Luban No 102 Bronze Block Plane Initial Setup and Review

Okay, hi, this is Jason and I'm just going to be giving a brief first impressions looking over of the Luban low-angle bronze block plane that I just opened up a few minutes ago. First thing I'm going to do is take a look at the sole and see if it's flat. I'm going to take a look at the blade and see if it's sharp. We're going to actually before I do anything else, I'll just throw a piece of wood in the vise and see what it does without doing anything to it. There's a piece of white oak, pretty rough and nasty piece of white oak, but just seeing what my first impressions are. I think that's going to be a bad angle. So this is with no sharpening or anything. It cuts and that is against the grain as well. So right out of the box, it cuts. There's a something on that blade right there that's keeping it from leaving a nice smooth finish. There is a bit of a ridge right there. So let's try it on a little piece of curly maple here. See that tears out terribly. So that one's already pretty finely planed. So yeah, definitely not sharp enough to do good work at this point. So I'm going to take a look at the back of that blade and see if it's flat. I'm going to take a look at the bottom of the plane itself, see if that's flat. And I'm just going to start out doing that on my extra fine diamond stone. So I'm actually just going to retract the blade all the way and put some tension on it because I want that tension to be on it whenever it's touching an abrasive surface because there can be some flex in the body on any plane. And that we want that flex to be there or to be in working order, working position when we try to flatten it. I'm just going to take a pencil and mark across it in a few places here. Drop it down on my extra, extra fine stone and see how flat it is. That's just a few strokes there on the finest stone that I have. Well, no, that's not true. I have water stones that are finer and I strop, but okay. So where we're actually doing any work is right around the mouth there, which means the area behind the mouth is actually the highest point. Also, I'm hoping y'all can see that there. The corners here and the back corners here. So it's slightly hollowed through the middle except for right behind the mouth. That's just a few seconds of work there. Here, here, here, here, and here. And it's not touching at all throughout any of this. Although, after just a few seconds of work there, and that is three micron diamond particles. This one's pretty well broken in at this point. I've been using it as my last step before stropping on chisels, planes, and knives for, oh, maybe three months now. My water stones have found a new permanent location where they are not touched because I find that gets me plenty sharp. So again, just, oh, that toe is almost done. I don't think the heel is that important. Frankly, if you're using that for smoothing, it's touching before the mouth, it's touching after the mouth, and it's touching on all four corners. So for the sake of using as a smoothing plane, a small smoothing plane, that should be plenty. It's not a plane like a jointer or even a jack where you're looking for your full length registration across something. This one is for detail work, really. So I don't think I need to really go any further on that. Before the mouth, after the mouth, all four corners are all at the same level at this point. So that is enough work on that, in my opinion. So, let's take the blade out, and we'll see how flat the blade is. Got my slurry up in here. Get that cleaned out. Of course, bronze. I don't have to worry about it rusting, but always good to be clean. I think that'll be just fine. Turn off that lever cap as well. Okay, now I am a user of the David Charlesworth ruler trick, so I do not flatten the entire back of my blades. Some people do, I don't. Take that bronze off there. But I want to know how flat it is straight out of the box, so I'm just going to go on my finest stone here. I'm trying to do that, so let's see what I'm doing here. It's got a pretty good suction to the stone. In this case, that's just a few strokes there, and that is actually touching all the way across the front edge. Get behind the camera, make sure y'all are seeing what I'm seeing here. So that's the polished part here, here, here, and all the way along the front edge. So unlike a chisel, where you want the entire back to be nice and flat, all I care about is that leading edge. So I think that's actually good enough. Not only that, but I don't see any reason to employ the Charlesworth trick initially anyway. So I'm just going to go on here with a micro bevel. That's one of the things that having a nice wide bevel should improve. If you're going to be hand sharpening. So there's the bevel, come up just a smidge. Circles or long strokes or figure eights or whatever, I must say, I pretty much just do circles. And I love these DMT stones because you don't have to flatten them. They don't wear. You can work in the same spot over and over and over. If you're going to be going back and forth between that and water stones, probably not the best idea in the world because you develop bad habit. There is a teeny, teeny nick in the blade, but that's got a burr. That's got a burr all the way across. See if you can see it, Nick. You see it right about there? I'm going to focus there. You can actually see that wire edge hanging out on the plane too. On the iron, I should say. Back to registration, come up just a smidge more. And I'm going to see if I can just work that little nick out right here on the three micron stone, the DMT extra fine. Without having to go to a coarser grit. Frankly, I don't go to a coarser grit very often anymore. I believe I may actually be behind that nick already. Work that burr off the back. Pretty dirty. Nice, fresh, old t-shirt. Yeah, and I'm behind that nick now. So that was not a lot of time to get that iron really ready to use. This is a three micron, so this is about the equivalent of a 6,000 grit water stone. That should be a cutting edge right there. But down on my registration point here, and this is just leather rough side up on a piece of MDF glued down with green honing compound. I don't think I've ever had to handle a blade quite that thin and small before. And then this one is just a piece of MDF with that same honing compound on it. There's no leather on this one so that it stays nice and flat. And that's what I work my backs with on my chisels when I'm polishing up the backs after polishing the bevel. I guess I could do that so y'all can see I'm doing a little bit better probably. And I'm holding both corners and putting one more finger right on the bevel there. That's nicely polished up to about here probably for my uneven pressure on a blade the size that I'm not used to. Put two fingers down on that from the front instead. And that is a mirror polish right along the cutting edge. That is the only place that matters. Now I'll give that just a few more strokes here. Right up to the edge, up a little more. That was about 10 more strokes. Let's see how we do. Oh yes. So there's the camera. I believe that's sharp enough. That's finger tight. I think I put it too far back. One more notch forward. Track that a little bit. There we have some projection. Okay, quite a bit of projection. Draw that back in a little bit. A little more. And I really like that knurling on that knob. You see how deep that is? You can really get a nice grip on it. I keep forgetting there's a camera here because I'm not used to this at all. I'm going to track that blade all the way. Come back to our piece of maple here. See how it does now. First got to get some projection. Wispy shavings where I'm getting them. Now how to adjust this is going to be my learning curve because I've never had to adjust anything with a hammer before because I've used western style planes. It seems like it's cutting on the left side but not on the right. So if I can shift that just ever so slightly to the right by hand. Oh yes. It's definitely a little heavy on the right now. See if I can adjust it back. I'm just squeezing that blade and a little bit heavy of a cut. There is not much slop in that. I mean that is registration to pull back and that is the amount of slop. That is less than half a turn before I have registration to come forward again. See where I put this tear out in. If I can take it out. Now this is some curly stuff. Maybe a little less cut than that. Of course that's not what this thing is intended for. It is a low angle plane. If anything this board should be should be planed with a high angle plane over a low angle plane. We get shavings. They're fairly thin. Actually that's a pretty good surface over there. Now here's where I hit it before I before I sharpened it at all and that's got a bunch of tear out. I'm just curious if even being a low angle plane, yeah even being a low angle plane, that's dramatically reduced that tear out already. I'm not going to take a very heavy cut with it. So let's try it on what a low angle plane is supposed to be best at and that is end grain. Whoops sorry about that. As I said very very very new to this. Now this surface was straight off the table saw. So there's my wax. There it is. Straight off the table saw. So pretty rough and I'm getting some dust but I'm also getting some shavings. Of course that's to be expected because it's a pretty rough surface. I should have shown it to you before I started on it. That is starting to make shavings. So I have never had a bevel up low angle plane before. That Stanley Stanley Lowe's special $35 is my only bevel up plane. And it was never terribly good at end grain but those are lovely full length fine end grain shavings. That's lovely. I'm very happy with that and I don't think I'll do any more work to this. I might. I might get to get a wild hair one day but tuning tools is not what I go to the shop for. I go to the shop to tune the wood. So chamfers and chamfers and end grain work is really what I bought this for. And little bitty fine chamfers because what I like to do more than anything else is build little hand cut dovetailed boxes and mostly hand tools. This is just a recipe box that I'm working on for my wife. Cherry and curly maple and walnut. But I was doing the chamfers on that box and I was very disappointed with the tools that I had for accomplishing that. And the only really good plane that I had or I should say the smallest good plane that I had was a Wood River No. 4 for working on something that small and I really wanted something something I could hold in my hand. Something that would be more maneuverable rather than trying to get up there with a full bench plane to make a chamfer. I wanted something I could just glide. So I'm very pleased with that initially and I think I will be going forward. So there it is the Luban bronze low angle block plane. Tuned up ready to within this is a 26 minute video now. So thank you for watching. That's it.