Plane Irons

[Leigh Betsch]

I'm kinda new to this Neanderthal thing, but I thought I would make a plane based on a recent magazine article. Being a bit frugal (cheap) I decided to make my own plane irons rather than buy at $58 ea. I'm an X- toolmaker/ machinist with a home shop. So I got a bit carried away and now I have 27 plane irons ready to send out for heat treating, but before I do I'm thinking I should make a scraping plane iron to include in the heat treat shipment. My questions are:
Is 1/8 too thick for a scraping plane blade?
How wide should a scraping plane blade be?
I plan to make one based on the Krenov magazine design but the rest of the irons are "inventory" for future plane projects. Got any good plane designs?

[Rob Luter]

The iron from a Stanley 112 is .094 thick x 2 7/8 x 5". I supppose .125 would work as long as it was ground to 45 degrees on the business end and it was soft enough to pull a hook burr with a burnisher. Seems to me that's no harder than about 52 on a "C" scale.

What steel did you use for your irons?

[Leigh Betsch]

The iron from a Stanley 112 is .094 thick x 2 7/8 x 5". I supppose .125 would work as long as it was ground to 45 degrees on the business end and it was soft enough to pull a hook burr with a burnisher. Seems to me that's no harder than about 52 on a "C" scale.

What steel did you use for your irons?


I used 3/16 thick A2 for the plane irons except the scraper irons. I used 1/8 for them, mostly because they were an after thought and I was out of 3/16. I know that a card scraper needs to be soft and have a burr raised on it but does a scraper plane need to be soft and have a burr raised on it also? I am planning to send my irons out to be heat treated to 62 RC and then cryo treated. I also planned to send the scraper irons along unless they need to be soft to raise a burr. I chipped my last carbide endmill cutting slotts in the irons tonight, so I gusess it will be next week before I get the irons out to heat treat.

[Derek Cohen]

I chipped my last carbide endmill cutting slotts in the irons tonight

Leigh

What type of planes are these blades intended for?

Slotted blades imply either use with a cap iron or in a Stanley bench plane.

A blade that is 3/16" thick neither needs a cap iron, nor will it fit into a Stanley plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Leigh Betsch]

I chipped my last carbide endmill cutting slotts in the irons tonight

Leigh

What type of planes are these blades intended for?

Slotted blades imply either use with a cap iron or in a Stanley bench plane.

A blade that is 3/16" thick neither needs a cap iron, nor will it fit into a Stanley plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek
They are similar to the irons sold by David Finck. The slot is so a chip breaker can be attached and moved up as the iron is sharpened. They are not exactly a copy but pretty close. I also made 4 - 11/16 and 2 - 9/16 shoulder plane irons that are slotted for the adjuster screw. I don't know much about planes but I thought I would make one like recently was written about in FWW, but I got a bit carried away with making extra irons. I figured I would make 2 irons for each plane I want to make, plus a few for a friend, and then through in a few shoulder plane irons, then maybe a scraper plane, and then "what the heck" may as well use up the A2 and get everything heat treated at the same time. So one plane project became 27 irons and at least one Krenov plane and one shoulder plane. I've been thinking of making a metal scraping plane body to go with the scraping plane iron. This is really beyond the scope of my original plan but it is within my shop capabilities. It will require a bit of CNC milling, which I have, but I've never used a scraper plane so I'm not sure if my design ideas are any good. I'm thinking about an adjustable frog angle so I could change the blade angle. I'm worried that if I chose one angle it may not be right for all woods, so I figured that I could just make the frog angle to be adjusted.