Resoling wooden plane

[Jim Belair]

I am adding a sole to an old wooden jointer plane and am wondering how concerned I should be about differential expansion between wood species. The body is beech which has about double the expansion factors of a rosewood or purpleheart which I have readily available. Bubinga is closer. Ipe is closer too and super hard, but I don’t know what its like to work and don’t want to kill a bandsaw blade (etc) for the project.

I’d like to add ¼” thickness. I think I heard somewhere if using lignum vitae as a sole material it needs to be kept very thin (can’t remember if it was expansion or some other issue).

Should I be concerned about differential expansion across the 3” X 24” sole?

Thanks
Jim B

[Sam Yerardi]

I'm not familiar with Ipe or Bubinga as far as using them for planes but I have seen rosewood, purpleheart, and beech used together in the same plpane body. I have also seen lignum vitae used with beech. I think besides the expansion factor there are some other things to look at from a positive bent (no pun intended) and that is that the possibilities of expansion typically come into play if you 're expecting changes (significant?) in humdity, etc. If the plane will always be in a stable environment or at least in one where the offending environmental conditions change very slowly you might not ever see a problem. That's just my 2 cents :)

[Zahid Naqvi]

I have used a Paduk sole on a Beech plane, and it is still doing well after a year. It's a jointer and is kept in an uninsulated garage