Tuning a Wooden Rabbet Plane | M. S. Bickford Planes

Tuning Your Wooden Rabbet Plane

A plane can only take a shaving as fine as the sole is flat. All planes eventually go out of flat.

Metal planes take a long time to distort and will take a proportionally long time to fix. Wooden planes may go out of flat seasonally but are fixed quickly.

In this post we will address tuning a wooden rabbet plane.

There are two ways in which a plane's sole may go out of flat. A high spot will develop behind the mouth or a low spot will present in the same location, leaving two high spots on the ends. The first option is the most common.

Signs that a plane’s sole is no longer flat will most often present in this manner: First, you will set the plane to take a predictable shaving, but it does not remove any wood. You then set the plane more aggressively and it still does not cut. You finally set the plane's iron even deeper and you are suddenly taking a heavy, aggressive, and uncontrollable shaving throughout. Your plane’s sole needs to be addressed because it has a high spot in the center of the plane's sole.

If the plane's iron is set and it only cuts for the first and last few inches of a stick, then the high spots are at the toe and heel of the plane's sole.

Follow the complete steps below to address the first issue. Follow the second half of the video (full-length shavings) to address the second.

The sole of your plane is flat. Throw some wax on it and get back to work!

Note: profiled planes also go out of flat. The issues will present in the same manner. Use hollows to address the soles of your rounds. Use rounds to adjust the soles of your hollows. Use hollows and rounds to address the soles of your dedicated planes.