Made myself a trapping plane

[Jake Darvall]

I reakon some of you might like this. (please excuse my dirty hands. Been working with epoxy all week. Can't get it off)

Pinched the idea from this site here.
http://www.ashemcrafts.com/products_trapping_plane.aspx
I was going to buy it. But it could be a while because their costly. So I worked out how to do it myself.

Its a just a tool that allows you shape tapers on turnings. The main advantage seems to be that you can do this on turnings longer than your lathe bed, since you only need to fix it at the head.

All I've done is made a jig up that clamps to a regular bench plane ( so you can adjust the blade depth etc)

Pictures should explain it I'm hoping.
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/apricotripper/1-9.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/apricotripper/2-8.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/apricotripper/3-8.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/apricotripper/4-8.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d74/apricotripper/5-6.jpg

I found it really nice to use. Plenty of control I felt. Turn the lathe speed right down, and the cuts very clean.

I got the universal bearing a long time ago in hard rubbish. But I'd imagine you could do something similar with just a couple of skateboard bearings epoxied into a block of wood.

I reakon, possibly somebody could make some money out of it too. Instead of the clamps have some kind of clamping device on the plate to attach the planes sole to. So any regular benchplane can be converted into a trapping plane. Sell it, and make heaps of muney . ;)

[Jay Kilpatrick]

Jake,
Sorry I couldn't see the pics for some reason, but I did visit the site mentioned. I had just used a skew chisel in a planing cut to get tapers up to this point (with support for long spindles to avoid chatter). Does the trapping plane help to avoid this? I'd think that even with the low speed involved, the pressure required to make the cut would still present opportunity for a somewhat elyptical pattern to form in the tangential plane of the spindle even at the lowest speeds. Interesting to visualize and ponder anyway.
~Jay

[Jake Darvall]

hi jay.

I'll attach them. see if that works.