A small overstuffed infill smoother done my way

[Leigh Betsch]

I haven't been posting much lately, too busy doing stuff I guess. Here is an infill I finished up around Christmas.

No dovetails, all cut from solid stock. 1 7/8" wide, bedded at 55 degrees as engraved on the medallion. My version of the Norris adjuster, double threads give .004" per revolution adjustment. Machined blade clamp allows fast course blade positioning as well as ultra fine adjustment with the double threaded adjustment screw. Rope knurls (thanks for the how to George). Adjustable mouth, 3/8" thick corrugated sole. Partridge wood for the infill. Every piece made in my shop except for four hidden machine screws that hold the frog and bun onto the sole.
Just for fun I started with 2 3/4" 4140 round stock. The sides have the 1 3/8 radius along with a blood groove, for grip (and blood).

And every plane needs a screwdriver to fit. Screwdriver has a O1 heat treated blade with a brass ferrel to center and keep the blade from scratching up the screw head.


If I get time I'll post a few in process pics in the metal forum.

[Todd Burch]

Very nice!

[Jim Foster]

Nice piece of work, Show us a shaving!

[Bruce Page]

Beautiful work Leigh! I would like to see more pictures of it.

[Chris Vandiver]

Really very nice! A modern interpretation that is actually pleasing to the eye. I'll bet it works like a charm.

[David Weaver]

Very tidy, Leigh. Can you show us a pic of the frog? This is so far different than what I could make in a handtools shop that I don't even have a reference of thought about what's in it or how it's done.

[Jim Koepke]

Great work. I am with the others who want more pictures.

jtk

[Tony Shea]

So i kinda understand what you've done with the adjuster but not completely. I also am with the others in that we need a few more pics. Don't just spoil the metal forum, we all would love to see a bit of your methods. Very nice work by the way.

[James Owen]

Very nice...beautiful plane and really clean lines.

[Jim Koepke]

Don't just spoil the metal forum, we all would love to see a bit of your methods.

At least post a link or a way to find it.

jtk

[Leigh Betsch]

I'm out in the shop for most of the day. Most of my pics are so disorganized that it will take some time to find the good ones. So more pics will have to wait until tonight or tomorrow. But here is a pic of a few shavings. If you notice the front adjuster screw is off the 90 degree mark in this pic, I fixed that later. I also knocked down the shine a bit with some Scotch bright since taking this pic.
In the pic of the metal parts you can see the frog and how the adjuster threads into the pivot pin. I had to make a couple of special taps to build this plane, A 1/4x32 coupled with a 1/4x28 on the adjuster nets .004 advancement per revolution IIRC. I had to build the 1/4x32 tap also a 3/8 Acme tap for the cap screw. As well as the rope knurling tools per Georges posts.

[Zach England]

What is a "blood groove"? Really nice plane.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Wow.... well done, I also like that it's modern but with charm

[george wilson]

Glad you can make your own knurls,Leigh! You milled that out of round stock ? Must have had a barrel full of chips!

[Bruce Page]

Leigh, thanks for the additional pics. The one I really want to see, the piece parts, is too small to see detail.
Also, what kind of mill are you using?

[Brent VanFossen]

Gorgeous. Very nice work.

[Leigh Betsch]

is too small to see detail. Also, what kind of mill are you using?
Not sure what happened to that pic. I'll add a few more and see how they work. I took them with my cell phone instead of my normal camera, maybe that's a problem.
Mill? What mill? Don't need no stink'n mill. OK I did use my bench top CNC for some of the profile work, my Moore jig borer for the holey work, my 1928 SB overhead chain drive lathe for the round stuff, but I used my Sheldon shaper for the hogg'n. Yup, George I did have a barrel of chips. I also just bought a small horizontal mill, just getting her tooled up for the next project. I don't ave a vertical mill, I use my Moore for some light milling, very accurate and does a great job of cutting dead flat surfaces like plane bottoms. I still have a surface grinder on the wish list....

And Zack, a blood groove is the groove in the side that catches my blood so it doesn't get on the wood!

[Bruce Page]

I had forgotten that you had that shaper. It’s definitely the machine for hoggin’ metal. You don’t see them around much anymore.
Thanks for the pictures.

[Van Huskey]

That is one gorgeous piece of work!

[Leigh Betsch]

Yeah, the shaper is pretty cool to watch run. I hope to get a video posted in the metal working forum if I can figure out how to upload off my cell phone. Once I get my horizontal going I suspect the shaper will be idle most of the time. But the shaper tooling is very cheap compared to the shell mills and slab mills for the horizontal. I was very surprised how accurate the surfaces actually are off the shaper.

[Bruce Page]

The last one I ran was a Cincinnati 32" when I worked at Los Alamos 30 years ago.
They are not for the faint of heart.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Wow! That is a cool piece of work.
I've never seen and adjuster that attached directly to the blade like that. I imagine it allows it to work with very little backlash.

These are by far my favorite kind of threads.

[Bobby O'Neal]

Very, very cool. I can imagine how gratifying it is to work with it.

[george wilson]

A nice thing about shapers is that they never seemed to get used a lot,and generally seem to be found in good condition mechanically. Another thing(probably the most important) is that you can do everything with cheap lathe cutters. Dovetails,all kinds of cuts can be made without buying expensive milling cutters. Plus,the shaper's cutters are easily sharpened. You don't need a tool and cutter grinder.

They may be obsolete as far as industry is concerned these days,but for home shop use,they can be great.

[Klaus Kretschmar]

Impressive work, Leigh!! I do like your approach to try some new design features, well at least new to me. The execution seems to be done on a very high level as well. Even an adjustable mouth, incredible. Be proud on this piece. I'm no plane expert by any means so maybe I'm wrong with my question concerning the depth of the bed. The blade isn't supported in the region where the lever cap screw presses against. OTOH it's rather thick so probably it doesn't need to be supported by a higher bed?

Klaus

[Leigh Betsch]

The blade isn't supported in the region where the lever cap screw presses against.

Thanks for the comments Klaus! I thought a lot about that when I was building it. I didn't want a tall frog because it would interfere with the adjusting mechanism that I was planning to use so I just went with the low frog and the cap iron torquing the blade. I don't know if this is common or not, seems to work just fine with a 3/16" tick blade though. I did make the frog adjustable as well as the mouth. With a 3/8" thick sole I was able to slide the frog back so the blade makes good contact with both the plane sole and the frog, no chatter so far! If you notice the the plane is pretty short (7 1/8" long), to get the adjuster into such a short plane I had to keep the adjuster screw short and not run the adjuster screw up above the tote or it would have cut into the tote and probably split it sooner or later. This all meant that I had to keep everything low, and cramped together. I also use a couple of set screws in from the side to adjust the lateral position of the iron and a make extra certain that it doesn't move around. My entire goal was to make a small infill that had an adjusting mechanism and a full tote. I don't care for the metal coffin type planes that don't have a full tote, they just seem to be not complete to my eye. I was really hoping to get a enclosed tote but I couldn't see how to do that without going to a longer plane.

[Harlan Barnhart]

What? Dare you mess with tradition? What are you, so kind of anarchist?

[Leigh Betsch]

What? Dare you mess with tradition? What are you, some kind of anarchist?

I'll go with that. I'm gonna name this plane the Anarchy! And I'm gonna change my signature line to be "The Plane Anarchist"!

[Chris Griggs]

Wow. That is something else. Really cool Leigh!