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I recently purchased a flea market Stanley No. 40 scrub plane and haven't researched anything about it. I did sharpen the straight edge of the blade and found it a wee bit tough to use because of the width and non-curvature of the blade. What I'd like to know is do I install the blade with the bevel up or down?
Plus while using the plane I noticed the blade would shift a bit to the left and my cut was difficult to make due to one edge of the blade sinking in deeper than the other. The set screw seemed to do an adequate job of holding the blade from going up or down, but not side to side. Any help there?
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10-22-2017, 05:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2017, 05:56 PM by Admiral.)
Bevel down. And you have to have a 3” radius to the iron. Straight is a no go. Properly prepared iron will solve your other problem.
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A scrub plane like the #40 is used to take defects like twists and bows out of boards. It was also used in the past to hog off edge wood to quickly reduce width. For surfaces, plane at a 45 degree angle to the grain. The blade is heavily cambered and usually takes divot like shavings about 1/2" wide. The finished board looks rough but once flat can be easily surfaced with a large bench plane.
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10-22-2017, 07:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2017, 07:20 PM by Bill_Houghton.)
(10-22-2017, 05:49 PM)Tynyyn Wrote: What I'd like to know is do I install the blade with the bevel up or down?
Plus while using the plane I noticed the blade would shift a bit to the left and my cut was difficult to make due to one edge of the blade sinking in deeper than the other. The set screw seemed to do an adequate job of holding the blade from going up or down, but not side to side. Any help there?
Bevel down. Two tricks:
1. Generally, the cutting iron's (aka blade's) logo should be visible when the iron is installed correctly.
2. If the bedding angle - angle at which the iron's installed - is 40 degrees or higher, bevel down. If 20 degrees or lower, bevel up. In between, see rule #1.
On the side to side: either your iron's not sharp enough, or you've got too much iron showing, or the iron's not bedding well on the plane. Or you're skewing it. Don't skew it.
