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Double Bass Setting Blade Depth on Ibex Thumb Planes
- Thread starter Ned Smith
- Start date
No experience with the particular brand, I assume they are metal finger planes. Looks like it. With wood planes it's all in the tapping - mostly back of the blade for out and heel of the plane for in, as well as fidding with wedge setting to allow adjustment and then prevent it from moving. But as with most things, it does get better with practice, and practice as practice gets it better faster than just using it.
i.e. if you sometimes get a good set, and run with that as long as possible you don't get much practice making a good set. Set the blade 50-60 times in an hour, taking a swipe to see if it was "good" and then re-setting it you get a lot more practice setting the blade in that hour. Or do it 5 times in 5 minutes, as going at it for a full hour at a time might be burnout territory. But do it 5 times in 5 minutes at least 5 days a week, perhaps a couple times in a single day, and you will improve a lot faster than "well, that worked, I guess" and "well that was terrible" without repeating the motions to make it good.
Learning to eyeball down the sole of the plane to know what a good set looks like is helpful. With thumbscrew-adjust metal planes like that, there's still the similar issue of the wooden plane wedge-tightness - it needs to be loose enough to allow moving the blade, but not so loose that it goes out of whack when you tighten it to keep it from moving after adjustment.
There's also the Zeroth law of hand planes; it could always stand to be sharper. The difference between just sharp enough and not quite sharp enough is huge, not minor.
i.e. if you sometimes get a good set, and run with that as long as possible you don't get much practice making a good set. Set the blade 50-60 times in an hour, taking a swipe to see if it was "good" and then re-setting it you get a lot more practice setting the blade in that hour. Or do it 5 times in 5 minutes, as going at it for a full hour at a time might be burnout territory. But do it 5 times in 5 minutes at least 5 days a week, perhaps a couple times in a single day, and you will improve a lot faster than "well, that worked, I guess" and "well that was terrible" without repeating the motions to make it good.
Learning to eyeball down the sole of the plane to know what a good set looks like is helpful. With thumbscrew-adjust metal planes like that, there's still the similar issue of the wooden plane wedge-tightness - it needs to be loose enough to allow moving the blade, but not so loose that it goes out of whack when you tighten it to keep it from moving after adjustment.
There's also the Zeroth law of hand planes; it could always stand to be sharper. The difference between just sharp enough and not quite sharp enough is huge, not minor.
I set mine with the blade pretty far out and I control the depth of cut with pressure. The part of the bottom of the plane in front of the blade ends up being the only bit that touches the wood.