Thread: Fallen off the wagon again - onto a box mitre plane

Originally Posted by auscab

Lovely plane Ian.
I always wonder how one would go heating to red with an oxy torch before peening the steel out. Just at the right locations in small sections.

Annealing stainless definitely softens it, I’d say it’s comparable to copper in workability but it has been about 30 yrs since I last worked with both copper and stainless

Paul, I was going to say I have no idea if SS is easy or difficult to anneal, but DJ has answered the question for us. But by "like copper", DJ, do you mean it softens even if quenched, like copper? It is certainly not as soft to saw or peen as (annealed) copper!

I have thought about using heat when peening up plane bodies, in fact right from the very first infill I made, but for the brass, not the steel. Mild steel, which is what I have mostly used for soles, is very ductile & doesn't work-harden, but for most of the planes I've made I used the hard "machinable" brass (385) for the sides. That does not peen well, it cracks & splits very quickly but I have been able to get around the problem by doing very little hammering on the brass, most of the work to close the dovetails can be done on the steel so that the ends of the tails only require light peening to fill the corners.

So apart from not really needing to do any annealing, there are other reasons I've been reluctant to try annealing as I peen, one is that the body is firmly attached to a wooden peening block so I would have to risk a forest fire getting the metal hot enough or take it off, which would be a chore. Another reason is that I'm afraid of causing distortion that I wouldn't be able to deal with (that may be an unfounded fear, but I don't want to find out after putting so much work into the thing!), so all in all, no attempts at annealing have been tried here..

A large part of why I got into trouble with this last plane is because I wanted to put a good 'slope' on the tails. The tails start off parallel-sided, because the continuous bent sides can't be fitted from each side of the sole but have to be dropped onto it from above; you can't cut close-fitting, easily-closed tails like you can for separate sides. To simulate the slope of tails, you file a tapered chamfer on the tails and beat the 'pins' over those chamfers so that when filed off it gives the illusion of a dovetail.

I was a bit tentative with my first couple & applied a very small chamfer, which meant the slope of the tails is not very pronounced. So I thought I'd go harder on this smaller plane & file a wider, more pronounced chamfer on the tails sides. I also made the pins about 0.5mm longer to give more metal to peen over the wider chamfers. What I discovered is that that little bit extra on the chamfers created a LOT of extra peening to fill them and the extra steel on the pins created even more effort filing them flush afterwards! So with the extra peening and the work-hardening, I soon realised I was in trouble and really struggled to get the tails covered adequately.

The moral of the story is if you want sloping D/Ts on a mitre plane, choose a malleable sole material! Ironically, you don't even need to make "dovetails", apparently the early mitre planes with bent sides had parallel pins, making them more like "finger joints" than D/Ts. Even straight joints will hold very securely when peened together, the D/Ts, but since the sides & sole are both iron, you don't know that without pulling one apart. Dovetails are more about appearance than structural integrity. If I were making an all-steel plane I would not bother trying to simulate D/Ts at all, I would just file a very small bevel on the tails - there should be nothing visible anyway, once they are closed & filed off.

Someday, when senility has thoroughly kicked-in & I've forgotten what a beast SS can be, I might try an all-SS body. With close-fitting tails I could minimise peening, so it should be easier than trying to make tails with brass & steel combinations. However, you may have to wait some time for the pain of the last effort to wear off.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Paul, I was going to say I have no idea if SS is easy or difficult to anneal, but DJ has answered the question for us. But by "like copper", DJ, do you mean it softens even if quenched, like copper? It is certainly not as soft to saw or peen as (annealed) copper!

It softens like copper but don’t remember what it did if quenched, as I just used to let it cool but work hardens same as copper once you bend or hammer it. From memory it work hardened quicker than copper.

Last time I did any coppersmithing/stainless work was about 32yrs ago, I’ve done heaps of welding and brazing of copper and stainless over the yrs but not smithing work. I did an apprenticeship as a coppersmith building sterilisers and hospitality equipment with copper and stainless.

This just popped up on YouTube,a lot of us hear follow Stavors hear, looks like he’s got him self a mill.
Ian you should be very happy with yourself doing a tongue an grove joint by hand alone.

Cheers Matt.

079 Tongue and groove in stainless steel - YouTube

Originally Posted by Simplicity

...... looks like he’s got him self a mill......

Yeah, & a real mill, not a toy like the one I've considered getting on occasion.

Actually, Matt, the T&G joint is not the part I find most difficult with these split soles. I won't pretend it's easy, but if you are prepared to work carefully and have a decent small file or two you can sneak up on a pretty close fit & it doesn't take as long as I first expected. Furthermore, you can close small imperfections with a bit of light peening when banging up the dovetails and make it all but disappear:

Sizes.jpg

You can't do anything about the top & bottom edges of the joint if you don't get them right, so I spend a lot of time filing & checking to ensure the two edges of the sole that the join is to be cut in are dead square before I start on the T&G.

The blade bed is usually the part that causes me the most angst. There is a lot of metal to remove to form the long wide bevel of a low-angle plane & it needs to be both dead flat, & square to the axis of the sole. If it's not, you end up with a crooked mouth, which is a real bummer (unless you are making a skewed plane). I did feel a twitch of envy watching Stavros's mill doing that part so effortlessly....

As I confessed, I got the bed off-square on the 'square-bodied' mitre I made (some posts back), entirely due to my stupidity in not carefully checking things. I did quickly check that the bevel was flat when I dug it out from where it had been 'resting' for more than a year, but didn't check that it was square in relation to the sole surface.

b mouth.jpg

The bed is only a tiny bit skewed, but because of the low bed angle it makes the mouth opening obviously crooked & the blade needs to be slewed over as far as it will go to get an even shaving. As I've said on numerous occasions, with a low-angle plane you have to slew the blade further to correct any skew & even a tiny amount of skew may cause you trouble. If your sides are a bit tight, you may not have enough room to get the blade far enough over & have to resort to sharpening it at an angle to compensate.

I can't straighten the gap on that plane without making the front of the mouth too obviously unsquare to the axis of the sole, and it would also make the gap a lot wider than it should be. Ironically, the thing works very nicely, the wider than desired mouth only matters in a few critical situations, it's not a problem most of the time. As I said previously, this one stays with me & every time I notice that mouth it will remind me to be more careful!....

Cheers,