Quick Question - Hand Planes

[Rob Young]

I've had this happen before and found out I had the wrong blade and/or cap iron.
 
If you have to pull the cap iron way back to get it to work, then its definitely the wrong parts.

+2

While parts are mostly interchangeable between closely related Stanley types (say Type 11 for Type 13), sometimes it doesn't work.  You may indeed have the wrong cap iron.

If you aren't afraid of doing a little filing, you can modify the "yolk hole" to meet your current needs.  Or determine the type number for your plane and post again requesting the correct cap iron.  Several members here have boneyards that might have a donor part.

[Zhent]

Thanks everyone. I will try another frog, and see if it's just a cap iron + frog mismatch. If not I may have to start buying up a few frogs here and there to experiment with! [I tried a brand new Veritas replacement cap iron + blade, and the same problem occurs, so I am leaning toward a frog problem vs. a cap iron problem]

Thedanielmatt - yep, definitely can move forward and back, but the problem i am running into is more of an up/down issue, I just can't retract the iron enough to raise it above the sole of the plane.

[Rob Young]

I think you should be able to adjust the frog forward/backwards. I know not all of them are, but wanted to throw it out there.

This can also help, don't fret about having a super-tight mouth.  A sharp blade and properly set cap iron does most of the anti-tearout work on a smoothing plane anyway.  The tight mouth helps but not as much as sharp.

The exposure of the blade from the cap iron should be 1/64" or less for smoothing work, depends a little bit on the wood to be planed and how heavy of a shaving you want to take.  Consider it a dynamic setting.

Just don't pull the frog so far back that the blade hangs up on the back side of the mouth opening.  That causes other problems.