Normally, your first pass will be full depth at the beginning of the board and may rise as the plane gets further away from you due to changing pressure holding the plane down.

 

Set your plane lighter till it cuts see thru shavings, this will lower the amount you are off at the end of the board.

 

Don't start and then end halfway through the board.

 

And you shouldn't need more than a couple of passes.

 

Draw a pencil line on a 6 ft board and measure after each pass to the edge.

 

You'll see how the plane (and you) are cutting and can adjust accordingly.

Dan Shuflin said:

Well, I finally got to spend some time with my hand planes. I learned some valuable lessons this last weekend. If you are sweating profusely you probably are doing it wrong. I was trying to remove the tool marks made by the Rigid planer, I succeded in learning a little about tear outs and the importance of planing the wrong direction. I had a friend come over and I showed him what I was doing. He explained the tear out thing to me. I thing I could use some help on though is while using my smoothing plane I had a tendency to remove more wood off of one side than the other. I had to go back and plane just part of the edge in order to square up the edge to the face. I was using a combination square as my guide. It appeared the planer blade was even coming out of the throat. Is it that critical that I need to measure the amount of blade protruding or was I doing something else wrong. I am currently reading Handplane Essentials by Chris Schwarz, great book but there is only so many hours in a day.

Dan

The plane is cutting more on the right side than the left side of the edge of the 2 by 4. Why??

Dan

The iron (blade) is crooked in the mouth. Take a small piece of scrap. About 3"x 3" x 1/2"or around there. Stand the block on edge.Adjust your plane so it is taking a moderate shaving. Run the plane over the egde of the block on the right side of the blade. Now do the left. Compare the thickness of the shavings. Adjust the blade by barely moving the lateral adjuster towards the side that is cutting heavy. Repeat above process until the shavings are the same. This lets you know that you are cutting square and what kind of shaving you are getting. Planes can be tricky. Keep at it.
Dan Shuflin said:

The plane is cutting more on the right side than the left side of the edge of the 2 by 4. Why??

Dan

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Adam Welker
Red Car Construction and Fine Woodworking

Thanks Adam, I was moving the adjuster the wrong direction.