Building traditional coffin smoother

[Moses Yoder]

I have this ebony chunk and over the next several years it is determined to become a traditional coffin smoother. I will build one out of something else first to practice. I will probably get a Hock iron, custom made if necessary. A cocobolo wedge. I found this article which gives me a general idea of how to go about it; I think I can manage it from just this. Are there any glaring omissions? HOW TO BUILD A COFFIN SMOOTHER (http://norsewoodsmith.com/content/building-traditional-coffin-smoother) I don't expect you to read the whole article, just scan or maybe you have some tips without looking at the article.

[David Weaver]

You can do better on aesthetics as well as better on the choice of iron and cap iron. If you're using a piece of ebony, getting the aesthetics right is going to be important, or it will just look like a blah plane made out of ebony.

If you want the plane to plane anything and everything, you'll need to use a double iron.

If you don't care, you can use a single iron instead.

There's another thread here with suggestions about where to get a good double iron. A piece of ebony deserves a decent iron or double iron with better aesthetics than a hock.



331199014827 (that's an ebay listing for a double iron set for about $33 shipped - with good style to match a vintage plane)

How wide is your blank and how wide of an iron are you looking to use?

[Jared Withers]

Caleb James has a very detailed plan available @ http://calebjamesplanemaker.com/

[Moses Yoder]

Thanks for the Caleb James plan Jared, that is fantastic. Mr. Weaver, I think THIS IRON (http://www.hocktools.com/PI.htm) from Hock is a fantastic aesthetic. I have always liked the looks of the Hock iron; every square millimeter means business. Sure, it is not traditional, but then it is different; it has that going for it. What say you?

[Moses Yoder]

I am looking at THESE PLANE FLOATS (http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=69096&cat=1,42524) from Lee Valley; would it be necessary to have both of them?

[David Weaver]

I wouldn't waste ebony putting a modern parallel iron in it, especially not one that is ugly looking and too short. Do what you'd like, though. Our opinions on aesthetics and just basic issues (like lengths of irons, etc, especially considering the wedge would overlap any of those by a lot and it won't be functional) are too far apart for me to give you any advice on planes.

[David Weaver]

Those floats are not worth having to make a coffin smoother. You will need sharp chisels, and a scraper type chisel set up to work the bed quickly on wood that hard. By that, I mean you will need to grind a chisel to close to 90 degrees so you can push to remove material on the bed (and anywhere there is end grain) with some ease.

I don't know if the point of those floats that LV has is to work the short height of a japanese dai, but they are not suitable for western plane work.


You will find a push side float and possibly an edge float from Lie Nielsen to be most useful of the floats, and a bed float may be handy, especially for working cross grain without tearing out fragile wood in the mortise, but the tool you can make for free (the blunt edge chisel to push scrape with) the most useful and surprisingly fast and accurate.

[george wilson]

Yes,that first mentioned coffin smoother really needs a lot of improvements,ranging from the poor shape to the miserable little eyes. With ebony reaching very high prices,the plane needs to be much better aesthetically.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Moses

Lee Valley offer tapered blades for single iron woodies. At 6" long, they may be a little shorter than some would prefer in a high coffin smoother - 7" being better suited to a 3" high body - however they are fine for most else. http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=71259&cat=1,230,41182,43698

I don't have a coffin build to offer, however there is a pictorial of a strike block plane on my website which has the same build process: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/BuildingaStrikeBlockPlane.html

I built the following 6 3/4" long x 2 3/4" high (I think) coffin smoother. This is in Tasmanian Blackwood with a Jarrah wedge, has a 55 degree bed and a 1 3/4" laminated and tapered J Herring & Sons iron, which was found on eBay.

I'm afraid the photos were taken with my iphone.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/My%20planes/photo2_zpsfa3a3bf0.jpg

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/My%20planes/photo4_zps4dddb083.jpg

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/My%20planes/photo3_zps83a5a415.jpg

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/My%20planes/photo1_zps2b668ff9.jpg

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Bill Rhodus]

From my perspective, as a user of wooden planes, David has it right. I would buy a wooden plane from ebay in which the body was ruined and use the iron and chip breaker. If you were to go this route, you may buy more than one iron because you should grind and sharpen the iron to get a feel for the hardness of the iron. The tapered irons are far superior in a wooden plane.

[David Weaver]

Buying an entire working plane is not a bad idea, actually. To go to the effort to make a plane, if you don't do it all the time (I don't), you really need to have an example in front of you unless you want to do several iterations. A physical example will give you something to look at in the very critical areas, like the wear, the abutments, the proportions of the mortise, the location of the mouth, etc.

The single iron plans above cover a lot of that if you want to build a Clark and Williams plane copy, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I never really had a good feel for the wear and the abutments on a double iron plane until I got an english coffin smoother that actually fed properly with the cap iron set close. The couple of later american coffin smoothers that I had did not.

If one is going to waste a billet of a rare wood, both the design and function should be very good, both so good that you want to use the plane above other planes, and look at it before looking at other planes. I wasted some rare wood (a vintage 9x9x5 billet of bois de rose - something exceptionally rare) on planes before I had any sense about what they should look like and I'm kind of sorry that I did at this point. At the time, I thought it was cocobolo.

Presume we're talking about gabon ebony at this point - if I had a dried blank of gabon ebony in the right orientation for a plane, I would be very specific about what I was doing to make sure the plane was something I wanted afterward, because it would be much easier to make something that looks like a smoother, but not very good, and that doesn't function across the board properly, where function would be defined as:
* ergonomically correct
* good iron / wedge / abutment fit
* good bed fit (so that in combination with the iron / wedge / abutment fit, the plane both works solidly and adjusts as it should - meaning a tap on the back relieves the iron evenly so that the vertical adjustment doesn't require a subsequent lateral adjustment every time)
* proper feeding, so that the plane will feed a shaving fat or thin, and not even attempt accumulate shavings in a dense way between the iron and a wear, even if they eventually come loose on their own. And do it with the cap iron close or set far off if there is a cap iron
* have an iron long enough so that if you actually like the plane, you can use a substantial portion of it and still adjust it fine
* have proper orientation of both the wedge and body wood so that they move together (else the wedge could end up overtight or it could be off in the other direction where the plane expands and it doesn't, causing a feeding problem at the edges)

If those things don't get done right, an expensive piece of wood has been turned into something worth less than it was initially, and if the plane doesn't function properly, you'll eventually tire of fiddling with it. If it's got no monetary value then and it's not a treat to use, it's worthless. I have some worthless planes, or close to it. I would feel guilty selling them to someone who didn't know planes for more than the iron was worth, even though some of them look OK.

[Sean Hughto]

Another's perspective. I wouldn't freak out too much about the ebony. Yes it is expensive wood, but blocks of the stuff in that size are common for use in turned pepper mills and so forth and can be had for $100 or less (far less than a lily white! ;-)). But even if you mess it up as a plane, the wood is still there for the most part and can serve as a lifetime supply of pulls, pins, inlay, and so forth. It won't be wasted. We put so many hours into these projects and spend hundreds on tools routinely. Use the wood that turns you on. You are a maker. You can always make it into something else.

[george wilson]

I'm going to try to explain some of my design aesthetics for making coffin smoothers. It might not be real clear,but I'll add pictures to help visualize things.

I have no top views of my wooden coffin smoother on hand. The closest parallel is the DARK gouge handle in the 2nd. picture from the left. I made both gouges from scratch. Imagine that this is the shape of a coffin smoother. The widest point is the escapement,of course. The curve of the body should be tighter as the sides approach the front end of the plane. As the sides approach the rear end,the curve should flatten out a bit. The rear end should also be a good deal narrower than the front end. Not as narrow as the ferrule end of the chisel handle,but narrower than the front.

The lighter chisel handle is not quite as well designed as the darker one in terms of what I think are ideal curves for a coffin smoother,so concentrate on the dark handle. Its curves are slightly more rounded,but I did not make it as a model for a coffin smoother at the time.

The dark handle of the fishtail gouge is a reasonable coffin smoother shape too. I did not make the smaller fishtail gouge beneath it. I might have pictured it just to show an original blade. I've forgotten why.

I HAD to make a lot of coffin smoothers that were copies of an 18th. C. original,because it was my job. That plane had a boring shape,because the rear end was nearly as wide as the front end. I think they reached a better aesthetic in the 19th. C..(Some might take this statement as heresy, but some things DID improve in the 19th. C.)

The sides of my infill coffin smoother are not so easy to see at the angle the picture was made at,but my selection of pictures is limited. If you look carefully,you may be able to make out the differences in curvature in the front and rear of the plane. The dark handle offers he best curvatures,though.

The eyes are one of the most important features of a wooden plane of any kind. I recut the eyes of the wooden plane on the far right.(Indeed,I recut the whole shape). They flare out BOLDLY,and are nicely parallel with the sides.They are not just little "dollops" cut into the body. Being parallel to the curve of the sides and bold is very important to adding significantly to the aesthetics of a plane. The eyes being large also makes more room for getting the fingers down into the plane to clear clogs.

The straight sided jack plane is a direct copy of an original 18th. C. plane. Its eyes are not
large enough,but at least they are parallel to the sides of the body. Again,I was paid to do this work,so it is not my own design,nor my ideal plane detail.
I hope this makes sense to you.

[Pat Barry]

.
George, what are the 'eyes'? for the life of me I can't figure out what you are referring to as eyes. Could you circle or highlight the eyes please?

[Steve Voigt]

George, I don't remember seeing those gouges before. They are beautiful.

Personally, I really like the shape exemplified in Caleb's plans, which Jared linked to above in post #3. The plans appear to be an almost mirror image of Larry & Don's planes. If anyone's interested, do a google image search for "old street coffin smoother," and you'll see the resemblance. Aside from aesthetics, I find that this style, with the large double radius at the back, is much more comfortable than the typical smoothers you find on ebay, which have very little radius and tend to dig into your hand. The bold, flat chamfers also add a lot to the appearance.

George remarked on how later planes are much narrower at the back end. I would speculate that this is because 19th c. smoothers tend to be wider, with 2" or wider irons, whereas the earlier planes usually have 1 1/2" - 1 3/4" irons.

[george wilson]

The eyes are the rounded cut away areas just ahead of the wedge. They make more room to get the fingers into the plane,and they keep the plane's throat looking more graceful. Must run.

[Steve Voigt]

Just a couple quick thoughts on wood and irons for the OP.
If you like the Hock design, make sure you get the 4 1/2", unless you are building a very small plane. Or you can get a vintage double iron, as David and others have suggested. It's mostly a matter of taste, so it's up to you.
If you want a single iron, there are the Veritas tapered irons that Derek mentioned, but I also saw that Phil Edwards (Philly planes) just started selling them as well. Vintage single irons are hard to find.
Regarding wood, I wish I had started making planes out of ordinary, inexpensive woods. I made a lot of planes early on that looked nice but were pretty middling. If I could do it over, I wouldn't use expensive wood until I was sure that I could make a plane that worked as well or better than a cast iron vintage Stanley.

[David Weaver]

I had figured that plane was pretty much the same plane bill williams had made (I think his name was bill - the never seen maker of the larger planes before he changed pace). Or did larry always build the coffin smoothers?

One advantage (for a maker) to caleb's plans is that the wear is very short, which will make it easier for a first-timer to get a plane that feeds well. The wear on the finer mid 19th century planes that I've seen is quite long, and they still feed well, but an average person making their first plane will probably not be able to execute that.

I don't know why the makers made the wear longer, though, it's not like someone is going to blast through 1/4" of plane sole and end up thinning the wear much. Most of the planes we make now suffer from hangar rash and rust much more often than over use.

I'd assume (I don't know caleb at all) that larry gave his blessing on caleb's planes, and there's someone else trying to sell hollows and rounds on ebay for $400 a pair, made pretty much to larry's designs. Same thing there, I don't know if courtesy was extended, but there seems to be a market, especially for the larger wooden planes, despite the abundance of good usable vintage planes that require a little tuneup (I guess the ability to do that comes after the ability to pay for a new long plane). However, I have no idea where people will get good billets of quartersawn and dry beech in widths large enough to make something like a proper vintage try plane, or even a jack, and I see caleb is having trouble keeping up stock of wood, too.

Someone with some foresight could go to southern ohio and fill a tractor trailer with beech for cheap, but the larger billets hate the kiln from what I've seen. Mike Digity, who is where I got my beech (and who is mostly retired now) had large billets of KD beech available from time to time, but they almost always had a crack in them somewhere, whereas his 8/4 and 4/4 and 5/4 have all been pretty good, maybe with the exception of small cracking here or there in 8/4. What I'm getting at is I would attempt to air dry the beech if it were me, but that takes time. I think what I've seen coming from kilns is not great, and it's rare to see it coming from them in the first place.

Anything else substituted (in place of beech) for the larger planes just doesn't trip my trigger much, even if it's perfectly executed it doesn't seem right. There is something very lovely about the way domestic beech works with a chisel, and i know George, of more skill than me, likes maple, but you can just do things with beech that you can't do with maple, like pare right back into the grain with a chisel and get no tearout.

[george wilson]

It's not that I prefer maple. It is that I have a bunch of it to use that is 4" thick. I can't get any dry beech. Beech trees grow around here,too. We cut 5000 bd. ft. of it years ago,for making tools. It was air dried for years in the hot attic of a large carriage house in the museum. At 73,even if I could get some 4x4"s cut,it'd be at least 4 years before it would be usable. And,knowing beech,8 years would be better. I don't have that time.

I'm traditional enough to really prefer beech since the old planes were made from it. But,maple is really better in hardness and weight. I can make a perfectly nice plane out of it.

I have some nice 2" thick beech,perfectly quartered on the wide side. I hate glued up planes,though.

[David Weaver]

I hate glued up planes,though.

Me, too. It's my opinion, I guess, but I think they are fine for people to put together to use in their own shops - sort of a low effort get a working plane for cheap kind of thing, but inexcusable for a plane made for sale unless it is very cheap.

I'd like to sneak into this carriage house attic you mentioned, I have enough 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and 8/4 beech to probably make 100 moulding planes, but none to make a large plane. And no great reason to make a large plane, I guess, but it would be nice to do.

[Steve Voigt]

Dave, I think you mean Bill Clark. I remember hearing from a reputable source that Bill was the bench plane maker, but that nowadays Larry and Don split the work more evenly. Can't say for sure though--hey Don, want to set the record straight? :)

I strongly agree with your comments about the wear. Most people today will not use a plane nearly as much as our predecessors did. Most will true up a plane with abrasives, which will remove far less material than planing the sole, which is how it would've been done a century or two ago. And most people will not keep their nice woodies in an uninsulated, shed-like building, with the only heat source being a wood fire--conditions that play havoc with moisture levels. All this adds up to exponentially less wear on the sole.

The Krenovians don't use a wear at all! I wouldn't go that far, but something in the neighborhood of 1/2" ought to be sufficient.

[Pedro Reyes]

...The curve of the body should be tighter as the sides approach the front end of the plane. As the sides approach the rear end,the curve should flatten out a bit. The rear end should also be a good deal narrower than the front end.


George,

I really value your insights, I have seen you mention the eyes of a plane many times, and for some reason (which I didn't know before, until I started paying attention) good looking eyes make a huge difference.

On your statement above, the only way to consolidate those statements (flatter curve, yet narrower on the back) is of course to have the widest part towards the front (similar to the section of an airfoil), any comments on this location? Also the planes I like have something similar to moulding planes, i.e. a grip, these details seem to be chiseled in, but is this section narrower or are these just chamfers?

Thanks for taking the time.

@Pat
289410

@Moses Someone mentioned $100 for a piece of Ebony like it was pocket change, I got some blocks on Ebay (quartersawn Beech) 3-1/4"x 3-1/4" x12" for about $20, I would search for something like this, I think learning on Beech will be easier and yield a nice working plane should you succeed on your first try ;).

Pedro

[george wilson]

Pedro,I'm not sure what you are asking. Yes,large eyes make a plane(or a girl) look MUCH better!!!!:) Little sneaky,mean,small eyes are villainous.

I agree about the $100.00 chunk of wood. I bet many members here would have to think carefully before putting that cash down. Especially if they have kids.(And,ebony is easy to chip while chopping the throat,too). But,if I chipped the sole while cutting the throat,I'd just slap a big slab of ivory on it. Heck,at $1500.00 a pound,chump change!!!:)

[Pedro Reyes]

Pedro,I'm not sure what you are asking. Yes,large eyes make a plane(or a girl) look MUCH better!!!!:) Little sneaky,mean,small eyes are villainous.

I agree about the $100.00 chunk of wood. I bet many members here would have to think carefully before putting that cash down. Especially if they have kids.(And,ebony is easy to chip while chopping the throat,too). But,if I chipped the sole while cutting the throat,I'd just slap a big slab of ivory on it. Heck,at $1500.00 a pound,chump change!!!:)

haha, I was going to add the girl comment as well.

What I asked was, in order to have a narrower back with a flatter curve one has to have more length, which means the widest part (mouth) is towards the front, and that is expected, just wanted to get a feel for a "how much"?

The second question was about the chamfered details, it seems (visually) like the curves on the top half of a coffins smoother are more pronounced than at the bottom, but it may just be that the chamfers make it seem that way, so not sure which it is (just chamfers or different curves for grip and bottom half of body).

Thanks

Pedro

PS: I am not implying that the partition of grip and body is exactly at half the height of the plane.

[David Weaver]

Dave, I think you mean Bill Clark. I remember hearing from a reputable source that Bill was the bench plane maker, but that nowadays Larry and Don split the work more evenly. Can't say for sure though--hey Don, want to set the record straight? :)

I strongly agree with your comments about the wear. Most people today will not use a plane nearly as much as our predecessors did. Most will true up a plane with abrasives, which will remove far less material that planing the sole, which is how it would've been done a century or two ago. And most people will not keep their nice woodies in an uninsulated, shed-like building, with the only heat source being a wood fire--conditions that play havoc with moisture levels. All this adds up to exponentially less wear on the sole.

The Krenovians don't use a wear at all! I wouldn't go that far, but something in the neighborhood of 1/2" ought to be sufficient.

Yeah, Bill Clark - I wasn't paying attention at all when I was guessing that!

I put a long wear on that cocobolo smoother, which increased the amount of work I had to do to get it to feed well (which I consider to be such that it doesn't even attempt to accumulate thin shavings), I'll probably do it on the second one, anyway. The old try plane that we stared at in pictures a few months ago has a very long wear and feeds flawlessly, which to me is a demonstration of skill more so than practicality. The muji continental smoothers that I have are very simply made in the mortise area and feed very well no matter where the cap iron is set, and i never made the conscious look at them before, but they have a very short wear thus the feed. To me, a long wear is much more aesthetically pleasing, but the first few planes I made had feeding issues because I wasn't up to designing the plane well enough to cope with the long wear.

[Pat Barry]

George / Pedro, thank you. Now I understand what you are looking for. This material, which is needed to support the wedge, gets in the way when you need to get your finger in to clear the chips so you relieve that area. Funny looking eyes.

[george wilson]

I am sorry,I don't understand about the chamfers. They are on the top edge of the plane,and run part way down the corners,as you know. I must be dense today because I can't understand the question.

I don't have a plane handy to measure where the throat is. David just made a plane. Perhaps he can give you particulars about measurements.

[David Weaver]

haha, I was going to add the girl comment as well.

What I asked was, in order to have a narrower back with a flatter curve one has to have more length, which means the widest part (mouth) is towards the front, and that is expected, just wanted to get a feel for a "how much"?

The second question was about the chamfered details, it seems (visually) like the curves on the top half of a coffins smoother are more pronounced than at the bottom, but it may just be that the chamfers make it seem that way, so not sure which it is (just chamfers or different curves for grip and bottom half of body).

Thanks

Pedro

PS: I am not implying that the partition of grip and body is exactly at half the height of the plane.

I would assume that the perceived change in curvature (which would make that curve compound) are probably illusory and that the curve up the side of the plane is probably constant.

The widest part of the plane is actually between the mouth and the back of the bed. There is a little more wiggle room (width) at the mouth than there is at the back of the bed (where the plane must be wide enough for the iron plus a gap plus the plane sides). The curvature is steep at the front and steeper at the peak width and just past it and then becomes more gradual toward the back of the plane. if it's a constant curvature front to back, it looks less natural.

[Sean Hughto]

It's not pocket change, but it's not prohibitive for most of us. My point was that IT IS NOT WASTED even if you f-up the plane - you don't have to throw it in the wood stove. I guess everyone here builds only with pallet wood and what they can find in dumpsters at job sites.:rolleyes:

[David Weaver]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?217062-Cocobolo-Smoother-Build&p=2259814#post2259814

to illustrate what I was talking about. Now that I'm a couple of weeks removed and have a better chance for a critical view of this plane, I'd leave the front of the plane wider. I intended to cut it back some when I first marked it out so that the front would be a bit wider, but gave up on trying to save all aesthetics after noticing that I made the mouth a 16th too large.

When I use it to mark out the next one, the next one will be different based on the following:
* the cheeks will be a little less thick, so the eyes will be a little smaller
* the bottom line on the eyes will maintain a curve rather than a straight line, as george pointed out to me that it's bad design to have a curve that somehow becomes a straight line (I agree with him after he pointed it out)
* the mouth will be fixed

If I don't get it all right, i won't have another chance, too, as the only other quartered cocobolo blank that I have (aside from the other half of the 4" thick blank used for this plane) is 3" wide, which will limit me to irons 2 1/8 wide or thinner, and I've got a glom of them in sizes between 2+ and 2 1/4.

I had a marples plane that I used to get the basic curvature for this, but I had trouble keeping it still and marking on cocobolo (cocobolo is hard and slippery and my white pencil didn't do a great job). The marples plane was a little shorter, and that also contributed to the front of the plane not being quite right in terms of width.

I might make the back of it slightly more rounded, and I might not. It's not an issue for comfort to me, the only discomfort I have with a plane like this is if I let my hand wander forward and get my thumb between the iron and the body, it rubs. There should be no need for it to get up there, though - if the plane needs to be leaned on that hard, it should be sharpened.

I'm a hack like most of the rest of us, so it might seem ridiculous that I'm as concerned about these details as a craftsman like george would be, but it's so much more satisfying to try to do good work and improve than it is to do mediocre work and not feel prized about what you've put together.

Fortunately, this plane has no feeding issues at all and has turned out to be a great user, and it was a good exercise to make it to get 80% of the way to what I really want as the final effort. It's hard to get it all right on the first one (or first one you make in a while - I've not made one with a double iron before because I was afraid I couldn't get it to feed right until I had at least one other wooden plane that fed right and that I could copy).

[David Weaver]

I guess everyone here builds only with pallet wood and what they can find in dumpsters at job sites.:rolleyes:

My wallet wishes that was the case!! Personally, I am disgusted to some extent that I blew a bois de rose blank on an infill plane that I've shown here before. I wouldn't be as bothered by a replacable blank like ebony, except for the fact that one rarely runs across ebony blanks that are:
* big enough
* properly oriented
* already dry

I paid $90 for the 9+x9+x4 cocobolo blank that I used recently (half of it left), and had to wait for it to dry, but the grain orientation of it is appropriate for planes and doesn't just look like a small diameter tree blank intended for bowls with a huge c shape to the grain on the front of the plane.

Just out of curiosity, btw, I went to google and ebay to find a gabon ebony blank of a similar size, and all I can find is 3x3 at the largest, and bowl blanks as large as maybe 6x6x3. I can't find anything suitable that would actually make a plane and a wedge out of one piece.

[george wilson]

Don't knock pallet wood. I found one made out of very curly maple a while back!!:) And dumpster diving at the museum's long dumpster is a national sport here. My friend Jon found several ORIGINAL 18th. C. prints,in frames once. I got a brand new pair of Channellocks. Some of the ignoramuses they get to clear out offices throw out valuable stuff. One time they threw out an original 17th. C. wheel lock rifle stock. That caused quite a stink when it came to light.

I used to get free curly maple at a furniture factory near where I lived in North Carolina. They'd TOSS curly maple because it was a difficult wood to machine,and would chip,etc..

Some of my most valuable wood is curly mahogany over 100 years old,and some English walnut. The conservators didn't want it because original 18th. C. furniture did not seem to use it.(I'll bet they just hadn't SEEN an original piece like that yet.Why WOULDN'T they have used it?,plenty of curly maple used in 18th. C. New England furniture.) Anyhow,I traded them out of it. They were making vise jaws out of the English walnut!! I guess they only wanted American furniture,though the museum is full of English furniture. I never understood that one.

[Kees Heiden]

Thanks for the lesson about plane aesthetics, George. Much appreciated.

[george wilson]

What about the lesson on pallet wood aesthetics??:):):) I gave the curly wood away. It was pretty thin,but you could make a jewelry box from it.

About 25 years ago I bought a whole BEDROOM stacked full of walnut for $300.00!! It was cut in 1941 by a farmer who had a small sawmill and sawed wood for a hobby. So,the wood is my same age.

The first thing I got to make with it was a tall(floor model) wig stand for retiring supreme court justice Wm. Rendquist(sp?) For that I got $600.00,so the wood paid for itself. I made it for a large judge's wig they were giving him as a retirement gift. The wig maker's shop in the museum made it. I made it in 3 pieces: The hexagonal base,the hexagonal column and the carved head which all easily pulled apart. I assumed he would arrive by car,and the wig stand could easily be taken apart and gotten into the car. No one gave me any specifications for it at all. I just made it up. There were no complaints,so I guess it went over well.

This walnut was stored in an empty brick house that the farmer owned. He died,and the family was clearing out the house to get it ready to sell.

The walnut is VERY hard,about as hard as I have ever seen. But,it was cut mostly from small trees. Unfortunately,it has a lot of cracks in it,so I have to carefully pick and choose pieces to use. But,at the price,I can't complain. I left a bunch at the toolmaker's shop when I retired,because I was tired of hauling stuff around. The rest is stored in my basement,along with a large pile of very choice 1 1/2"-2" white pine up to 12" wide(a few 14" wide pieces).

The white pine was at an auction I went to many years ago. This large cabinet shop was shutting down. There were several long planks of this nice pine. They were about 16 feet long. People were bidding up a storm for those long planks. I guess most of them were a foot wide. Inside a tractor trailer body that was being used as a dust collector bin,there was a large bunch of white pine planks between 3 feet and 7 feet long. I bid $35.00,and NO ONE ELSE BID!!! That was astounding. At the time,the millwork shop in the museum was using that same choice(hardly ever a knot) white pine to make all sorts of stuff from. It cost the same price as hard maple,about $2.75 per foot in the museum warehouse. I guess that was a wholesale price.

I got all that wood home and counted the board footage up. There was nearly $3,000 dollars worth of pine there at the current price. I could not help but wonder why the other bidders had bid so high on the 16' planks,but ignored this wood. I mean,what are you going to make that is 16' long? I used some of the wood to make nice shelves and book cases for our house. I made some toys for kids,too. I used to make up a bunch of wooden toys every Christmas to give to poor children in the area when I lived in North Carolina. I'd like to get back to that,but these days a kid would probably ignore the toy if it wasn't electronic. Times have gotten more complex. Can't recall what all I've made from it. The rest is stored in our basement. Still a substantial amount left.

[steven c newman]

A while back, out on a rust hunt, came across a few of them289475ah, no, NOT these, but289477ever see a body like this?289478Still sitting in the display case289479and because she wants at least $50 for it, it might sit there awhile, Butcher iron. 289480Wonder IF it was carved all in one piece.

[george wilson]

I'd pass on those even at $5.00 for the lot. Tell her to take them back to the chicken house.:)

[David Weaver]

I'd pass on those even at $5.00 for the lot. Tell her to take them back to the chicken house.:)

Me, too. Butcher irons are nice, but not when they are as far gone as that.

It looks like someone tried to make the grip similar to a continental smoother.It's a good design, but that plane's best destination is a garbage can.

[Zach Dillinger]

I have a box of planes that look like that. I use them for little bits of beech when repairing a savable plane. Mouth patches, blanks to glue in to repair tote horns, etc. I would probably pay $5.00 for 'em all but not much more.

[David Weaver]

I'd personally eyeball the butcher iron on that one plane before giving up on it, but it would have to be one of the rare cases where the iron is rusty, but the stuff under the cap iron isn't other than just at the point the cap iron contacts the iron.

But I'd give something like $5-$10 for the plane if the iron was good and more for the iron than the plane.

I have admittedly cut up long planes before when they weren't worth the cost of shipping, and have a bunch of beech around just because of that. Well, along with recently sawn beech.

[steven c newman]

Ok, ok. Those three on the ground were at a Tractor Fest @ West Liberty, OH., last Labour Day. Looked at them, turned them over, and walked away atfer the photo was in the camera. The Butcher ironed Coffin was at a local Antique Mall, run by the owner of the plane. THAT explains a lot about the high price. It was at $65, and the least she would go was $50. There were two other coffin shaped planes scattered through the store, both @ $17. One was a butcher, the other looked like a regular #4 plane iron and chipbreaker was installed. There was even a tote-less 16" long thingy that looked like a jack plane, sans any metal, for the same as the Coffin ones. All are still sitting there. Too "rich" for me.....

[george wilson]

David,you are hardly a hack,and you have quite a good eye for design.