How to Adjust a Hand Plane

Contributor

By Elizabeth Arnold
eHow Contributing Writer

Types of hand planes include bench planes, jointer and fore planes, jack planes, block planes, smooth planes and rabbet planes. Though there is a wide variety of planes, they are all fairly common in construction and design. Plane construction consists the front knob, the plane base, the lever cap, a cam, the plane iron and the iron cap, the lateral adjusting lever, the adjusting lever, the adjusting nut, and the back handle; being familiar with how a plane works will help you when making adjustments.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Hand plane
Wood

Step 1

Inspect the hand plane's underside to determine if the blade needs to be retracted or protracted.
Step 2

Locate the adjusting nut, which is situated in front of the handle and behind the blade.
Step 3

Turn the adjusting nut to make the appropriate blade depth adjustments.
Step 4

Slide the hand plane across the wood with the grain. The hand plane should slide smoothly over the wood, producing fine wood shavings.
Step 5

If the plane is not smoothly shaving the wood, make small adjustments to the hand plane blade.

Tips & Warnings

Make sure to inspect the blade of the hand plane. If the blade is in poor condition, the hand plane may not work properly no matter what adjustments are made to the plain; this will result in a damaged surface finish.