Thread: Moving Fillister Plane build.

Originally Posted by planemaker

4 Moving Fillister Planes made by 3 well known British Plane Makers. Griffiths (Norwich) x2, Moseley & Son (London), Varvill & Sons (York).

3 Fillister planes match in skew direction. The Varvill & Sons (shown on the right) has the skew running in the opposing direction.

The unanswered question is which skew direction offers an improvement within design. The best way to find out it to test out the Varvil & Sons Fillister Plane with its opposing skew direction. The major improvement award goes to Varvil & Sons. The curly shavings being worked were flowing freely from the escarpment without any need to manually intervene. The answer in hindsight lies in the fact that the skew direction is favoring the escarpment side of the plane.

To better understand what I mean by manual intervention of the shavings, view the following video by Bill Anderson at the 10.40 min where he is working the long grain rebate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKiJ46JhWSM

The next Moving Fillister Plane build will include this Varvil & Sons feature.

Stewie

Very nice job and excellent description of the build.

Regards
Paul

Hi,

Firstly, nice job on the plane. The results shown above look very crisp.

Originally Posted by planemaker

The unanswered question is which skew direction offers an improvement within design. The best way to find out it to test out the Varvil & Sons Fillister Plane with its opposing skew direction. The major improvement award goes to Varvil & Sons. The curly shavings being worked were flowing freely from the escarpment without any need to manually intervene. The answer in hindsight lies in the fact that the skew direction is favoring the escarpment side of the plane.

I've not had the pleasure(?) of using a skewed plane, and I could be talking rubbish here, but I have some dumb questions.

The skew direction on the Varvil & Sons plane would apply a small force pushing the plane away from the work (I think). Is this a noticeable effect, or is it controllable just by good planing technique. Even if it is noticeable, does the improved shaving clearance overall give a better result?

Iain

Iain; you raise a very intuitive question given the difference in skew direction. In practice its not something that was noticeably different between the 2 different skews. More than likely good planing technique being the critical factor. In other words, there is potential within either skew direction to lose contact with the work piece and guide fence if correct technique is not maintained during each planing stroke. As mentioned within my previous comments, the major benefit I experienced with the Varvil & Sons design was a clearer passage for the shavings to exit the escarpment. Hopefully I have been able to answer all the points you raised.

regards Stewie;

Originally Posted by planemaker

Iain; you raise a very intuitive question given the difference in skew direction. In practice its not something that was noticeably different between the 2 different skews. More than likely good planing technique being the critical factor. In other words, there is potential within either skew direction to lose contact with the work piece and guide fence if correct technique is not maintained during each planing stroke. As mentioned within my previous comments, the major benefit I experienced with the Varvil & Sons design was a clearer passage for the shavings to exit the escarpment. Hopefully I have been able to answer all the points you raised.

Thanks for the reply Stewie. I had a feeling that might be the case - I best practice my planing technique.

Iain

Hi Stewie,
very beautiful your moving fillister plane!
I agree with you about the capacity of easing the chip escapment in the Varvill plane, although me too, I would say more difficulties in keeping the plane against the rebate. But you have both, so you can appreciate and tell us about any difference.
However, I haven't a plane with the skew in opposite direction as the Varvill, but my Kendall (1818-1830, standard skew) does not clog much if the setting is accurate:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnpWXtAcwLg

This one (standard skew) I made some years ago and also it rarely clogs:

IMG_0916.JPG

Ciao Giuliano

Hi, I'm a beginner woodworker, I want to restore a moving fillister plane. The depth stop looks like yours, no screw holding it on. How do I remove it from the plane?
Thanks

Woodsheen, some pics (nice & sharp & showing the depth stop from top, bottom & side) would be helpful. I've had little to do with the type of depth stop used on moving fillesters, they are constructed differently from the ones fitted to ploughs & dados. But planemaker can probably get you on the right track if you show us the part in question....

Cheers,

I am so jealous of all you plane makers. It's been a dream of mine to do this. I entered the plane build competition last year and failed miserably. I walked away from it and threw my plane in the firewood box. I'm going to try again only this time with full size blocks wood, no laminating and no pins.

Banjopicks, if it's any consolation my first TWO planes were miserable failures - one was even more miserable than the other. Both made shavings, but that's about the best I could say of them. That was 40 years ago & I've made a few planes since, getting a bit slicker at it, mainly 'cos I'm better at recognising impending disasters before they fully mature...

My first two failures were both laminated ("Krenov") designs too, and in both cases it was mainly the pin/wedge combo that brought the things undone. On one I used a metal pin & on the other, a wooden pin as Krenov advocated. But exactly where to place those pins was the catch. The article I was following was none too clear on how to fix the right position, so I was left to my own judgement, & for an ignorant newbie that's a dangerous situation!. I set the wooden cross-pin too low & it caused severe choking. I set the metal pin too high & it didn't hold the blade firmly enough, the damned thing chattered like a politician whatever I did. But each taught me a valuable lesson and made me far more careful on future builds, though it did take me a few years to get over the trauma & try again...

The 'traditional' solid-bodied woodie is hard to screw up entirely. Digging out the escapement & abutments for the wedge is a bit harder to execute than just glueing up 4 bits of wood, but you have more scope for fitting & adjusting the wedge. You can do a lot of refining of the wedge slot and easily make new wedges if necessary, whereas once you've put a cross-pin in place you are stuck with it. I've only done a couple of solid-bodies and my first attempt turned out a nice little performer. However, I foolishly chose to build it with Cooktown ironwood, which made chiselling out the escapement a major chore! Ironwood is a very brittle, as well as very tough wood and apart from a small chip coming off the edge of one abutment (cosmetic only) the mouth chipped very badly (more than cosmetic!):

Bad mouth.jpg

That was easy enough to fix with a mouth insert, fortunately. I used brass since I had plenty of scraps, epoxied & screwed in place:
Mouth insert.jpg

Another small mistake was to use Crow's ash for the wedge (a greasy wood & it did have a tendency to slip a bit as predicted by Riverbuilder), but fixing that was easy & it turned out quite a good little performer:

Finished.jpg

But as a single-iron job, it could never match the performance of a later infill. Besides having a double-iron, this little plane comes late in the family & benefited from a lot more experience - it has become my go-to small smoother that can handle just about anything you could throw at it:
Bull oak 170mm.jpg

The road to success can be a bit bumpy, and you can easily take a wrong turn or two, but persistence will get you there eventually. There are some who manage to pull it off on their first try - all of the top 5 contenders in the "great plane challenge" were from either complete novices at plane-making or had minimal experience. Even for someone with quite a few planes under their belt, I thought some would have been pretty ambitious projects, but the results were by & large very impressive (hats off to all of you!). But it's perfectly normal to struggle when we begin - a plane is deceptively simple and it's all too easy to be deceived. If you followed all the builds of the 'challenge', you'll know it wasn't all beer & skittles & I suspect several were tempted to walk away at times!

Hang in there....

Ian

Thanks for the encouragement Ian. I'm almost ready for another go around.

Hi BP. I started by following some plans produced by "The English Woodworker". Made a try and a jack plane and they both worked out beautifully. This gave me the encouragement to try harder things. Currently making a "razee" style higher pitched smoother that I should probably post some pictures of. I have stuck to wooden planes, following the KISS mantra.

Without starting a debate on whether one is better than the other, MA, I reckon you would find making a metal-bodied plane easier than you think, particularly with the experience you've gained already. A bit more physical work in the metal jobs (lapping soles by hand as I do is pretty tedious) so it's unlikely you'd bash your first plane together in a weekend, but that's about all. Each type has pros & cons, and there is no question a well-made & well-fettled woodie can hold it's own with the best of the metal jobs, so I'm not implying good woodies can't serve perfectly well, & in fact are a better choice for some specialised applications, imo.

I've said before that I think it's probably smart for the complete novice to start with a woodie or two, the raw material costs less and is easy to come by, so mistakes matter far less, but it will teach you the basics.

It is possible, though, to launch straight into a metal-bodied plane & come up with a winner, as amply demonstrated in the "great plane challenge", so if anyone reckons they can successfully build a coffin smoother on their first foray into plane making, don't let me dissuade you.....

Cheers,