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TIL the guy at the hardware store was right about hand planes
My neighbor Bill told me to ditch my cheap low-angle block plane and get a vintage Stanley No. 4 instead, said it would save me hours of frustration on a total of 12 oak boards. After 3 attempts at jointing edges with chatter and tearout, I caved and spent $40 on one at a flea market last Saturday and it cut smooth as butter first try. Has anyone else had a random pro tip from an older guy turn out to be spot on?
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drewgonzalez1mo ago
yo @drew_reed62 is spot on about the length thing. my buddy mike tried jointing with a no. 4 last year and ended up with this insane scalloped edge that looked like a wave pool. took him like 2 hours with a belt sander to fix it haha.
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drew_reed621mo ago
Hold on a sec, jointing edges with a No. 4 is a lot harder than with a proper jointer plane. You really want a No. 5 or a No. 6 for that job because the longer sole bridges the low spots way better. A No. 4 is great for smoothing faces but trying to get a dead straight edge with a short plane is gonna fight you the whole time. I've tried it myself when I didn't know better and ended up with a wavy mess I had to sand out. Sounds like the one you got is just set up real well though, that old iron cuts so much nicer than the new junk.
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