If you don't have a planing stop in your bench, you should get one. And if you have a stop, but it doesn't have teeth, you should get some. I waited for years to install the toothed metal planing stop I ordered from Peter Ross. I was afraid it would mar my work, cut my hand, dent my tools and generally not be worth the trouble. When I finally got around to installing it, I realized how wrong I was to wait. The teeth come in handy so often I have trouble remembering how I worked without them.
This will be the first in a series of videos on working a toothed planing stop. This first one I shot near the end of last year, when I was prepping the last workbench of 2020 for shipment. It involves smoothing a rail that has a rabbet cut down its length. The rabbet makes the rail want to tip over under the weight of the plane, but the toothed stop offers an effortless solution. And because the end of the rail will be hidden inside a mortise, I don't have to worry about teeth marks.
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