Article on making a new wedge for a woodie?

[Dominic Greco]

I've been messing around with that wooden coffin smoother again and have determined that it would benefit from a new wedge. So I've decided to make one. I assume that any dry, stable, dense hardwood would work. I have a piece of bubinga that'll probably work nicely.

I seem to remember seeing an article on making a new wedge for a wooden plane. But I can't seem to find it in my "archives", or in the hand plane websites I have bookmarked. I believe it was Bob Smasler that wrote the article I'm talking about.

I have read and re-read Michael Dunbar's book "Restoring, Tuning & Using Classic Woodworking Tools". However, the actual process of making the wedge and fitting it properly is not gone over in enough detail (for me that is).

Does anyone have a source for an online document that details the fabrication and fitting of a wedge for a (non-Krenov style) wooden plane?

[Dave Matson]

theres write-up on it at norsewoodsmith:

http://www.norsewoodsmith.com/node/25

When I was first starting out a few years ago I made a new wedge for a auburn tool co. jointer I have, that is missing both an iron and a wedge. I foolishly tried to use a thin iron from a stanley bench plane with predictable results: the mouth opening was huge and clogged quickly. I gave up and bought a #7 and 8 on ebay. Iron planes are so much easier to mess around with when you are starting out. Perhaps one day I'll revisit the wooden jointer, though probably after all the other amputated tools are fixed up!

[Dominic Greco]

Dave,
You da' man!!!

That's the article I was thinking of!! Fantastic!

Thanks so much for posting this link. I just printed the entire "Building a Traditional Coffin Smoother" article (which includes step by step instructions on building the wedge) to PDF and have saved it to the archives

[David Keller NC]

Dominic - If you've a copy of Whelan's "Making Traditional Wooden Planes", there's several descriptions of making wedges for bench planes in it. Though John was making wedges for new wooden planes, a similar procedure would apply for making a replacement wedge.

One thought about the wedge material - I might suggest using an open-pored wood without a lot of natural oil (not sure if Bubinga fits into the class of "tropical wood with natural oil). I've made a fair number of wooden bench planes, and made the error of using hard maple on a maple plane and ebony on an ebony smoother when I first started; neither held very well. I went back to beech, which seems to work far better for the purpose. I would think walnut (as in the Norse Woodsmith article) would be appropriate, as would yellow birch, and I used to own a Steve Knight coffin smoother where the wedge appeared to be white oak.