Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Problems With Veritas Small Plow Plane Resolved

I finally figured out the plow plane depth stop problem.  What I didn't realize was that the plane was returned to me with a new part (the depth stop clamp) that replaces the old one.  This photo is a top view of the depth stop mechanism.  The top of the cylindrical stem of the depth stop is visible in the center of the photo.  You can see the thumb screw is off-set from this.
View of depth stop area from above
Here are the original parts:
Depth stop, washer, clamp and thumb screw
And here are the new parts:
Original depth stop, new clamp, new machine screw and original thumb screw
And here is the birds-eye view with the new hardware assembled.  Notice how the thumb screw is right in line with the depth stop stem.  The machine screw bolts the clamp to the body using the tapped hole that the thumb screw used to screw into.  The new clamp has a tapped hole for the thumb screw directly in line with the depth stop stem, so now the thumb screw presses directly against the stem to keep it from moving.
Thumb screw directly in line with depth stop stem

What I didn't realize was that the new clamp that was bolted to the plane when it was returned was not an original part.  So when I tried to reinstall the old clamp hardware, I tried installing on top of the new clamp!  Silly.  I had forgotten about the depth stop upgrade and didn't understand that the clamp would be replaced.  That'll teach me for not taking pictures before I sent in the plane.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Matt,
    seems that you could figure out the problem. Good.

    Cheers,
    Stefan

    ReplyDelete