Yet Another Smoother

[Steve Voigt]

Dave Weaver's recent threads on his cocobolo smoothers motivated me to get cracking on a plane I've been planning. I made a little smoother last year (also cocobolo, with a 1 1/4" iron) that is just about my favorite plane, so I want to make a slightly larger brother. I have a 1 3/4" vintage Buck double iron that I bought at PATINA for $10, and a dry block of goncalo alves that I'm anxious to use, so I might as well do it.
I'm not going to do anything like an exhaustive thread; it's completely unnecessary at this point. I'll just show a few progress pics along the way. Some of my methods are different than Dave's, so that might be slightly interesting to some.

To start, here's the basic geometry I'm planning.

292476

It's a little confusing to look at because of the way the lines extend. The important thing is to look at the only vertical line--that's the wear. I'm making this one 90°. The line that intersects the wear from the right determines how tall the wear is (about 1/2"). The line that intersects it from the left is for the abutments. To make the abutments properly--which is what Dave, Kees, and I have been talking about over 3 or 4 threads for the past couple months--they have to terminate in the middle of the wear.
After I lay out one side, I transfer my lines across both top and bottom with a square, then mark the other side. Then I cut the mortise. For the finish cuts, I like to use a guide--just a piece of scrap with the correct angle cut on one end.
Anyway, here's the mortise chopped out.

292477

The goncalo alves looks very nice, particularly on the tangential plane, and it chops much more easily than cocobolo or jatoba (the nastiest wood I've used in planes). I can see why planemakers like Phil Edwards use it so much.

Before making the saw cuts for the abutments, I decided to do a little side project and make a new abutment saw. In the past, I've used a repurposed drywall saw. It works, but I wanted to upgrade a little. I recently got a box of vintage compass saw blades, 14" long and .060 thick, perfect for what I want. The blades come with an obscene amount of set, so I squeezed them in a vise, then jointed the teeth down to little nubs, and finally flattened both sides on some sandpaper. I cut the blade down a little so I'd have 7" of teeth. Last, I sharpened it and made a simple handle.

292480

Why go to the trouble of making a saw (besides that I like to make tools)? I think it will make sense after you see the cuts.

292482

Here you can see the cuts for (left to right) the bed, the abutments, and the front ramp. The bed is just a through-cut, 1/4" deep. The front ramp is also a through cut, but angled; it's 1/4" deep at the top and zero at the bottom.
The tricky cut is the abutments. It's a stopped cut, and the closer you can get to full depth at the bottom, the better. With the thick .060 blade and the saw filed for a push cut, you can really get aggressive, lead with the front tooth, and cut to the proper depth. A floppy japanese flush saw won't do this. If I didn't have this saw, the next best tool is an edge float.
I use a spacer block to make the cut for the abutments. I spray a little Spray 77 on it and stick it to the bed. It pops off easily with a mallet and the glue comes right off with mineral spirits.
Oh by the way, the homemade saw works like a dream. And yes, that is an ugly stray chisel divot on the left side. It may come out later; if not, I'll live with it. Bummer though.

The next thing is to knock out the waste, chisel everything as smoothly as possible, then finish up with floats. If you don't want to buy or make floats, you can use small vixen files, which can be found for less than $10 on the bay, or you can even cut wooden wedges to size and glue on some sandpaper.

Here's the last pic for today.

292483

This shows my favorite technique for fitting the abutments. Take a piece of 1/4" scrap and make a wedge of the proper angle (mine is 10°). The first thing obviously is to make sure that the angle is correct. Once you're done with one side, make a pencil mark flush at the top of the plane. Then work the other side. If you look closely, you can see the pencil mark is about a 32nd high, so I've got a little more to do. You can match the two sides to a pretty phenomenal degree of accuracy this way.
Just below the bottom of the wedge, you can see I've trimmed the abutment so that it intersects nicely with the top of the wear. It's an awfully small thing to make such a big deal out of, but it is so much cleaner than any other way of doing this. I never saw this detail until Dave started showing pictures of some of his vintage planes.

More in a day or two, hopefully.

[David Weaver]

I never thought to cut the escapement to release things. That would've saved a lot of sweat!

Your work is much neater than mine, too. :)

[george wilson]

Yes,a very neat looking job!!

[Brian Holcombe]

Gorgeous work Steve!

[Steve Voigt]

George, Dave, and Brian, thanks!
David, speaking of sawing, I forgot to mention something. Making the mortise for the chipbreaker screw, I never would have thought of sawing the sides, but I saw that in your thread and decided to borrow it. Worked great!

[Kees Heiden]

Good job so far , Steve! very neat.

At the moment I am moving my entire workshop from the graden shed to the garage and moving all the junk from the garage to the shed. I hope to be finished before the summer hollidays, but I am scheduled for some orthopedic surgery after that. So, while I'm very eager to give it a try too, I'll have to wait.

While browsing around I found these sketches on Caleb James' website. They show the little triangle too, but because this is a single iron plane, the frontline of the abutments goes through the mouth, doesn't end in the wear, so it is much easier to make.

http://kapeldesigns.blogspot.nl/2013/11/how-to-make-mouth-abutment-wedge-for.html

292485

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks Kees. I hope your shop move is an upgrade!
I like Caleb's blog a lot. The shape of his smoother, which I think is based pretty closely on the Old Street model, is my favorite version of the coffin shape.
I have only found one other picture of the "triangle" outside of SMC. This is from Paul Seller's blog:

292494

It's a silly pic, with the artfully arranged shavings (plane porn?), but the woodie in the foreground is instructive. You can just barely see the left side of the top of the wear. I like the way the cut of the abutment is not horizontal, but rises up at an angle; this makes the taper more gradual. The eyes and the wedge are nice too.

[Pat Barry]

To start, here's the basic geometry I'm planning.

292476

...The important thing is to look at the only vertical line--that's the wear. I'm making this one 90°. The line that intersects the wear from the right determines how tall the wear is (about 1/2").

292483


Just below the bottom of the wedge, you can see I've trimmed the abutment so that it intersects nicely with the top of the wear. It's an awfully small thing to make such a big deal out of, but it is so much cleaner than any other way of doing this. .

First off - thanks for the detailed description and pictures. This coupled with Dave's previous thread are very informative. You are doing fine work

I do have a couple questions though related to the actual purpose / function of the wear:
1) why are you making the wear so tall? 1/2" seems about double what you really need for this feature,
2) if you expect to need 1/2" for the wear then why go with a 90 deg wear angle? - it seems it should actually taper to be more parallel with the blade itself. This is actually what the Caleb James images show also. See figure 8 http://kapeldesigns.blogspot.nl/2013/11/how-to-make-mouth-abutment-wedge-for.html

My questions come about from all these detailed discussions because after all this, I see the 'wear' as the provision being made for future wear and re-dress of the sole. Having it thick enough so that you can prolong the life of the tool without significantly altering the throat characteristics. I can't imagine the need to allow for 1/2" of wear on the sole of this plane. Lets say you ultimately get 1/4" of thickness reduction after years of use and re-dress - at this point the throat opening in the bottom of the plane will have significantly grown in dimension, probably less important with a double blade plane. If the 'wear' were angled back to be more parallel to the blade then the the resultant opening size would be reduced compared to the 90 degree 'wear' angle.

[David Weaver]

The cap iron is going to present a chip at 90 degrees or a little more vs. the sole of the plane. It's not going to slip up the iron like it would in a single iron plane. If you tried to make the wear too tight, the chips coming off of the cap iron would run into the wear and make a clog instead of running adjacent to the wear more or less and coming out of the plane.

You also can't have the wear too low or your abutments will terminate in the escapement, which will be ugly.

Also, having a taller wear allows the escapement to be a little less large, which is visually a little more satisfying.

[Steve Voigt]

First off - thanks for the detailed description and pictures. This coupled with Dave's previous thread are very informative. You are doing fine work

I do have a couple questions though related to the actual purpose / function of the wear:
1) why are you making the wear so tall? 1/2" seems about double what you really need for this feature,
2) if you expect to need 1/2" for the wear then why go with a 90 deg wear angle? - it seems it should actually taper to be more parallel with the blade itself. This is actually what the Caleb James images show also. See figure 8 http://kapeldesigns.blogspot.nl/2013/11/how-to-make-mouth-abutment-wedge-for.html



Thanks Pat, and good questions. I think David answered them, but I'll just add a little.
The wear in a single iron is usually around 70°--roughly 25° steeper than the bed. Caleb's plane is a single iron. But the wear in a double iron has to be closer to vertical, for all the reasons David mentioned. Kees has actually done the measurements on this and has mentioned that double iron wears are usually between 80 and 90. Apparently the double iron planes in the Seaton chest are at 87° or thereabouts. So, 90° is at the top end, but in the range. On a purely practical level, I've had problems with wears in the 80° range, so this is just an effort to combat those problems.
As to the exact height of the wear, I think I'll be able to say a little more about that soon, but Dave covered why it has to be taller.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I think it's worth considering that the angle at the tip of the chip breaker will be a factor hinow steep you can make the wear.
I make the wear on all my bench planes at 85 degrees, about 3\8 - 1\2 inch tall using hock irons which have fairly steep chip breakers. the setup is great, and actually works better than
a single iron with the same set-up because the wear combined with the chip breaker send the savings straight up and out of the plane better than previous set-ups I've tried.

[Steve Voigt]

I got through the next phase of construction, and it went well. The game plan was to make a wedge, flatten the bottom reasonably well, and test the plane. I want to be sure the thing actually works before I start cutting curves, chamfers, and all that jazz.
I don't have any nice goncalo left for the wedge, so I'll use a piece of tropical mystery pallet wood. It's actually pretty nice wood: hard, dense, and stable. I've had it for years, so I know it's dry.
Dave gave me some good ideas for improving how I make and fit the wedge. I didn't do it exactly like he did, but close.
First, I measured the opening of the plane at the top and bottom. I have 1.79" at the bottom and 1.80" at the top, so I squared up the wedge stick at 1.795. I laid out an 11° taper on both sides (10° plus 1° for the taper of the double iron) and then saw and plane pretty close to the lines. Here's the planing setup:

292534

I push the thing halfway down the throat to see if I'm on the right track, and I am. So then I plane to the lines and cut out the fingers to approximate size. This gives me enough flex that I can insert the wedge all the way. Now it's just plane and check until I'm satisfied. Here's the wedge almost done:

292535

When happy, I cut the thing to length, trim the fingers, and start testing the plane.
The plane doesn't work perfectly at first. I have two problems. First, when I tap the blade, the blade tilts to the right, cutting deeper on that side. This problem is easily fixed: I plane a single shaving off the left finger, and it works as it should.
The second problem is more interesting. The plane clogs on one side. I mentioned before that one abutment was better looking than the other; the first was cut back a little more than I intended. But the one that looks great is clogging, so I have to cut it back some more. Here it is after re-cutting:

292536

Hopefully you can see that the cut is about 1/32" above the top of the wear. It doesn't look bad; I'm perfectly happy with it. But next time, I will do it right.
So, this goes back directly to the question Pat asked today: How tall should the wear be? Right now, it is about 15/32, and that is just barely too small. So, I would say 1/2" is the absolute minimum, but 9/16 or 5/8 would be better.
By the way, the term "triangle" has been used a bunch, so I think I should mention that I completely remove the tips of the triangle, then pare. So it's really more like a trapezoid.
OK, enough blathering about geometry. Once the abutment is fixed, I get this, and I'm stoked.

292537

Vertical shavings, about .008 thick. I didn't arrange the shavings--that's just how they came out of the plane. It's only SYP, which is soft, but can produce more problems with clogging than other less resinous woods. So I'm pretty pleased.

Probably can't see in the picture, but the surface of the board has a lovely, shimmering quality. There are tracks, so I need to work on the corners of my iron, but that's no problem.

292538

I planed some elm seat blanks also:

292539

The elm is weird; even on the tangential plane, the shavings fall apart the way QS oak does. Doesn't matter what plane I use. But the upshot is that the plane works, and doesn't clog or tear out, so tomorrow I can move on to shaping. I'll try to plane some more macho wood before this thread is done.

Edit: I forgot to mention--the mouth on this plane is somewhere between .030" and .040", or just under 1 millimeter. I have absolutely no desire to make a tighter mouth than this; it works great.

[Kees Heiden]

You should test with some fluffy shavings in the 1 thou range too. These are the most suspectible to clog.

Otherwise I can see why you are pleased. Pushing the plane with such sharp corners can be quite entertaining, doesn't it?

[Jim Matthews]

I think you should make two of everything, so I don't have to beg for one when you're finished.

Your "mini-smoother" defines excellence among my planes, and I've got some from established makers.

The main difference I'm seeing between current offerings of this type, and vintage planes is that
the vintage planes have worn parts and resulting alignment problems.

I wonder if the old planes ever performed so well, and if time on the bench makes them loose?

[Steve Voigt]

I think you should make two of everything, so I don't have to beg for one when you're finished.

Your "mini-smoother" defines excellence among my planes, and I've got some from established makers.

The main difference I'm seeing between current offerings of this type, and vintage planes is that
the vintage planes have worn parts and resulting alignment problems.

I wonder if the old planes ever performed so well, and if time on the bench makes them loose?

Jim, that's very kind of you; I'm glad that plane is working out.
Regarding old planes, I think the answer is that some of them worked fantastically, and still do; the problem is getting a good one.
As part of this whole abutment discussion, I was hoping to post some pictures of poorly cut planes, for comparison. I took some pics in an antique shop this weekend, but unfortunately the lighting was bad and none of them are worth posting. But it was really instructive to look at these planes, knowing what I know now. It was clear that the throats, abutments, etc. were designed to be cut quickly, probably with mass production setups, and the priority was volume rather than quality.
On the other hand, Dave has shown a number of old planes that were obviously very well made. The trick is separating the two.

[David Weaver]

I like the old planes in long planes, because the little fiddles that make our smoothers work really well don't need to be perfect in the big planes. The bigger planes need to take big bites for productivity. I especially like that you can get those good old planes fairly inexpensively.

Jim has the only decent manufactured coffin smoother I've ever had, though it's a couple of steps behind the smoothers we've been making out of cocobolo (as it should be if we're literally super-tuning these planes as we make them). There is enough there with it, though, to tune it to the level of a newly made plane and it would be almost as good (but a pound lighter than cocobolo based on what I've seen - and that pound counts for a lot in ease of use).

I can't remember the exact details of it, though, to know if the wedge and innards were quite as nice as they are on the old mathiesen planes (it was a more modern marples plane - but not so modern that all of the curves were broken and rounded over on it), but it was properly made and clogs less easily than most coffin smoothers out there.

I think when this whole rush to make coffin smoothers is over, I'll go back to wooden long planes and a stanley 4. That has definitely been a benefit of this analysis, though - that I've stopped using metal long planes on most work, and gone to yet bigger bites of wood unless there is a demand to get within a thousandth of something.

[Steve Voigt]

OK, this plane is done. I suppose this is a little anticlimactic, since it's already made some shavings, but I should say a couple things about design and shaping.
There are a lot of variations on the coffin shape. The style I like best is that used by Larry and Don (http://www.planemaker.com/images/planes/smooth.jpg), and also by Caleb James. (http://kapeldesigns.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-coffin-shaped-smoother-up-close.html)
To get the basic shape, I just bandsawed and then cleaned up with a plane. The main thing is to plane downhill on each end. The middle needed some cleaning up, so I used a Nicholson Super Shear file, followed by a scraper. I think next time I'd just use the scraper.

292715

For me, cutting the stopped chamfers is tricky. One of my favorite tips from Larry's "Making Side Escapement Planes" video is to use a chisel stop. In the video, Larry is chiseling horizontally, but with the coffin shape, vertical is easier. So just make a piece of scrap the right height to stop your chisel.

292716

The back of the plane is the intersection of 4 arcs: on the back, the bottom, and on each side. I marked them out on the top and back; next time I'll do the sides as well. The one on the back is too large, and I reduced it later.

292717

Then it's just chisel away most of the waste and refine with the super shear. I really like the design of the back end--it's super comfy, and it's a fun sculptural detail to make.I should get one of those nice hand-stitched rasps, but the file did a nice job. A little more scraping, and I was ready for the finish. I didn't use any sandpaper on the outside (except for lapping the sole), because I wanted to have a "grippier" finish, but I did sand inside the throat.
Here it is after some oil.

292718 292719

I said I would find some more macho wood to test the plane, so I dug out a dry piece of Ipe decking. Yuck. I feel like I need a shower after planing that stuff, but it's a good test. The plane did well, I think. (that's not tear-out on the left side--I just didn't plane that part of the board)

292720

Kees, here's some fluffy shavings, just for you. ;)

292721

Thanks again to David for helping me to push the design envelope on this thing. If anyone has questions, I'll be happy to try and answer, and comments welcome of course.

[Pat Barry]

Well done Steve. This was a very nice project. I appreciate the detail you have provided, the questions answered, the thorough documentation with pictures and the speed with with you accomplished this entire project. I have one request - could you please post a couple pictures of your wedge so we can see the detail in it as well? Thanks

[Kees Heiden]

Kees, here's some fluffy shavings, just for you. ;)

292721



Thanks! :) looks good!

One little design detail you could add, or not. At the very top of the abutments, where the wedge leaves the plane, is a bit of vulnerable short grained triangle. This is often chamfered to increase its strength.

[David Weaver]

Looks good! Can't argue with the results.

[Steve Voigt]

… I have one request - could you please post a couple pictures of your wedge so we can see the detail in it as well? Thanks

Pat, nothing special about the wedge, but here are a couple pics. The fingers are a bit long. Shortening them about 1/4", and making the ramp that much longer, would be an improvement.

292738 292739

[Pat Barry]

Thanks Steve, I was actually curious if the tips of the fingers had a bevel cut or not to help shavings flow though.