Rabbets

Not a whole lot of time in the shop after work today, but I figured I'd go ahead and break out my Stanley rabbet plane. No, this one is not a vintage tool, but a new one I'd bought last year that I thought I needed for a project. Turns out...not so much. This means that for the past year, I've only broken the tool out 3 times in the last year...and one of those times was just to clean it up. Quite disappointing. Not that I expect to use every tool I own every week, but because this is a tool I have not even brought out enough to really know how to use yet.

So I guess today is a good day to practice then, right?

Setting it up was pretty simple. Since I was going to start with cutting the ends first--this allows the cuts with the grain to clean up the slightly rougher cross-grain cuts--I needed to lower the cutter. This severs the end grain before the plane iron gets there to cut down on tearout or chipping on far side of the cut.

Overall it seemed to work pretty well and did exactly what it was supposed to do. The bottom of the rabbet is a little rough, which is to be expected since this is not a skewed rabbet plane, but definitely good enough to clean up for a joint.

The only real problem I have with the plane is that the shavings/chips (especially when cutting across the grain) don't eject from the plane. This means I spend a few seconds after every couple passes cleaning it out so it doesn't jam. Not a deal breaker, but definitely not a high point.

Time for more practice! There are seven more of these to do for this little box...

Josh