Boy, have I been bad about writing this blog. I don’t think any of the great bloggers have any competition from me.
Anyway, Today I finished up a few planing stops or bench stops, I’ve also seen them called bench hooks. These are a small fishtail shaped iron hook that had teeth filed into it. Typically these are set into a wooden square 2″ – 3″ that is mortised through the bench top. This allows the iron hook to move up or down to adjust to the board thickness. These are a real improvement to most hand tool workbenches.
When you cut the hole in the wooden part of the stop, just make sure it is a good fit so you don’t cause a split like i did.
In use be sure to keep the iron stop well below the path of your plane iron. This will dull your cutter badly if you’re not careful
Thanks for your post. I dabble with blacksmithing but haven’t attempted a planing stop yet. I purchased a stop from Peter Ross. It is high quality also, but what I’m not sure about yet is the sharpening of the teeth. In my first attempt at sharpening, I did too much filing and the points were sharpened with bevels on the top and bottom of the points and on each side of the points. I have since refiled the teeth so the edges are square, 90 degrees, to the top and bottom surfaces. I’ve looked at a bunch of pictures by Chris Schwarz and others. Is there supposed to be one bevel on only one side of each tooth and the other is 90 degrees? Or are both sides of the tooth beveled down from just the top edge? I haven’t been able to get a board to stick into the stop very well so far.
I prefer the teeth sharpened all the way around. I use a triangular file for the teeth and then match that angle (more or less) on the top and bottom leaving little pyramid shaped teeth. I have never actually had an original in my hand to see if they where sharpened that way, but it seems to work well. It also helps to give a tap to the end of the board to set the board into
the stop.