Loading…
21
Question about cheap hand planes: my $25 garage sale find cost me way more than that in walnut
So I picked up a no-name hand plane at a garage sale near me in Boise for $25, thinking I scored. Big mistake. The sole was warped by like 1/16 of an inch and I didn't check it, so I burned through a $60 board of walnut trying to flatten it before I noticed the gap. Then I spent two evenings lapping the sole on sandpaper on my granite countertop, which helped some but the mouth is still a mile wide and it chatters on anything with figure. All in I'm out maybe $85 plus like 5 hours I can't get back, and the shavings look like crumbled cereal. If you're new to this, put a straight edge on the sole before you hand over money, even at a yard sale. How do you all deal with a plane that's tuned as far as it'll go and still cuts lousy, just retire it or is there a trick I'm missing?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
tylerpark4d ago
What's the actual gap at the mouth measure? If it's a quarter inch or more, the iron is never going to get proper support no matter how flat the sole is, and that's your chatter right there. Did you check whether the frog sits square to the sole, or if the iron itself is flat? A lot of those no-name planes have irons that are dished or bent, and no amount of lapping fixes a bad iron. Also worth asking: is the chip breaker mating up tight with the iron? A gap there lets shavings jam under it and you get exactly the crumbled cereal you described. If the iron and chip breaker are fine but the mouth is huge, you could glue in a patch of hardwood or brass to close it up, but honestly on a $25 plane with a warped sole you're polishing a rock at that point.
5