Veritas Tapered Plane blade question?

[Tony Shea]

I have been interested in building myself a coffin smoother for some time now and have recently seen the tapered plane blades that LV is now offering up. My question is about the taper. Does it seem like they may be tapered a bit too heavily or is this a fairly standard taper. I am personally not interested in creating a plane that is historically accurate or anything of that nature, I just want to make a nice functioning coffin smoother. So the fact that they are an inch short doesn't matter to me at all. I have used an old coffin smoother that was fairly rough but really liked the feel and function of the plane. But I just haven't been able to come up with a blade that was in good enough condition suited for this project. I've contemplated just buying one of Old Street's coffin smoothers but thought I'd rather make my own.

Also, any info or tutorials on building such a plane would be great. I have never made a non laminated style plane so cutting the mortise will certainly be a fun project.

[Steve Voigt]

The taper is more than on old blades, but not much. I have a bunch of 19th c. laminated, tapered irons; nearly all of them go from around .180-.190 at the business end to .090-.100 at the top. I can't see how the slightly greater taper on the LV irons would be a problem.
Sources of info: I did a big 3 part post on my single iron fore plane a couple months ago. People didn't seem interested, but maybe you'll find something useful in it. Just google "single iron fore plane." Derek Cohen has a tutorial on his strike block plane that was very helpful to me. And Caleb James has a nice PDF blueprint of a coffin smoother on his blog.
That's about it for free sources. The whelan book (making traditional wooden planes) is super helpful, but pricey.

[Jack Curtis]

The taper is more than on old blades, but not much. I have a bunch of 19th c. laminated, tapered irons; nearly all of them go from around .180-.190 at the business end to .090-.100 at the top. I can't see how the slightly greater taper on the LV irons would be a problem. ...

That's interesting, all my Japanese blades have the reverse taper, much thicker at the top than the edge. One thing this accomplishes is the blade gets thicker as it's worn away, which in turn automatically adjusts for wearing/worn wooden dai abutments along with a wearing/worn sole, to a point (as the abutments wear they get wider). This leads me to at least consider that the LV tapered irons may be only intended for their metal planes.

But no, I looked them up on LV and they're intended for wood planes. Maybe wedged only? Otherwise, you'd have to insert the blade into the sole and drive it home by hitting on the edge.

[Chris Griggs]

That because Japanese blades wedge into the abutments instead of being held in with a wedge. The point of the taper in the other direction in western planes is totally different. It is so they will not loosen or move under heavy planing. Any force that pushes the blade upward will only wedge it tighter between the wooden wedge and the bed.

[Kees Heiden]

A disadvantage of the taper in western planes, the mouth opens over time when you sharpen the blade often. So when you make a plane with a very tight mouth, it won't be like that for the rest of the life of the plane. Now, I've never found a very tight mouth in a wooden plane to be very usefull in the first place, so the problem doesn't seem to be so troublesome. (Very tight as in 0.2 mm tight).

[Ryan Baker]

I did a big 3 part post on my single iron fore plane a couple months ago. People didn't seem interested, but maybe you'll find something useful in it. Just google "single iron fore plane."

I don't remember seeing that. I'll have to go search. Sounds interesting.