Large smoother update
Hi, it’s been a while but I have made some progress on my large smoothing plane.
I’d never made a plane handle before, so i decided to have a go with an offcut of beech, before commiting myself to something a little more interesting. I’m not quite sure what wood to use yet, but I’m thinking that a darker wood would look good against the brass sides, Walnut maybe? Bubinga? Cocobolo? Your comments would be most welcome. Also, where can I get hold of such small pieces of these timbers? I guess that woodturning blanks would be a good bet. I’d also like ideas as to what to do with the front bun.
The iron is yet to be hardened and tempered, but that shouldn’t take me too long. It’s massive, at a full 6mm thick, so chatter shouldn’t be much of an issue.
The lever cap is held in place using spring loaded pins, as Jim Kingshot documented in his book “Making and Modifying Woodworking Tools”.
Although the plane looks almost complete, there’s still a lot of shaping, tweaking and lapping to be done, I’m probably no more than half way through the build at the moment. Getting the infills to fit well is going to be quite a task!
Cheers
Aled
Large smoother
Hi,I’m still waiting for delivery of the Small Smoother sole plates, so I’ve finally got back onto my large smoother project, and have made some progress this week.
In building this plane, I decided to try out a different assembly technique, of screwing the sides of the plane to the sole, much in the way that Karl Holtey and Ron Brese do.
The length of the sole will be 215mm (8 1/2″) and the 6mm (1/4″) thick iron is 60mm (2 3/8″ ish) wide, set at a 50 degree pitch. The sole is made from 10mm Gauge Plate, and the sides are 5mm Brass. When I finish, I envisage this plane to weigh around 7 – 8 lbs, so it’s going to be a hefty bit of kit!!
Here’s a few pics of where I’ve got to so far.
The rear sole plate is my second attempt, as I managed to break two taps during the threading operation – this method of assembly is definately high risk! I’m unsure as to whether I’ll use this assembly method again, at the moment the risks far outweigh the gains.
The screw heads will be slighly countersunk, and then peined, before being filed and lapped. This “should” result in an almost invisible joint – here’s hoping!!
I’ve ordered a fine tooth bandsaw blade from Workshop Heaven, so the next job will be to cut the sides to shape, and then start thinking about shaping the lever cap, which incidentaly will be cut from a 12mm thick billet of brass. You’ll notice from my first picture that I’ve already made a lever cap screw, but I might tweak the design a little again, I find the flat face a little boring.
I hope to get a little more done this week.
Cheers
Aled
Small Smoother Progress
I’ve been doing a little work on my Small Smoother this week, but unfortunately made no real progress.
As I thought, the laser cut blanks for the soles of this palne turned out to have been hardened by the process of laser cutting – something that the profiling company ommited to tell me about. It’s quite amazing how hard O1 steel can be, the sharp corners of the plane’s sole took the teeth right off a brand new Bastard File!! The teeth on hacksaws just whimper and give up, and scribes just skate on the surface.
As with the development stages of the Small Shoulder, I tried to anneal a sole plate to “soften” the hard edges. The annealing worked to some degree, but there were still a few areas where the steel had not reached the required temperature, or cooled too quickly, which resulted in a few localised hard spots. Bugger!
I grudgingnly decided that this was just not good enough and ordered a new set of sole plates. These should be with me by the end of this week, so I can carry on with getting these smoothers off the ground.
On a brighter note, I’ve started to think about where to go next on my plane making journey. The wife was away on a hen night last night, so I had some peace and quiet to put pen to paper (pencil actually, but “pen to paper” sounds better than “pencil to paper”), and started sketching out a full sized shoulder plane along the lines of a Norris A7
I also have a full sized smoother project on the go, but it’s been put on the back burner for a while for a number fo reasons. Firstly because I don’t have the time to spend on it, and also because that I’ve gone down the route of screwing the sides to the sole. Tapping 20 odd blind holes in O1 steel is a painstaking and time consuming task!! (especially if you break a tap, and fail to remove it). I’ll post more on this project later in the week when I have some photos to show you.
Cheers
Aled
Small World eh?
Just a quick post to say how powerfull (and scary) the internet can be.
As some of you may know, this site “went live” last Wednesday, and to my complete amazement I had a request for a my first plane kit waiting in my inbox on Friday morning. This in itself blew me away, but to put the icing on the cake the request came all the way from Sydney Australia. Needless to say, the package was shipped via Airmail, and should touch down on the East Coast in the next couple of days.
What’s even more amazing is that Peter, my Aussie “customer” – I find it quite weird thinking of fellow woodworkers as customers – living on the other side of the planet has Welsh ancestry.
Small world eh?
Cheers
Aled
