Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Friends,
Does anyone have a nice hand JOINTER plane for sale??
I just thought I would ask here first.
Maybe someone bought a fancy machine jointer and don't need the hand model plane.

I don't have a lot of money to spend, as usual!!
Thanks, Walter

Walter...Check out Anant planes. They are recent entries from India and are based on the traditional Stanley designs.

They need some tuning and I replaced the blades with Hock blades. Once tuned up, they're every bit as effective as the $300-$400 models and the good thing is that they're priced at from $40-$80. I have 4 models and am very pleased.

Tuning requires some elbow grease to lap the surfaces flat and mirror shiney. The original blades are crap!The Hock blade replacements ($30-$40) are the key to their performance. Check them out at Highland Hardware or Diefenbacher.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I have quietly been buying vintage hand planes on ebay and tuning them up for use. Collectors are probably reeling, but the quality is very nice and they can be had pretty cheap.

I just picked up 2 vintage Stanley jointer planes. A #7 and a #8 both from around 1910. They were in decent shape and both cleaned up with less than an hour's work. I think I have about $50 in each of them.

I think there are some good deals to be had in the used market.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

JJ, I too am interested in buying a jointer plane but I don't know how to tune one and I can't justify the $300-$400 for the pre-tuned Lie-Nelson plane. Would you mind detailing how you tuned up the plane?

TIA,

Roy

I'd be interested in reading how others tune their plane soles, but I'll go ahead and tell you how I do it.

I scrounged up a Corian sink cutout last year that fits nicely on my workbench. It's about 18" x 30" x 3/4" thick. I checked it for flatness with a machinist straight edge and a 0.0015" (one and a half thou) feeler gauge, and could not insert the feeler gauge under the straight edge anywhere along its surface. So, it may not be as flat as a machinist surface plate, but for the sort of stuff I do, it's plenty flat enough. Barring that, any good quality sheet of plate glass should be flat enough for your purposes.

Next, I trimmed three sheets of sandpaper of various grits into 3" wide strips, and fastened them down to my sink cutout. I used the 3M 77 adhesive spray, but that can make a mess. Double-sided tape along the edges works good too. I don't recall now the grits of the sheets, but suffice it to say, you should start with something in the 250 grit or so neighborhood, and graduate to a very fine grit, say 1000 or so, for the last sheet.

Then I just ran the sole across each sheet until I had covered the entire sole with sanding marks, moving up to the next one once I had 100% coverage. Using a Sharpie marker or something similar for witness lines might help.

Anyway, this was an old Millers Falls No. 900 that I inherited from my Grandfater -- equivalent to a Stanley #4, I suppose -- and I installed a hock blade and chip breaker on the plane once I trued up the sole. It feels a bit clunky compared to my Veritas block plane, but once the blade is set right it really does plane nicely. Definitely worth the effort, and worth the expense of the Hock items.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

Here is a pretty good tutorial on how to tune a hand plane.

http://www.yesterdaystools.com/tuninga1.htm

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

walter, i should sell you my jointer as i use it very seldom unless i have to level a table top. it get's no use in guitar work at all. even when i still thicknessed plates by hand it stayed on the shelf. i used a no 5 jack which did the task very well. sometimes i even went down to a no 4 smooth. the jointer was too big, heavy and unwieldy for the task.

as for jointing the plates i still do that by hand on a shooting board eschewing the power jointer, again using the no 5.

i don't think that there is anything long enough on a guitar to require the use of a jointer plane.

and all my planes, 3 block, 2 scrub, 4 smooth, 2 jack and the jointer came to me from garage sales, auctions, flea markets, etc. among them the jointer was the dearest at $25, followed by a pristine sargeant smooth at $20. in all less than $175, and they all do their task with stock irons. time may have ensured that you may have to pay a bit more, but perhaps not. the last plane i bought was a stanley blockwith adjustable throat for $9.00. have never felt the need to spend the dollars on one of the hock irons, though some day perhaps i may out of curiousity. but the chippers are set correctly, and the irons are finish honed on 8000 grit waterstones, and i have been considering getting one of the 8000 or 12000 grit waterstones which of course also get used on chisels, spokeshaves, marking knives, etc.

i suppose the message i am trying to give is that you don't have to spend big dollars to get good results. good planes can be had cheaply, and fun had in the process as well.

When truing the bottom of a plane, the most important areas to have on an even plane are the toe, the area just in front of the blade, and the heel. Those must be flat (front to back AND side to side) and at the same level as indicated by a straight edge. Sometimes, after you've expended a lot of time and elbow grease, frustration and fatigue set in and your brain will tell you that a little hollow spot in one of those areas doesn't look too bad. Don't believe it, or the plane just won't work right.

Roy...the link that Brock provided is a good one. My method is similar...I start with 100 grit on a 1/4" glass plate and move up progressively to 2000 grit. I do this on the sole plate and then the sides.
Make sure the sides are square with the sole plate. Make sure that the frog is properly angled and aligned.

Thereafter, I add the Hock blade and possibly his chipbreaker and it's good to go.

The key after that is to keep the blades scary sharp. Once I saw how thin and beautiful I could make curls, I was addicted!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Thanks everyone for the advise and the link. I'll check into some used and less expensive brands.

Thanks for all your advice...I appreciate it!!

Walter