Dominic Greco
03-15-2009, 9:44 PM
Hi gang,
I finally got a chance to mess with that wedge I made for my old wooden coffin smoother. I used walnut for the new wedge and followed the directions I found at the Norse Woodsmith site (http://norsewoodsmith.com/node/25). Side note here: That is one heck of a site! It is just chocked full of great information!
I'm glad I let this sit for a while before I went at it again. After making (2) wedges and not having either work I figured it was a good thing to leave it alone for a bit. As it stood, one of the wedges wasn't as bad as I had thought. So all it took was some careful chisel & rasp work.
It turned out that the abutments are not quite at the same angle. So I had to tweak the wedge a good deal to make it fit perfectly. Before this I used a belt sander to narrow the sides of the iron by a hair, and flattened/polished the chip breaker. But it was getting the wedge to fit right that did the trick.
Here's some shots of the smoother after trying it out on a piece of cherry.
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr1a.jpghttp://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr2a.jpg
After I was confident that I had the wedge sized correctly, I cleaned up the corners and used a rasp to steepen the incline on the inner "ramp". After all the work I did making sure they fit, I left all the sections that contacted the abutments alone!
Here's a shot after I tried the smoother on some ash.
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr3a.jpg
The next think I'm going to do is either laminate a new sole onto this plane, or just install a insert at the mouth. Either way, I have a nice piece of pear that will work.
BTW, I was examining the front of the plane this afternoon and noticed the maker's mark. It's partially worn away but I could see a star and some letters. Anyone know of a plane maker that uses a star in their logo?
I finally got a chance to mess with that wedge I made for my old wooden coffin smoother. I used walnut for the new wedge and followed the directions I found at the Norse Woodsmith site (http://norsewoodsmith.com/node/25). Side note here: That is one heck of a site! It is just chocked full of great information!
I'm glad I let this sit for a while before I went at it again. After making (2) wedges and not having either work I figured it was a good thing to leave it alone for a bit. As it stood, one of the wedges wasn't as bad as I had thought. So all it took was some careful chisel & rasp work.
It turned out that the abutments are not quite at the same angle. So I had to tweak the wedge a good deal to make it fit perfectly. Before this I used a belt sander to narrow the sides of the iron by a hair, and flattened/polished the chip breaker. But it was getting the wedge to fit right that did the trick.
Here's some shots of the smoother after trying it out on a piece of cherry.
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr1a.jpghttp://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr2a.jpg
After I was confident that I had the wedge sized correctly, I cleaned up the corners and used a rasp to steepen the incline on the inner "ramp". After all the work I did making sure they fit, I left all the sections that contacted the abutments alone!
Here's a shot after I tried the smoother on some ash.
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z287/DominicGreco/cofnsmthr3a.jpg
The next think I'm going to do is either laminate a new sole onto this plane, or just install a insert at the mouth. Either way, I have a nice piece of pear that will work.
BTW, I was examining the front of the plane this afternoon and noticed the maker's mark. It's partially worn away but I could see a star and some letters. Anyone know of a plane maker that uses a star in their logo?