Popular Woodworking 2008-12 № 173, страница 20

- Tool Test •

BY THE POPULAR WOODWORKING STAFF

Veritas Skew Rabbet Planes

one who has used ihe Stanley No. 78 can now stop cheering and gel out a credit card.

The tool's nicker is also improved. You engage t he nicker when you are cutting cross-grain rabbets. It scores the work ahead of ihe blade so that your work doesn't get torn up. The Veritas nicker is easy to sharpen and is fully adjustable. Nickers on old rabbet planes are neither.

The tool's depth stop is also robust and contoured so it won't mark your work.

Veritas also added an improvement that I've not seen on a rabbet plane: blade set screws. These control the position of the blade side to side. Veritas has these set screws on many other tools, and I generally ignore them. But on a rabbet plane, they are welcome.

So what pitfall did they step into? It was an unavoidable one, I 'm afraid. Rabbet planes are complex tools that require sensitive and careful adjustments to make them work at all. There are a lot of controls on this tool -even more than you'll find on a bench plane-and they all must be correct to get good results.

So be sure to follow the tool's instruction manual. It's brief, but it's critical to success.

Despite its complexity, I found the tool easy to set up. The iron is accurately ground and

Lee Valley Tools ■ 800-871-8158 or

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its flat side is lapped dead flat - sharpening the iron was a five-minute job.

Once I got the blade, nicker, set screws and fence all workingin unison, ihe tool made beautiful spiral shavings-shoot fora thickness of about .008" for best results.

The rear tote of the tool is comfortable 10 hold, but 1 didn't use ihe front knob at all. When 1 use a rabbel plane, 1 find it best 10 relegate my oi l hand 10 pressing ihe fence lo the work. So 1 ended up using my left hand's fingers to press the fence horizontally and my left thumb lo press ihe lool down in front of the mouth.

Veritas isoffcring lelt- and right-hand ver-sionsof this tool. Do you need both? Perhaps. Having both will allovvyou to deal with grain reversals in your boards. Most people will buy the one tool that matches their hand dominance and live with some teat-out.

Not me. 1 want both. I've been cutting rabbets for far too long with a table saw and have a lot of catching up to do.

— Christopher Schwarz

CONTINUED ON PACil 38

How novel: Rabbet planes that actually work well in hardwoods and in cutting across the grain.

n

I V abbct planes have always been a bit of an odd duck. The best vintage ones are either difficult to find or they have wooden bodies and are difficult to fix to get them functional.

Add to that the fact that the most common rabbet plane ever made - ihe Stanley No. 78 - isn't well-suited for culling hardwoods, and ii's no wonder that even hard-core hand-tool woodworkers make rabbets on a table saw.

Now Veritas has introduced a pair of rabbel planes that hand-tool woodworkers have been waiting for. In lact,lhcseloolsaresogood that they might convince a few power-tool woodworkers to give them a try.

The Veritas designers clearly learned a lot of lessons from old designs and avoided every one of the pitfalls of these tools (except one).

1 lere's what's right: The plane has its cutter skewed at 30°. This makes a cleaner cut overall and pulls the tool's fence tight to the work.

They also improved the tool's fence. Using the same technology from ihe company's plow plane, the Veritas's fence is incredibly stable and always-always—locks down square. Any-

Neat nicker. I he round nicker is fully adjustable and easily sharpened.

36 ■ Popular Woodworking December 2008

mOIOSUV Al PARRISH