Hand Plane Chatter

[Fenton Murray]

4 more cents. The sole must be dead flat, I know it's adjustable. Adjust it flat and true up on fine sand paper laid out on flat glass or something similar. Any high spots will show up right away with your first couple passes as witness marks from the sand paper. I know, you want to cut wood, not spend a week tuning up your hand plane.
Fenton
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fenton Murray 
  To: Pianotech List 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:55 AM
  Subject: Re: Hand Plane Chatter


  Hey Terry,
  I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but here goes. The blade is diving some how, a flexible base might cause that. If the sole of the plane is not flat, especially if it's high in the middle, it's going to chatter. So, when you introduce a curve in the sole of the plane, I know it's an outside radius, if your blade isn't perfectly supported by the sole of the plane it's going to try to dive away from the plane and into some nice virgin wood. Also, as you're working the wood into a radius, if the radius becomes tighter than the sole of the plane, it can happen, things are not going to work right and you'll get chatter. Bla, Bla, Bla. I'm just thinking out loud. And you already said your sharp, anything less than that and you get chatter. And I'm giving you a lot of chatter, but then again, I'm a pretty fart smeller. Shoot some slip spay on the sole and try to slow down your strokes and skew it a little. I ain't no expert with hand planes, I've just done my share of screwing up with them.
  Fenton
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Farrell 
    To: pianotech at ptg.org 
    Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:29 AM
    Subject: Hand Plane Chatter


    Question for the wood chomping gurus out there.

    I have a hand plane that has a propensity to "chatter" in use. Picture of it is below. The reason the base looks as if it is curved is because it is curved. That's the whole deal with this plane - the base curvature is adjustable to any gentle curve - convex or concave. It's great for planing many wooden things found in piano bellies and jigs to make those things. But it can be a bear when the darn plane wants to chatter.

    Obviously, the plane is not a 35 lb. forged steel heavyweight. It is a high quality German plane, but I think the adjustable base feature necessitates a lighter weight. I wonder if the chattering is simply related to it's light-weight design (relatively speaking - the plane is NOT really anything I would call light-weight).

    The blade is sharp, the cap iron is mated nicely to the blade and adjusted about 1 mm from the blade edge. I think everything is in order. But the darn thing still chatters up a storm. Any ideas/suggestions?



    BTW, I am trying to plane a curved caul, so I can't use a flat plane.

    Terry Farrell
    Farrell Piano

    www.farrellpiano.com
    terry at farrellpiano.com
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