plane iron crowning

Re: plane iron crowning

Matthew J D'Avella, Kona HI

>Aloha Blue!

How about a disk sander. I prefer to do it by hand using sticky-back sand paper on a piece of plate glass or MDF.

Matthew J D'Avella

Kona Hawaii

Re: plane iron crowning

Ted in Mpls

>I use a dished coarse oil stone. Now I need a really badly dished stone for my scrub plane.

ted

Re: plane iron crowning

Andrew Bacchi

>It depends on how much of a crown you're talking about. I only put .001 to .002 crown in my smoother. All I do is lean heavy on one corner at a time at the end of the honing. Just a few passes on each corner is all it takes.

Just did it a couple night ago on my #4 and was

smoothing some maple in no time.

Re: plane iron crowning

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Joe,

I'm a little confused by your post, because a crowned iron is curved across its width, while hollow grinding is across the width of the bevel, or at right angles (sort of) to the width of the iron.

If your question is how to get a crown on a plane iron while maintaining a flat bevel, the simple answer is "use something that grinds flat." Matthew proposes a disk sander or working it by hand on a flat surface; Ted, responding to the crown issue, uses a dished oil stone. A belt sander is another alternative, either a 4" or 6" stationary sander or one of the narrow belt sanders.

As Andrew points out, a mild crown can be achieved by the way that you put subtle pressure to the left end and then to the right end of your iron while you hone it. My sharpening technique is so bad that I tend to do this on all my irons, or maybe I should say that I'm so good that I crown the irons unconsciously.