New Plane Iron Sharpening

[Steve Brown]

I just got a Veritas bevel up jointer plane.The iron is sharp, but the back is not lapped, so I know it's not as sharp as it could/should be. I guess what Ionut said is true: no tool out of the box is truly sharp. Looks like a nice unit, however.
Steve

[ionut]

Hi Steve,

They are sharp but not as sharp as we like to have our tools. The blades made by Veritas are very flat as they come, they pay a lot of attention to that so I suggest you to jump directly to 4000 for the back and see how is looking. If you see any uneven areas go down in the grit to 1000 or lower depending of the defect. If there is no defect just go as fine as you have in the matter of bench stones grit. I never found any defects in the blades I have. As far for the bevel is straight forward with the stones you have.
I hope you like that plane, I love it, there is not lamination that doesn't see that plane in my shop.

All the best,
Ionut

[Steve Brown]

Hi Ionut,
After trying the jointer plane, I decided to also get the bevel up jack plane. I read a little bit and I'm thinking that a jack plane will do the job of a "scrub" plane, more or less. Maybe nice to have a scrub, but I should be OK with the jack and jointer. What do you think? Also, what about a smoothing plane, do you have one and do you use it a lot? Thanks,
Steve

[ionut]

Hi Steve,

Considering the fact that you already have a planner, you would not need a dedicated scrub plane for boards less than the width of your planner. And if you need then yes you can use a jack plane for that, if you have to take off a large amount of wood I would suggest you to have a separate 3" radius cambered blade for that purpose that you would use with the jack plane. Yes I have a smoothing plane and use it a lot. You can use the jack plane for smoothing with some limitations, as the jack plane is much larger than a smoothing plane so very localized smoothing would be pretty hard, also for smoothing operations you should at least get a 38 if not a 50 degrees bevel blade, but I find that the 38 in my case is the one I use most. I use 50 only in crazy woods. To not make a large hole in your pocket at once I would suggest you to get the jack plane first, there are more operations where a jack plane will come handy than the smoothing plane. See how it goes, and how you like it and the need for the smoothing plane may come in time, if you have a sander (random orbital) and if you plan to use it the smoothing plane is not really needed. The wood from a sander does not compare though with the wood from a good smoothing plane, in my opinion but most of the woodworkers finish with sanding. I tend as much as possible to leave the sanding for others but in some projects is not possible with the tools I have. The good thing about these planes is the fact that the blades are interchangeable so you would not have to but a complete set of blades for each plane.

Ionut