Just for Fun, a Little Infill Plane

[Leigh Betsch]

I built this infill for a fellow Creeker. He started it, had the dovetails done but nothing else. I traded him my labor (and some brass), for a couple of chunks of wood. I'm not very satisfied with results but I liked how it worked. Next time I build one I'm keeping it.

[george wilson]

That's a very thick iron. Who made it?

[David Weaver]

Looks like a shepherd kit. Was the brass insert put in to steepen the angle or close the mouth?

How it works and that it feels OK in the hand is the only thing that really counts.

[Leigh Betsch]

Yep, it started it's life as a Shepard kit. I didn't like the 45* bed angle so I pinned a brass shim to the frog to bring it up to 52*. I didn't like the mouth opening so I dovetailed in a brass insert in the sole. If you look close you can see it fro the side, the two pins going thru the bun are angled at 10* to lock it into the 45 dovetail. The sides weren't square so I re-cut them so the wood would fit better. I didn't like the open tote (started to develop a rack almost right away) so I added a brass pin from the bottom and also pinned it to the brass blade shim. I also didn't trust the dovetailed sides to hold up (started to open up already) so I added six threaded steel pins up thru the sole and threaded into the brass cross pins. I lapped the heads down so you can't see them.
Overall there was so much I didn't like about the kit I would have been much better starting from scratch. But the owner had the kit started and I agreed to finish it. So that's what I did. I'm sure I have over 50 hrs into it. It's got lots of mass and works quite well.

[David Weaver]

Overall there was so much I didn't like about the kit I would have been much better starting from scratch.

I recall having the same feeling on a kit recently. I can't say it would've taken less time to make it from scratch given it was a large plane, but I spent a lot of time doing stupid things, like adding cocobolo veneer to the infills to make them large enough to fit the plane, and peining metal onto the chipbreaker so that the lever cap screw would even touch the chipbreaker.

In the end, the conclusion is the same, though - the plane works well, and the frustration with the kit is in the rearview mirror.