Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane? *LINK*

Christopher Fitch @ Memphis

>I had a similar situation with a Record #5 I bought. I tried, as you did, to flatten using sandpaper and plate glass and had the same problems.

So I tried using lapping grits and plastic film from Lee Valley on plate glass and I had much better success.

That's just been my experience...


http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?page=33017&category=1,43072&ccurrency=2&SID=

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Tom MacGregor, Vermont

>Try not bearing down quite so hard and let the paper do a little more work. Press hard enough and sometimes you just damage the paper. I've also had reasonable results using blue zirconia paper with a good dose of thread cutting oil on it. It seems to make an abrasive slurry that keeps it cutting longer. I switch to dry for the finish smoothing.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Wendell @ Murphy, TX

>I used Alumina Zirconia belts in 120,150 & 180 grits when I was working on my #8 sole. Those belts last forever. I believe these are intended for metal work.

Wendell

May I suggest scraping *LINK*

David Barnett - Venice, FL

>Once I learned to do this (and it can go pretty fast), I went back and scraped all the iron soles I'd sanded. The benefits were obvious. You may have everything you already need to get started, too: an old file, something to grind the file to its new shape, a surface plate or piece of glass, and a dab of oil paint.

This is from Jeff Gorman:


Scraping planes soles

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Tony Z.

>I've had good luck giving the silicon carbide paper a spray of "Rem-lube". Aids in the cutting action and seems to really prolong the life of the paper.

Or even faster... *LINK*

Roger Nixon

>Bugbear's filing method http://www.geocities.com/plybench/flatten.html

Below is a link to a method I use which is a variation on Bugbear's method.


Flat sole

Gettin' jiggy widdit, I see

David Barnett - Venice, FL

>Great link and article, Roger. Yeah, I have a few favorite files with various bows in them that are handy for life's little convexities, and I've been known to try wearing down a strip of that bluish sanding belt to get things started. But when it's February in the Berkshires, -10F and you're fighting cabin fever, there's something soothing about the steady scratch scratch scratch of your machinist's scraper, your unblinking eyes staring right through that dead fly on the wall... I mean, you can only clean your AK so many times in a week.

Probably a good thing I moved back to Sunbelt.

Re: Gettin' jiggy widdit, I see

Roger Nixon

>I could probably use your planes to test my surface plate :). Hard to imagine a man of your refined tastes and penchant for precision with an AK 47, though.

Could you post a picture of your anvil stand sometime? I need a better one.

"...and I speak Esperanto like a native."

David Barnett - Venice, FL

>"I could probably use your planes to test my surface plate :)"

Heh... probably not, but thanks, nonetheless. Besides, I haven't bought an old plane in years so I'm a tad out of practice. But it IS fun. For a certain type of person, that is. One with OCD issues, which might explain my newest penchant; sharpening jeweler's saws under a microscope with escapement files.

"Hard to imagine a man of your refined tastes and penchant for precision with an AK 47, though."

The Stanley of the sturmgewehr, I suppose, although the slop was 'designed in'.

"Could you post a picture of your anvil stand sometime? I need a better one."

Wilco, Roger. You bet. Charging my digicam batteries as I type.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Alan Hamilton

>Jim,

I'm with Tom: don't press down so hard. As he said, let the tool (the paper) do the work.

Alan

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Michael Stadulis, in Gloucester County, NJ

>Jim,

I use blue zirc, but the most important thing is to use long strokes, and secondly use your shop vac very frequently to suck up dust from the paper. I think that iron dust tends to build up fast in the middle of a short sheet and cause the plane to "lift" and "rock" on the dust pile that may just be as thick as the grit. The rocking keeps it from getting as flat as fast as it would otherwise.

Mike

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Monte Milanuk

>I've been having the devil's own time getting the soles of my planes and the backs of the irons flat, and re-grinding the bevels. Primarily I've been using Scary Sharp, though it's starting to lose it's economy as it often takes me *sheets* to get something approaching flat. And that's starting at 80 grit or so. I have been keeping the hand foxtail sweep nearby and brushing out the swarf periodically, but it doens't seem to make a huge difference. The paper I've been using is what I have handy at the local hardware stores: Gator Grit wet/dry. I get a nasty metallic taste and smell afterwards, so I guess I need to start wearing a dust mask or something of the sort while working on this.

By the blue paper I presume you mean the blue grinder belts? Do they really last longer? I'm ready to try about anything at this point. I'll read thru the scraping links, but that doesn't really help me w/ grinding the bevels and such.

Thanks,

Monte

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Michael Stadulis, in Gloucester County, NJ

>Yes Monte, I get blue belts at HD and contact cement them to long MDF blocks that I glue up. I honestly think that all this discussion that I hear about purchasing granite reference blocks for sole flattening ........w/ 1/10,000 inch flatness is just a teensy bit over the top. MDF is plenty flat for this craft.

Mike

Yeah, but...

David Barnett - Venice, FL

>...it's a rule of thumb that to get a flatness of .001" per a given length you need a reference of .0001" for at least that same length.

Re: Thanks for the plug...

paul womack

>My approach was developed with help from the old Badger Pond crew, especially Darren Addy and Stephen Thomas, without whose metal working expertise I'd never have got anywhere.

I have tried using small convex sanding blocks with AlZi abrasive as the metal removing mechanism.

This worked OK, especially in the early stages, but I got bad (numb for a week!) finger cramps, and it was very difficult to work near edges without the dreaded corner dubbing. Surface appearance was good though.

The sandblock were around 1/2" thick, 1" square, and varied in convexity from almost flat to around 1/8" crowned.

The 1/16" crowned block saw the most use.

Side bar. In the early stages of flattening by this mark/remove process be aggressive. Until you're getting at least some marking on all parts of the sole you can really hack of the metal.

BugBear

Re: Yeah, but...

Michael Stadulis, in Gloucester County, NJ

>David,

I don't disagree for machinery, but I personally don't think those tolerances are critical in a wooden tabletop for example. All of my furniture moves w/ humidity. You'll not find .001" accuracy on virtually any antique. Having said that my point wasn't that you shouldn't worry about your planes bottom, but to suggest that you don't need a piece of granite to get a superbly flat reference surface. MDF from my ditributor is always dead flat....so much so that there is a vacuum between sheets since they lie so flat on each other.

Mike

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Wendell @ Murphy, TX

>I used some of the blue zirc belts from HD on the sole of my #8 for over an hour. They cut just as well at the end of the hour as they at the beginning. I don't think wet/dry paper would've held up nearly as well. I did find that I need to vacuum up the iron dust once in a while. HD is probably not the cheapest place to buy the belts just convenient. I have since bought a bunch of bigger belts from www.supergrit.com for less than what I paid at HD.

Wendell

Re: Yeah, but...

Roger Nixon

>Mike, here's a few points you might have missed.

I don't think +/- .0001" is necessary but, hey, it's there, it's cheap and it's a lot more stable than MDF.

The problem isn't with the flatness of MDF but in the process of abrading the plane sole on the sanding belt. There are some people who can do an excellent job flattening a plane with this method but most people, including me, will round the plane sole with this method. Having a reference plate and spotting will catch this and show you where to correct. If you read my article, I used sanding belts on glass to get the plane sole close then finished by knocking off the high spots until the sole was acceptably flat. I don't know if it is +/- .001" but somewhere in that range.

Trying to dimension wood to .001" isn't the goal. The goal is to minimize or eliminate tearout and that sometimes requires very thin shavings be taken. Some folks take that to mean all planes should be superflat but not me. Most of my planes are not flattened at all. I only flatten the ones I use to take very fine cuts.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Steve knight

>a magnet in a plastic bag works better.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Steve knight

>if your getting a hour out of the belt something is wrong. either your not doing much or it is more worn then you know. Your lucky to get 10 minutes out of a good belt if you work aggressivly. what is happening is the belt wears in the middle more then the sides and the ends. so it ends up cutting faster in those places and you get a rounded sole.

changing the grit often is critical to flattening soles.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane?

Steve knight

>Alumina Zirconia belts in 120,150 & 180

they only go up to 120. this is a phisical limit of the matieral. antyhign about that is nto truly alumina zirconia. I sure wished it went to a higher grit though.

Re: Best abrasive for flattening a plane? *LINK*

Wendell @ Murphy, TX

>Maybe the belts didn't go that high, but I have bought sheets from www.supergrit.com that claim to be Zirconia. They also sell hook and loop Zirconia disks in 150 and 320 grit.

Wendell


Supergrit Blue Zirconia Sheets

Re: "...and I speak Esperanto like a native."

Lyn J. Mangiameli

>Having found an Ouzi to be remarkably unreliable--though effective when it worked--I can't imagine how an even AK functions.

Re: Yes

Lyn J. Mangiameli

>