Completed hand plane

[Tom Jones III]

I asked yesterday about finishes for this hand plane that would not yellow the maple. I haven't decided whether I should pursue finishing it, or leave it unfinished. Here is the plane as requested. This is the first plane I made and it turned out fairly well. It serves the purpose for which it was designed anyway. The mouth is a little too large, and I don't think that I really needed to make it so long, next time I will do a better job on the pin that holds in the wedge. It has a thick Hock iron and chip breaker, the wood is walnut and maple scrap, the sole is maple. The plane cost $30 total, all for the iron.

I built this plane to finish a table top, I bought an Anant #4 very cheap, so with those two planes and a hand scraper I completed the top in this earlier thread:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=23338&highlight=pembroke

The picture with a carcase in it is my current project. It is a dresser/changing table. There will be a sled and cushion on top to set the baby while changing diapers. When the baby is out of diapers, you take the sled off and it is a normal chest of drawers. The chunk of 8/4 oak in the background will be ogee bracket feet. I'm building 3 of these simultaneously, one for a missionary couple expecting their first and the other two for the crisis pregnancy center. The top of the dresser is under the plane waiting to be flattened.

[Alan Turner]

Nice plane. HOpe it works well for you. I did not see our question on finishing to hold the maple white, but will offer a suggestion, perhaps too late. Put a small amount of oil based white paint in some BLO for a first coat, and this will "freeze" the white color a bit, and it will not look painted. Then finish normally. NOt white, but whiter than without the small amount of paint added.

[Bart Leetch]

Just planing along singing a song day by day...oh... oh great looking plane Tom. :D

[Philip Edwards]

Wow-looks great Tom!

How did you flatten the sole?
Cheers
Phil

[Tom Jones III]

Dont throw me out of this forum, but I used power tools to build the plane. When glue-up was complete I ran it through the power jointer, et voila, flat and square to the sides.

This plane is so long that the sandpaper on a flat surface would be troublesome. I suppose that if you already had a #7 or #8, you could always joint it with a hand plane. Kind of a chicken and egg problem.

[Terry Beadle]

Nice plane and even nicer table.
Regarding the flattening of the bottom of the plane, I too have used a jointer on an old boat jack plane ( 28 inches long ) to true it up, using the very lightest setting. However, after that I use the jointer bed or my Grizzley table saw top for the next step. You take a carpenter's pencil and put graphite on a 4~5 inch wide strip. Then with the blade mounted but recessed, you rub the bottom on the graphite strip. This puts graphite on the remaining high points. Take either a Japanese standing iron plane or a cabinet scraper and lightly scrape the high points until you get a nice flat area all over the bottom and especially in a push plane, the area just before the blade mouth. This finall tuning of the bottom allows me to get those very thin 2 thou shavings. Over a period of use or months ( wood movement dictates this ), I recheck and refine. Keeps the plane in truth. The graphite wipes off with WD40.

You might consider putting a Yazee handle mod on this long plane. That woul d be an oppotunity to shorten it a bit if that's what you want. What ever you do or don't, it's the way the plane works that matters most. From the beauty of that table, there's no doubt the plane works as is. For the finish I would use walnut oil for no change in the appearance of the wood. Lindseed oil is traditional but it will give a slight browning to the tool but it will really protects the wood the best for the minimum effort. I would put some kind of protection on to help stablilize it. Not on the bottom though as it would just get in the way of keeping the sole true.

My 2cents.

[Mike Wenzloff]

Hi Tom, following the jointer do this...use the belt from a stationary belt sander, cut it and lay it out. Personally as this won't need to be done often, I would spray a light coat of spray adhesive on the back of the belt and afix it to the bed of the jointer or other flat cast iron surface long enough. After sanding, remove the belt and clean off the adhesive residue.

Nice looking plane, btw. I would think the plane is easy enough to use with this shape, without a handle? Looks like it.

Mike

[Jim Hinze]

Tom,

Very nice plane. Very nice indeed. Let us know when/if you decide on a finish.

How long is it....22"? I'm assuming your using the 2" hock iron?

[Dan Forman]

Nice looking plane, like the sweep of the profile. I would like to try my hand at plane making eventually, they are such fascinating things, you really can't have too many.

Dan

[Quesne Ouaques]

Tom:

Very nice plane! I've been thinking about building one myself instead of buying the LN or LV for $$$$.

Did you use a plan to build it or is it of your own design? For myself, I am especially concerned about getting the iron bed and mouth dimensions correct.

Also, I've been making some jigs out of hickory these days, since I heard it was a pretty stable wood. Would that be a good choice for a plane sole?

Thanks

[Tom Jones III]

I have a couple books on making and using wooden hand planes, a search on bn.com or amazon for "wooden hand plane" will turn up some good results. Basically it is well known as a Krenov style plane. If you google search on the Internet or this forum you will find lots of plans, examples and discussion about it.

Hickory is incredibly hard and pretty stable so in those respects it would be fine. However it tends to have plenty of knots and other small defects that are part of its charm. These "defects" may cause the sole to catch on things. If you can find a clear piece for the sole then you will probably be very happy with it. For you first plane I would use whatever you have on hand that is fairly inexpensive. Your second plane will probably be much better.

[Danny Thompson]

Beautiful pieces of work!

[James Carmichael]

Did you use the Hock-Krenov iron? I don't see a chipbreaker??

[Matthew Poeller]

As with others, when I can find some time this is something I would definitely like to try.

Are they all that hard to build? Did you get it right on the first try? I assume this is not your first attempt. Can this be done without a bandsaw? Most of the plans that I have seen reference a bandsaw as one of the tools required. I do not currently have one.

At any rate, that this is outstanding. Very nice work.

Matt

[Ken Werner]

Tom, just want to echo the praises others have already said.