home brew woodie plane

[Ron Petley]

Here is my home made plane, made from some maple with straight grain. I put in a Lignum Vitae insert.
I made the blade from 01 3/8ths steel, which I had on hand, and it seems to have come out just fine, so far, no idea on how long it will stay sharp, but it sharpened well. With the thinish blade no chatter on the thin shavings. I found I could put the blade in with the front of the plane on a sheet of paper and it is set for a thin shaving.
The plane lenght is between a block plane and a smoother to fit in between what I already have. Seven inches long and two ans a quater wide.
The shavings are oak which is what I use the most of.
It was a fun project to do that did not take much shop space. I am going to try a scraper plane next.
Cheers Ron.
100909

100910

[Jim Becker]

Nice work on that plane! And it looks like it performs well, too...'looking forward to your next one.

[Jim Koepke]

Nice, have you tried different papers to see if you can get thinner shavings with tissue paper?

Is that a bevel down arrangement?

jim

[Robert Rozaieski]

Nice! Looks like it works very well.

[Ron Petley]

Jim;
Yes bevel down, no I did not think of thinner paper but a good idea.
I also noticed it was a little tricky to get the blade in the middle of the slot, but just teething problems I think.
Thanks all for the kind words.
Cheers Ron.

[David Keller NC]

Ron - A thought about setting the plane with a shim. I used to use paper to set my L-N #112 scraper plane, and while it worked fairly well, it seemed that the paper on the workbench gave frustratingly inconsistent settings. One day while I was perusing the offerings at the local hardware store, I came across a selection of brass shim stock, and it came in thicknesses down to 0.05". I bought a piece of this, and set the plane with the aid of the shim stock and the small, cheapie granite surface plate that I have for flattening water stones - works like a charm, and is consistent every time.

[Douglas Brummett]

I think your decimal place is off David. Probably should be .005" for the brass shim. That still seems a bit thick. Sheet paper is about .0045". Tissue paper or wrapping tissue may get you closer to .003".

[David Keller NC]

Douglas - You got me wondering about it, so I went down to the shop and measured it with a decimal caliper - it is indeed 5 thousandths, not 50 thousandths as I posted. Thanks for the correction. I did try cigarette rolling papers, inkjet printing paper, kimwipes non-woven tissue paper, and several other candidates, but I still had consistency problems in getting the scraper to a setting that would take very thin shavings, but still take a shaving. The brass shim stock works much better. My thinking is that the paper was compressible, and also not very consistent in thickness, but that's just a guess on may part.

[Victor Stearns]

Ron,
Nice Job. Did you heat treat the metal that you used for the blade?

Thanks
Victor

[Ron Petley]

Victor:
Yes I made the blade out of a 01 steel bar, I posted some photos a while back with Charles Cannon but I do not know how to conect the thread to this one.
I have a setup for making knives so it was easy to do a plane iron. I found that the plane iron has more mass than a knife and so it cools quickly in the oil quench bit still retainds some heat, this is perfect for quenching if the steel cools qiuckly to about 400f and then stays at 400f for a few min it is ideal, which swwms to have happened.Charle's iron was a 1/4 inch. This plane iron got really extremly sharp quite easily useing water stones, I have not been able to tell how britile or chipie it is or how easily it dulls.
It was a fun project and doing the iron was a added bonus to the home made feel.
I placed just a notepad paper on my table saw to set the blade. I have a very thin teflon spacer sheet for making folder knives I will give that a go, or some old spark plug gapers made out of brass.
Cheers Ron.

[Charles Cannon]

Ron
Looks good. I have not been using anything to raise the body of mine. I just lay it flat on the bench, put the iron and wedge in and tap the wedge. I guess hitting the wedge moves the iron down a little more.
Cannon

[Terry Beadle]

Niffty plane!

I was wondering why the wedge is taller than the blade?

The woodies I have all have a shorter wedge so you can tap the blade after you've set the wedge.

Just wondering...?

[John Schreiber]

That looks really good. I plan on making one of those some day. Were there any surprises for you as you were building it.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Sweet little plane.