David Weaver
05-17-2010, 2:44 PM
I was moving quickly through mine until I got to the installation of the rear tote.
For those who have put smoothers together, they are done differently. The rear tote is inserted through a through mortise in the rear infill in the panel plane. A mortise that doesn't remotely match the size of the tote.
The commentary in the instructions just says something like "putting the tote in the panel will take significantly more skill than fitting the tote in the smoothers", and encourages you to just fiddle with the mortise until you can get the tote to fit.
Doing this with satisfactory results is proving to be a challenge since the mortise radius does not match the radius on the tote blank. I have already undercut the mortise ends on the infill (the rear one) - the long grain will have plenty of grip strength for the tote, but I am having less luck getting the radius of the mortise to match the radius of the tote and also have it match the length of the tote.
For those of you who have done this,
*did you size the mortise to the tote, or the tote to the mortise?
* Did you remove some of the veritical height of the tote by leaving it proud of the bottom of the infill and then planing it flush?
* did you end up making a radius gauge to match the two and lengthen the mortise?
I'm getting fed up with this kit, and have already split the rear infill by accident and reglued it once.
I'm also a bit miffed to find that the front and rear infills are not wide enough to fill the plane, and the rear infill was way out of square, forcing me to remove another couple hundredths of material to get it squared up. I'll be adhering veneer to each side of the infill and then trimming it to get it to fit tight on the plane.
This is the first I've built a plane where I didn't make the wooden bits from a block of wood. I think I prefer that. I would've cut the mortise square in the case of this plane, and at the very least, cut it to be the actual size and profile of the profile routered onto the tote blank.
I'm sure in the end, this plane will work well, and it'll come out better than it seems mid-build, but there are just hassles in the build that do not need to be there. I should've bought the smoother kit and made my panel from scratch instead of the other way around.
For those who have put smoothers together, they are done differently. The rear tote is inserted through a through mortise in the rear infill in the panel plane. A mortise that doesn't remotely match the size of the tote.
The commentary in the instructions just says something like "putting the tote in the panel will take significantly more skill than fitting the tote in the smoothers", and encourages you to just fiddle with the mortise until you can get the tote to fit.
Doing this with satisfactory results is proving to be a challenge since the mortise radius does not match the radius on the tote blank. I have already undercut the mortise ends on the infill (the rear one) - the long grain will have plenty of grip strength for the tote, but I am having less luck getting the radius of the mortise to match the radius of the tote and also have it match the length of the tote.
For those of you who have done this,
*did you size the mortise to the tote, or the tote to the mortise?
* Did you remove some of the veritical height of the tote by leaving it proud of the bottom of the infill and then planing it flush?
* did you end up making a radius gauge to match the two and lengthen the mortise?
I'm getting fed up with this kit, and have already split the rear infill by accident and reglued it once.
I'm also a bit miffed to find that the front and rear infills are not wide enough to fill the plane, and the rear infill was way out of square, forcing me to remove another couple hundredths of material to get it squared up. I'll be adhering veneer to each side of the infill and then trimming it to get it to fit tight on the plane.
This is the first I've built a plane where I didn't make the wooden bits from a block of wood. I think I prefer that. I would've cut the mortise square in the case of this plane, and at the very least, cut it to be the actual size and profile of the profile routered onto the tote blank.
I'm sure in the end, this plane will work well, and it'll come out better than it seems mid-build, but there are just hassles in the build that do not need to be there. I should've bought the smoother kit and made my panel from scratch instead of the other way around.