First time out to a flea all spring. Oh, well. Tied up with Little League, youth soccer and the like.
Anyway, I just picked up my first transitional, a Stanley #35, and I have a couple of questions:
1. The knob is a little loose. Should I be concerned about tightening it too much because it screws into the wood of the plane body?
2. A variation of the question above. If I wanted to adjust the frog, could I unscrew and then retighten the screws -- or does this strip the wood that holds the screws in place?
3. I've checked the archives and couldn't find much on transitionals. Perhaps I used the wrong key words. Anyway, this is my first one - does anyone have any feedback on their use, care, pros and cons, etc.
>I messed around with a few transitionals for a while. I'm currently making a new cherry body for a sargent trans. smoothing plane with a step-back sole... I think it's close to your 35. I also made some modifications to my stanley 27 (jack plane, 2 1/8" blade) that helped it work a whole lot better. I have a bigger jointer plane that's been waiting for similar attention, and I also have a Union #26 that will get reworked fairly soon, too, I think. Here are my general impressions, and the things I did to try to get mine to work.
-I was seduced by the initial idea of the transitional planes. They're easy to get, they're affordable, and making a new body for one can't be at all that difficult, right? That said, initial performance wasn't all I'd have hoped for. The depth of the throat and the fact that it doesn't really open up much means it jams up very easily out of the box. It's not incurable, but be aware that sometimes it takes a little work to get a transitional to work satisfactorily.
-Stanley transitionals were the easiest to make new bodies for, as everything pretty much directly screws into the body. Sargent planes are a little different, as the casting includes two tapped sections for mounting the frog that protrude into the body. (ie, holes need to be drilled to fit the casting onto a new body.) It's not that much of a deal, but considering all of the adjustments are also backwards on a sargent, (feed knob is threaded the other way, lateral adjust moves the opposite direction as a stanley) I'm not sure it's going to be a plane I'll use a lot anyway.
One simple fix if you're worried about stripped holes is to do basically what Stanley eventually did. Drill holes, and use threaded inserts in the body that will take machine screws. They won't strip out as easily. That goes for any hole you're worried about stripping... frog mounting holes, or the knob.
-The throat is wide enough to allow shavings to pass initially, but it remains a pretty tight fit for the first 3/4 of an inch or so that the shavings travel to get to the other side of the block. Shavings that curl tightly will jam the throat. One option is to simply move the chipbreaker farther back, so the curl isn't as tight, and the shavings will shoot out, rather than curl. Another option is to do what I did. I chopped a huge well forward of the blade, to allow a lot of room for shavings to clear. From the sole of the plane, it was almost a vertical cut halfway through the body. Past that, it has to angle up and towards the back, to meet the forward edge of the opening in the casting. After that, I used a thin (~3/16" thick) piece of rosewood to close the mouth and sole back up. The mouth stays tightly closed, but there's room on the other side of the rosewood for shavings to run wild without jamming up the plane. There's also enough room coming from the top to get two of my fingers in, all the way down to the 2nd knuckle, to pull the shavings out when the well fills up. That should give you some idea of the amount of wood I hogged out. Try sticking your fingers into yours, you'll see what I mean.
After all that, I thought the plane performed pretty well. I replaced the blade and chipbreaker, which helped a bunch, becuase stanley at that point had made a selling point out of thin blades, and I wasn't too impressed with the one that came with the plane. I recently bought a Union #26, which is essentially the same thing as a Stanley 26... only Union was offering thicker blades. It's amazing what marketing can do... I'd have thought Union would come out on top of that one.
I replaced the old, rusty chipbreaker with one from Lie-Nielsen. Be warned, though... you need to have one custom made. The hole for the yoke is in a different place on the transitional planes because the blade has to go a lot farther down to get through the body of the plane. Take measurements on the chipbreaker that came with the plane, and relay to L-N where the hole should be located. They were amazingly nice about it, took about a week, and they didn't charge me anything extra, I don't think. They also make blades in a variety of widths, including, as it turned out, a 2 1/8" blade that would fit my 27. Don't try to use the thicker blades designed for Lie-Nielsen's regular planes... the slot for the lateral adjustment is shorter on those, and it will bottom out on the lateral adjustment cam as you lower the blade. Use their thinner blades which are intended for older stanley planes.
After all the modifications, the plane works fine. I like the wood on wood feel while planing, and they're a lot easier to flatten than metal bodied planes. They're also MUCH, MUCH lighter, which can be nice on some of the larger planes. I'm looking forward to getting the jointer tuned up for that reason. I also like the fact that the wood will support the blade very well all the way to the work. After all the modifications were done, I used the 27 to flatten my benchtop, and was very happy with the results.
Next time around I think I'll aim to make the mouth a little narrower, and square it up more cleanly. This time out I was simply trying to see if I could get the darned things to work properly, as I'd already trashed a sargent transitional jack plane trying to make it work as well as my metal bodied planes. I was very skeptical and bummed out over my first try, so I wasn't as precise with the Stanley as I should have been.
Yours was an incredible post. I very much appreciate the time you took to put your thoughts on paper (or is it electrons?). I have printed out your reply, and saved it in with my other favorite internet woodworking posts.
My particular #35 is in pretty good shape. However the blade is pretty badly pitted. So I am in the process of sharpening it right now and will be using the David Charlesworth "ruler" trick for the first time. I will keep your suggestion in mind regarding an L-N blade (and chipbreaker).
The wood on this transitional seems to be in quite good shape - which is why I was concerned about mucking up the wood with too much screwing and unscrewing.
Thanks so much for sharing! I'm excited to see how it works with a sharp blade - and an thrilled to have your "roadmap" in case it needs fettling.
>Glad to pass on the information. I'd have posted pics if I had them hosted somewhere.
As for messing up the wood, I don't really worry too much about the knob. Any forces exerted won't be likely to strip out anything, since very few people I know will plane by pulling vertically on the knob. Frog mounting screws have also held up fairly well so far, but I'd be more concerned about those than about the knob.
I've screwed my own handles down fairly tight, and the wood holds up fine.
>Read the title again folks,it`s prevention not convention.There,now that all those low minded folks have left we can get on with things.
I`ve found that if you remove the screws and put one or two drops of water thin CA glue in to strengthen the threads you`ll never have to worry about stripping them.Just wait till the glue is completely set before assembly.
I use this trick on wood chucks for my lathe and they withstand years of constant on and off the different screwchucks that I use.
Thanks for the CA tip! I hate to be dense, but I have to ask. When you say, "water thin CA glue" is this a particular kind of CA glue, or just a CA glue that's be "watered down" with a solvent? And, if the later, what is the appropriate solvent for mixing with the CA glue? Acetone?
>CA glue comes in different viscosities from very thin like water to stuff that is so thick it is almost hard to get out of the bottle. You use different ones for different things. If I want it to stay put on a vertical surface, I will use the thick stuff, if I want it to wick in a lot, such as your application of perhaps to stabalize some punky wood for turning, I will use the thin stuff. If you look at online catalogs for CA glue (Woodcraft, Rockler, LV, etc.) you will see the different ones.
>If you have a crack that needs filled then hit it with the thin CA first and then the thick.The thicker glue will follow the water thin deep into the crack and fill it completely.
If you have any friends who are woodturners they know all kinds of tips and tricks with this stuff as well as where to get the best deals(Starbond or Balsa USA).
If you can`t tell,I do some bowl turning as well as handtool stuff.
Don should speak for himself, but I'm pretty sure he intended this to be a form of praise for the quality and helpfulness of your reply. An article (here at WC) has the merit of preserving helpful ideas, techniques or processes for ready access for others. And because some of these things are hard to follow with just prose - pics always seem to help.
I think Don's "Article! Article" was akin to "Encore! Encore! at a concert.
>Well, as it happens, I have another jack sized transitional plane, as well as a jointer that are awaiting similar attention to what I described. Aside from that, there are always small little "I should've said..." afterthoughts that come creeping in from time to time... so an article might be worth putting down, if for no other reason than that it's a way to get the voices to be quiet.
If I'm going to write an article, how do I go about submitting it? Does the site host the pictures, if I submit them?
That'd be wonderful. As I mentioned in my original post, I wasn't able to find much on transitionals in the archives, so I think this would be a much needed contribution.
I don't know the answers to your questions, but as you can see from the subject line, I've put out a call for help, and I'm sure it will be forthcoming. Dan is one of the many super volunteers around here who help Ellis and make this such a great place to hang out. I'm confident he'll be able to answer your questions. However, I'm sure there are others, as well, and perhaps they'll chime in before Dan gets a chance.
>The pictures are all hosted here on the WC server, so there is no bandwidth or other issue for the person that writes it. Also, it is best to just send the pictures at full resolution (no need to worry about the 40k limit or anything) so that they can be sized to fit the article. You can also just write whatever you want about it in any format (it helps to identify what picture would go with each part the text) and the editors will put it all together for you. I don't know if you have looked through the articles page, but you can see there examples of how they normally go together. The Bob Smalser articles are good examples of ones with lots of pictures.
You can just send anything you would care to have made into an article to articles@woodcentral.com
This looks like something that would make a very nice article and it would be preserved for posterity;-)
>Hello - I'm back. Everyone guessed right - I was trying to communicate that your posting was worthy of saving as an Article in the Articles & Reviews section of Wood Central.
>Wow... what a weekend. I just spent 2 days with Larry Williams (of Clark and Williams, wooden plane makers from AK. see www.planemaker.com)
It was a workshop on making molding planes, shoehorned into 2 days. (It was originally designed as a 5 day workshop)
Anyway, I learned a lot from Larry, and there are a few things I want to try out on some of my transitional planes, so no worries, there will be an article coming soon, with plenty of pictures for the editorial staff to pick through.
>He made a visit to the North bennet Street school, here in Boston. It was quite a time... it was a pretty hectic 2 days, all things considered, because we had so much to get done. But everyone involved got together this morning to go over everything that happened, and write up as much of the procedure as we could recall. But for all that, we were... well, panicked isn't the word, but we were definately moving with a purpose... Larry was panicked at first, and amazed we'd gotten as much done as we had when he left.
I can't say enough good things about Larry. He's a gentleman, and a wood geek in the best sense of the word. And it shows in the quality of his work. Little wonder he makes planes now for historic Richmond, VA. He simply does a good job, and he's really happy to be doing what he does. He loves his work, and he loves his wife, and he's plain spoken about both. He seems to really love life, and to be genuinely content. It's inspiring.
He's doing what he loves to do, doesn't want "a whole lot of money," he makes enough to take care of his family, and he's got more than enough work to keep himself busy. He's a year behind on his planes, he says, and told us all to go ahead and start making planes to sell, just so people would quit banging down his door. He's plain-spoken about everything he does, and he seems genuinely content, in a laid-back, but hard working sort of way.
It's rare to find someone on earth who has everything they really need out of life, and who truly deserves to have it. I think Larry is one of those people, and I feel priveleged to have met him.