last week i released a video that looked back at the last 10 years of this channel and in that video was this little clip this caught some people's attention and they wanted to know why i was sawing my hand plane well this was actually a very interesting experiment i did a decade ago i called it hand plane surgery and while i don't recommend you do this to your planes i thought you might enjoy taking a look back and seeing what i did and why then i'll tell you if i do it again i want to stress that these were both very common planes at least here in the u.s you can find these models at pretty much any flea market for just a few bucks i'm not destroying history here and removing these two beat up examples from the market does not mean that you're going to have a harder time finding good planes yourself the goal was to mimic the function of the rare stanley number 10 jackrabbit plane which features a blade that can cut flush with the side of the plane's body i decided to make two versions a rabbiting block plane and a rabbiting bench plane the hole i board in the side marks the top of the opening i had to extend that opening all the way to the mouth keeping it aligned with the bed of the plane so i maintained a flat surface for the iron to lay upon i started with a hacksaw but i soon moved into power with a rotary file cast iron is very soft and easy to file but it's messy and you don't want to breathe in the dust i also did a fair amount of hand filing because again it was very important that the lower edge of the opening was flush with the surface of the inner frog if i filed away too much on that bottom edge i'd create a gap beneath the edge of the blade where chips would get stuck i also had to make sure the overall size of the opening was large enough to allow the shavings to exit without clogging the plane it was more difficult than it looked because i didn't want to overly weaken the plane's body by removing too much material on the larger bench plane i had more room to create a larger opening and i suspected that that would make that version perform better than the block plane everything also had to be smooth and free from burrs or it would not work correctly i use the rotary tool to enlarge the space on the frog where the chip breaker's screw head will set so the iron may be shifted to the side and i open the mouth on the larger plane with some more hand filing next it was off to the grinder to start modifying the cutting irons i cut a notch on the side so that i could shift the iron inside the plane's body this will give the plane a rabbeting function on only one side but i reasoned that was better than nothing at all then i got to test them i wish i had sharpened them a little bit before doing the test but as i recall i really just wanted to see if they would cut at all i wasn't concerned with how thin i could make the shavings and believe it or not it worked they did make shavings now would i do this again or more importantly would i recommend you do it no it's completely impractical the reason why stanley number 10 jack planes are so rare is because few people need a rabbiting plane that wide and i did have some issues with my homemade versions for one thing the opening on the side of the block plane version was just too small it frequently clogged with chips and by shifting the irons to the side i opened up a gap on the opposite side of the iron which made it too easy for the iron to skew out of alignment during use you could solve that problem by substituting a wider iron but i don't really see the point like a lot of those early videos this was just for fun i eventually ended up tossing the planes but it was an interesting experiment and i think it was fun to look back see you next time as the builders behind some of the top brands in the industry harvey machinery has for decades been letting others take credit for their innovation now they've developed their own line of saws with the quality and features once reserved only for professional shops the woodworking world is officially on notice harvey machinery will be in the shadows no longer
