Thread: A #3-sized infill coffin smoother

With the sides dovetailed & bent, the tails can be scribed to the sides and another round of sawing & filing begins. The steel is harder & thicker than the brass, so it takes quite a bit more effort, but it’s not all that bad if you aren’t in a big hurry. After several hours of sawing, hacking & careful filing, it’s done. The pic shows the little cold-chisel ground from an old car engine valve-stem that I used for knocking out the pieces where I couldn’t reach with the jewellers’ saw: A1.jpg

This is the selection of files I used for cleaning out the dovetails, two 6” warding files: one coarse & with the sides ground safe & one smooth cut; a 4 ½” slim taper 3-corner; and a needle file for really getting into those corners & making them clean & sharp: A2.jpg

Once all the D/Ts were cut & the fit checked, I riveted the chatter block in place & tidied up the bevel – much easier without the sides on. I was very careful to get the block aligned exactly to my layout line to minimise the amount of filing needed to blend the bevels. This shot also shows my stupid mistake rather starkly – there should’ve been a ‘pin’ on each side of the mouth instead of a ‘tail’ cutout! A3.jpg

To create the ‘double’ dovetails, another bevel must be filed on the outer edges of the side dovetails. You don’t need a huge bevel, or you’ll be hammering away forever trying to fill them in. I file the bevel deeper at the corners, tapering it out towards the outer edge. This increases the apparent angle of the D/T from the side a little, but ensures you see a clean, straight dovetail from the sole. In fact it isn't very obvious in the pic, but there is a bevel on the edge of every tail: A4.jpg

The last preparatory job is to make the peening buck. I selected a scrap of hardwood, squared it up, then used a template (cut down from my original sole template) to trace the outline of the inner lines of the sole on its top. The shape was bandsawn out & rasped & planed to the lines (checking carefully as I went that the sides remained dead square to the top), and a notch cut out for the chatter-block to fit into: A5.jpg

After a bit of finessing,everything clamped up nicely: A6.jpg

Then the fun part begins. I first closed the projecting sole over the sides, just enough to hold the sides in. This required a bit of juggling of the clamps so that I could sit the down side on a steel block, & get at the pins with my hammer. I try to start closing from the outside, hammering so the pieces are forced together, like slowly closing a clamp. It takes a lot of steady hammering, working the metal from the centres towards the edges. It’s tempting to just pound the edges of the pins down, but that’s generally not a good idea, because it may look like the gaps have been filled, but when you file off the excess, you’ll find some nasty voids.
Here is a shot of the peening at about the half-way mark – the pins have been locked over and the side clamps can be removed, but I still have to push more metal over to completely fill the bevels filed on the tails:
A7.jpg

You may be able to see that I’ve also peened the brass down a bit as well, to pull the sides tight against the sole. This is the method I’ve evolved by trial & error, & it works for me, but I saw a bloke on another forum use a small cold-chisel to help get the metal moving. I tried it, but it didn’t seem any better than just using the ball of the hammer. Eventually, I had both sides peened to my satisfaction; all of the gaps appeared to be thoroughly filled: A8.jpg

It certainly doesn’t look very pretty at this stage, but fear not, a little (lot) of filing will work wonders.

Here we are after the initial clean-up - I’m not going any further than filing them flush, now, because I plan to rivet the infill in, so more filing will be needed after that : A9.jpg

In fact, I’m well pleased with my effort, it’s the 4th plane body I’ve dovetailed and the first time I’ve got it absolutely flawless, no visible gaps anywhere, & the sides have remained almost perfectly perpendicular to the sole, which will make it much easier to fit the infill: A10.jpg

The two posts represent 3 or more days of work, & I'm about halfway.....
Cheers,

Been busy with other things the last few days & only managed a few hours here & there on the plane.

I decided to use some Black Wattle from a tree in our front yard that died a few years ago for the infill. It is dark & dense and has some nice figure in it & should look very spiffy once polished up (I think darker woods go best with the brass sides, but that's just my preference). The infill consists of 4 separate pieces, the front bun, handle/tote section, & its two cheeks: Infill 1.jpg

The handle/tote bit is much easier to shape & sand without the cheeks on, so getting that in order was task #1. Once I was satisfied with it, the cheeks were glued on and I put it aside to cure.

Fitting the front bun was a fiddly job, thanks to those curved sides & it required lots of testing & sneaking up to get a tight fit. I was going to over-stuff this plane (i.e., have the infill extend out to the outer edge of the metal), so I made the bun this way at first. However, when I came to fit the tote assembly, I realised it wasn’t going to work with the back unless I cut the sides down more, which I was reluctant to do, so decided to keep the infill flush with the inside edges rather than extend over the sides. That's ok, it gives me more scope with chamfering the tops of the sides, so it’s a win either way.

With the glue dry, the heavy shaping for the tote assembly begins. I could only mark up the bottom with a template, so when cutting off the waste, I left plenty of room for error. It meant lots of planing, rasping & scraping, but it’s a safer route to a good fit. Infill 2.jpg

Holding such an awkward shape while you work at it requires a bit of lateral thinking, but this setup worked nicely (I love my tail vise!). Note the cut-out to fit over the chatter block, which I did while the block was still straight & square: Infill 3.jpg

After an hour of careful shaping, the rear infill sat nicely in position. I then turned back to the metal work, smoothed & finish-sanded the tops of the sides & filed chamfers on all edges, as I won't be able to do that so easily once the woodwork is set in place permanently. Chamfering the sides is fun, and I let my fancy loose making the chamfers taper and flow to add interest.

So here's where we're at tonight. I will need to cut out a recess in the slope of the tote for the head of the cap-iron screw to fit into, & after that the woodwork will be ready to fix in place. Then I can complete the clean-up of the sides & the body will be close to done: Infill 4.jpg

I've modified the front bun to remove the overhang, as you can see, but it still needs more work. It doesn’t look right to me, yet. It looks out of proportion from the side, & I think I need to take a bit off the top, but I’m still thinking about the final shape.

After that, there are only a few smallish jobs to finish, I have to make a lever-cap & screw, and a cap-iron. But the rest of this week isn't looking good for much plane-making time, got a mower to fix & lots of grass to cut, so you might have to wait til the end of the week or later for the next installment......

Cheers,

Due to the weather, I managed some shed time today, so got a bit more done on my plane.

There was one small job to do on the rear infill before it can be glued in place, I needed to dig out the slot for the cap-iron screw to fit in. That was just a matter of drilling some overlapping holes and joining the dots: Infill 5.jpg
The woodwork is now ready to fix in place but I decided to hold off on that & finish some other parts.

So, to the lever-cap. After making some initial measurements with the woodwork sitting in place, I drew & cut out a template for a lever cap and from that made a wooden mock-up: Lever cap 1a.jpg. This was used with the blade and a temporary cap-iron in place to figure out some critical dimensions like the position of the cap-iron screw & the position for the pivot points in the sides. These need to be within a mm or so of the 'right' spot so the bottom of the lever cap meets the cap-iron at a suitable angle, with the thumb-screw roughly perpendicular to the blade/cap-iron so it doesn't tend to move the blade when tightened down. The thumbscrew also needs to be well clear of the cap-iron screw, so the two don’t foul and prevent smooth blade adjustment.

It took a deal of juggling to get everything right because I’m using a blade made for Stanley type planes (an IBC A2 for a #3, bought from Jim Davey), & it isn’t ideal for my plane. This is simply because Stanley/Record blades have the expanded hole in the slot for the head of the cap-iron screw head to feed through at the bottom of the slot, and this large hole happens to be right where it overlaps the point at which I’d initially wanted to put the cap-iron screw on my plane. I like to keep the cap-iron screw reasonably close to the bottom edge, but the hole in the slot meant I had very little room to manouvre. I eventually got it all sorted to my satisfaction, and made a new lever-cap template with some necessary alterations.

Then this pattern was scribed on a chunk of ½” thick brass, and before taking to it with a saw, I drilled & tapped the thumbscrew hole while it was still flat & square & easy to set up & hold on the DP. The thread I chose is M10, since I don’t have taps or dies for the traditional square threads, & a 10mm screw looks about the right proportions on this plane. I really don’t know why they used square threads in the past; presumably they are a little more robust and less prone to superficial damage?? Anyway, the angled threads work perfectly well, the only drawback is the finer pitch allows the heavy-handed to exert even more pressure on the lever-cap, which is not altogether wise, & quite unnecessary! It’ll be ok in my lifetime, and if it turns out to be a good user, maybe it will pass on to a new owner who’ll also treat it with a bit of care & respect.
After a bit of tedious sawing away (there are times when I wish I had a decent metal-cutting jigsaw!), I had a vaguely lever-cap-shaped chunk of brass: Lever cap 1.jpg

That was tidied up to the lines with files, leaving me with a rather shapeless lump of metal that needed some serious file work to make it look like a 'real' lever cap. First, a shallow cove was made across the lower underside. I traced guide-lines for the cove on the sides, then made a series of cross-cuts to just above the lines with a hacksaw (very rough & ready, as you can see, the idea is just to get rid of unwanted material quickly, but I certainly could have made that last cut a bit straighter!): Lever cap 2.jpg

The remaining bits were knocked out with my small cold-chisel, and the cove refined with a coarse round file followed by cloth-backed 80 grit wrapped round a bit of dowel of appropriate size. The latter does a very impressive job of chewing away brass, and I soon had my cove looking straight and regular. Still pretty crude at this stage, but further sanding after I finish the edge that will bear down on the cap-iron will get it in order. The edge of the lever cap needs to meet the cap-iron cleanly and apply even pressure across its width, but it doesn’t need a water-tight fit at the leading edge like a cap iron. To get a clean, straight edge, I first filed a shallow angle from the leading edge back to the cove, then carefully refined that over tightly-stretched sandpaper until there was a clean, clear flat for about 2 or 3mm back from the edge: Lever cap 3.jpg

Next step was to round over the bottom from the top surface Lever cap 4.jpg then shape the ‘neck’: Lever cap 5.jpg

Then over to the mini-lathe to make the thumb screw, some more refining of the rough shape, plus sanding to 240 grit, and voila, it’s beginning to look like a proper lever cap. Before installing it, I’ll give it a final sand to 1200 grit & buff it: lever cap 6a.jpg Lever cap 6.jpg

This time I have a nice, neat, fit and it has plenty of room to move freely back & forth, as it should. Lever cap 7.jpg

Still to do: Make a cap-iron, fit the woodwork, drill the body for the lever cap & install same, then clean-up & fettle. Probably a day's worth of work left, but it will come in dribs & drabs so I don't think I'll be making shavings with it 'til next week...

Cheers,

Thanks for including the lever cap build process!

Excited to see it finished up. You made the others seem borderline easy, but this one still seems untouchable to a planemaking virgin like me.

Cheers,
Luke

Awesome pictorial, thanks for the massive amounts of detail! Very excited to see this finished.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

.......You made the others seem borderline easy, but this one still seems untouchable to a planemaking virgin like me......

I guess 'borderline easy' is a good descriptor for a straight-sided job, Luke. I was almost a (metal) 'planemaking virgin' myself when I tackled my first coffin-side plane, and it was almost the end of my planemaking career! But having gained a little more experience & confidence, it's actually not that much more difficult than straight sides if you break the task into the necessary steps. The only extra process is bending those sides to the sole profile, all of the other procedures remain the same as for straight sides. Sometimes Lady Luck is just plain generous to me - getting the bend so close on my first try with this build was an even bigger surprise to me than it may be to you! I'll admit fitting the woodwork is also slightly more fiddly, particularly if you want the 'overstuffed' look, but we are all woodies here, & fiddling with wood is our thing. I've changed my mind about over-stuffing, I used to prefer the look, but with my panel plane the wood was not wide enough, so I had to go with an 'inside' job. As peter McBrides said on one of the builds he posted, that gives you an opportunity to do some fancy chamfering along the tops of the sides, & I think I now like that look better. I'll put up a pic of #1 & this plane together when it's all done & you can judge for yourselves which look you prefer.

However, I would advise starting with a straight sided model if you've never worked with metal before, no point in adding complications if you are a bit uncertain. Straight sides are much more straightforward (pun intended), but I do recommend some practice at hammering a dovetail or two before tackling the real thing. I think you'll be surprised by how relatively simple metal work can be once you plunge in. I showed a friend what I'd done with my first attempt at a shoulder plane, & she went off and produced a far nicer example. I gave mine away & made a new one - the one you know about!

Cheers,

Ian

I just love these builds. The coffin shape in metal seems daunting to me, but very happy to watch you do it.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

....The coffin shape in metal seems daunting to me, but very happy to watch you do it....

Nah, Paul, you have played with metal enough not to be intimidated by a bend or two! Let's face it, cold-forming is far more civilised than hot-forming, and so much safer, no risk of burning down the shed (or bits of flesh!).

But then, you are probably more sensible than I - yesterday I welded up a broken bracket for my neighbor's mower, bare-legged & wearing sneakers. It was just a 2-minute job & my gloves weren't in reach so I didn't bother with those either. It was only when I'd finished that I thought 'that was really poor practice & I'd be critical if I saw some young fella doing the same thing'. Many, many years ago, I was doing something equally foolish & had a goodly-sized glob of molten slag go down a boot. It creates quite a dilema - do you rip off the boot & sock and drag the hot blob over more flesh in the process, or stand still & just let it make a deeper hole in one spot?? I 'decided' on the latter......

Cheers,

Got a few hours of shed time again today, and made the cap-iron.

I started with a piece of 301 stainless steel, 3mm thick, cut to the width of the blade: Cap iron 1.jpg

This is a general-purpose grade of SS & the stuff I got comes annealed & is quite easy to work - at least as easy as mild steel.
I drew several lines across one end, to use for aligning it in the bending jig. This is the highly sophisticated bending apparatus: Cap iron 2.jpg

The putative cap-iron was set up in a vise, very carefully, so the blank is square to the two bars at the back, & the brass pressure bar at the front is straight across & between those bars: Cap iron 3.jpg

Then the vise was closed slowly until I was satisfied I had enough of a bend: Cap iron 4.jpg

The bent section as it comes out of the jig is too long, and will need to be trimmed back: Cap iron 4a.jpg

So I carefully hack-sawed most of the excess-metal off, rough-filed it straight, then used another sophisticated jig to grind a smooth 'cove' along the curve. This is the jig: Cap iron 5.jpg

And here is the result: Cap iron 6.jpg

So then it was a matter of filing a clean, straight flat on the business end & rounding over the top to meet this edge cleanly. After the file, I moved to my diamond stones to refine the edge & make it smooth & dead flat. The idea is to have only the very tip contacting the blade all the way across: Cap iron 7.jpg

With the end sorted and fitting nicely, I cut the cap-iron to length, shaped & bevelled the top, & drilled & tapped the screw hole: Cap iron 8.jpg

All the metal work is now done, save for the cleaning and polishing, so I sat all the bits in place for a progress shot. Looks like a plane, now, albeit a slightly rough one! Cap iron 9.jpg

But that'll change. Last thing I did before leaving the shed for the night was to bed the wood in with epoxy. Tomorrow (I hope), I'll rivet the wood in - the epoxy is just to make a firm bed & hold things while I drill through the body for the rivets. Still trying to decide whether to use steel or brass rivets. I used to prefer brass, so they would blend in & disappear after cleaning up, but I've seen quite a few brass planes with steel rivets, including some by Holtey, and they look quite good, & complement the steel of the sole that shows on the sides. I guess if Holtey, uses steel, it must be the right thing to do......

Cheers,

For a rough progress shot that looks mighty fine to me! Keep em coming [emoji846]

Got a full day at it today, but the fiddly final stuff seems to take forever, so not quite finished.

last night I bedded the infill in with epoxy. This is partly to hold the wood securely while I drill the rivet holes, and partly to seal the inner wood & (I hope) keep moisture away from the steel bits in particular.

This morning, the epoxy would have cured enough to hang on tightly, but was still a bit soft, which is ideal for my purposes since I expect the metal to clamp up a bit as I set the rivets. Job #1 was to set the plane up in the drill press and drill the rivet holes. Again, the parallel section in the middle of the plane body made it easier to set it up so the holes can be drilled through symmetrically. One of the reasons I used screws to hold the infill on my first coffin smoother was because it is curved front to back & I wasn't confident I could set it up accurately enough to drill the through holes for rivets, so I wimped out & just drilled shorter screw hoes from each side. To be on the safe side, I put a wedge under the tapered end to prevent it from being pushed down when I started drilling, and it all went very smoothly: #1.jpg

I'd decided overnight to go with brass for the rivets - I just prefer the cleaner look of rivets that aren't obvious. So the rivet holes were countersunk with my cobbled-up counter-sinking tool, and the necessary rivets cut from some 5/32" rod. After a bit of careful peening, I had them all nicely set: #2.jpg

The protruding heads were filed flush: #3.jpg

And now I can finally begin cleaning up the sides properly. I started by sanding each side with 180 grit paper wrapped around a block of wood, and soon had the errant file marks, the couple of light dings caused by partial mis-hits of the peening hammer, and the rivets, all banished: #4.jpg

Then I spent a tedious hour or more, filing the front of the mouth until the blade would pass through. I've mentioned before how you need to proceed very carefully with this step. For some reason I've yet to fathom, I seem to go from having the blade almost going through, to too wide a mouth, in the space of a half-dozen file-strokes! Eventually, after a protracted file-test session, I had the mouth done.

Next step was to drill the holes for the lever cap. This is the most nerve-wracking part of the whole construction process, for me - mess it up & a week's work & $40 in material go down the gurgler! I was concentrating so hard I forgot to take any pics, but it was a bit of an anticlimax, thankfully. The parallel centre section made it simple to lay out the centre for the pivot on one side & transfer it to the other. Once I had the position marked on side, I simply squared a line down the side & across to the other side. The body went back on the DP setup used for drilling the rivet holes, and each side was drilled in turn. Then the blade/cap iron & lever cap were wedged lightly in place and the spots marked for the holes in the lever cap. These were drilled & tapped to take 5mm screws. I made two headless screws, with a short 5.5mm shank to sit inside the pivot holes in the sides. Then I finish-sanded the lever cap & cap iron & buffed both up ready for final fitting:#6.jpg

With a functioning lever cap I could tension the plane up & start lapping the sole. I got it 90% done, but I was rapidly running out of day by this time, & had to pack up. But before I closed the shed for the night, I just had to do a quick test. Even with a not-so-sharp blade & not fully-lapped sole, I got shavings first try: #5.jpg

So I go to bed a happy chap tonight, in the knowledge that all that work seems to be coming to a good end. I should be able to comfortably finish the job tomorrow, unless my other half has other ideas about how I should occupy my time.....
Cheers,

Great work so far.

So... Since you used brass this is irrelevant, but if you had decided to use steel rivets in the plane, this would have been an "issue".

How do you drill the rivet holes so that neither side has an elliptical shape once they're filed and sanded flush? It seems to me that if you get one plane (loosely used term since it's curved) of one side of the coffin perpendicular to the bit in the DP, then it's going to come out the other side as an ellipse, given that the sides are not parallel. Again, with brass, they disappear, so it's a non-issue, but if you'd chosen steel rivets would you have just used "stopped" rivet holes? Is that even an option, or would you be able to peen the ends with them stopped against the malleable surface of wood?

I hope that question makes sense...

Cheers,
Luke

Luke, a perfectly sensible question and I'm actually caught out because I confess I hadn't given the elliptical head problem a single thought! When I was weighing up whether to go steel (slightly easier to peen) or brass (hopefully, not seen on the finished product), my concerns were entirely focused on the contrast aspect of visibility. For the rear taper, the angle is pretty small, so the ellipse would not be too obvious, but it sure would be on the steeper front curve if you didn't do something about it. So you've actually given me another reason to opt for brass. I'll save the steel for another day & only for parallel-sided planes to avoid that ever being an issue.

I actually did do 'something', not out of concerns about visibility, but to try & make a more even gap to peen into. I simply held the countersink tool more or less perpendicular to the tangent at each site, which produced a roughly circular edge to the bevel. It didn't give a perfectly circular countersink, but much, much closer than if I had drilled them on the DP with the same setup I used for the through holes.

If you were thinking of using screws to retain the wooodwork, which has plenty of precedent, that's a good reason to add to the one of easier removability in case repair/replacement is needed down the track. Since the screw holes don't go right through, you can just drill them perpendicuar to the surface.

OK, on with the job. Raining here in Brissie today, so no outside work likely (I'm sooo disappointed ). I hope to see it done & dusted, but probably won't post any pics til tomorrow because it's our class reunion this afternoon/evening. Forty five years already, since we were let loose on the world as newly-minted veterinarians. How time flies!

Cheers,

D1.jpg

Well, done, with maybe still a little bit of dusting to do, but I need to leave it & turn my attention to a few other matters I’ve been neglecting.

There are still some marks on the sole where filings stuck in the aluminium vise jaws made some deep scratches just behind the mouth. It’s only cosmetic, the sole is flat enough for all practical purposes, so I think I'll just wait til they wear out or become disguised by the inevitable small scratches of use. The plane has a tight & solid action. The pic shows it with some heavy shavings I made, to see if they’d feed through the mouth ok. They did so without problems, in fact I probably could have left the mouth a little narrower, but I didn’t want this plane to a precious thing that can only handle the wispiest of cuts. I’m also not sure about the front bun, it might look better with about 5mm lopped off it, but I’ll ignore it for a week or two, then stare at it for a while, before I take to it with saw & rasp.

Now, Luke, since you asked, here it is beside the big brother that you’ve held in your own hands: D2.jpg

It’s not all that much smaller in profile, and in fact the sole is only 5mm shorter at 190mm vs 195 for big bro, but the new plane is a bit more ‘delicate’ looking.

There’s a more obvious difference in width (maximum 55mm wide vs a bit over 65), and a bit more front taper: D3.jpg

The lever cap is smaller, the blade thinner (3.2mm vs about 3.65mm), as well as narrower, and there is less infill, so there is a noticeable difference in heft (1.6Kg vs a bit over 2.1Kg).

Slightly disappointed with the Wattle, it’s nice enough, but despite my careful laying out, the best fiddleback has largely disappeared in the shaping. There is a little bit of chattoyance in the cheeks if you hold it under strong light, & the handle has some nice grain patterns: D4.jpg

All in all, pretty satisfied with the way it turned out, definitely a keeper. I tried hard to get this one absolutely flawless, but there are a few minor imperfections. It’s certainly the best result I’ve achieved so far, & perhaps perfection is just an illusion & there’ll always be little things on any job that could be a bit better, unless you are in the Holtey league, & I suspect even Karl has the occasional slip! It’s certainly good enough for daily use, in fact I would be much happier using this plane than a Holtey – Imagine dropping a $10,000 plane!
As always, learnt a few lessons on the way:

1. Just because you’ve done something a few times already doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay careful attention!

2. Designing your own tools from scratch is fun, but can be a bit risky, even when (or should that be ‘especially when’!) you think you know what you are doing. I was so careful to apply the lessons learnt on the original, like making sure I had the side bulge that accommodates the lever-cap properly placed, the escapement adequate, the lever cap bearing down on the right part of the cap-iron, & fitting the tote in the short body without getting it too cramped. All of which I successfully managed, but in the process I went & reversed the pin/tail arrangement beside the mouth. It isn’t a fatal blunder & in fact turned out a small blessing in disguise because I kept the mouth just wide enough for the blade to pass through in order to retain as much metal as I could at the sides while I was cutting out the sole D/Ts. I was planning to file the sides out more after assembly, but as they are, they serve the same function as the little domes Norris put inside their planes each side of the mouth to act as a fulcrum when making lateral adjustments (perhaps the inspiration for Veritas’s side screws??).

And finally, gotta have a ‘family’ portrait: D5.jpg

The She-oak infill has been an only child for close to 10 years & now suddenly it has 4 siblings, all in the space of about 3 months. I've been planning on bringing the little chariot plane & one I just finished into the world for a very long time, but the panel plane & the small 'bun' smoother just happened. So much for my family-planning ability…..

Cheers,