Old matherson iron in stanley plane...

**JDarvall** · 9th May 2005, 11:53 PM

I've been inventive today,,, but no doubt its been done before ....

I've been tied of the chatter I get with thin stanley plane irons.... You know how on some timbers ( pine sometimes ) how , no matter how sharp your blade is, it grabs heavily (even if set fine) at start of pass, then releases, skips, chatters, graps again etc...all that sort of annoying handplaning crap...
Well, I've been putting up with this lot for years, stubborning never giving in to buying myself a plane with more control,,,,ie something with a THICK BLADE...partly because of the cost,,,,, Hock irons, HNT gordon etc.....So I tried something
I got plenty of old Matherson irons from the old wooden planes everyone once used......cast steel.......Thick buggers that taper...getting thicker towards the edge where they can be anywhere near 5mm thick (no chatter here I thought)......I got the idea of using it in one of my stanleys which I'm too comfortable with to give up......But you know the slots in the old matherson irons are different with the hole at the rear, In this position the planes lateral ajustment doesn't work,,, so I welded in two small pieces into the circle, filed it so the circle was no more and it was just one continuous slot....
The other problem to deal with, due to the irons thickness, was the little lever that controls the blades depth. It couldn't touch the matching slot in the chipbreaker,,,,, so I welded a little bit of steel on this lever to make it longer so it would reach,,,,,,, (getting messy,,,,but I was moody)
Finally, I did the scary sharp thing on the Matherson iron, which as you can imagine took a while with such an old iron,,,lots of rust pits, and unevenness..
...set it up (had to slide back the fog a little because blades thickness) and well what can I say,,,bliss,,,huge difference...It could be adjusted like a regular steel plane, yet, absolutely no chatter,,,, and the blades edge held out a lot longer than my asortment of 2mm thick irons,,,and free............

So ,, have I got a right to feel special about this ? who's done this before ...... come on, hit me with it ... I'm ready.....

**Wood Borer** · 10th May 2005, 09:28 AM

Good on you.

Sounds like you have had some fun experimenting and coming up with good results. How about some photos?

**E. maculata** · 10th May 2005, 07:05 PM

Very cool, nice thinking
I've often thought about this but am too slack too follow through.
As Borer said photos would be great.

**JDarvall** · 11th May 2005, 09:55 AM

thanks for the feedback,

Love to show you a picture ,,but,, don't have a camera... Besides, although it works well its not too pretty to look at.... someone out there will probably think badly of what I've done to my stanley....to make the depth ajustment lever longer I put blobs of weld onto the lever until I felt it was long enough and then filed it square to fit the chipbreakers slot.... so there's a bit of splatter about....... and the matherson blade was modifyed with the welder as well,,,, messy looking ,,,but all that was flatterned afterwards so it doesn't affect a smooth movement on the fog,,,,,,, Everything else is in fine fettle,,,,flat sole, close throat, razor sharp edge,,,,,,,function is much, much more important to me than looks,,,,,,, Why have a tool that doesn't perform to its best ? eh..... besides I'm one of those people who cleans up those rusty old stanleys that seem to be everywhere at flee markets.... I've got parts coming out of my ears... It doesn't matter if I stuff one up.

Something else I forgot to mention ... the chipbreakers bolt... the one that binds it to the iron.... because the iron was so much thicker the bolt couldn't reach past the iron and bind it,,,,wasn't long enough ,,,, so I had to drill the chipbreaker out and retap for a bolt that was long enough....and then I found the head of this bolt went too deeply lifting the blade off the fog,,,, so this had to be ground thinner a bit

And something else that might be worth discussing.... Because the blade tapered the effective pitch of the blade must be lower than the fogs 45 degrees.... by how much I don't know,,,, maybe 5 degrees ( I'll work this out) which might mean the whole plane may work better as a shooting plane on end grain,,,, come to think of it, a thick blade would help this also..... I'm sure someone out there knows more about this than me .....maybe could bolt on or weld on a wide steel plate to one of its wings to give it stability as a shooting plane ??

and if it needs to be higher then a back bevel shouldn't be a problem... in fact it probably mean I wouldn't have to flattern the irons back.... it could have rust pits and still be ok because the actually edge would be further into the iron away from the surface.... if this makes sense ???

I better stop raving,,, seeya.

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