How Should I Setup My Frog and When Should I Change It

"you're that guy with a low angle jack and 3 blades" i feel attacked lol.

If people are snarky to such an amiable, kind, charitable person such as James Wright, that's very ungenerous. I find your videos, including the "Dad" jokes, heart-warming and informative, more than most. Thank you for all that you do.

James, thanks for the tip of setting the frog by tapping with a small mallet and wood. Tremendous help.

Finally got around to adjusting the frog on my number 4 after this and was so pleased with the reduction in tear out. Thanks.

Hahahaha “I’m not a collector, I use all my tools!” This is now part of my argument to get more tools!!!

The Big Mouth telling us how and when to adjust the plane mouth.🤣😂😅🤪🤪 Snide remark as requested. Thanks for sharing James. Have a great day and stay safe.🙂🙂

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have some of my great-grandpa's planes and now I know to get them to "behave" themselves. FINALLY!!!

My wife's uncle, a carpenter had one plane, a MIller's Falls No. 19, with two blades with cap irons. One blade had a heavy camber used for scrub and foreplane work. The other had a very light camber. He did both carpentry and finish work. He swapped the blades out rather than carry two bodies. Furniture he made always had a beutiful, subtle undulation produced by the light camber he put on the finish blade. He told me he could control the amount of undulation by withdrawing blade for thinner cuts. Because of the camber, these were also narrower and were good for reducing the elevated wood along the side of the undulations. He didn't use sand paper.

Thanks for this video. I am in the process of restoring a set of old plains and now have a perfect plan to set up the frogs. 🤙🏻

Ok now you have inspired me - there has been much confusion in my tiny little mind on this exact topic. I'll thank you in advance before I run down there and try not to bleed too much on the square foot or less of clear space on my gross and disgusting "workbench". (I made it in 1986 from 2x4 lumber and certainly not a work of art.)

this was super helpful, i just rehabbed a few 3-5s and left each with a wide mouth, now I know to set my 3 up much tighter

Sometimes it's a pain trying to adjust a Bailey style plane since the frog tends to rotate and it ends up not being square so the blade protrudes more from one side. Btw I got a CPM magnacut because of your plane iron test and it works awesome.

Well done and presented sir. As the old song says: "Little things mean a lot" and, in the art of fettling (the Fettling Arts?) it can be as simple as in which order and how that make all the difference in the world to the final usability of a mechanical device, no matter what it is made of.

Thanks for that - interesting and useful to me. I have just bought a new smoothing plane and I'll go and adjust the frog now.

Thanks. a great video and super helpful I hope. I have managed to accumulate about 10 planes of various sizes, 3 - 6 Stanley and Record planes. But when I cleaned and "restored" them I set the frogs to a forward position, ensuring they were in a flush lie with the back of the mouth. I assumed they simply needed to rest there. Of course if the mouth of the base plate is narrow I end up with a very small open mouth and the planes are very hard to use. It's only OK on the planes with a larger mouth to start with. So I am off to the garage to set up a single smoothing plane, and the rest will be adjusted for the rest of my milling work and then left alone for years, I hope. Thanks for explaining this so clearly.

Thanks for de-mystifying this part of the set up process. I need to check the mouths on my smoothing planes.

It's true you don't see many wide mouthed frogs! LOL. Love that joke.

02:30 for me the problem was, i couldnt find any plane for anything remotly close to reasonable price in turkey especially only mony i get was the things i collected from relatives cuz i was in highscool and didint worked. So I was lucky enough to find one no4 in a flee market (seen only 1 plane for months of visiting) It wasnt a choice. I had to learn everything with it so i needed to adjust the frog regularly to prepare stock and smooth back.

insert joke about planes, frogs and its sound "rabbet, rabbet"

Thanks for the tips....one plane to rule them all