Infill brainstorm

[Ryan Cathey]

OK, I'm thinking real hard and umm... taking time from my schoolwork(:D) to sketch ideas for an infill. I've got the bed from a Sargent made Craftsman thats going to be perfect for it. I just have a few questions. How do I mill out the insides of the bed?-and-What do you think about this initial rough sketch? This plan is going to have Bailey adjustments in a east Indian rosewood frog/handle, yup I'm shooting for the sky. Thanks in advance. Maybe I will be able to get the picture to attach.

-Ryan C.

PS- Please forgive the sloppiness of the attachment.
EDIT: Forgot to say that this will most likely not be used for anything except conversation due to the inherent fragility of the wood and the pressure of the adjustments.

[Derek Cohen]

Ryan

I've built two infills out of Stanley planes, a #4 and, very recently, a #3 (below, 60 degree cutting angle, 7 1/2" long).

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/Stanleyinfill4.jpg

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/Stanleyinfill3.jpg

I milled out the bed with a small 4" hand angle grinder and a Dremel - not exactly high tech!.

The article with more info is at http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/dCohen/galootInfill/galootInfill1.asp

The #4 was built some years ago and looks like this:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/InfillStanley.jpg 55 degree bed, LN blade, Mathieson cap iron

Your drawing looks great. But just remember - it is NOT an infill unless the bed is wood. You cannot use the Stanley frog.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[John Schreiber]

I've built two infills out of Stanley planes
Very interesting. I'd never heard of this method. Do you use the original throat from the Stanley body, or do you fill it and cut another? How clean did you make the iron body before adding the wood? Are the handle bolt holes still there etc? Did the outside of the sole and sides change shape as you removed metal from the inside?

[Ryan Cathey]

Perhaps I wasn't clear earlier. It's going to be a closed handle(as shown in the picture) and just like a regular Bailey plane the brass adjustment wheel, yoke, lever clap, and blade/chip breaker assembly will be used. All of this is going to put in a frog made of wood. Yeah, I'm pretty confident:cool:.

-Ryan C.

[Wiley Horne]

Ryan,

Just a note. If you look at Derek's infills, you will see that (a) the wood is pinned to the sides, and (b) the lever cap is also pinned to the sides. What happens is that when the lever is tightened, the infill bedding, the sides, the bottom, and the blade assembly are pulled together as tight as a baseball. The whole assembly becomes like a monolith. This is (IMO) what makes an infill perform--this quality of becoming like a rock when the lever is tightened.

A Stanley, on the other hand, has the frog, the blade assembly, the adjuster, and the lever all anchored to the bottom (only). Everything depends on the quality of the machining of the mating surfaces, plus two screws at the bottom. The Stanley is made like this so that the frog can move.

I can't make out from your drawing whether you intend to make your plane rigid like an infill, or movable like a Stanley. But it's something to think about.

Wiley

[Mike Henderson]

That's a beautiful plane, Derek. I was just thinking that those of us who don't have the ability to make a brass lever cap could just drive a screw (with the proper type of head) into the wood and use the regular lever cap, chip breaker, and iron. Wouldn't look as trick as yours but seems like it would work.

One question I have is how did you adjust everything so the mouth would be very tight (assuming it's going to be used as a smoother)? Do you fit everything and then move the rear piece of wood forward - with the iron in position - until the mouth is tight before you fasten the wood into position?

Mike

[Ryan Cathey]

That's what I was planning on doing Mike. Like I said in my first post, it probably wouldn't be used very much but I think it would be neat to have. Just an experiment of sorts I guess.

-Ryan C.

[Ryan Cathey]

Wiley, It is going to be rigid and pinned to the sides likes a standard infill.

-Ryan C.

[Derek Cohen]

... I was just thinking that those of us who don't have the ability to make a brass lever cap could just drive a screw (with the proper type of head) into the wood and use the regular lever cap, chip breaker, and iron. Wouldn't look as trick as yours but seems like it would work.

Hi Mike

There are "ways and means" (i.e. cheats) :) to get the results needed.

The lever cap and lever cap screw, the latter especially, are daunting for most. I have the least impressive array of metal working tools - an angle grinder, a metal cut-off saw, a belt sander, files, and a drill press.

The lever cap is just cut to rough shape, the cap screw hole is drilled and tapped for a thread, then the remainder of the cap is filed and sanded to shape. This is fairly easy (unless you use the brass I used, which is extremely hard).

The cap screw is a cheat. It involved epoxying together a brass garden hose connector with a brass threaded bolt, and then attaching a coin at the top (to finish and conceal), the metal here chosen to compliment the colour of the lever cap. The coin is then filed to shape. Some of this is documented in the article (address above) and more in another I wrote on renovating an infill.


One question I have is how did you adjust everything so the mouth would be very tight (assuming it's going to be used as a smoother)? Do you fit everything and then move the rear piece of wood forward - with the iron in position - until the mouth is tight before you fasten the wood into position?

I did not explain this well before. Basically, I build the infill bed first, then fit this - along with a fiinished blade (then I am using known dimensions) - so that the edge of the blade just lies below the surface of the sole. Like so ..

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Planes/Mouthofplane.jpg

One of the opportunities you have at this point is to make sure that the bed's lateral angle is square to the sole (i.e. the blade is level with the sole). Hence another need to use a finished blade.

Once the plane is complete (sides pinned, sole flattened, etc), then I carefully file the mouth until the blade begins to clear the end. This allowed me to make this mouth extremely small, and I have been rewarded with a plane that will take very fine shavings.

I hope this encourages you to give it a go.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[nic obie]

Nice post.

Thank you.

[Derek Cohen]

Perhaps I wasn't clear earlier. It's going to be a closed handle(as shown in the picture) and just like a regular Bailey plane the brass adjustment wheel, yoke, lever clap, and blade/chip breaker assembly will be used. All of this is going to put in a frog made of wood. Yeah, I'm pretty confident:cool:.

-Ryan C.

Ryan

You may want to look at this one - very similar to what you plan.

http://www.geocities.com/PicketFence/3212/galoot/stinfill.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Ryan Cathey]

Thanks Derek, I was hoping to hear from you. BTW how is the weather down there now. I went the summer between my 8th and 9th grade year. Sure was beautiful. About how far away is Perth from places like Melbourne, Brisbane, or Sydney. We went to a bunch of other places but that's all I can really remember, that and staying in The Menzies(Sp?) in Sydney. Now that is a nice hotel!

-Ryan C.

[Michael Pilla]

I've been following Derek's post in hopes of making my own "stanley" infill. One of the things that concerned me as well is the lever cap. I'm told that St JAmes Bey Tool Co. sells parts and kits for their planes and that a lever cap can be purchased a reasonable price. I haven't contacted them yet.

Michael

[Derek Cohen]

Thanks Derek, I was hoping to hear from you. BTW how is the weather down there now. I went the summer between my 8th and 9th grade year. Sure was beautiful. About how far away is Perth from places like Melbourne, Brisbane, or Sydney. We went to a bunch of other places but that's all I can really remember, that and staying in The Menzies(Sp?) in Sydney. Now that is a nice hotel!

-Ryan C.

Ryan

Perth is on the west coast of Oz. Sydney is on the east coast. Think California to New York distance!

It is Hot at present.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Ryan Cathey]

Oh! WOW! I had to wear a jacket a few times when I was there. Once again it sure is beautiful there. I would really like to go back. Oh yeah, rugby is a lot more fun to watch than football lol. One more question. How do I go about pinning the infill to the bed?

[Mike Henderson]

Thanks, Derek, for the info and the diagrams. I, and I think everyone else also, appreciate it.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

I'm told that St James Bey Tool Co. sells parts and kits for their planes and that a lever cap can be purchased a reasonable price. I haven't contacted them yet.

Michael
If I could get a sexy lever cap from them that would fit, it'd be fun to put it on a standard Stanley plane, just to replace the existing boring lever cap. It'd ruin the plane for collectors, but it'd be a real conversation piece.

Mike

[Derek Cohen]

Mike

Try LN - one of their bronze ones would fit a Stanley.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Ryan Cathey]

That would look spiffy on my infill. I might look into that.

-Ryan C.

[Chuck Hamman]

Hello Ryan,
I thought I would chime in and show you my efforts to make a mitre plane from a Stanley Handyman #4. I was looking for something to dedicate to my shooting board. It has a 20 Deg bed angle, bevel up blade configuration. If my attachments make it I included a sketch of my next creation. It is a stuffed #5 panel plane.

Check out this site for plans for a handle and cushion. Any plane I build I start with a full size plan. Tape a couple of sheets of graph paper together and in this case I traced off the profile of a #5 to start. Print out the plans for the infill, full size, cut them out and tape them to your profile.
http://www.xmission.com/~jry/ww/tools/jy-panel/jy-panel.html

One drawback to using these bodies is that the sides aren't very high and getting rivets into the infill is difficult. The infill in my mitre plane sits in a bed of Gorilla glue. It remains to be seen if temperature changes in my shop give me any trouble.

Don't sell your idea short. There is no reason why you can't build a perfectly good plane with what you have.

Good luck,
-Chuck

[Ryan Cathey]

Thats ironic. I came this close to asking you about that low angle one over at knots. Sure is neat, I even thought about trying something like that with an adjuster set up kind of like the ones on the small Bailey transitionals. Thanks again everyone for the pictures, diagrams, and other helpful information. Once I get the funds built up I'll buy all the things I need and get it built. It may be a while. All I need is the rosewood though so it might not be that long.

-Ryan C.

[Chuck Hamman]

How do I mill out the insides of the bed?

Ryan,
It dawned on me that I never completly answered your question. I used a drill press and a large drill bit and drilled out much of the waste (for lack of a better word). Do this again with a smaller bit in the areas you couldn't reach with the big bit. Of course be carful not to drill through the sole:eek: I bought a small milling head from Sears and I chucked that into the drill press and took out most of what was left. I cleaned it up with a Dremel tool and hand files.

When your doing this, be sure to wear saftey glasses and a paper mask. If not, you'll be amazed at how much black crude you'll blow out your nose and pick out of your ears. And you'll have this metalic taste in your mouth for an hour. Don't ask me how I know this:o This is by far the worst part of the project.

The next time I think I'll check with a local machine shop to see how much they would want to clean out the plane body for me.

-Chuck

[Ryan Cathey]

I like that idea a little bit better than Derek's about using only a dremel. Thats the way I think I'll go. Thanks alot!!

-Ryan C.

[rick fulton]

Ryan, thanks for starting this thread. I've seen you have some posts looking for boxwood and rosewood. Any chance we will be seeing a post of your Stanley Infill plane progress pics soon?

Derek, thanks for adding your "cheats" and other nuggets of wisdom to this post. Your posts on SMC and WKFT are inspiring. You make it look easy, which means it might be doable by a newbie woodworker. Can't wait to find time to try building my own "Cohen Smoother".

Thanks for sharing.
rick
pre-newbie-blacksmith

[Dan Moening]

Ryan,

Bob Smalser posted quite a few how-tos on this forum (and others).

One he did was about creating a 50* smoothing plane. Part II shows how to "stuff" the plane with wood for extra weight:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=8136

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=8491


HTH

[Ryan Cathey]

Not quite. That's for a different(read: smaller) project. Here is my plan I drew up, if your interested.

-Ryan C.

[Mike Weaver]

Thanks for the info & links to other [non-forum] sites and threads folks!

This is excellent stuff & definitely gets added to my 'personal archives'! :D

-Mike