Thread: New addition, I’ve been a good boy

DW - I’m referring mostly to the sides and sole, in regards to your comment re weight. I have never found much detail on the material used by the infill makers. Certainly not something like an analysis of say 20, say, Spiers infills where they the stuffing is removed and detailed measurements are taken. That would be a lovely research project. My thoughts on people who make infills now, either commercially or home made… to me they seem to use much thicker metals, hence heavy.
This one I have is @3mm for sides & sole (but that’s just what is exposed, and a rough measurement).
A piece of mild steel at 100mm x 100mm x 3mm = 0.2361 kg. 4mm is 0.3148 kg. 78.7 grams more. 5mm is 0.3935 kg, 157 grams more than the 3mm. It adds up.

Ian, I do wonder what the state of the national archives is for these makers. Maybe we could find answers there?

Rob, thanks. I haven’t seen that, so thank you very much.
Also, thanks for the photos of your work… I do hope you have put a lot of apprentices through your shop… not many can do what you do.
I really have no idea about the heavy panel planes. I have an 18” user made one, very heavy. If you’d like to talk more about the subject, I’d appreciate it.

I weighed the Spiers open handle coffin smoother, without blade or cap iron. 1.394kg.

Coming up well.
Had a skin cancer chopped out of my hand that’s still healing, so I’ll do a little bit by bit.
I’m thinking of using this Vulpex conservators soap on the varnished timber to clean it… but I’m not sure.
The agonising over “will this be a mistake”. Sigh.IMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpg

Sorry for all the duplicate photos… I’m not doing well with attaching photos

Hopefully the pics are good enough to illustrate this.
So I’ve cleaned one side of its light surface rust. Mostly light. In the shiny side photo, the dark splotches on the side was an area of scaled rust. Scaled rust will be far deeper than surface “bloom”. I just scraped it with a plane blade that my boy has been using to whittle sticks with. (he’s 12, so he doesn’t understand that Dads stuff is not automatically his stuff )
Back to the point, if you turned the plane over to refit a “taken off the plane to do sharpening” blade… the deeper rust corresponds to how I hold it.
The more scaled the rust (in my opinion/experience), the deeper the pits under it.

Was this caused by the sweaty thumb of previous users?

I agonise over stuff like this.
That just makes “getting old tools singing” more enjoyable to me.
When I asked my local butcher to weigh it for me, I was really awkward with asking him, thinking it must break hygiene standards… I plastic bagged it for that reason, a handy IGA blue bag, so he wouldn’t have been able to see the tool. He said sure, weighed it, asked what it was. I stumbled over trying to explain it, but at one point showed him, he said “This?”, held it, thought, and said “this?”, and he got it. Would it be stalky of me to introduce him to woodwork in order to prime him for an old tool journey?

Before, after.

Originally Posted by Clinton1

Ian, I do wonder what the state of the national archives is for these makers. Maybe we could find answers there?

I rather doubt there is much useful info anywhere, Clinton. Probably the best source would be the Hawley museum in Sheffield. Unfortunately Ken Hawley didn't start documenting the old processes until the late 50s & 60s by which time Spiers & Norris had long since folded their tents & departed into the night....

Yes, increasing the gauge of your plate certainly bumps up the weight quickly - each mm adds another 33% to the mass, based on your figures. There does seem to be a modern tendency to go overboard with weight, as I've noted above & elsewhere. Bill Carter is guilty - some of the mitre planes he's built are truly massive! But perhaps that's ok for mitres, many of the old ones I've seen are rather hefty brutes.

From what I've seen, your plane seems to be pretty typical of the gauges of metal used. I noted in the pic Derk posted of the guts of his Spiers (well, putatively a Spiers) that the sole looks quite thin - 3.2mm? Even the blade block is quite thin, just enough to get the bed bevel comfortably above the blade sharpening bevel, I guess. I have always thought such a thin sole would not be stiff enough & use 5mm for a 9-10 inch smoother. But once again, my intuition is wrong - if the old planes have survived quite happily for close to 200 years with their thinner soles, who's to argue?

Cheers,
Ian

A couple of links which may prove helpful.

Firstly, here is the restoration I completed with the Old Tools Forum inputting: Renovating an Infill Smoother

Then there is the website of Peter McBride: http://www.petermcbride.com/

Regards from Perth

Derek

Ian - shame about the archives.
I really do think that modern makers use thicker material. The “you can take it off easier than putting it back on” bias. Plus there has been a lot bs mystique pushed about the benefit of weight.
Before infills with their weight came along, the much lighter timber body plane produced fine work.
My thinking might be 20 years out of current thought in the area.
The tradies that made them… different trade scenario too.

Derek, I remember when you first put that restoration thread up in this forum. Phenomenal job, but I’m glad I don’t have to go to the lengths you did.

Originally Posted by Clinton1

I weighed the Spiers open handle coffin smoother, without blade or cap iron. 1.394kg.

that's a fabulous weight. You can always acquire a boat anchor later if you desire. that's a plane made to do lengths of work without tiring the user any more than needed.

Originally Posted by Clinton1

Coming up well.
Had a skin cancer chopped out of my hand that’s still healing, so I’ll do a little bit by bit.
I’m thinking of using this Vulpex conservators soap on the varnished timber to clean it… but I’m not sure.
The agonising over “will this be a mistake”. Sigh.IMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpgIMG_0185.jpgIMG_0184.jpg

Don't worry too much. There was a short rah rah period where infills were run up to priceless levels, but they are ultimately functional tools and the day of the $1000 spiers or norris common plane with some wear are over.

You can clean the wood with anything you want, and pardon me for not going back and reading through all of the posts, but if you're not going for a straight up refinish of everything, a non-abrasive scotch brite with linseed oil isn't a terrible idea. You can decide if anything needs to go over it, it'll clean things a little bit without messing anything up, and after it dries, you can put wax or shellac on it.

I'd do something after it, as the hardware store stuff will allow molding here. A good clean swedish linseed oil won't, but they are filtered or allowed to sit whereas the "boiled" linseed oils appear to not be anything of the sort, but rather raw unfiltered and unprocessed oil treated with a chemical cocktail to get them to dry faster.