Maybe it’s just me, but I had a tough time getting the reality of my plane use to meet the ease and effectiveness I saw in books and magazines. I think the advent of high quality modern handplanes helped with this, but I only had a jackplane from Farm and Fleet. I knew I had to be missing something, my plane just tore up wood and clogged. Garrett Hack’s great book on handplanes helped out a bunch, but it still took me a long time to feel like I could get the tool to do what I wanted, when I wanted it.
Jointing the edges of boards was no exception. Even though I was taking clean shavings and the surface quality of the edges was good, I couldn’t get them flat. This can send one down a rabbit hole of questions. Should I buy a different tool? Should I spend a month or two flattening the sole? Is the chip breaker set wrong? Am I pushing it wrong? Every one of these things can deliver different results, but after too many hours of trying to limit the variables, I found my holy grail when I realized how important it was to have a blade with a flat edge.
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