Pssst! Wanna see some pretty cherry?

[Hank Knight]

Last weekend I glued up the top for the hunt baord I've been working on for forever. Today I played hooky from my day job to plane it flat and smooth. The figure in the cherry is stunning. I can't wait to get the finish on it so I can see what it really looks like.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/HuntBoard018.jpg

What do you think?

Hank

[Michael Peet]

I think it looks great, Hank. I'm a big fan of cherry.

[gary Zimmel]

That is going to be one very pretty top Hank..

Thanks for the sneak peek.

[Jamie Bacon]

That's some beautiful cherry. AND some beautiful planes on your bench.

[Brian Kent]

Actually, Hank, I think it's your planes that look great.

[Jim Koepke]

My attention was also drawn to the planes.

jim

[Danny Burns]

Nice looking work and shop! A day well spent!:D

[John Keeton]

An LN stealth gloat! Hank, that is some beautiful wood - you leave us anxious to see the final product. Looks like some great grain match on the glueup, too.

[David Keller NC]

Well now - That's the first time I've seen a Lie-Nielsen iron in a post-war Norris smoother. Interesting - does it fit well?

And - that was quite a nice job on figure matching on the glue-up. While getting a single board would be nice, I see many fine pieces of furniture pretty much ruined by unsympathetic panel glue-ups were little attention was paid to the orientation of the grain and figure.

[Zahid Naqvi]

Dang, I drooled all over my keyboard:eek:.

That's purdy

[Hank Knight]

Well now - That's the first time I've seen a Lie-Nielsen iron in a post-war Norris smoother. Interesting - does it fit well?

And - that was quite a nice job on figure matching on the glue-up. While getting a single board would be nice, I see many fine pieces of furniture pretty much ruined by unsympathetic panel glue-ups were little attention was paid to the orientation of the grain and figure.

David,

Thanks for the compliments. I was anxious about the figure match, but I think it turned out well.

Your question about the LN blade in my Norris it timely. The original Sorby blade on my plane did a great job, but I always thought the mouth was wider than I wanted it. In a conversation with one of folks at LN, I learned they had some thick Norris replacement baldes. I ordered an A2 thinking it would close up the mouth of my plane and improve it's already great performance. As it turned out, LN was between batches of A2 Norris blades so they sent me a W1 blade they had on the shelf while they were making the A2s. The W1 was thicker than my original blade and it closed up the mouth considerably, but I wasn't blown away by the performance. My A2 arrived a month or so later. It is thicker even than the W1 and it closed up the mouth like I wanted it to. But it has proved to be impossible to adjust. It either doesn't cut at all or gouges, and it defies anything in between. I've fiddled with it for a year and I can't get it to work. I've gone back to the W1 and I'm thinking of going all the way back to the Sorby. Here's the performance I got form the original blade on my hard maple bench top:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/DSC_0002Small.jpg

Not even the W1 is that good.

Hank

[David Keller NC]

Hmm - That seems odd about having adjustment problems with just the blade, assuming you're still using the original cap iron and cap iron screw. One thought would be the iron's width. On a Norris, it's critical that the width of the iron exactly match the mouth. Otherwise, there's no bearing surface for the pivoting action of the adjuster, and it would tend to shift when put to wood, resulting in a gouge.

Might be worth looking into - I've custom-fitted several Hock infill plane blades to Norris planes that were missing the original iron. It's an incredible amount of work. I buy the blades too thick and thin them down to get about a 4 thousandths of an inch mouth, and they're incredibly hard - it takes literally days on a belt sander followed by a lapping plate to remove 25 thousandths or so of thickness. Once done, though, the irons (and the plane that's had the iron fitted) are incredible performers.

[Jose Kilpatrick]

All of your shavings look soft and snuggly like you could put them in a pillow.

[Chris Padilla]

Where's the sander?? How'd you get it so smooth???



;)

Beautiful job...now try to keep the "Ding Brothers and Cousin Marr" away from it....

[Jim Becker]

YUM!!! Lovely stuff.