Thread: Tool for plane makers

MC,

Well if there common, I’m in the same boat as you.

Not sure they would be any good, with a Jig saw blade, maybe possibly, but not really sure with a small file either,


Cheers Matt.

Well that makes three of us then (officially a crowd?). I did a bit of googling and looks like there are quite a few air powered variants of this tool Heavy Duty Reciprocating File , T-7705 and apparently are good with the small saws and files, promo video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLRpqaPl4Pw. I imagine the battery powered variant would have a lot less grunt so maybe ok for light duty?

For sawing soft metals, I would be considering mounting a short length of 32 tpi hacksaw blade between the screws, maybe with the spacer. Say a short length of the sutton cobalt blades. The saw will need to run smooth.


Posted cause a thought occurred to me these small reciprocating tools might one handy for these various plane making projects and also lack of familiarity.

I've used a 'lectric engraver before, but it used rotary burrs not a reciprocating action. I had visions of being able to do something like this, but quickly realised it would take me years of solid practice just to be able to write my name legibly! It was very hard to control for fine work because of the bulk (& my utter lack of skill) so I soon decided engraving was not something I needed to do after all.

Just eyeballing the tool in question, I'm not sure it would be much use in metal plane making, but I've been wrong once or twice before, haven't I? I reckon it would be awkward to use as a saw for any fine work. If you must burn electrons, a good scroll saw would be far more accurate cutting tight curves in plate material (or a bandsaw for less tight curves?).

I mostly use hand-tools when making planes, on principle, because I set out to prove to myself that it can be done by your average Joe with hand tools only. Some of the work does get pretty tedious though, so I'll admit to using a cut-off wheel in an angle grinder for straight cuts in 4-5mm steel (but we'll keep that to ourselves... )

I'm happy enough with a jewellers saw & hacksaw for the cutting-out steps. With good-quality blades, the jewelles saw is surprisingly quick on 3-4mm brass (typical thicknesses used for sides), and will handle quite thick brass (for lever-caps), albeit a bit more slowly. The hacksaw is very quick on brass & ok for straight cuts but leaves a much rougher surface & the quality of blades sold now is downright awful; two out of every three new blades I get will not track straight, which makes it very difficult to saw to a line.

I'm not anti-power tool, anything that makes life easier is ok in my book most of the time. What I would really like is a low-effort way to clean up those peened dovetails. With decent files & a smallish plane, it's not too taxing, but gets pretty tiresome on anything larger. Especially when your files are coming to the end of their lives, as I discovered a couple of days ago when cleaning up a small smoother body - I ended up retrieving a file from the 'dead' pile 'cos it was better than the 'good' file I was using!

This is one of the operations that needs a bit of care if you don't want to wreck all the hard work you've put in so far. You can rip off a lot of the excess metal with coarse files but when I get them down to about 0.5mm above the surface, there is a danger of grazing the sides, and one swipe of a coarse file on brass leaves a horrible scar (damhik!). So I switch to a much finer file at that stage, which of course slows things even with a new sharp file & there's still a lot of steel to come off.

However, I don't think those dinky little files illustrated in the ads linked to would remove much metal in a hurry...

Cheers,
Ian

The biax metal scrapers use a reciprocating action, I wonder what a small scraper mounted in it would be like? Might be possible to use for decorative patterning with say 10 years practice

Originally Posted by mic-d

The biax metal scrapers use a reciprocating action, I wonder what a small scraper mounted in it would be like? Might be possible to use for decorative patterning with say 10 years practice

The biax tool is a more powerful version of the tool acquired. Took at closer look at the tool and the adjustment I thought was variable speed was actually variable stoke with a 2 speed settings.

Cannot find any modern equivalents hand power tools that have peening hammers. Could only find automatic peening marking systems of robotic surface peeners. This is not to say they do not exist. More likely I don't know the right name.Happemed once before when looking at radio frequency curing systems. Couldn't find any for the life of me - and others could find them either. But type in "wood welder" and then there are dozens.

Link to Biax power scraper, to those who curious.
Schulungen Schaben - Maschratur Biax Handschaben & Elektroschaben

Cheers

Originally Posted by MartinCH

The biax tool is a more powerful version of the tool acquired. Took at closer look at the tool and the adjustment I thought was variable speed was actually variable stoke with a 2 speed settings.

Cannot find any modern equivalents hand power tools that have peening hammers. Could only find automatic peening marking systems of robotic surface peeners. This is not to say they do not exist. More likely I don't know the right name.Happemed once before when looking at radio frequency curing systems. Couldn't find any for the life of me - and others could find them either. But type in "wood welder" and then there are dozens.

Link to Biax power scraper, to those who curious.
Schulungen Schaben - Maschratur Biax Handschaben & Elektroschaben

Cheers

A good friend of mine who was the toolmaker at Williamsburg has a Biax. He spent a lot of time earlier in his life reconditioning metalworking machines, but I think the Biax he has is unused. I think he got it at a discount and offered it to me for a low price (for a biax - that's like saying getting a good deal on a mercedes, though), but I couldn't justify even a fraction of new.

nothing is cheap with them. Not the tool and not the bits, but they sure to look like they do nice work. Best I can find is they're about $4-6k US for one new. There's a single decent shape used one that comes up on google shopping here for $2650, and then some basket cases for a fraction that (incomplete tools, parts, etc).

Air filers aren't uncommon here, but I don't see any american offerings of the same thing in cordless electric. die grinders and tiny liner belt sanders aplenty, though.