Made a grooving plane - now how do I make the tonguing one?

[Federico Mena Quintero]

I'm in need of tongued/grooved boards for a garden door, so I decided to make a pair of match planes. This is the first plane of any kind that I've ever made, so any advice is appreciated :)

Making the grooving plane was straightforward. It's downright crude by the standards of what people post here, but it cuts well enough for my purposes, and I'm taking it as a learning experience. It's made from two parts of beech glued together; the first part has the V-shaped dado for the iron and wedge, and the second part is the "lid". You can notice that the iron doesn't seat perfectly on the bed, and the wedge doesn't seat perfectly on the iron, either - I want to fix these things over time, but so far it manages to cut pine reasonably well (which is what I want it for). I decided to damn the torpedoes and use flatsawn beech as it was, rather than regluing for a quartersawn orientation. I'll glue or clamp a fence to the body at some point.

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The next thing is to make the tonguing plane - and this is where I turn to your kind advice :)

I've been thinking of making a two-part body with the V dado as usual, and then using this first plane to cut a groove in the body at the appropriate position - the fence should give me *that* position, correct?

And then, should I make the iron using that new body as a template? Any tips for how to mark the iron for cutting/notching? Do I need to widen the groove on the body so that the iron will have a chance to protrude slightly around its sides?

Thanks in advance!

[Ryan Baker]

Your plan sounds fine. Build the body. Use your existing plane to create the groove in the bottom. Make sure you keep the same reference side on both planes so that the groove in the new plane ends up aligned with the existing one. Then put the iron into position and mark it with a scriber reaching up into the groove. Don't widen the groove. I assume you are comfortable with the tempering process, becuse you are definitely going to need that iron annealed to cut out the notch.

The other approach would be to use two irons instead of one. That makes the metal work easier but the wood work significantly harder.

[Federico Mena Quintero]

Thanks, Ryan; this is comforting advice.

The iron I have is not hardened yet, so hopefully it won't need annealing before cutting it. I haven't tried a hacksaw on it yet, but a file definitely cuts it - I used an angle grinder to cut the grooving iron from a larger blade, and then a file to refine it.

... and then I tried hardening and tempering that iron, and it bowed a bit. My cromagnon instinct was, "let's try to bend it into being straight", and it snapped instantly. Two lessons: 1. don't goddamn try to bend an iron into shape; 2. my tempering was't enough and I left the steel too brittle.

So I made another iron for the grooving plane, and haven't hardened it yet :)

I'll try a hacksaw for the notch in the iron of the tonguing plane; I don't feel steady enough with the angle grinder yet to attempt such a delicate cut.

[Ryan Baker]

Some warping tends to happen while hardening. You can't bend it afterwards. All you can do is grind it back to flat. You should be able to keep it flat enough to grind back to flat. Try to keep the heat even so you don't have one side hotter than the other. Quench it vertically -- again trying to keep things even.