My goal is to eventually make a few planes. After watching the Williams and Herrli DVD's and reading about making planes, the planemakers float seemed like a needed tool. With the price of buying floats, decided to make my own.
I looked at the all the different types of floats and made my list of the ones to make. Figured, while I was getting setup to doing it, might as well do it all at once.
I had a bunch of old worn out files in box that had been collected at garage sales for next to nothing.
Step 1 - Was to anneal them so they could be worked. With the last few days left of spring and cool mornings, tossed a few of them in to the woodstove to test the results. When they were no longer magnetic, they were covered in ash and allowed to slowly cool down. This worked ok, but the thinner ones didn't stay flat.
Attempt number 2. Two bundles were made and wired together to make 2 solid blocks of files. The same process was done and this time they came out nice and flat.
Step 2 - Cut them to length and to the shape. This was done on the bandsaw. They cut pretty fast. A hacksaw would be fine if doing 1 or 2.
Step 3 - The straight sided floats were milled flat on the faces and the edges. The side floats faces were milled flat and the cutting edge was milled at 12°. The cheek floats were milled with a 12° included angle (it would have been easier to leave the cheek floats straight until after the teeth were made). The skewed side floats, a left and right cut, were skewed at 23° to be used for a panel raising plane - if I live long enough to make one. I used a small Grizzly mill/drill for the milling.
Step 4 - Looking back this was not really necessary, but I surface ground all the faces and cutting edges. The milled surfaces would have been good enough. This step would be eliminated if I was to do this again. I marked the direction of the teeth to keep from getting confused.
Step 5 - I used a 60° dovetail cutter with the mill head tilted 30° to cut the tooth shape.
Step 6 - Sharpened the teeth
A few notes. The floats were 1/8" and 3/16" Thick. The faces on the 3/16" thick floats and all the side floats were cut at 8tpi. The 1/8" thick faces were cut at 10tpi to leave enough metal for strength. The 8tpi can really remove some wood. The handles are just old handles that came off some of the files.
A list of the floats
Mortise floats
1 - 1/4"
2 - 3/8"
3 - 1/2"
Bed floats
4, 5
Cheek floats
6, 7
Edge Floats
8,9
23° skewed edge floats
10, 11
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