I’ve finally finished the Small Smoothing Plane, well, almost finished, the lever cap could do with some more finishing and the infills need a few coats of shellac.
Appologies for the photography, taking pics of shiny brass is very difficult. I’ve just bought a light tent, but haven’t yet got any decent lighting to go with it, so a couple of pics on the kitchen table will have to do for the time being.
I took the plane to the Axminster/Lie-Nielsen show over the weekend, and the feedback was positive. Most comments started with “Wow, it’s hefty!” followed by comments about how good it felt in the hand. It also performs pretty well!
The plane is 150mm (6″) long, with a 40mm (1 1/2″) wide, 6mm thick iron.
I’ll post some shavings soon.
Cheers
Aled
Small Smoothing Plane WIP #2
I’ve done a little more work on the SSP over the last few days.
There’s a bit of work to do yet, but it looks like I may be able to get it ready for the show at Rycotewood next weekend. The priority jobs are to heat treat the iron and flatten the sole. Other jobs to finish the plane include tyding up the lever cap, shaping/sanding/finishing the infills, but if I run out of time, these can wait until after the show.
Being the most impatient man on the planet, I’ve already assembled the plane with a donor iron and lever cap, just to see if it would produce a shaving, and despite the iron being way too thin, resulting in a mouth opening of about 2mm, and not having flattened the sole yet, it performed pretty well, leaving a nice finish on Oak when going with the grain, but as would be expected, it tore out a little when going against the grain. The first shavings always give a great feeling of achievement, and I must say that i’m quite proud of what I’ve achieved so far, let’s hope i don’t screw it up as I approach the finish line.
Cheers
Aled
Small Smoothing Plane WIP
It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally making good progress with building the pre-production Small Smoothing Plane (SSP). I always (well maybe “always” is a bit of an exaturation as I’ve only been down this path once before) try to build a kit from the actual parts that are intended for sale, just to make sure that they fit together as they should, I can then take plenty of pics to put in the assembly instructions – which I’m completely dreading to write.
Here are a few of the WIP shots to wet your appetite.
Filing the sole
Checking the fit, note the small gap present for peining the brass to lock the shell together. (excuse the milling marks, I got a little carried away with the milling machine when cleaning the rivets that hold the blade support block)
Here’s the profiled block used to support the shell during peining, the cutouts are there to accomodate the blade support block and cross pin.
The peined dovetails – yes they’re supposed to look like that 
The three layers of masking tape does a great job of protecting the brass sides from rogue hammer blows. The brass is drifted into the corners using a round nose punch to ensure that the dovetails fully fill the voids.
Here are the dovetails roughly cleaned up, furtter cleaning will follow once the plane is stuffed and the infills are riveted.
I’ve also roughed out the infills, but haven’t yet taken any photos, I’ll take some tomorrow and post further details tomorrow night.
Cheers for now.
Aled
