Beech Jointer Build

[David Weaver]

I thought I'd put this in a separate thread, I changed my mind. There will be less talk about the mortise, wear, etc, it's all covered in the cocobolo smoother thread here.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?218832-Cocobolo-Smoother-Build-2

This beech is courtesty of Prashun generously offering up some good stuff. It's pretty close to QS (close enough), it's 4" wide and almost 6" tall, and 29" long. And whatever Prashun does where this wood is stored, it smells wonderful (I smell essential oil of tobacco in the wood or something of that sort, which for the uninitiated is not remotely similar to burning tobacco...)

I don't have a power jointer, this stick has a little bit of twist, I have to be careful and sparing because the jointer will finish slightly under 3 3/8 inches wide. The twist is nothing unexpected, beech moves a little when it dries, even when it's QS.

On the top of this stick, which you can't see, you could trace grain in the middle of the stick straight to the back and be pretty much in the middle. That's preferable. Grain can be a little diagonal, too, but straight is best for strength around the cheeks.
296896


Check the winding sticks..You can just barely make out the silver of the one on the far end. The wind is gone.
296897

That's about all I have time for in a night. two young kids who sleep over the shop and they go to sleep late - woodworking was eaiser before kids.

Some pictures of considerations:

There will be a sacrifice. I don't have a spare 2 1/2" iron and cap iron set that is not in a plane. I do have planes that are not worth as much as it would cost me to go out to ebay and get one, though. This is a plane marked "FM" with a nice I&H sorby iron that's got about 3/4ths of its life left. I'll never use it to the notch. This plane has a repaired handle, a not so fancy mortise, a lot of cracks, and on the opposite side of the plane, it's got a mouth plug. Prashun, I'd send it to you (so you could have a look at the mortise, bed, wear to get some measurements) but I don't think it's worth having to copy. It does feed well, though, it's a decent working plane.

296895

And the iron/cap iron:
296898

Fortunately, I&H sorby bears no relation to what robert sorby calls steel these days. This is one of the vintage crisp and dry feeling irons that raises a wire edge easily, wears evenly and lets go of the wire edge without tearing itself up.

Here are two planes I'm going to take considerations from. The front is a JT Brown of baltimore jointer, a lovely jointer to use, but limited by the fact that it's 50 degrees, single iron and the iron is a fast wearing butcher - something that would matter a lot less if it was sporting a cap iron. It is so nicely made, though, that I will never get rid of it.

The back plane is one of two I got from an MJD auction. I paid a MINT for those two planes ($185 with shipping) to find that martin couldn't be bothered to take a picture of the mouths. This one has been let open a little bit by a user a long time ago (it's tolerable, and the maker may have made it a bit too tight out of pride), and the other one just had a very large mouth to start. Both jointers will hit the road when I'm done with this jointer process. In spite of the mouth being let out a bit, this plane is nice to use, but I don't know what was done to it - it's over 10 pounds.

I like the handle on the JT brown jointer, it is just a superbly made plane all the way around (and almost 200 years old), with a super choice piece of beech, and a very tasteful handle with flat sides - the maker had the good sense to leave the sides faceted instead of just rounding them all off. I may copy this handle design. George had also provided a nice one, though this one would be a little bit easier (the aesthetics of what george provided are better, though).

296899

i realize that there are some who aren't going to get as excited about making an heirloom quality plane as I am, but with a stick of wood like this, the time it takes to make any plane, and the desire to do something nice, well...it's not going to be a throw away plane, a marginal performer or something looking full of shortcuts. I've made tools in the past that I wasn't that happy with, it turns into a waste of time.

Well, I'm going to make two of them actually, but we'll get through the first one first. UPS has a nicer stick yet of beech than this one (on its way to me), and the second one will be made from it. I'll give one of them away when I'm done, unless there's a fatal flaw with one.

[David Weaver]

Only a little work tonight. Thank goodness for bandsaws (though plane no 2, I will saw to size by hand, I feel a bit cheated)

Brought the stick closer to spec. with the flatsawn top and bottom - keep those, they'll be good wedge material because they should move the same amount as the plane body (in terms of how much they move laterally). A finished wedge is only about 5/8" thick. We will be precise about how the wedge fits - especially at the bottom of the abutments, so the closer the amount of movement is to the body, the better.

296920



I want the finish dimensions to be 28 long, 3 5/16 wide, and just a hair over 3" high, or right around there.

At this point, I can go just a tiny amount over the height (I don't have much fear over blowing it with the eyes, which is the only reason I'd keep the height overthick a little - you can get two shots at the eyes), or if you think you might do sloppy work and chip something out at the top of the mortise, if you leave yourself an extra eighth, that'll give you some room to clean it up. It also means extra work later, though, that I don't want.

I'll leave the plane a little wide because I want to cut the mortise and do the eyes to a pencil mark on the sides, but have some left over in case they get a bit wide. If I make the sides narrow right away and overshoot the eyes, they'll look uneven.

The stick itself - it is a really nice piece of wood. It will make a nice plane. I have to choose what is the front and what is the back based on the grain being higher in the front than the back. There's not much difference on this one, but in this picture if the front is at the left and the back at the right end of the stick, that'll be the best orientation.

296921

Like the cocobolo plane, I am using only a washita stone to sharpen. I did use the jasper on that plane to pare, but that was into the grain on cocobolo, just a bit too much for the level of sharpness a washita provides.

[Brian Holcombe]

Awesome. There is a beautiful quality to clear, straight grained, heavy lumber that I find irresistible. I think it is under appreciated in a world that admires wild grain.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Looking forward to it. Thank you for taking the time.

[Prashun Patel]

Looking forward to this.
I forgot to warn you about the aroma of any wood coming from me. I store it in my warehouse at work. We blend fragrance oils here. Any wood I take home tends to 'offgas' for a couple days a faint powder/musk odor. Fortunately, you didn't find it distasteful.

[David Weaver]

Fortunately, you didn't find it distasteful.

The blend that the beech took on has quite a nice smell, made my garage smell lovely :) It could be by chance that the combination smells like essential oil of tobacco, and I know not everyone likes that smell, either, but I think it's a great smell (the users of tabac shave soap think the same, even though our wives tell us we smell like old men).

That fragrant smell is fighting the good fight against the diaper genie, which is kept nearby. Yesterday, the diaper genie was winning, unfortunately.

[Prashun Patel]

Fortunately we don't use Skatol any more, otherwise both the beech and the Genie would be rowing in the same, unfortunate direction.

[Jim Matthews]

I think it is under appreciated in a world that admires wild grain.

You need only struggle with interlocking grain a first time to gain this insight.
Scraping an entire kitchen's worth of Birdseye maple made me appreciate good veneer.

[Jim Matthews]

... even though our wives tell us we smell like old men.

Is this observation made, on days when you have not shaven?
I believe the "old man smell" is brought on by the presence of things like diaper pails, and Transformers lunchboxes.

[Brian Holcombe]

Very true! I've been planing interlocking white oak and rock maple this week, so the 12/4 straight grained walnut I bought is looking really appealing to me right now. Every once in a while I stop and plane some straight grained white ash just to remember what it's like.

[Brian Holcombe]

I'll have to put a diffuser's worth of green irish tweed in the workshop in case I have guests.

[David Weaver]

Is this observation made, on days when you have not shaven?
I believe the "old man smell" is brought on by the presence of things like diaper pails, and Transformers lunchboxes.

It's made specifically on the days I use Tabac when I shave. I just looked it up, and my hopes are all dashed - it's not only tobacco oil, it's got other things that combine to make the old man smell.

[David Weaver]

I'll have to put a diffuser's worth of green irish tweed in the workshop in case I have guests.

I had to look it up to find out what that even is. I thought it might be something that you'd put on the outside of a suitcase, or that you'd make a hat out of!

[Brian Holcombe]

I had to look it up to find out what that even is. I thought it might be something that you'd put on the outside of a suitcase, or that you'd make a hat out of!

Hah, that it does. My wife hates it, dubbed it 'old man smell'.

[george wilson]

I have mentioned that my wife likes the way I smell when I use linseed oil. Strange!! She said it reminded her of the smell of her grand mother's closet. When she was a little girl,she'd go in there and set it up to be her "office",and pretend she was in business.

I have never cared to smell of linseed oil !! Especially when it gets old smelling.

[David Weaver]

Laying out the blank. The first thing I did was examine the ends and decide what I wanted to remove. One end of the stick has the tiniest little check, so with the spare inch on this billet, most will come off of that end.

I'm going to provide all of the measurements, and if anyone else wants to make a 28" jointer and is satisfied with the appearance of this, you can just do it.

Make sure before you do any of this, that your blank is straight and square. If it's not, you might have a couple of marking problems. I mark in this order.

* draw the back of the mouth 9.75" from the front
* draw the 45 degree bed line from the mouth at the bottom of the plane to the top of the plane. If you're not sure that you want to learn the cap iron but you have a double iron, better make this 50 - it'll still work well with the cap iron if you do.
* using the iron you will use with your plane, lay the iron on the bed line to get the minimum mouth and mark the front of the mouth with your iron's thickness. (You can mark an extra 16th if you want. I think it's important to get the mouth marked right, you'll work to it with chisels or a float, and if you work outside of your marks, you're sort of in no man's land. )
* from the front of the mouth mark, draw your wear on the side of the plane. Mine is 78 degrees. You can go closer to 90 degrees if you want a little more room for error. I wouldn't go much tighter on a double iron plane. My wear is 1" high. It's about that on all of the single iron planes I have.
* connect a 60 degree line from the top of the plane to the wear. I don't know what's typical. I have some less steep than 60 and some more.
* draw a center line on the top and bottom of the plane
* transfer the escapement and bed lines to the top of the plane and draw a box to be mortised around the center line 1/2" less than the width of your iron at the bottom (that gives you quarter inch abutments, which will look nice. ( I'm going to talk about the vintage irons in a separate post - it's important to the measurements. )
* find the width of the iron where it will sit at the top of the mortise. Add a fat 16th for lateral movement (you can do more if you want, but less looks better - it should only be a problem if your iron is ground way out of square). In this case, my top width at the bed is going to be 2.5" + a 16th, but I'm going to work just inside those pencil lines to give me a fat 16th of lateral movement.
* The distance between the back of the bed and the abutment at the top of the mortise will be 1 and 3/16 ths of an inch. Mark it on the top. If you are not using a double iron or vintage irons, you will need a different mark. please don't go to the trouble to make a plane like this and then insert a stanley iron and cap iron in the plane.
* turn the plane over to the bottom and mark the mouth width - it should be exactly the iron width. You don't want it to be any wider than just letting the iron through when you're done. If it's wide, you'll have lateral adjustment problems. I wrote myself a note to make sure I don't remove my lines completely, or I'll have lateral slop.

Pictures of what everything looks like - the side.

297003

The top of the plane
297005

The bottom / mouth area
297006

[David Weaver]

About the vintage irons:

the vintage irons are tapered in their thickness and they're also tapered in their width. In my case, the iron is a 16th narrower where it comes out of the mortise than it is at the business end, where it's about exactly 2.5". When I insert the iron, it still has to pass through the top of the mortise, so the top has to be at least 2.5" plus a little. That's just about perfect for an attractive setup at the top of the plane, and it will give me enough for lateral adjustment.

Keep that taper on the irons in mind when you mark the top of your mortise (as in, don't mark with the cutting edge at the top of your mortise), or you'll end up with a lot of lateral slop which looks ugly. If your iron tapers like mine, then going just a tiny bit wider than the width of the iron at the business end should work well.

Most of us are pikers (I am), but we can at least try to get the proportions and the gaps, etc to be visually pleasing, and be mindful of how the irons, etc, were designed to be used in a plane.

[David Weaver]

This looks familar:

I do this on the bottom of the mouth so the drill bit doesn't wander when I come along to drill it. I hate that - you get long lines that look like those dynamite holes in rock if your drill bit goes off course. Careful with the drilling, do it slowly, keep it out of the wear and out of the abutments.

297041

I guess you could drill first if you like. I don't like to. Cutting the mortise for the plane is one of the best parts of all of this - it gives you a lot of time to watch the wood get worked and ponder how to speed up cutting mortises in general. It takes about a half hour to get this much of a mortise cut. I'd like to see a "real" planemaker back in the day cutting these mortises.

I used an iyoroi chisel this time (a bench chisel), sharpened only with the washita - I gave it a small rounded bevel and it handled this fine (iyoroi chisels are a bit soft among japanese chisels, some others won't sharpen on a washita very well).
297042

something interesting happens when you sharpen these on a washita. The jigane (soft part) sort of refreshes the stone a little bit. These are wrought instead of mild steel or harder non-wrought, which helps sharpenability on a washita. they get sharper on the washita than any western chisel I have.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I'm starting to think a laminated plane is just as much work... just more messing around and less woodworking

[Kees Heiden]

I've once seen a Japanese video from a guy bashing out dai mortices at high speed. If someone knows where to find that one?
The planemakers fom yesterday were expected to complete about 5 bench planes a day! A long day perhaps, buts still, that's fast.

[David Weaver]

Mark Hennebury put up a video if hisao working in context, and he was using a 6 pound hammer to cut mortises in planes. The speed that he cut macassar ebony was shocking, though it looked subtle when he was doing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KaeQxEr30Q&feature=youtu.be (right at 1 hour - after he goes through his knuckle cracking routine)

There's a familiarity with what you can do when you have experience that I've never been able to...well...experience in woodworking.

[David Weaver]

I'm starting to think a laminated plane is just as much work... just more messing around and less woodworking

I think that's probably true to make one with decent aesthetics, though a beginner could make one without having to chisel anything.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

It takes about a half hour to get this much of a mortise cut. I'd like to see a "real" planemaker back in the day cutting these mortises.



I remember seeing a video of French or Swiss plane makers, they just had a big honking chisel, and most of the force came from leaning into the thing with their shoulder…

[Matthew N. Masail]

I remember seeing a video of French or Swiss plane makers, they just had a big honking chisel, and most of the force came from leaning into the thing with their shoulder…

I remember that, but the shoulder thing was for paring not chopping. looked like a aweful idea health wise, but what do I know.

[David Weaver]

After about two more hours, I'm here. The top of the mortise got a little wider than I wanted it *again*, and though I said something about the mouth, I have a stray couple of strokes there, too, laterally (I hate that).

297069

(at the bottom here). The bevel on the iron doesn't show up well, but it fairly even, that bottom overstroke is ugly, though. I remember thinking last time I did this that I'd open that little bit very last, but I didn't remember it until afterward.

297070

When you're an amateur, you're just constantly reminded of it.

I know i'm not doing things the way I did last time, because I don't really have a routine.

I'm going to mark the cut to open up the mortise in preparation for cutting the eyes, and at the same time, I think the width of the abutments (taper them). They don't need to be a full quarter inch wide down at the bottom.

The wide end of the escapement at the top on my planes is about a quarter inch wider than the back of the mortise. It makes nice proportions, I think, because it makes the sides look thin where the eyes are. The fatter the cheeks are left below the top of this line, the wider the eyes will be. If the cheek is left a bit convex inside, it's easy to cut the eyes with a little curve at the bottom. If those facets inside on the cheeks are flat like a pane of glass, then the eyes tend to have straight lines along their length.

Anyway, I marked the width of the plane in general, as well as where I want the chamfer to terminate (which gives me a visual guide to work the eyes to evenly when I cut them later.

A "good" maker would probably chisel these, I floated them to be safe (with a cheek float). The thing about the cheek float is that you can sort of move it diagonally, semi draw filing and get each side cut out in five minutes. I didn't know this before and I really sweated cutting straight on with the cocobolo plane. What came out of the float this time was like little spirals. Really nice.

If you buy floats or make them, give them a pass with the file often. If they are even mildly dull, they cut poorly. If they are sharp, they cut great.

It doesn't look like it here, but the front of the mortise is a quarter wider than the back. The back is a fat 2.5" and the front is 2 3/4"

297072

It's nice to work with a plane that has flat sides, compared to the coffin smoothers.

[David Weaver]

A couple of more hours, and the plane is working as a plane. This wedge has a terminal problem, though, it's a short 16th too narrow, I got in a hurry and that creates a trap. The mouth where it was was a bit tighter than it needed to be, too, so I widened it to about a 16th. A tight mouth on a plane like this is sort of like alloy wheels on a chevette.

297086


The eyes and stuff will make more sense once I plane the sides to width (the overall width of the plane will be trimmed to the first line and the chamfer from that will be made to the second. Next time, I won't leave this step, there is no risk in cutting the eyes in beech like there was in cocobolo, so no risk in needing to have room to take a second try (cocobolo breaks out and splinters and breaks out at the edges of the cuts sometimes.

This is my choice of handles, maybe with a slight change to the design in the front.

297087

[Brian Holcombe]

Coming along nicely!

[Charles Bjorgen]

David -- what does the term "Eyes" refer to in a wooden plane? You used this term in your cocobolo plane project. I should have asked at that time but did not. I'm guessing it refers to the abutments that keep the wedge in place. But maybe not...

[David Weaver]

Thanks Brian.

Charles, the eyes are the parts that are semi oval shaped at the top of the mortise. I trouble about them because they are not done very well on a lot of later planes, and if they aren't done right, they take away a lot as far as looks go, just like a funny handle would.

[David Weaver]

Eyes after thicknessing the sides and adding the bevel (the front and back will be beveled , and the back rounded, later).

I forced myself to use a single old millers falls iron that already had some use on it with, with the cap iron set close, to run the 1/8" approximate off of each side of the plane. It's surprising how long the old irons will cut when you push them.

They won't match new irons, but the fact that they will do as well as they do is something I couldn't grasp even a couple of years ago. The fact that the plane will continue to cut without doing damage because of the cap iron itself is helpful. Unlike the cherry, there will be no 1 hundredth thick shavings coming off of the beech at full width.

(yes george, the lower line of these eyes will get a little bit of correction as part of the cleanup before the plane is done. )

297088297089

[Charles Bjorgen]

Charles, the eyes are the parts that are semi oval shaped at the top of the mortise. I trouble about them because they are not done very well on a lot of later planes, and if they aren't done right, they take away a lot as far as looks go, just like a funny handle would.
Thanks, David. I see it now.

[David Weaver]

I am in need of some hardware for this plane. Not something I was expecting to look for, but if you look closely at the front of the JT brown plane's handle (you don't really need to look) there is a round headed lag screw in the handle front.

I have had handles out of their mortises a fair amount lately, but I can't recall what a consistent mortise depth is, I think it's probably closer to an inch. I thought it might be 3/4", so I've cut my handle at 3/4", but upon staring at it, the tenon seems a bit short for a mortise in the body (as in, it would probably be better and strong if it was longer. I'm going to go with it for now, I can make another one if it's actually a problem.

what I *don't* have is a proper style lag screw 2" long in the front of the handle, and google image, etc, is not showing me much that looks remotely similar. Figure the lag screw in the jt brown is standard head with a head about 1/8" thick, maybe 1/2 or 5/8" wide, and i'm not sure what the diameter of the screw is on the outside of the threads, probably 3/16" or 1/4" - it's not small.

Oh yeah, and while making the handle last night, I dropped the plane as it sits in those pictures on the floor - I can't even remember how, but so much for a spotless plane to start!!

Fortunately, it landed on its front corner and I just have a dent under the front right corner - unsightly, but nearly so much as it would've been if it fell and broke a chunk off at the chamfer. I doubt it's the last time it will be dropped run banged into something.

Anyway, anyone have any clue where to source a screw like the one I'm describing?

[Doug Trembath]

Sorry, Dave, but for the life of me I can't picture the screw you need in my limited brain. I also can't see it in the pics you provided earlier. How about a pic of the screw? I know some places to get hardware locally, or we could fashion one and age it if needed.

Doug Trembath

[george wilson]

David,are you certain that screw is original? Do you make your mortises slant a bit forward,both on the front and real surfaces? You probably know this,but the slanted mortise makes it impossible to push the handle out when pushing forwards. I have not had much trouble with handles coming out,but have seen a few planes with a non original nail or screw driven into the front part of the handle.

Do post a picture anyway. Good and close up.

[David Weaver]

Not sure if it's original, George, but it's been in there for a very long time.

I have cut the handle with a forward slant, though it goes I think opposite of what you're thinking. In the last plane I took the handle out of (because it was loose and needed to be reglued), the slant was forward with the top of the tenon at the surface of the plane further forward than the back. I have to assume that was for fitting ease, but I don't know. The back was straight up and down.

I'll get a picture of the lag screw tonight.

[george wilson]

Not sure what you are saying,David. If you make the handle fit both ends in a slanted mortise,it will just not budge with a forward push,where,of course,is where the effort is placed.

[Kees Heiden]

If I remember George correctly, the front and the backside of the tenon are angled forward. The mortise is angled like wise of course. Now when you push the plane forwards, the handle wants to tilt forward too, but it can't, because of that angled backside of the tenon. The front is also canted, otherwise you couldn't insert the handle into the mortise.

But a plane isn't only pushed forward, it is also to be lifted on the handle quite often, and especially with a big heavy jointer, that is quite strenous on the glue too. So you very often see a screw through the nose of the handle in an old plane.

Don't you have round headed wood screws overthere? It needs to be a large one of course.

[David Weaver]

Sorry, Dave, but for the life of me I can't picture the screw you need in my limited brain. I also can't see it in the pics you provided earlier. How about a pic of the screw? I know some places to get hardware locally, or we could fashion one and age it if needed.

Doug Trembath

it's just like a lag screw like these, except older, and I think threaded all the way up to the head, and the head is round instead of hex with a standard screwdriver slot across it. But the thickness of the head is similar.

I'll have go to check my plane box, as I've cut down a few old planes and maybe there's a chance I have one and don't remember it. Either way, I'll try to remember to take a picture.

[David Weaver]

I was wrong about the screw. It's an old tapered head wood screw with a standard slot in the jt brown. I know it's not the first plane I had where that screw was in the front of the handle, though. I'm sure I have something appropriate.

[Matthew N. Masail]

may I suggest you use a stainless or a screw with a alen-key head instead of a straight slot. I'm sure you know single slotted screw can be a pain to get out 10years down the road. HNT used a alen head screw, I don't think it looks distasteful like a philips would.

[David Weaver]

I'll insert the screw with beeswax and oil. You're right that an Allen key screw would be easier to get out, but I just can't live with the look.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I wonder did the old craftsman have alen- heads ( no pun intended..)

[Pat Barry]

Screw the screw.... You should really try that idea George has

[David Weaver]

I am already making the handle that way. The screw is just insurance on the front of the handle lifting at all. The slants on the handle don't necessarily keep it from coming loose, they just keep the plane from dropping off of the handle while you're using it. I've got several old planes that need to come apart and be reglued, but they are no threat of coming apart because the mortise was cut that way.

[Matthew N. Masail]

David do you intend to glue it also? I making a jack plane right now, I'm considering having a snug fit mortice with a stanley style screw (I'd use a alen head wood screw and go mabybe 1 inch into to wood)

[David Weaver]

Definitely on the glue. If you don't glue it, it will shift around tiny amounts while you're using it, which is very annoying, even if it's not a threat to come apart. It's like using a stanley plane where the handle is just a tiny bit loose and it clicks around under your hand. VERY annoying.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Then I wonder what do HNT planes do (yeah I know I bring them up a lot lately), I got to try a jack plane and the handle had a alen screw on top, so is he relaying on the "mild steel" wood of his again? (won't compress in use)

Edit: I have used a wooden plane with a screwed on stanley handle (as an experiment) and it was ok. I don't see how the end grain would compress enough to cause a loose feeling tote? especially with the screw holding in down with a fair bit of friction. am I wrong? maybe just a drop of glue on the end grain.

[David Weaver]

Well, the screw is holding only the front. Over time, the handle is going to get a lot of pressure, and I'll probably be cutting that mortise by hand to begin with instead of drilling and paring. The screw in the front of the handle is keeping the front end from rising out of its taper, but the back where the taper is also somewhat gradual is not going to have anything holding it in. If it's worked a little bit over time, it'll develop the "clack clack" feeling that happens when you're using it hard.

I've got a try plane in that condition right now (but with no front screw) and though it's been used for months now in heavy work, the handle just doesn't come out.

I'm not sure what HNT does, the only plane I ever had from them had no handle on the back, but I'm sure Terry Gordon does something sound.

[george wilson]

The back of the handle DOES have something holding it in. You need to have the contoured back of the handle fit into the angled back part of the mortise. With BOTH the front and the back fitting into the angled mortise,the handle cannot rise up when you are pushing forward. The glue is only to hold the handle in while you pull the plane BACKWARDS.

I hope this is making sense to you.

[David Weaver]

George, that's right. That's how my handle is thus far without screw. It could not come out on a forward stroke as the back has less taper than the front, but it does have some. Pressure on the handle would lever it so that the front couldn't rise and if the front couldn't then neither could the back. I'd imagine the clacking feel that I'm referring to is a handle moving only a small fraction of a millimeter, but you can feel it and it's annoying. I like them to be glued in solid.

A screw in the front of the handle is sort of like belt and suspenders, but it would ensure that the handle couldn't come out going backwards, anyway. Of all of the wooden planes I've gotten, probably 10-20% of them have had that screw, maybe signaling that there are other people who would also wear belt and suspenders.

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks a lot David I'm really enjoying your build. I look forward to seeing the handle and how you mortice it into the body and the final fitting of the wedge/mouth etc.

Your comments and insights about your process and objectives at each stage of the build are also really insightful. For example, hearing your description of what you're trying to accomplish in each stage of mortising the bed for the iron and abutments have given me a much better understanding of how to attempt this.

Any advice about how you get the bed for the plane iron straight, level and at the proper angle? Do you use a 45° guide block clamped to the top of the plane body to keep your chisel at the desired 45° angle? I've built lots of laminated planes but have never attempted a solid body plane because I can't figure out how I would get the blade bed straight, flat and co-planar with the sole. I assume that's important to both keep the iron stable when taking thick shaving and also to allow for accurate adjustment of the cutting-edge parallel to the sole?

Thanks again for taking the time to post pictures and share your knowledge.

All the best, Mike

[David Weaver]

I lay out the angle on the side of the plane with a protractor, draw the back line of the mouth on the bottom of the plane and then take that line and put a (noncritical) angle of 45 degrees on the other side of the plane.

When mortising the bed, i leave the mortise about a quarter inch short of the line at the bottom of the plane, just eyeballing. i don't use guide blocks anywhere or anything like that, not that it wouldn't be a good idea to get close, but the money shot with the bedding comes when you bed the iron, and it's really not critical that it's perfect to your starting line.

If you were to leave it just short at the top, then you could end up with a bed of 46 degrees or 47 degrees or something, but it really wouldn't matter as long as it's flat.

Anyway, once I've drilled through the mouth, I just continue then to work what's left of the bed down close to where the mouth is (the wood is pretty resilient) and I have an almost flat bed with a lot of imperfections. When it's time to get those out, it's entirely by eye. If the mouth is not level, you can see a lot of trouble awfully quick just with a naked eye. I sight down it straight and across the diagonals, and if it looks good both ways, it will take *very* little work to get the iron to bed to it. When bedding the iron, I just want even contact somewhere near the top of the mortise as well as at the bottom, and I don't want any irregularities near where it's bedded well that could cause any part of the iron to high center. The even bed at the top and the bottom ensures that when you get a good wedge fit later, the plane will adjust like you expect it to (as in, when you strike the iron in the middle, it will advance evenly, and when you strike the back of the plane, it will retract). You can use a plane without it adjusting perfectly, but it's nice when it does.

I suppose the critical part of it is not overcutting past your initial line when making the first rough mortise, which is why I leave it about a quarter inch short until I open the mouth from the bottom.

The only jig of any type that i've used for any of it is a spacer to cut the abutments, and that's courtesy of Steve V saying in another thread that it would eliminate a lot of paring of abutments (which is a good thing).

After getting what looks like an even bed by eye, it only takes about 5 minutes to get the iron to bed where I want it, and when I'm nearly done and fitting the wedge with the iron I'm actually going to use (jim matthews provided me with a nicer iron, and since I'm probably going to redo the wedge, I'll check the bed with the new iron), i'll check the bed again with the iron under tension to make sure it's beddling like I want it to. All I use to mark the bed is a drop of oil spread over the back of the iron. I put a picture of the scraper chisel I showed in another thread - it's a two hander, blunt on the front with a crisp bottom, and makes very short work of any bedding of irons.

It may be a wise thing to use a guide block when trimming the sides of the handle mortise, I don't know, but I love so much working by eye - things seem to come out OK regardless.

[george wilson]

I feel that a screw sort of messes up the design,David. But,of course,it's up to you to secure the handle as you feel fit.

[David Weaver]

It does a little. I'll sink it flush and make sure it has nice color.

Besides, george, I already dropped the blank on the floor the other day, so it's got visual boogers right off the bat!!

[george wilson]

Can't you apply wet paper towels and a clothes iron or soldering iron behind it? That will get nearly all of the mashed corner. Or,saw a little off the end. Who's gonna know?

[David Weaver]

I was thinking about steaming it. Laziness is going to be the issue. it's a dent about 3/8" wide and probably 3/4" long, and it's lifted probably a 16th. I already planed off any part of it that protruded from the side of the plane (I troubled to make sure the sides of this plane are square, but I don't know that i'd use it to shoot long edges - it's too big). I want to use this plane, too, it's only a matter of time until I run it into a holdfast or another plane sitting on the bench.

[george wilson]

3/4" would be a bit much to saw off!!

[David Weaver]

Yes, I'm not going to saw it off. It only encroaches laterally a little bit. I was pondering not showing it in pictures on here because it's so unsightly, but I may include a final picture. I was, after all, making a plane to use and not to look at.

I'm never going to be able to pry your big jointer out of your hands if you know I drop planes, anyway!!

[Pat Barry]

I'm never going to be able to pry your big jointer out of your hands if you know I drop planes, anyway!!
I seem to recall quite a discussion about designing new planes that are capable of being dropped without damaging the planes - something for beginners. Welcome to my world. LOL

[David Weaver]

Yeah, my daughter was standing there in front of me. She's not afraid to get in the way in the shop, but I think she had kind of that "I think he's going to think I did it" look on her face, and she was stunned by the noise.

I have never dropped a metal plane that I can recall, but I'll bet I've pushed wooden planes off of my bench at least a dozen times over the last 5 years (because they're close to the edge of the bench and I know it but I don't want to stop what I'm doing - and they're often about $20 each), but when metal plane gets remotely close, I always move it right away.

I guess that's the height of laziness. This is the first wooden plane that I didn't do that, though, and I can't even remember what I did - if I just had a spaz or what, I wasn't working on the plane at the time and it was just sitting at the front of the bench.

[David Weaver]

Do the initial shaping on the handle (especially at the bottom) then trace the mortise lines around it.


297301
A gouge works well to work safely to the lines. Anything else runs the risk of having a fiber lift and bungle the surface.

297302

Mortise looks something like this after cleaning the bottom out with a chisel and checking it with a square to make sure the depth is good
297303

Unfortunately, what I didn't expect is that the handle could really crush its own fibers under a tight fit. And it did. It also started a hairline crack where these fibers broke, so next time I make a plane, i'll leave the mortise a bit more loose.

297306

And the handle sunk in the plane - the damage behind the handle is there, but it's not too severe.
297307

This handle needs some aesthetic help yet, it's looking a little slab sided. I think even though it's fitted I can get away with fairing the curve without making it look too bad. It's also a bit too fat at the top, and from the feel I'd like the handle to have a little more downward angle, so I can push the part where the web of your hand fits inward a little bit and clean up those curves.

After that, it'll just be cutting the bevels on the front and back and then rounding over the rear end a little bit, and them some kind of quickie finish.

I'll fit the other iron and another wedge after I've used it a little bit.

[David Weaver]

This picture illustrates the handle's problems a little better. From a visual perspective, it's slab sided and dominating looking for the plane, and I drew a red x where I'll bring the curves around a little further on the side and a red x at the top where it needs to have some material removed. That'll make the flats a little smaller and it won't look so slab sided. 297308

I found some #12x2" brass flat head slotted screws online. I'll need them, too, because I had to put a screw in the front of the handle when I fit the too-tight handle. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten it out.

(I fixed the hairline crack - which was too strong to be pulled apart to glue - by inserting two 2" wood screws into the bottom of the handle. Very amateurish, but nobody will ever see them except the TSA.

[Pat Barry]

I think the handle looks pretty darn good actually. Maybe just a bit light in tone next to the beech. Your trimming and curve modifications should fix it up nicely. I wonder if the handle wood would darken a bit to match the beech with just a quick wipe of BLO? I assume you are not planning to add any finish to the plane body itself, right?

[David Weaver]

Thanks for the compliment, pat. I haven't decided how to finish it - I do know that if I leave it totally unfinished, it will soon carry sharpening swarf smudges all over it, so it will have to have something. I just don't know if I will stain it or not, or maybe use a tinted wax.

If I take good pictures, you'll be able to tell why the handle looks better after some modification. It's just one of those things that as you go along and you get a keener sense of proportions, a little more sticks out at you each time. The improvements are not critical (the handle is comfortable), more along the lines of when you see before and after, it'll just be kind of a "yeah, that looks better", and it's what I'm going for - to try to get it to fit the eye and be a little bit more trim looking where it needs to be.

[Steve Voigt]

Dave, I think the plane is coming along very nicely. Just a couple comments on the handle.
- i agree that a little more angle downward would be nice. A related point is that if you continue the line of the bed angle upward, that line should clear the forward-most part of the handle, for ease of hammer adjustment. I'm not sure if yours does but it looks close.
- On a lot of 19th c. planes, The back end of the handle mortise is full round and the front end is square. One doesn't have to do that of course, but the back of the handle, at the bottom, should be a full 1/2" radius or pretty close to it. I use a radius gauge to check my handles (homemade--just bore a 1" hole in a thin piece of scrap and cut it into pieces).

[David Weaver]

Steve, I agree with both of those:
* the handle is clear of the bed angle by enough to be able to strike any replacement iron that would go on it, and without hitting the handle. It looks close on the picture (I suppose it is somewhat, but not dangerously)
* The front of this handle is square. I pretty much ripped off the handle design of the JT brown plane, which has this tongue sticking out in the front like this one does. I looked at the rest of my planes last night and literally only one has anything of any size in the front, and the other 10 or so have nothing. When I refair the curve on the back, it will be approximately a half circle - it will have to be to be visually interesting. It might create a tiny gap around the back of the plane handle, but it won't be much and glue will make it go away. It's a bit closer to half round already than it looks in the pictures I guess. If the line on each side is moved in 1 millimeter at the bottom and maybe 2 at the top, I'll have what I want.

(I think the fourth picture in the series of five pictures above probably gives a more accurate look at the actual curvature on the back of the handle - it's close)

I wonder how the old planemakers decided their radius and set it up (as in whether the back of their plane handle was faired by machinery, at least for the bulk parts) I'd assume that the back end of the mortise was probably just bored, but I don't have an accurate setup, and that's just being hand fitted for me. I fired this handle profile out all at once, and I almost always have some corrections to make when I do it all at one time and don't stand back and look at it. If I wasn't so lazy, I would've cut the profile exactly to the handle picture from the JT plane, but I just coped it out instead, it was faster than putting a fine blade in my bandsaw would've been.

One other side thought, this was the first handle of any type where I've done some of the initial roughing with a chisel instead of a rasp. That's mostly out of prior conservatism. I can imagine that with a chisel and a nice working wood like this, if someone was making these by hand, they could get really really fast at it. I don't know how fast, but maybe making one every half hour. It took me a couple of hours to plane it from rough stock, cut it out and get to this point, and probably a little less than an hour to cut and fit the mortise. Something I'd imagine an experienced maker could do in ten minutes - maybe less.

I still haven't used any shims or paring guides to make cuts, which makes me happy. Eyeball from straight overhead works very well in the mortises and the fit has a lot of contact.

I would like to build more of these and get better at it! I guess that means finding a permanent source of wood. It probably costs $80 to make one of these with a good iron, more than any wooden plane I've ever bought, and it has zero chance of being better than the try plane that sparked all of this discussion months ago. That's life!!

[george wilson]

The handle DO look a bit tall and large,David. It looks like the handle on my Nurse plane as far as the general design goes.

[David Weaver]

I think when its attitude is changed forward, it hopefully won't look so tall. I believe it's about an eighth higher than the JT Brown handle, which is by no means small given the era of the plane (1820-1840). It is only your guidance on design that allowed me to spot that it looks funny, let alone how to fix it. I could tell instantly last night when i installed it in a plane. 4 years ago, I'd have had no clue (let's be honest, 4 years ago I would've rounded off every edge on it and made it boring and amateurish looking).

I'll have to measure it. I believe it to be about 4 1/8" off the top of the plane at the top of the horn.

[Sean Hughto]

I would have though the best way to orient the grain on the handle was like on a saw with the line of the grain running straight fromt eh back of the horn through the "eyebrow" above the opening and out the front - i.e., moving the more or less parallel to the sole grain line up about 25 degrees at the rear. I've never build a plane, but just curious.

[george wilson]

Somehow a post I just put up vanished. Probably I forgot to hit save.

What I was saying was about the decadence in design in general. My Nurse plane is one of my favorites,and it has that same design in its handle. I like it,but,I know that the front curve is CRAMPED,just like table legs became cramped,and even the cocks of flintlock guns became cramped. Instead of having the nice,flowing curves of earlier cocks,they pushed up the curve in the body of the cock,making it tightly round over just under the lower jaw that held the flint. This cramping seemed to be universally adopted to any number of things you can see from that period.

Table legs that once had a gradual,flowing S curve became straighter,with a sharper,cramped curve up at the top.

Never the less,I like my Nurse plane. It is somehow evocative of the Industrial Revolution. It is hard to figure out in my own head WHY the Industrial Revolution SHOULD be thought of as evocative in a PLEASANT sort of way,though. In reality it meant working very long hours,trying to keep up with the relentless power of the steam engine. Taking home,exhausted each night,just enough money to buy food to survive another day.

But,I wasn't there to endure that,and have more pleasant feelings towards that period. Perhaps it was that we were starting to get somewhere, the standard of living would gradually go up though it was hard on the workers. And upon the air. Who knows how the brain works. All you have to do is read Dickens to have somer idea how it was(and read about HIS own early life,too) But,there it is,I like my Nurse handle,cramped though it is.

[David Weaver]

It should look like this after I mangle it a little bit more. I drew inaccurate black lines to suggest where the curves meet the flats, but they're not quite exactly as they will be on the plane. 297334

[Tony Shea]

I'm very late getting in on this thread, actually I have not been around this forum for a while now. It has been so long that you've built a coco smoother that I had to go back and read about with great interest. But I have to say this has been a great thread David as well as your smoother thread. Very helpful for those of us that have not attempted a traditional mortised bench plane. I've done a few H&R in the traditional side escapement style but have not tried this type of plane. I have been wanting a traditional jack plane for some time now but have not come across a good enough example in the wild to buy one. Therefore am just going to build one once I am able to find an iron/cap-iron set worthy of the project. The iron has been harder to find than I expected but am not giving up. I want the jack plane set up as a hogging/flattening plane to give me some relief from my #5 and #6 Stanley's, just think a wooden one would be more enjoyable.

Sorry to ramble... The point of my post was to comment on what a wonderful plane you've made here and great tutorial for us to follow. There are very few tutorials on this subject, if any that I have been able to find. Oh and that stick of Beech is amazing! Not everyday you come across such a big chunk that is dry and flat enough to be usable.

[David Weaver]

Tony, thanks for the kind words.

Do you know what size iron you're looking for? I've been getting most of my double irons from the UK, either sigee64 or something of that sort for a user name, or gandmtoolsales (who has an ebay store that has a category of double plane irons, and a good clean set with little or no use is usually about $35 to get shipped here. That seems like a lot, but they are better than most irons that you'll find in planes over here, and full with good clean cap irons, etc.

Prashun was very generous to offer me the beech he has - *very*.

[David Weaver]

OK, I thought my jt brown handle was a little over 4, and this was maybe a strong 8th greater. Instead, this handle is 4 3/8" tall and the JT brown is just a tiny bit under 4. George was right, this handle was tall!!

One thing that's not right about this handle is that the opening should be flush with the top of the plane. This one is not, the opening is up from the bottom a little bit. It's just the way it is, and part of the reason it's that much taller, I must've screwed something up when I took the picture and adjusted its size and then another when I located the tenon on the bottom.

The next plane will have a slightly shorter handle that's flat on the inside of the handle at the bottom and flush with the top of the plane. It might not seem like much to adjust the working height by 3/8", but it will be something that you can notice in use.

So, the handle looks a little better now, but it is bigger than it should be.

Anyway, the few things I did tonight after cleaning up the handle. I got a washer that looked similar to the back of the JT brown, traced its profile on both sides of the back after cutting the bevels down the backside and terminating them with a cheap gouge cut. Then I faceted most of the back. It could be a bigger radius and larger surface, but I didn't go there. I did not mark the back and front bevels either, it's better to mark them. This one looks uneven, but when I pare off that corner you won't be able to tell. Sand off the facets and then burnish the sanded area with shavings.

297357

After the corner is pared off and sanded flush (I see little bare feet in this picture - that's, of course, not allowed in my shop and I didn't know it was going on until I saw this picture)

297358

After gluing in the handle (the multicolor look is due to water when cleaning off the glue). Liquid hide glue. Doesn't look great (the handle), but it looks good and much better than it was before. The nasty proportions of before smack of 1950s english or american made wooden tools where some fat pattern is made and then just run across a shaper cutter. Gross.

297359

See how the handle bottom isn't flush with the plane? Oh well. It doesn't seem uncomfortable at this point in test feel, but the glue is wet so no test use on the bench. If you make one, you should do the handle "righter" than I did.

297360

Next to the JT.


297361

[Steve Voigt]

Steve, I agree with both of those:
* the handle is clear of the bed angle by enough to be able to strike any replacement iron that would go on it, and without hitting the handle. It looks close on the picture (I suppose it is somewhat, but not dangerously)


Yeah, I figured it was probably just the camera angle.




I wonder how the old planemakers decided their radius and set it up (as in whether the back of their plane handle was faired by machinery, at least for the bulk parts) I'd assume that the back end of the mortise was probably just bored

I wish I knew what the pre-industrial practice was. At least in this country, planemaking seems to have been pretty automated by 1830. The oldest plane I have is probably 1840s; by then I assume they were just boring the slot with a 1" end mill (or similar cutter) and shaping the handle to match, maybe on a shaper? I don't really know.




One other side thought, this was the first handle of any type where I've done some of the initial roughing with a chisel instead of a rasp. That's mostly out of prior conservatism. I can imagine that with a chisel and a nice working wood like this, if someone was making these by hand, they could get really really fast at it.

+1 on that. I always try to remove as much as possible with the chisel, not just for handles but for other stuff too. Aside from the fact that it's MUCH faster, I figure that rasps are wasting assets…you can only use them so long before their performance suffers.


It probably costs $80 to make one of these with a good iron, more than any wooden plane I've ever bought, and it has zero chance of being better than the try plane that sparked all of this discussion months ago. That's life!!

Hey, just think of all the worse ways you could blow your money. At least it's something you're passionate about.

[george wilson]

The old handle mortices I have seen all were bored with a row of holes. The boring tool marks were left in the bottoms of the holes. I don't know if the walls of the mortices were then made straight with a little hand chiseling,or were somehow routed straight. I suspect they were quickly cleaned up by chiseling. The front of the mortice had to be made square and given an angle at least by hand. The whole operation of cleaning up a mortice after boring a string of holes would only have taken a few minutes by an operator who was doing repetitive work. Men can get very fast when they do the same job all the time. The holes were bored most likely by some type of drill press,with a fence to run the plane body against. Possibly a special purpose drilling machine with stops to regulate how deep the holes were to be bored. I never saw a mortice that did not have perfectly evenly deep boring tool marks. They looked like regular boring tools like you'd use in a brace and bit. Probably without the screw tip.

When I was in a furniture factory back in the 60's,as a guest,I saw a guy running a 36" Tannewitz bandsaw. He had to cut a long curving cut that was the bottom edge of a chest of drawers. At each end there were quarter circles,connected by a long,downward curving line that curved back up at the quarter circles that would become part of the feet of the dresser(hope this is clear!!!) Anyway,he practically THREW the piece through the bandsaw in a VERY FAST,continuous cut that was amazing to see. He made the over 3 1/2 foot cut right on the line all the way down. He had probably made that cut a thousand times. The whole cut took less than 2 seconds. Really amazing! You definitely could not have done the job any faster with a shaper and a template to control the cut.

That Tannewitz bandsaw was so smooth running,you could not tell it was running,except that the teeth of the blade could not be seen. Those were marvelous machines in their prime. Direct driven by no doubt specially balanced motors,and precision balanced wheels.

[David Weaver]

When I worked in a cabinet factory, there were a few old timers left who ran stuff through a bandsaw and with a radial arm saw. They all had their hands and fingers, but they worked at rates that gave me the willies.

My dad is not quite as proficient as the user you're talking about, but he can run small curved stuff through a bandsaw as fast as the saw can cut it because my mother used to make him cut several thousand pieces a year for her to paint an sell. I used to get annoyed as a kid because it didn't work the same way for me when I'd try to cut something (on his BS).

There's no substitute for experience when it comes to some things. I probably should've just drilled the handle on this plane, but I felt like cutting the mortise and gouging the back end of it. There are several things I'd change if I did it again (the bevels would be just a little steeper, the handle would be right (adjusted as I mentioned earlier) and the wedge would've been done right the first time instead of hurrying and leaving it a tiny bit too narrow.

But that's about it. It's easy to make another wedge and solve one of those problems. I'm not going to trouble with making another handle unless I absolutely have to, and I don't think I'm going to cut the bevels any steeper - it's not a plane to sell, and nobody's ever really going to see it. The experience should make the next plane better, though.

[ian maybury]

Nice to see how wooden planes are done David. It's a style of work (relatively small item, high precision, lots of detail) that appeals to me - much more than say building more traditional cabinets. I'm lying low as i don't have knowledge to contribute, but it's dead interesting...

[David Weaver]

It sounds like it's not a particularly historically accurate way of making planes, but it's enjoyable because there's no large marking, and no large glue ups.

You can set up some basic layout and then just go at it marking the next step off of the last. Highly recommended for leisure woodworking.

[william sympson]

Nice work David. I appreciate the effort you put forth to share your experiences.

R/
William

[Tony Shea]

Tony, thanks for the kind words.

Do you know what size iron you're looking for? I've been getting most of my double irons from the UK, either sigee64 or something of that sort for a user name, or gandmtoolsales (who has an ebay store that has a category of double plane irons, and a good clean set with little or no use is usually about $35 to get shipped here. That seems like a lot, but they are better than most irons that you'll find in planes over here, and full with good clean cap irons, etc.

Prashun was very generous to offer me the beech he has - *very*.

I am looking for something close to 2" wide. I have searched a whole lot online but have been checking all the local hotspots for a good set. This is not something that comes up very often in good enough shape to be a good quality user. I think $35 is more than fair for a good quality iron set.

[David Weaver]

I might have something in my bin for you. That's a size that I have some of but have little use of building many more smoother sized planes. I'd suggest something in the 2 1/8 to 2 1/4 range if you're going to grind a large camber on it and use it on medium hardwoods. Just a preference, though anything is really fine.

Online is the way to go - you can find a better iron online in 10 minutes than you can in a ton of looking, and when you're making yourself a plane, you really owe yourself the benefit of having a full iron that will last as long as you use the plane.

[David Weaver]

Nice work David. I appreciate the effort you put forth to share your experiences.

R/
William

Thanks for the kind words, william.

[Tony Shea]

I would be more than willing to buy an iron off you David if you have one available in the 2 1/8" range.

[David Weaver]

And finally, a video of the completed plane. Sorry about the orientation, I don't take many videos and I should've had the phone turned differently.

I finished it with one coat of BLO and one coat of wax.

One last thing that I did need to do was lap the bottom of the plane, so I didn't say anything about that, but you can do that however you want, or you can smooth plane the high spots on the sole until there are no high spots. Final weight is 9 pounds plus a fraction of an ounce, close to expected.

http://youtu.be/r_zp0klJS3c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_zp0klJS3c&feature=youtu.be)

[ian maybury]

Seems like the extra mass adds something to the smoothness of cut...

[Kees Heiden]

Nice!

It seems to work well enough. And the handle does look big, but not offendingly too big. Nice details also with the chmfers and the rounding at the back.

[David Weaver]

Seems like the extra mass adds something to the smoothness of cut...

Compared to a smaller plane, yes. It is between the weights of the old jointers that I have (which range from 8 to a little over 10 pounds - the three 28" jointers, that is). I can't remember what a closed handle jack weighs - something like 5 pounds. Coffin smoothers (of beech) are right around 2, and you need to supply the go-go for them in a hardwood, right from the start.

[David Weaver]

Nice!

It seems to work well enough.

Stroke of luck! It seems to work as well as any other jointer that I have.


And the handle does look big, but not offendingly too big. Nice details also with the chmfers and the rounding at the back.

Nope - I'll get used to the quibbles because I'll see it all the time. I didn't notice anything different about the handle in use, you never know when 3/8" or so will make a difference, but in this case it doesn't seem to. Before this video, I put the iron in and played just a little, and the iron was dull - there isn't enough difference in the handle height to keep it in the cut, and the fact that the handle was scraped instead of sanded makes a much bigger difference (card scrape across end grain makes it just a little bit rough feeling - it'll burnish over time).

Size wise, you can see how much room it leaves under my hands (with a 3.5" web). If someone with wide hands like derek were to use a plane, the odd thing is that the handle would fit him just about spot on (I know he's said his hands are 4" wide across the web). Given that most of the modern tools have slightly larger handles, this doesn't really feel any different (but I was concerned!!! You never want to spend time and money making something, and then make a dud that costs more in materials than a good used plane).

Thanks for the nice comments re: the details. It would look a little plain without them, so they're somewhat obligatory.

[george wilson]

The shavings shoot right up out of the escapement!! How close did you set your chip breaker for the video? You are making me want to make another plane,but I have no beech wood. I should have taken more care of that situation when I left the museum.

[David Weaver]

George, I've never measured a cap iron set. I'd say it's just slightly further back than a tight smoother shaving, and those shavings are about 5 thousandths thick - not real thick, but not flimsy smoother shavings, either.

You should make some planes and send them to me :) You know I'm too cheap to pay you for them, though. You could make a slightly scaled down buddy plane for your gigantic 3" wide jointer.

I think if you cozied up to a couple of folks down at the museum, you could probably get some of their stock. I'm *very very* fortunate that Prashun shared what he has with me. If the topic didn't come up on this forum, I'd have never known horizon had beech (you could call them, too).

[David Weaver]

Here's my pro wrestler heat post, which I say tongue in cheek because I know this stuff irritates some people. BUT -on the sharpening and the cap iron.

- The iron was dull enough that it wouldn't stay in my first test cuts. That thwarted my video efforts. So the washita sharpening is pretty much genuine to the process for a dull iron (not freshly reground, either), and I faffed around a little on the strop because I never fully flattened this iron properly (it's 95% of the way there, I guess I gave up on it at the time in an urge to use the plane it came in), so the wire edge doesn't come off evenly on the stone (i'll rectify that later). What's the total time sharpening, even fetching the strop? I don't know, but it doesn't take long and I don't have to keep track of anything.

- The second thing is setting the cap iron. I have only a couple of years experience with this (and very little with this particular iron and cap iron set*), not like warren who has decades of familiarity with the tools he uses on a daily basis, but it looks like about an extra 15 seconds to set it closer than I normally would. I didn't want to horse thick shavings in this video just to get the chips to straighten out, so I set it a bit closer to get normal jointer shavings to straighten out. My point is, it's not fiddly, I didn't need to reset it to figure out where it would need to go. I can just look at it and tell what it should look like. The surface that's left behind could take a finish, despite the little bit of curl or wrinkle in walnut that looks light colored.

* sometimes the old double iron sets don't behave like you'd expect them to.

[Steve Voigt]

Looks good! and more importantly, works well.
Any thoughts of adding a strike?

[David Weaver]

I probably won't. Presume you mean somewhere middle front, and not a dedicated replaceable strike block in the back? Most of my planes don't have them.

At some point, I am going to myself a simple maker's stamp (I've got reverse stamps to do it now), but later. After several planes nobody would take credit for, I think I could finally mark my planes on the front (the really funny thing about this plane next too others at this point is that the wedge is short, but it's short because it was made for an iron that's already 1/3rd spent).

Probably order of business no 1 would be getting rid of that filthy HF faced hammer, as the faces are always unscrewing....or at least gluing them in.

[Bruce Mack]

Thanks David, esp. the video. The build is beyond my skills, but so much fun to watch.

[Alfred Kraemer]

Being more familiar with European beech I second that statement about the pleasant fragrance of beech. It was my parents favorite for smoking meats.

Alfred

[Tony Shea]

Thanks David, esp. the video. The build is beyond my skills, but so much fun to watch.

Although David did a great job with this plane and nailed the details of the aesthetics I highly doubt that this build is beyond your skills, or most peoples' skills on this site. These planes can be time consuming for the un-initiated, like myself, but as long as you take your time with the important details then this is a very doable and rewarding project. What sets the good ones apart from the bad is how you deal with the bedding of the iron, the shape and size of the mouth, the iron, and the fitting of wedge. There actually is a lot to these planes to get a good one, which David just proved that his is, but I personally think that most people here could accomplish this if you take your sweet time.

[David Weaver]

Total time for this plane is probably about 15 hours. I know I could never do it in 5 totally by hand ,but 10 would be pretty easily attainable.

Anyway, yes, anyone who can make anything where you have to be a little free with the hands and work on the fly can make a good plane. The bigger deal is knowing ahead of time what things should look like and why they're designed the way they are. (as in if you don't have a plane to look at and someone else doesn't pitch up the measurements for certain things, you could end up with something not so desirable).

The only suggestion I have is not to use good material on the first ever mortised plane. laminating some short boards together isn't even a horrible idea. It's pretty easy on the first one to cut into some part of the abutment and have a fatal error, or drill into the wear or into the side of the plane by accident when opening hte mouth. Whatever mistakes you make in the first one won't appear in the second, and there will probably be a lot in the first.

[Brian Holcombe]

Nice work David! That turned out some gorgeous shavings.

[Pat Barry]

Nice work on the plane David! Who was the youngish dude dong all the demo work?

[David Weaver]

Nice work on the plane David! Who was the youngish dude dong all the demo work?

Thanks Pat, and Brian.

That fat guy pushing the plane is me!! I see from the overhead lighting that I'm starting to lose hair, too!

[ian maybury]

That surprisd me a little too. So who is your avatar David?

[David Weaver]

Richard Collins - now deceased actor who played Phil Collins on Trailer Park Boys.

You can go to youtube and type in "best of phil collins" and you'll see who I'm talking about if you match the picture, but don't do it if you're easily offended.

I'm almost 40. I'm always a little surprised when people expect me to be older just because I'm a crab!!

[steven c newman]

Might look into a front knob screw from a transistional plane?

Looking very good so far, by the way...

Wasn't there a dovetail like joint at the front of the totes? You had to slide the tote into the socket to allow the rear of the tote to drop into the mortise...

[Matthew N. Masail]

looks like it works fantastically... (pretty too). I think you might just get a bunch of people to start building these.

[David Weaver]

Might look into a front knob screw from a transistional plane?

Steven...wash your mouth out with soap!! A plane like this one doesn't get a knob.


Looking very good so far, by the way..

I hope so, because it's as done!


Wasn't there a dovetail like joint at the front of the totes? You had to slide the tote into the socket to allow the rear of the tote to drop into the mortise...

Other way around, you have to insert the back of the handle and the front slides down a ramp. You can see it in the step where I showed the rough cut mortise, though the final ramp is a lot more subtle (it's steeper/less taper). It has to be just a bit steeper than the angle of the handle working under the curved mortise in the back so that the handle can be inserted.

[David Weaver]

I think you might just get a bunch of people to start building these.

I hope so. Like we discussed here or another thread, it doesn't take much time to make these planes in the grand scheme of things (though the floats and such do cost some real money - but someone looking just to build their own planes and then sell the floats could do so and not be out much).

When the double iron is mastered with these planes, the riddle of the "difficult to use" old planes with open mouths and tricky adjustment is solved. It's a plane that should last a lifetime, and should the iron ever be worn out, fitting another iron and making another wedge if needed is quick.

Did I tip you over the edge into looking for some wide dry stock?

[Matthew N. Masail]

I hope so. Like we discussed here or another thread, it doesn't take much time to make these planes in the grand scheme of things (though the floats and such do cost some real money - but someone looking just to build their own planes and then sell the floats could do so and not be out much).

When the double iron is mastered with these planes, the riddle of the "difficult to use" old planes with open mouths and tricky adjustment is solved. It's a plane that should last a lifetime, and should the iron ever be worn out, fitting another iron and making another wedge if needed is quick.

Did I tip you over the edge into looking for some wide dry stock?

well... emm em... maybe.. I mean, yes. yes you did! are you happy now ?!:)


I really do think what your doing and showing is fantastic, it's amazing to think that you cannot buy a traditional double iron plane new, even from those who are making them because they all make them with a 50degree bed and a single iron. yet it seems that the benefits of a double iron and the knowledge of how to make the planes was once a fairly common thing. that's amazing to me.


I doubt I will make one very soon, but I have a laminated try plane in the works with a 2 1\8" I. Sorby iron and I think I will give the abutments a try instead of a notched metal cross pin. will have to practice on some wood first to make all the mistakes and get an understanding of what I'm doing first, but thanks to you and Steve I think I already have a fairly good picture of what I'm aiming for, just need to see how it comes into practice.


Thanks again for all the generosity!

[David Weaver]

Looks good! and more importantly, works well.
Any thoughts of adding a strike?

I feel like a dunce now. I just looked back at my first picture of the jointer planes I have in tow (which included the JT brown and the unknown double iron plane that I didn't identify - it's got a maker's mark, I was just too lazy to read it, and it's not a common mark).

Anyway - it has a strike button right in the center on the middle. Apologies for being such a flippant idiot with "none of my planes have them" stuff!! I never noticed it was there.

I gotta start dumping some of these excess planes- i don't even know what's on them!

[george wilson]

Just get on the stick,Weaver,and get your eyes open!!:) My giant jointer has a square ebony striking knob inlaid on the diagonal,so it looks like a diamond shape. I could send you a piece if you need it. I think I have a piece of ebony about 1 1/4" square laying around. Could be wrong.

Or,it would look cool if you mounted a brass door knob there!:)

[steven c newman]

Leave the knob behind, but check out the screw that held it in place? Say, like the front knob on a Liberty Bell? Those were wood screws. Maybe you could even find one that never had a point on it? 297523or just the steel one in the middle?

[David Weaver]

Ahh, I see, you mean for the screw that's in the handle on the back of my plane? That's a good idea. I thought you meant put a knob in the middle of my plane on the front, but now I see what you were saying.

Over the weekend, I located some large slotted brass screws and inserted one in the front of the handle. Cost me $15 for 10 of them!!

The things we'll do for what we like, I guess.

The JT jointer was $25 off of ebay - with an unused iron or nearly unused. This particular plane cost me about $100 to build. It doesn't necessarily make money sense to do this if you can find good old ones, but one wouldn't find something the quality of my JT jointer for $25 very often. I'm not sure that I'd sell it for $300 (actually, I'm sure I wouldn't)

[David Weaver]

Next plane will be a try plane of the same design, 24" long, and then a closed handle jack/fore 16-18" long. I'll post them at the end of this post when I finish them, along with their measurements if anyone wants to use them, but otherwise no need to show any parts of a build on here - they are going to be identical in setup to this jointer in everything except length.

[Pat Barry]

Just get on the stick,Weaver,and get your eyes open!!:) My giant jointer has a square ebony striking knob inlaid on the diagonal,so it looks like a diamond shape. I could send you a piece if you need it. I think I have a piece of ebony about 1 1/4" square laying around. Could be wrong.

Or,it would look cool if you mounted a brass door knob there!:)
I suspect that the location of the strike button is important. You want to be on the sweet spot of the body of the plane (or maybe far away from it). Somebody must understand the mechanics of it.

[steven c newman]

There is a shop about three blocks from my house. On the second floor, there is a display of seven all wood bodied Jointers/Try planes.....$20 each.

One of which is solid BLACK, and weighs about twice what any of the others weigh. Double iron, Enclosed handle. About 28" long.

[David Weaver]

I suspect that the location of the strike button is important. You want to be on the sweet spot of the body of the plane (or maybe far away from it). Somebody must understand the mechanics of it.

The safe thing to do would be to look at 3 or 4 old planes and locate it where it is on the old planes. The ideal place for it appears to be halfway between the front and the escapement. On bigger planes like these, especially if a coarse cut is in order, I just advance the iron by tapping it. It's nice to advance the iron and make a lateral adjustment at the same time when using the plane if the cut is to be light.

it's the retraction of some cutting length that takes learning the plane. In the video, I tried a light tap and then one too heavy. I don't usually retract an iron in use in a jointer plane once it's set, so this isn't a big issue to me, but it'd be nice to do it. Unfortunately, the tap on the back of the plane is more precise with something harder than a urethane mallet, but that will mark the back of the plane. I'll have to come up with something. Sooner or later it's going to get a little beat up, anyway.

[David Weaver]

There is a shop about three blocks from my house. On the second floor, there is a display of seven all wood bodied Jointers/Try planes.....$20 each.

One of which is solid BLACK, and weighs about twice what any of the others weigh. Double iron, Enclosed handle. About 28" long.

Steven, have a look at it. If it's cracked and hte handle is loose with a bad wedge and mouth patched, etc, it might not be worth the trouble. If the iron is clean and long, the eyes elegant, the handle good and unbroken and the wood not cracked, you'd do well to take it from them.

As I apply oil to this plane, it's creeping up in weight, now to a few ounces over 9 pounds. Unless a vintage jointer is really dry, you're going to find it in the 9 or 10 pound range, and the ones that are dry will readily accept enough oil to get up to that weight (they're 8 pounds or a few ounces more already if they are planes with a 2.5 inch iron).

[Steve Voigt]

OK, a couple thoughts about strike buttons since people are talking about them.
You don't have to have one. On many old planes, the only cracks you see are clearly caused by the strike. I noticed Dave had one of those big round (urethane?) mallets on the bench, presumably for loosening the iron. That's what I do also. I use the plane hammer for advancing the iron (or sideways adjustment), and a deadblow mallet for loosening the iron. That saves a lot of wear on the plane body.
The one thing a strike is kind of nice for is when you want to retract the iron just a hair. The big mallet is too coarse, so hitting the strike with your plane hammer avoids ugly marks on the softer plane body.
Something I don't get at all are steel strikes. They're ugly, and since they won't expand/contract they are even more likely to crack the stock.
I like the kind of strike George described, rectangular but turned 45°. The Old Street site has lots of nice pictures of these. I put one of cocobolo on my jointer plane (can't seem to upload photos today, for some reason).

Edit: I see I'm repeating a number of things Dave already said…oh well, I'll read more carefully next time.

[Steve Voigt]

Oh, one other thing on strikes & adjustment. The longer the plane is, the less effective it is to hit the back end. I hit the back on my smoothers but on big planes I just hit the strike or in front of the mouth. I suppose it is a matter of the energy of the blow being dispersed or absorbed before it gets to the mortise. On Larry's planes, it looks like the strike is only a couple inches in fron of the mouth, maybe a little more on a really big plane. I've tried that and it seems to work well.

[David Weaver]

I hope you get your pictures up, I'd like to see it. I like the diamond shaped strikes, too, more so than the round. Round suggests machine made to me, though it may not necessarily be so.

I strike the back of the planes with either the urethane mallet or a dead blow hammer, also. Even a rubber hammer works OK if the strike is dead flush. i'm thinking about making a cherry mallet to strike the back of my planes, though. Retraction of the iron is a lot more precise on the big planes if the hammer is hard enough to have a little bit of snap, or clank instead of slap when it hits the plane. With the urethane and such, when the wedge has a good fit and grip as this one does right now, it's all or none, and it can take several flush whacks to get an iron loose. But a wooden hammer or a steel hammer can get the iron to retract much more precisely.

I like the method the japanese planemakers use, which is to keep a block that is stationary or close near their work area, and when they want to get the iron out, instead of hitting the plane with something, they hit the block with the plane.

[David Weaver]

Next stick - For a 24" try plane.

298044

Very nice. We were just talking about rays in beech the other day (albeit the beech shown on a saw handle was european).

This blank was going way uphill. I could've bandsawn it, but i didn't. I just jacked one end and then jointed it so that the grain will be running slightly uphill back to front. I can't say enough about keeping one of these inexpensive japanese planes around as a jack. Mixes it up for us guys out of shape - back and forth between push and pull. JWW used to sell these planes (fuunji brand) for about $60, and they make great jacks. The irons in them are really super quality for $60)

298045

I was going to use the V11 iron only, but I just can't work as fast with a metal plane as I can with wooden on stuff like this. This is the first heavy use I've gotten of the jointer. It's fantastic, the best wooden plane I've used to date (which is no surprise because it's freshly made and everything is very tight on it). It works through the beech blank with ease, both on the easy to plane quartered side and the less easy flatsawn side. I rarely measure shavings, but I did measure these to get a gauge at how well the plane is working, and they're 6 thousandths.

You can tell which shavings are from the jointer, they're straight (this pile isn't all from this blank).

298048

The bottom of the billet shows the flat sawn grain you want to see on the bottom with the grain running straight down the length:

298049

And the plane that inspired me to want to make double iron wooden planes - an english plane with a nice ward double iron set (griffiths of norwich is the maker).

298050

It looks unassuming, but the work inside is so super tight, the maker was very proud of what he was doing. I don't think I'll be able to part with it when I'm done.

I'll not post anything else until I'm done (no need until then), and then I'll post the measurements in case anyone ever reads this years on when it's archived, looking for measurements - I'd struggle to get measurements right if I didn't have a good plane to copy.

[Matthew N. Masail]

David I have a measurements question if you don't mind. regarding the tote placement. I just finished a Jack, the body is 5cm high (most I could get out of the reclaimed wood) and the back of the tote is 9" away from the cutting edge (for reference I checked a bailey 4 at around 7") I find that the longer distance requires a longer stroke with my arm to bring to blade back to start the next cut, and suddenly the side stance you see in old book makes more sense. I think it's possible that the reason reeze planes were done that way for kids was the stroke length , and not because of the wight difference.
In any case I'm thinking of making a reeze and placing the tote around 8" -8 1\4" inchs away from the blade, with the reeze around 4-4.5 cm high. how far are the totes placed measured the above way on your planes? (must be far with the high body). do you feel it might be more comfortable if they were closer in term of your body movement?

[David Weaver]

bm not sure why razee planes are scooped in the back. Probably more due to height of kids, but I by no means have reliable knowledge of plane history.

I measured some planes this morning, all common pitch or York and get this:

Jointer: 11
Try plane: 10 1/8
Closed handle jack: 11
Open handle jack: just over 9

The open handle jack is slightly shorter in height.

8 or 8.5 would be my choice for your plane. I wouldn't go any closer except on a two handled plane. For two reasons:
1- you'll end up feeling odd about where the mouth is in use if you change much - like you end up short of the end of your cuts.
2- the mechanics of the plane change too much and you get an uncomfortable change of forces on your hands.

[Prashun Patel]

What do you mean by 'scooped'? I understood from Garrett Hack's book that Razee's to have lower handles in the back to allow a more in-line stroke vis-a-vis a higher mounted handle.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I'm not sure a more in-line stroke is better. so far the taller planes I've made seem to have more power in the department.

[David Weaver]

What do you mean by 'scooped'? I understood from Garrett Hack's book that Razee's to have lower handles in the back to allow a more in-line stroke vis-a-vis a higher mounted handle.

Scooped might've been a bad choice of words, but the cutout of the height of the rear of the plane.

I agree with Matthew's comment, I find the full height planes to be better to use, so I'm not really sure what the advantage of the razee is and I'd only consider it if I was using wood that made a too-heavy full height plane.

It's just a preference, though, I guess. I can't explain it as anything more than preference and feel.

[george wilson]

Razee planes were made cut down in the back for kids to use in vocational training,so David's reference was correct.

A ship that had had the upper deck cut down to make the ship less top heavy in heavy seas was also called a razee. In fact,the cut down planes likely were so named after the ships.

It is an interesting tale that Charles II had the incredibly expensive "Sovereign of the Seas" (Charles considered himself the "Monarch of the Seas") built,to show his glory and power. It could be seen from miles away,glittering with gilding. It was very top heavy(too much "top hamper"). After Charles II was beheaded,his glorious ship had its upper deck cut down as well,to make it sail better. So,both,in a sense,became "razees".

[David Weaver]

George, do you think they were cut down because of height, or cut down because of weight? I can't imagine a vocational kid (even if they were 10 or 11) couldn't handle a jack. A 9+ pound jointer might be different, though.

when I see razee planes selling for high prices (they usually have a commensurate amount of plain-ness in the mortise and escapement areas), I just wonder what everyone loves about them - when you turn around and the next sale on ebay is a plane like the try plane I pictured that is much better made and it sells for less.

I think some of it is the sense that fewer of something means rare and more interesting, but in the case of planes I've come to find out that different means less nice in heavy use. I'm not apt to fool much with the proportions seen on planes like the trying plane shown or my jointer. they leave you tired from work, but only tired - never with sore parts of the hands, elbows or wrists. And that is ideal.

[Mel Fulks]

George, it was Charles the first, there was no Charles the eleventh!

[george wilson]

I just can't get excited about razee planes. No,they were for boys.

As I have mentioned,I increased the mass of several of my planes by filling their bodies full of raw linseed oil. I clamp the plane,sans iron and wedge,on a flat sacrificial board(it will get all oily). Stop up the bottom of the escapement with nice gooey window putty. Not really gooey,but gooey enough to actually stick to the wood,rather than being dried out enough to not seal up to the wood-the oil will readily leak through without the putty sticking to the wood.

Set the plane horizontal,and fill the throat with RAW linseed oil. It will penetrate further than boiled. In fact,it will take several escapements full of oil to bleed clear through the plane all the way out to both ends.

I learned to do this from old Mr. Simms,whose chest of what was left of his tools was seen on Roy's show(When I knew him in the early 70's,those chisels were all about 10" or 12" long,overall. His son apparently ground all of them down to nearly stubs. Too bad. The son was VERY incompetent.

After being so treated,the plane will be stabilized against weather changes,twisting,etc.. It is moot if the internal oil ever dries completely. It dries everywhere on the ends and sides of the plane,and not a whit ever is seen leaking from the interior EVER. At least not in the 45 odd years I have been doing it.(I'm not going to saw a plane in half to see if the oil inside ever dried!:)) I mention this internal drying because I took a lot of flack from someone when I first mentioned it years ago here.

Of course,it takes some days for the oil on the surface of the plane to dry,being raw oil,but it will dry just fine.

We started using tung oil on our planes that were destined for use by out door workmen,like the Housewrights in the museum. Tung oil does not mold like linseed can. I have never had any trouble with my planes molding as I don't leave them in unheated sheds all year long,but some of the craftsmen had no other place to keep them. I will mention that any molding on the old planes in the collection in the museum,which some were kept in the unheated attic of the Capitol Building,only ever had a slight gray-green misting on them,which took many decades to develop. Never the less,we used tung to avoid the issue completely. By the way,tung means stomach in Chinese. They used it to treat stomach ailments. I have not availed myself of that benefit!!:)
Though we used what was proported to be 100% PURE tung oil,you can never tell for sure. In any event,it was not pharmaceutical grade.:)

Personally,I like the looks of linseed oil better. The odor too. There is just something about tung oil that I don't care for,though I can't put my finger on it.

[David Weaver]

I added about 8 ounces to a dry try plane using your method, but I just stopped the mouth with a clump of paper towels and put a measuring cup under the mouth. The oil emptied through the paper towels about once every day or so, but I just took the measuring cup and poured it back in.

I have another double iron jointer that I have to unload, but I think it's too light. It'll get the remainder of that linseed oil so that the next person who uses it finds it favorable.

My freshly made jointer is heavy already, so I'm leaving it go for now (I can't remember what I said the weight is, but it's accumulated a couple of ounces of weight from applying linseed oil, which I always seal with wax because I have had the linseed oil mold before.

The side of the plane above can be seen reflecting the shavings on an oiled and waxed surface (which is usually a bit dull). I'd attribute that to planing the sides of the plane instead of sanding them, despite the comments that we often see that nobody can see the difference between a planed and sanded surface.

[george wilson]

The oil filling really works great with very old wood,like an old wooden plane.

I made my large jointer from an old piece of maple that had started to be a bedstead. It was so old that the maple had actually turned a medium brown color. Dry as a bone. Really sucked up the oil. That plane is heavy,and I could get a good shove going,which would carry the plane across a 3' long board pretty well.

Just situate your strike knob in the center of the front end of the plane. Center it up in the area between the front edge of the escapement,and the front edge of the plane. This has always worked fine for me,and is aesthetically pleasing. Pops the iron right back when given a smack with a mallet. There is no point at all in making the strike knob FLUSH. Make it raised enough that you won't accidentally dent up the area around the knob. Everything on my large jointer is somewhat exaggerated,but my diamond shaped knob is about 3/16" tall in the center,nicely rounded down to be flush with the plane at it's edges. The plane has never gotten a stray mallet mark on it.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Do you think the raw linseed oil would effect to glue line in a laminated plane? I have a jack that I feel could use some more mass.

[george wilson]

I think the already dried and penetrated into the wood glue line might be o.k.,but if it came loose in the future,it could be a problem to re glue. I really can't be sure about oiling a laminated plane,though. Probably best to not fill it with oil. Just oil the surface.

Mel,I'm sure you know I meant Charles the 2nd.(II)!!

[David Weaver]

Do you think the raw linseed oil would effect to glue line in a laminated plane? I have a jack that I feel could use some more mass.

I'd use a section of drill rod on the front and back of a plane that was glued. It will be easy to cut it and install it. And it should be pretty cheap.

[David Weaver]

The oil filling really works great with very old wood,like an old wooden plane.


Hopefully it will work well with fresh wood, too. The try plane stock I pictured above is going to be just over 6 pounds in finished form. It's a bit of a quibble, but the other try planes I have are 7 pounds, and I recall adding linseed oil to the one I've been using because it was a pound light.

[george wilson]

Be sure to use good window putty instead of paper towels this time. Caulking MIGHT also work,but it will be a mess if it doesn't. I'd prefer to stay with what I know will work. So,unsqueeze your Pa. Dutch fist and buy some putty!!:)

I'm pretty sure I successfully filled new made planes I made with raw oil,but it was a long time ago.

[Zach Dillinger]

Be sure to use good window putty instead of paper towels this time. Caulking MIGHT also work,but it will be a mess if it doesn't. I'd prefer to stay with what I know will work. So,unsqueeze your Pa. Dutch fist and buy some putty!!:)

Or, even better, buy some whiting and make your own. The whiting is probably even cheaper than the store-bought putty and you've already got the linseed oil... :)

[george wilson]

Is whiting as cheap as putty? Might depend upon the smallest can or tube you can find. I'd hope I would not have to buy a quart can for this one use.

[David Weaver]

Be sure to use good window putty instead of paper towels this time. Caulking MIGHT also work,but it will be a mess if it doesn't. I'd prefer to stay with what I know will work. So,unsqueeze your Pa. Dutch fist and buy some putty!!:)

I'm pretty sure I successfully filled new made planes I made with raw oil,but it was a long time ago.

I can't see why it wouldn't work well with them - they have a bunch of straws that have never been capped with other oil, etc.

[Zach Dillinger]

Is whiting as cheap as putty? Might depend upon the smallest can or tube you can find. I'd hope I would not have to buy a quart can for this one use.

I buy whiting chalk for about $5 a kilogram. The little tiny tub of store bought putty, at least in these parts, costs about the same. The whiting has myriad other uses as well.

[David Weaver]

Is whiting as cheap as putty? Might depend upon the smallest can or tube you can find. I'd hope I would not have to buy a quart can for this one use.

I'll probably just cut a piece of rubber and plug it. That will be free.

[Zach Dillinger]

I'll probably just cut a piece of rubber and plug it. That will be free.

Free is good :)

[george wilson]

I can practically guarantee that your rubber plug will leak all the oil out. You need the stickiness of the putty to really get into the grain of the wood to seal off the leaking. It will still leak some,even at that,but it remains the best way I have found to plug your plane up.

Here's an idea I just thought of: Get a piece of really soft but not porous rubber sheet. Cut a 2" x 3" piece of it and place it between the plane and a decently thick plank you are clamping it to. Securely clamp the plane down,squeezing the rubber tight. That MIGHT work. Place the clamps close to each end of the escapement so as to not warp the plane.

[David Weaver]

Been there before with the slow leak!

Maybe I'll just do the same setup I had last time. You'd be surprised how well the paper towels worked (the blue shop towel type). It took a long time for the oil to drain out and the plane itself had oil coming out of the sole.

Last time I did it, I wasn't thinking and waxed the plane first, so I don't think the oil had the chance to move unrestricted like it would've if I'd have not oiled it.

[george wilson]

Not sure if you can get a POUND of linseed oil into your plane. As linseed is lighter than water,that means more than a pint can to make your plane a pound heavier.

[David Weaver]

I've got a quart of oil, about 3/4ths of it is left. It'll be a couple of weeks before I finish the plane, though in terms of time, I'm going much faster this time (except I handsawed the black this time because I felt a bit cheated last time).

I hope I can get about a pound's worth through the grain in the try plane, because that's what I want the weight to increase by. The mortised blank is a little under 6 pounds, and 7 pounds is a nice weight for a try plane. I might not quite need a pound, but I have two old try planes where one was 6 and the other 7 and some change, and the one that's 7 pounds is nicer to work. Strange how a pound makes that much difference, but it makes quite a bit (makes a huge difference in coffin smoothers).

[David Weaver]

I learned something worth noting today, and that is that when mortising the plane initially, you can mortise a lot faster if the chisel has a steeper bevel. The reason for that being that at some point, the bevel on the chisel is steep enough that the moritised pieces of beech don't stick together, they shoot out of the mortise and don't stay around inside the plane, and if they do, you can turn the plane over and they fall out (vs. staying attached to something).

That and the mortise should be done progressively left to right rather than both outsides and the middle (it wouldn't take someone long to figure that out, though - you can mortise wood a lot more easily if it's not attached to other wood on one side).

Mortising is always done bevel down with the chisel so that it's climbing up the grain of the wood as it's working instead of going straight across. The cut is much easier (meaning you can take bigger bites) and the edge lasts multiples of what it would going perpendicular to the grain. Plus, both sides of the mortise are on an angle, so there's no need to go bevel up straight into the wood.

I could see being able to fairly easily make two of these planes a day if I made a dozen more, I could make this one in a long day at this point and have it bedded and tight (meaning made absolutely properly).

[David Weaver]

Finished (except for finish, and probably a little bit of oil).

Same issue again with the handle, kind of tubby at the top. I followed the picture of the JT brown handle like a slave this time, though, so I guess that's the pattern. I'll probably let in the top of the handle just a little bit go give the handle a little more forward and down. The side profile picture does make it look a little worse than it is, and the view from behind gives a better perspective of the curve cut on the top of the handle.

I was a lot less careful on this plane. Total time to this point, even hand sawing the original blank and preparing the iron, is less than 10 hours. It's probably more like 8.

I did all of the heavy work on the handle with a chisel this time, then light rasping with the gramercy rasp and a card scraper. Almost no sanding, which is left the handle just slightly less refined, but over time that'll get ignored.

One more to go ( a jack ) and then I'll have to decide if I care to make any more of them. I like making them, for sure.

Jim Matthews hooked me up with what looks like an unused butcher iron and cap iron 2 9/16 inches wide, no slot needed in the wedge because the screw doesn't come out the top like it does in an english set.

Mouth is probably a bit too tight for the cap iron, it's somewhere between 75 and 80 degrees, but I can open it up a little bit after the plane is oiled - it doesn't need to be that tight.298298298299298300298301

[Kees Heiden]

Great work David. I love to read these threads. Your last post about how you chisel the mortise is a bit cryptic, but I think I got it now.

It would be interesting to see how you get along with a tight mouth like that in a wooden double iron plane. So don't widen it too soon!

You are rather quick now, making these planes, for an amateur! Could you envision making 5 planes in a working day? That was the kind of reckless speed they made back in the days when this was still a 7 to 6, 6 days a week, job.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Kees, did they make 5 GOOD planes in a day?.. where is that info coming from ?


David, they look really great. I've been making totes lately and the top on that one does seem a bit fat. the jointer looks real good though. I found this:
http://www.oocities.org/plybench/handle.html haven't tried it yet except for the profiling which I think I like. I re-did the tote on my jack, thanks for the advice, it's much better now.


I wanted to suggest, that you might like adding a thin diluted coat or two of shellac after the oil dries. I did that to a plane that had a tung oil finish and it completely stopped the plane from getting awfully dirty, yet it keeps the oiled look.

[Kees Heiden]

I did some digging around to find out more about that in this thread: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?197081-Economics-of-planemaking-in-the-19th-century

I don't know of course if these 5 planes were always bench planes. The moulding and rabetting planes were considered to be easier and quicker to make. They were a lot ceaper too.

[David Weaver]

Great work David. I love to read these threads. Your last post about how you chisel the mortise is a bit cryptic, but I think I got it now.

It would be interesting to see how you get along with a tight mouth like that in a wooden double iron plane. So don't widen it too soon!

You are rather quick now, making these planes, for an amateur! Could you envision making 5 planes in a working day? That was the kind of reckless speed they made back in the days when this was still a 7 to 6, 6 days a week, job.

Thanks, Kees. That bit about mortising would probably make more sense in a video, but it is not too important, just a random passing thought about speed.

5 would be unattainable for me without some mechanization. If I machine prepped the blank and batches the rough parts (handle stock, and wedge stock) , I could see maybe 3, but it would be taxing. It would be impossible to source wood and irons, though. These planes deserve a good handsome vintage set, and not unsightly modern irons in my opinion.

There is definitely more speed on the table, the wood would allow me to work faster without getting nasty. Here's my accounting of speed, that I can recall from this one. Some of the steps are easy to spot for areas of improvement:
* milling the blank - 1 hour from rough. That includes jointing one edge and then squaring the side, cutting the blank to width and height (with a hand saw), hand planing the cut to finish dimension and then hand sawing the ends off of the blank (which I tried to mark and do as neatly as possible to minimize cleanup work).
* layout - 15 minutes (this could easily be done in a minute or two with a decent pattern, marking the mouth, the wear, the tops of the mortise and the angles on the side of the plane, and then a center line top and bottom, as well as the lateral lines for the mortise in the top and at the mouth).
* Opening the first mortise and drilling the mouth and opening it - 1 hour (to be ready to cut the abutments.
* cutting the abutments and then cleaning up everything down around the mouth to be able to get the iron through and bedding the iron - another hour (this would be a lot faster for an experienced maker)
* opening up the cheeks, putting in the eyes and cleaning up everything (1 hour)
* making the wedge and fitting it to the iron and cap iron - 1 hour. This would also be faster if I did a better job of making a spacer to cut the abutments. For some reason, I threw the first one away, and wasted time looking for it before making another one.
* making the handle - 2 hours (I could easily see this being halved with good stock to start at a pre-determined thickness, and a pattern. The old handles look to me like they were done by hand, but I'm not sure.)
* sinking the mortise and fitting the handle - 45 minutes (this would be faster if I weren't doing it by hand, but I'm doing it by hand
* marking and planing bevels onto the plane, paring them on the front and back and putting the curve on the back of the plane, lapping the bottom of the plane - half hour

While I was doing the mortising on the handle, I tried using a 4 pound hammer. I only got about halfway through the mortise before I had to go back to a regular mallet. Hisao swings a 6 pound hammer in that video making a dai, and I think he was in his 60s or 70s there.

Everything where we have to work to a line or create a clean plane over a long span (the bed, the cheeks, the front of the escapement), I can imagine you could get very fast doing that and leave a lot less to clean up than I would leave. Same with sawing the abutments and removing the waste. In half a dozen planes, I can do all of this twice as fast as I could before, and neater, I could imagine a pro could do it four times as fast as I do.

I guess it really doesn't matter because it's all hypothetical, but it's interesting to think about it, and the faster you can build these, the satisfying it is.

[David Weaver]

Kees, did they make 5 GOOD planes in a day?.. where is that info coming from ?


David, they look really great. I've been making totes lately and the top on that one does seem a bit fat. the jointer looks real good though. I found this:
http://www.oocities.org/plybench/handle.html haven't tried it yet except for the profiling which I think I like. I re-did the tote on my jack, thanks for the advice, it's much better now.


I wanted to suggest, that you might like adding a thin diluted coat or two of shellac after the oil dries. I did that to a plane that had a tung oil finish and it completely stopped the plane from getting awfully dirty, yet it keeps the oiled look.

As far as the fat-topped handle, I guess it's just the pattern. I've got about a dozen old bench planes, and all but a few of the crappiest have nice tasteful handles. I took a picture of the JT brown handle so I could scale it and print it to be the size I wanted. Maybe the angle of the photo caused some distortion, or there's a bit of a shadow at the back of the handle making it look bigger than it is? The jointer is the same pattern as the try plane, but I let in the top of that one a little at the back and I'll have to do it again with this one to make it the same. I've seen the handle you linked before, but it leaves my eye looking for something - a little more heft I guess, and some lines on the sides. It does indicate I was closer on the tenon for the first handle (3/4ths of an inch) than this plane, where the handle tenon is nearly an inch. Belt and suspenders, I guess.

George's patterns look nicer, but I have doubts about my ability to keep them unbroken.

I've shellacked planes before (under wax, though), and may ultimately go that route. 4 coats of BLO stopped this plane from getting dirty, but it's kind of a pain to put on 4 coats of BLO. I wonder what was on the planes originally over the stain? Does anyone know? (I know george doesn't like the mold feeding BLO, but it's OK if it's topped with a coat of toxic briwax).

[george wilson]

I like the linseed oil just fine,David. The only reason we went to tung oil was for tools stored in unheated out buildings. I prefer the looks and smell of linseed. I'm sure your planes will be fine with linseed oil. If I made more planes for myself,I'd use linseed oil.

You think your old planes were stained? I doubt it. They are just aged by sunlight. The English seem to have slathered everything with tallow,which turned brown and crusty over many years. I have seen all kinds of wooden equipment they made that has a thick,sometimes rather smooth surface on it. Must be tallow. In one of the museums in London I went to,there is a large wooden butter churning machine that is covered with this glossy looking tallow coating. It has a 10 foot dia. gear wheel overhead. A horse walks in circles to rotate a keg that was full of cream. The keg,and most of the lower down wooden parts have this coating. So did an 18th. C. wooden lathe Williamsburg borrowed from them. The tailstock was missing,so I was asked to make a new one. The whole lathe had this hard,somewhat glossy goop all over it. I made the tailstock,stained it dark brown,and buffed it till it was quite similar looking to the original lathe. I did sign and date it on the tenon that went between the ways of the lathe.

This tallow treatment seems to have been an English thing. I haven't seen it on American tools,or else I have forgotten. Anyway,your old planes were darkened by sunlight,and were likely oiled too. The oil probably helped them darken.

Your new plane looks great.

[David Weaver]

Thanks George. I know your eyes see the same things mine do, though. There's at least one other irk looking at the pictures of the plane (though in person, the plane looks a little better than the pictures would let on). That irk is that the fingers of the wedge were cut too far up into the taper that you can see. I got quick and just cut those fingers fast and wasn't thinking that I cut them too long and too far up, but I wanted to finish the plane yesterday.

That results in too steep of a taper from the iron to the top of the wedge between the fingers, and too much of the metal on the cap iron being visible. It doesn't look authentic and it was a mistake made by not thinking (really, it would be better for me to have a set pattern of sorts for wedges if I'm going to make 4 or 5 of these planes). If that taper was 1/4 or 3/8" further down into the plane, it would make a world of aesthetic difference.

The fat-topped handle, will, of course, be fixed. I'm obsessing over it, but my eyes see it very clearly.

The pictures aren't good enough to ask for any more suggestions on looks, and it'll look better once it has oil and all of the bevels and facets can reflect light better. Flash pictures in the dark and bare wood don't go together that well. The camera doesn't know what to look for or focus on. But I am open, by all means, to criticism.

I just don't want my planes to look like they were made by an amateur, or turned out in quantity on modern tools - etc. I think a compliment that they could get is after I kick the bucket, if they come up for sale and an auction lists them as "craftsman made, but well made" would be just fine (but I'd always like them to look a little better and am open to suggestions).

I've got some ideas for the eyes on the next one. My eyes go right out to the outside of the plane right away from the back to the front, and I do have a vintage plane that's made like that, but I like the looks of the planes that get there a little more gradually a bit better. If it doesn't work out, I can cut them deeper and they will be like these.

[David Weaver]

I like the linseed oil just fine,David. The only reason we went to tung oil was for tools stored in unheated out buildings. I prefer the looks and smell of linseed. I'm sure your planes will be fine with linseed oil. If I made more planes for myself,I'd use linseed oil.

You think your old planes were stained? I doubt it. They are just aged by sunlight. The English seem to have slathered everything with tallow,which turned brown and crusty over many years. I have seen all kinds of wooden equipment they made that has a thick,sometimes rather smooth surface on it. Must be tallow. In one of the museums in London I went to,there is a large wooden butter churning machine that is covered with this glossy looking tallow coating. It has a 10 foot dia. gear wheel overhead. A horse walks in circles to rotate a keg that was full of cream. The keg,and most of the lower down wooden parts have this coating. So did an 18th. C. wooden lathe Williamsburg borrowed from them. The tailstock was missing,so I was asked to make a new one. The whole lathe had this hard,somewhat glossy goop all over it. I made the tailstock,stained it dark brown,and buffed it till it was quite similar looking to the original lathe. I did sign and date it on the tenon that went between the ways of the lathe.

This tallow treatment seems to have been an English thing. I haven't seen it on American tools,or else I have forgotten. Anyway,your old planes were darkened by sunlight,and were likely oiled too. The oil probably helped them darken.

Your new plane looks great.

I think you're right about the coloring. Most of my older planes do have some goop on them, long dried hard. I like the way the brown looks, but I don't know what caused it, and I can't imagine in my mind that someone would've sat around staining planes in those days. But I just don't know about it, and i'm not as motivated to read historical texts as a lot of folks are. I'd rather find something and copy/make it than reading - I'm too intellectually lazy for much else (I could never be a tool collector, though that doesn't bother me in the least, either).

[george wilson]

Do be careful: That dried goop is VERY water soluble. I once hung a colonial style louvered outer door that had hand made strap hinges and pintles. I drilled the holes in the rain for the pintles with a wooden hand brace. Got pretty wet. But,the goop washed off the old brace,leaving pretty clean beech wood showing beneath it. I was surprised it was so easily dissolved. That was quite a long time ago,but a learning experience!

I'm pretty sure the old English used the tallow as a protective treatment for their tools at the time. It must have taken many years to dry and harden,and turn dark. I can't be sure WHY they thought it protected the wood. Moisture? Anti worm? Don't know. But,we have to remember that they likely had no heat,or little of it in most of their shops,especially in small shops on a farm,etc.. Tallow would definitely protect from moisture,and it was the most common lard they had. During the 2nd. World War,the Americans got very tired of eating mutton all the time when stationed in England.

I got very tired of it,too. We lived on a light house that was near an abandoned sheep farm. There were horribly filthy,shaggy wooled sheep running around. They hadn't been shorn in years. My step father,always being frugal,would shoot one in the head with a .22 short(They were very easy to kill). Then,he'd string them up in the basement and gut them. The stench was horrible!! Then,we ate mutton all the time. I will not touch the stuff now. Even lamb chops are horribly greasy,sitting in disgusting yellow grease.

[David Weaver]

I've never gotten water on those planes (but I did get a whole bunch of dykem on some of them). I'm not surprised that the stuff is water soluble, especially if it was mostly some kind of free rendered fat that was floating around surplus.

I know mutton tallow got a big boost lately because of blog posts or a magazine article or something, but that kind of rah rah "gotta have it all of the sudden" stuff isn't for me. I certainly don't want to put it on my planes, nor do I want to wait for an accumulation of it to dry.

Someone posted a picture of one of your planes that was being used heavily in the hay cabinet shop and it was pretty dark, but without looking like it was coated with lard several times. That look would be just fine.

(most of my planes that are bought are going to be exiting the building soon, anyway, either in boxes or in pieces - depending on whether they're worth the trouble and cost that it would be to ship them).

[Kees Heiden]

Old English oak furniture is often very dark too.

298309

But this link http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/oak-a-good-reason-to-go-to-church/ shows some church stuff that is much more bleeched. One big difference between houses and churches is the smoke. Smoke makes things dark in a hurry too. Combine that with wax or tallow and you get a very dark patina.

[David Weaver]

Kees - I noticed your comment about the tight mouth and forgot to respond. No worries, I'm not doing any more work on the plane to open things up if I don't have to, I'm too lazy. If I suggested that I'd do it before trying it out, that's probably only because I figured just looking at it that things might be a bit too tight for a chip to escape in a deep and heavy cut at this point. Use will tell.

final weight of the plane at this point is 7 pounds and 1 ounce. I was wrong about needing to oil it, and as it sits, it feels heavy enough, so use will probably be sooner than later.

The griffiths plane that spurred all of this talk has a very tight mouth and works fine. The wear is about 78 degrees or something on it, too. It must just be perfect to operate like that. The work inside the mortise and on the cheeks is still neater than I'm capable of doing - it is just unbelievably crisp and clean, far beyond anything I've seen in any other plane. Better even than the mathiesens.

The large lamb jointer that I sold in the classifieds last week was also made with a very tight mouth, but it looks like a user of the plane in the past had enough of it and opened the mouth. It is a nice working plane with the double iron set properly, though. I would've cursed that open mouth 5 years ago, but I get it now.

[David Weaver]

298352

A little better. Maybe a bit of touch up to do. Took some extra work last night to get it working right, but it's good to go now and soaking some raw linseed oil.

George, my trick for the mouth of the plane was to put a shop paper towel across the bottom of the mouth and hold it in place with a bessey k body clamp. Not much dribbled out overnight, maybe a teaspoon full, but a very large amount was absorbed by the plane.

My handle is a bit rough on the details part - I finished it with files, and you can see that I had to shim the front of the mortise - I mismeasured, but those are the kind of things where it's good you're making a plane for yourself and don't have to remake the entire handle. You can see I broke out a little bit of wood for some reason, too (can't remember why) For anyone making handles out there, I always carefully sanded those lines around the edge of the handle so that the facet would be crisp, but I think I like two fine metal files better. I just don't like to sand and thus didn't sand anytyhing on this handle, which is why it looks a little unrefined.

It's still a heavy profile at the top after adjusting it, but that's just the pattern. It doesn't look as bad as it did before pushing the top in a little bit, and it feels better in use with a little bit more down attitude.

I don't really need the brass screw, but I did it on the other plane and I figured I might as well at least put it in this plane and clock it.

[george wilson]

David,why are you just copying the old handle,and not also rounding the top of the handle as I did on my large jointer? That might make your handle look less top heavy(You think it looks top heavy,I didn't notice that in your 2nd plane.) Anyway,it would lower the perceived lines of the handle,and make it 1/8" lower in appearance.

No one said you have to slavishly follow all the details of the original handle,since you aren't working in a museum like I was. I think rounding the top of the handle would make it look nicer,too. Not that it isn't already nice. Go look at my handle and consider rounding.

P.S.:I just studied your handle. The area of greatest mass is at the top. Rounding the top over would also help remove some of that perceived extra mass of wood.

[David Weaver]

In this case, I chose to keep it for heft. Same as on the jointer. I don't have a lot of faith in being able to thin it and keep it unbroken (it's likely that there will be kids using it in a few years - which is part of the reason that I left heft on the horn, too)

I do agree that your thinned handle had better aesthetics, though I do also think this one looks fine (and is very strong) once the top back of the handle is tucked in a little bit like this.

[george wilson]

I like your handle just fine,but if you were to round the top,it would still have plenty enough wood at the front of the top of the handle to not risk cracking. Mine was much thinner due to the extra "loop" I added.

[David Weaver]

I might be too lazy at this point. Once I make the jack to go along with these, I'll do all three at once if I do that. I can't draw the lines I want to do with MS paint, I tried, so I'll either have to take a picture and print it on paper and draw the adjustments on that or just make a handle out of something soft like pine and adjust it to get an idea of what would look nice.

[george wilson]

Come on,David. If a tired out old geezer like me can do it,you can. Of course I do not have a small child and a baby to help the wife keep up with. And,you do work long hours.

[David Weaver]

Part of the reason for the laziness is that these are going to be planes that get beat up. The one I just made here already has 4 dents in it, just from horsing it around last night to get it flat and feeding properly. I'd like to unload most of my unused tools and use these hard. It's such a pain to ship stuff, though! Easier to buy the stuff than it is to sell it.

I might make more planes after these first three if I can get more beech, though. i've been getting more irons. If I do, I will try to do a better job on the aesthetics, whereas the aesthetics on these are pretty workman-like.

I still have two or three infills to build, but they take orders of magnitude longer (and you're obligated to do neater work to make them worth the time), so they're on the back burner.

[David Weaver]

One last update-after a 2 day soak with linseed oil in the mortise of the plane, the weight increased 8 ounces and the plane is now a little over 7 1/2 pounds.
P
I made one mistake soaking it, which was that I gave it an all over coat of blo before deciding I'd give it a soak, and that probably created a vapor lock.

7 1/2 is a good weight, so it doesn't make much of a difference.

[Stewie Simpson]

Nice work David. I'm with George on this one. I doubt the screw to secure the tote seat is original. More likely the original glue joint failed at some stage and a quick fix was required. I see you were using oil to highlight any high spots on the blade bed. I found stick chalk works very well as a marking agent. If the chalk wont hold properly to the bare metal surface of the plane iron, a layer of masking tape over the metal surface before chalking will do the trick.

I am currently making a batch of 4 traditional box chamfer planes, and used the chalking technique to flatten the 4 sides of the depth stop mortise.

http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/af219/swagman001/stopped%20chamfer%20plane/DSC_0407_zps60fce59d.jpg (http://s1009.photobucket.com/user/swagman001/media/stopped%20chamfer%20plane/DSC_0407_zps60fce59d.jpg.html)

http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/af219/swagman001/stopped%20chamfer%20plane/DSC_0412_zpsd2930c5f.jpg (http://s1009.photobucket.com/user/swagman001/media/stopped%20chamfer%20plane/DSC_0412_zpsd2930c5f.jpg.html)

Stewie;

[David Weaver]

Yep, oil is my favorite. I've tried a lot of different things, but oil is always nearby, you can put a very thin coat on and be really precise, and if it gets on the plane, the whole thing is going to get oil later, so it doesn't cause problems that way.

(welcome back to the board, btw).

[Pat Barry]

One last update-after a 2 day soak with linseed oil in the mortise of the plane, the weight increased 8 ounces and the plane is now a little over 7 1/2 pounds.
P
I made one mistake soaking it, which was that I gave it an all over coat of blo before deciding I'd give it a soak, and that probably created a vapor lock.

7 1/2 is a good weight, so it doesn't make much of a difference.
Hi David, might have missed the point here. Why just impregnate the mouth of the plane with oil? WHy not just put the entire thing into a bath for a day or two and then pull it out, wipe it dry, and let it sit for a couple days?

[David Weaver]

You can, but if you plug the mortise, the oil will literally go from end to end on the plane, and I just glued in my handle, so I didn't want to soak the whole thing. I kept the oil in the bottom half of the plane for the most part, but in this plane's case, it's sap on the lower part and heart above. The sap is a bit more dry and really absorbs the oil, so keeping it on the lower half of the plane after the first dose was probably good policy. It was that way on the ends, too - the oil wicked right into the sap, literally disappeared as you wiped it onto the wood, but the heart didn't take much in.

Plus, I guess, I don't have enough raw linseed oil to give it a bath either (and I can't get it locally). If I did, sitting it in oil about an inch deep would've been a good way to go.

If I'd have been smart enough to not seal it with blo and then decide to oil it, I think I could've gotten the raw linseed oil to go from end to end on the bare wood (george has described really old dried out planes where that's occurred - the oil goes in through the mortise and literally gets to the end of the plane and appears there). Even as it is, it goes in pretty far through the wood to take on that much oil.

[David Weaver]

This detour is nearing its end.

298620

[Kees Heiden]

Is that yet another one?

[David Weaver]

Yes, I just have to mortise the handle and that'll be it. Jack, jointer, try plane and the Cocobolo coffin smoother from before.

I might have a line on some more beech, and if I do will probably make a few to sell at cost of materials.

They're fun to make.

I experimented with a tall wear on this planet, about half of the plane height because the other plane in the picture is made that way I kind of wish I'd have made all three that way.

[george wilson]

Is that a Kenyon iron? Many of the saws we reproduced were 18th. C. Kenyons,though the top of that iron is not hemispherical enough to be that early,unless it has been ground to a flatter curve to eliminate hammer damage.

I don't know how long Kenyon was in business.

[Kees Heiden]

The name Kenyon has been used for a very long time. I have a saw and a plane iron with the Kenyon name and they are defenitely 20 th century.

[David Weaver]

Yes, it's Kenyon, but not very old. It's not laminated, and feels like o1. They are still for sale sometimes on eBay for cheap, but you have to track down a cap iron.

[David Weaver]

298666298667298668298669298670

Almost done. The wet on the handle is just that, water, after gluing, and then wiping off excess.

The picture of the mouth with the iron is a bit misleading, it's not really that large - the iron is retracted a fair amount.

I need to flush the tenon on the front of the handle with the plane body, but the fit of the handle is tight enough that I didn't want to drive it all the way down to mark it and then take it back out. (and, of course, I need to put the brass screw through the tenon in the front, even It's not necessarily "correct")

You can make out the bits and pieces around the mouth where I need to get in there with paring chisels and clean up the corners and such just a little, but that's just cosmetic on an iron profile like this is. (and it looks like I have a little bit of float work to do on the front of the escapement - at least the picture would suggest so).

The one problem with a flash picture is it just washes all of the detail out of the pictures - the lines on the handle (these aren't quite that handsome, but they'll be functional (and I see I need to scrape some plane lines off of the face of the handle)). I took the picture close up because pictures not close up almost suggest there are no lines at the junction of the curves and flats.

And the last picture is the four double iron planes I've made. I'll use the three beech planes. As far as the coffin smoother goes, it's nice for a coffin smoother, but I like stanley 4s better.

[Steve Voigt]

Looking good! A great collection of users that will last a lifetime.

[Kees Heiden]

My compliments too. Just put that Stanley #4 away for a while and you'll learn to appreciate your cocobolo smoother soon enough.

[David Weaver]

Thanks for the nice comments guys. I hope if anyone else is building an of these planes, they'll speak up. The discussions about them were interesting, but traffic for projects here seems to be tailing off.

When I'm building planes, I fight my laziness a little bit. It's obviously work to sink a mortise as tightly as this handle is sunk, and I'm still not using any templates for anything other than a few sample measurements off of a plane and a printed picture of a handle (as in, I don't drill the handle or anything, just cut it close with a chisel and then finish it with a gouge).

One thing I couldn't ever get control of before all of this was quick excavation of waste using something other than mortising (I had stray drill bit marks everywhere, and a drill press isn't a tool I use much). I guess it could be argued cutting the initial mortise in a half hour isn't particularly quick, but it's quick enough and risk free or close to it.

The only thing sanded on this plane is a tiny bit around the eyes (which isn't really necessary) and I sanded the rear hump after paring facets off. The rest of it could be made sharper by sanding (like the handle - not the facet joints, of course), but I just scraped it with a card scraper and a shop knife for anywhere the card scraper doesn't fit. It occurs to me that I should make something a little more photogenic if I'm going to take pictures of it, but ..well, I'm too lazy.

One final parting thought. I sharpen every float each time I do this, or every one I use, except for the edge float. The bed float doesn't do much unless it's near perfectly sharp - too much surface area otherwise. I didn't do this at first, but it takes about 2 minutes to sharpen a float if it's not in bad shape and I'm sure it saves way more than two minutes - it's the difference between fighting the bed float vs. springing it and being able to work a lot of wood off of it at a time.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Well I did acquire, very cheaply, a huge honking piece of hardwood 4inch square and 25inch long... problem is, it's Greenheart... I think It might be a "leave until you can do it perfectly" kind of wood

[David Weaver]

It'll be really heavy, but you can always make it a bit shorter to make up for that. Now you have to task yourself with finding a piece of quartered or rift to make a handle.

Beech density is pretty much ideal to make a plane that's almost square in cross section (in terms of weight). Anything lighter feels whiffy, and anything heavier feels arduous.

(I'd make another plane first, too. what are your prospects for inexpensive medium hardwoods? You can work with chippy woods as long as all of the cuts face in toward the middle of the plane, and still make something The only place I can think of where there's possible trouble is if you have to adjust the abutments - the wood will be chippy there)

[Matthew N. Masail]

I could probably get beech, there is a huge supplier of beech over here that has thick stock, steamed and not steamed and so forth. my biggest issue is finances, I cannot afford anything at current times. getting the beech would mean driving down there and buying a big board and knowing me I'd want to get some other stock for furniture and handles while I'm at it because I don't own a car.
I'm also making more laminated planes, because I don't want to chop a mortice into a unproven desing. which is for me that hardest part by far.

[David Weaver]

Nothing is cheap, for sure. The average cost for irons for me (with cap irons) is about $40, because the only place I can seem to find unused irons in quantity is the UK (or near unused).

It's funny that people see that as expensive, because wooden planes are usually cheap, but if you try to find a tapered iron out there that's new and slotted, well, good luck.

The beech cost me somewhere around $30 a plane with shipping, and that was with some generosity from Prashun. That makes the price near my most expensive bought wooden planes, and I still have to make them. Are they better? Probably not better than the three planes I copied, but better than some of the old wooden planes that I've gotten. From a money proposition perspective, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense!!!

It's easy to see why none of the current wooden plane makers want to make a traditional wooden plane in double iron format. First off, most of them probably don't know how to use one correctly, but second, neither do most of the buyers of planes, either.

If you have to buy a large board of beech and it costs you several hundred dollars, I would allocate 25% of the board to make some smoothers or something, double iron, it's easier than it would seem to if you follow the stuff Steve and I put up, there's much less risk than it looks like there is if you have a spacer for the abutments and you cut accurately against it with something like a zero clearance saw or a modified saw like steve made, then you're good to go. Pretty much the rest of the stuff is cosmetic (like if you have some blowout on the abutments or the mouth), but the plane works well in spite of those issues. At any rate, it won't take many planes to tackle those issues. I guess it took me two coffin smoothers (a single iron and a double iron) and the rest have been fine - not cosmetically perfect, but fine in use. The blown double iron coffin smoother (ugly mouth area and funny aesthetics) could be made good by putting a steel sole on it on the front.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Yeah, there is no doubt I could have a bought at least 3 premium planes for what I've spent on irons and wood and other stuff for planemaking, and it all started to save money! honestly the best advice someone could have given me back them was to buy a LN4 and maybe 6, a low angle block and be done with it. my fanciest planes are Bailey 4's with nice iron, but I'd sure love to have a LN one day. lately I reach for my 9" krenovs more much more often than the Baileys, I guess for me that's to thing about making planes, you can keep making them until you have some that just feel right and you enjoy using them.


I don't know how much the beech would cost, but 200$-300$ sounds like a good guess. that's a lot of money over here. I'm confused why I'd want to make coffin smoothers out of beech? the krenovs work well because they have a stout blade with a low center of gravity and the pushing point is low and far enough back to give good power, somehow I Imagine a coffin smoother being less than ideal unless it's quite heavy and correctly balanced. ?


I have another Idea, quite stupid because it involves spending yet more money... but I'd like to know what you think. the Idea is basically to buy a U shaped steel profile square inside and out (might not be perfect), and file a mouth opening and fit infills (I Imagine beech looking quite handsome). I'd weld or peen steel ears to hold the wedge. I imagine I'd get "light wight" infills that might just hit the sweet-spot between mass and agility. of course, the challenge was and still is arriving at a perfectly balanced designs, but with the steel sole Stanley like designs would be possible as well as traditional (maybe only 2" high) models.