
Forum Handwerkzeuge:
http://www.woodworking.de/cgi-bin/fo...bbbs_config.pl

Dmitri wrote in message ...

Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
magic?

Yes. :-) For nasty woods, you need a plane with a small mouth and
a solidly-bedded, extremely sharp, thick iron (to reduce chatter).
You also need to be able to set it for a very light cut.

There are lots of variables, including the presence or absence (or
positioning) of a cap iron, the flatness of the sole (actually, a sole
that is "coplanar"), the bedding angle of the iron, and how you hold
your mouth when you plane. :-)

But those should work for a start.

I am particularly thinking about wooden planes. Steve Knight's
planes come with adjustable mouth as far as I know, but how does he do
it, i.e. is it a front adjustable or it is done by moving iron up
front?

Steve's planes have an adjustable mouth only in the sense that the
mouth block (positioned in front of the iron) maintains a constant
mouth opening. This would be so much easier to explain with visual
aids, but let's see if I can manage: On a wooden plane you might need
to lap the sole to maintain flatness, and each time you do this, you
open the mouth a bit (however tiny that may be). With Steve's plane,
even if you remove stock on the sole, the angle of the mouth block
makes it so the mouth opening stays the same.


Chuck Vance
Just say (tmPL) OK, so that wasn't the best explanation.

Dmitri wrote in news:bj6nqq$14b$1
@news.Stanford.EDU:

Hi All.

Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
magic?

The function of a smoothing plane is different from that of stock
preparation or jointing, so the size of the plane is different. In
order to be easily worked in whatever direction the grain is going,
you want a short body and light weight, and perhaps a narrower iron
so you can focus on a small area; and in order to give the finest
possible cut you want a narrow mouth and perhaps a higher pitched
iron.

John

"Conan the Librarian" wrote

: Dmitri wrote in message
...
:
: Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
: smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
: magic?
:
: Yes. :-) For nasty woods, you need a plane with a small mouth and
: a solidly-bedded, extremely sharp, thick iron (to reduce chatter).
: You also need to be able to set it for a very light cut.
:
: There are lots of variables, including the presence or absence (or
: positioning) of a cap iron, the flatness of the sole (actually, a sole
: that is "coplanar"), the bedding angle of the iron, and how you hold
: your mouth when you plane. :-)

This gives me an excuse to say that yesterday I upgraded my web site page
'Planing Notes' - 'Coping With Gnarly Grain' with an extra pic of some maple
prior to planing with a standard Stanley #5, fulfilling the criteria that
Chuck outlines.

Jeff G

--
Jeff Gorman, West Yorkshire, UK
Email address is username@ISP
username is amgron
ISP is clara.co.uk
Website www.username.clara.net

Wolfgang Jordan wrote:
"Dmitri" wrote:

Please excuse my ignorance as I am newbie, but what does make plane a
smoothing plane. Is it a small mouth opening or there is some deeper
magic? I am particularly thinking about wooden planes. Steve Knight's
planes come with adjustable mouth as far as I know, but how does he do
it, i.e. is it a front adjustable or it is done by moving iron up
front?


Mostly it's the small opening, but the cutting angle is important too.
For figured hardwoods you want a steeper angle like 50 degrees or even
more.

Steve's planes are adjusted by what he calls a mouth block. For more
information on this feature see:
http://www.holzwerken.de/museum/pate...th_block.phtml

Wolfgang

Thanks a lot.

--
Dmitri
---------------

"Sages do not grieve for the living nor the dead." - Bhagavatgita.