Jack Plane

I have a Craftsman jack plane for several years. It never did work right. It would cut on the start of a stroke then it would not cut until the end of the piece, I have fretted with this tool for a long time and several years ago I bought a smooth plane ((shorter than a jack plane) and it works like it should. Yesterday I decided to find the trouble. I placed it on the ways of my lathe, which I assume to be true, and discovered that in the center of the length I can slide a .011 feeler gauge between the lathe ways and the base of the plane. I see no way to correct this. I did consider having it mulled on a planer like used to true cylinder heads but doubt it is worth the effort. I know of no old-time machinist who know how to scrape parts. I have considered shortening the bottom of the plane to the length of a smooth plane but that would not take out all of the error.

I don't own a Jack Plane. I really can't see do woodworking without a good jointer, good thickness planner and a good table saw.

Your making this harder than it needs to be. It is only out by .011. That would not be hard to flatten.

Do you have a table saw??? IF you do take two good sheets of sand paper. Tape it flat on the table top. Then just rub your plane around/across it until it is flat.

Start out with a pretty coarse paper and work your way down to finer to get the finish you want.

When your done use a good paste wax on the bottom of the hand plane.

I have never had to flatten a hand plane but I have done hundreds of small engine heads over the years.

Also check the sharpness of the hand plane knife. The angle it is sharpened at is important too. IF it is too steep it will not cut correctly.

It can be fixed, but you need to decide how much effort is it worth. If you have a good belt sander long enough you should be able to get it close.

I would flatten like JD says on a table saw top. I would also get the iron razor sharp using Japanese water stones.

I had a Craftsman smoothing plane for several years until someone stole it. I never did get it really right as the adjustment that's supposed to square up the iron didn't have enough movement to properly straighten the iron. When I buy a replacement it won't be another Craftsman.

Do not cut the jack plane down. Tune it up instead. It is not at all unusual for a plane to come from the factory poorly tuned. Here is a good video on tuning a plane:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/tool-guide/video/handplane-tune-up-tips.aspx

Tuning up a plane is a bit of a lost art, but you may be able to make a significant improvement by simply putting it on a flat surface (joiner beds, table saw tops, planer beds and such are all good candidates if you have them, and even a piece of glass will often work well if you have somewhere reasonably flat to set it), then run a Sharpie marker down the length of the sole in several places to serve as an index mark, put a piece of coarse sandpaper on the flat surface and run your plane over it until you're hitting everywhere on the surface. Of course you'll want to pull your iron up out of harm's way, but leave it clamped in the plane as otherwise the difference in pressure can throw off your results. Once you get it flattened, things will go quicker--move up to a higher grit, take out the scratches, and keep doing it with higher grits until you have a nice surface finish. You'll be amazed at how well it works when you're done, and you should only have to do it once--most people will never use a plane enough to wear it appreciably once it's flattened correctly.

I will try the sanding belt taped to table saw. The blade is sharp like on my smoothing plane.

link
clickable link

Gee, once again I have learned something, (at my age) learned how to sharpen the iron on a jack plane in vo-ag class, but never knew you could tune one. Tried using an old one of my dad's a few years ago and encountered that problem. Ended up just using an old block plane that has been in cupboard from an auction a few years ago. Thanks for the info.

Dick ND

Here's my $0.02

0.011"? thats likely not significant to your problem. I wouldn't flatten a plane with that description unless I was certain that there was no other explanation. Think about how elastic the wood is. I have owned dozens of Bailey-style cast iron smooth, jack, and jointer planes dating from the 1870s to today's junk and I have never needed to true a sole to get the plane to work perfectly.

Usually I see exactly what you describe when planing wood that is more cupped than the operator originally recognizes, or the operator's handplane technique needs tuning. Its always easy to plane the first and last two-three inches of a board.

Before you make any modifications to the plane get a piece of 3/4 white pine without knots and plane it end to end until you get a continuous shaving. You will need to push down on the knob at the start of the stroke and push down on the handle at the end of the stroke.

Then, once you have a continuous shaving from one end to the other, sight down the board and decide if it is straight or not. Straight means straight enough for what you want it for. If its straight then Bob's your uncle. if it isn't straight enough for you, then you have a few choices.

1- focus on your technique very carefully. Theres lots of youtubes and so on. Until you have done it a lot, its hard to get it right- much harder than most people think. I have been doing hand-tool woodworking since 1999 and I still need to focus on technique carefully.

2- buy a jointer plane, like a stanley #7 or #8 to achieve a true joint. Completely usable if ugly ones can be found on fleabay for not much at all, and the steel in the older blades is wonderful. Jack planes really aren't for truing anyway. They are for getting wood off so its close enough that using the jointer plane isn't tedious, or for trimming here and here.

3- tune the plane you have. It may just be that opening the mouth a little by sliding the frog back 0.05 is enough, or taking an infintesmally thicker shaving may do it.

good luck, post pics and keep asking.

Bill