Thread: Of brass and plane-making

Check out Popular Mechanics and Shopnotes forBrass Block Plane Pattern and plans. Then there is Finck's book and Perch & Lee's Book.
Should help you get started. Also, it goes without saying, to do a search on this forum, has been discussed a time or two before

Mate,
George Westons in Bris have about the only 6mm brass sheet that I can find. Other than that the max thickness that I can find seems to be 3mm.

I like these links:
http://www.xmission.com/~jry/ww/tool...etails-v2.html
http://www.xmission.com/~jry/ww/tools/a13/a13.html
http://home.xnet.com/~rcallen/kingshott.html#more

Infills and metal sided rebates came in steel and brass, and other copper alloys as well, i.e. gunmetal, bronze, bell brass....

I plan to do a steel sole with brass sides plane or two, as I like the contrast. I also like the all brass and think it looks good in a rebate.

I have not given too much thought to what wood species for a all wooden plane. My considerations would be that is reasonably dense, straight grained and quarter cut.

Edit: If the timber is for the infill, then as the sides, a rivet and an exopy bed hold the timber in, then I'd use the Qld Walnut, just cause I like it.

It depends on the grain, of course, but I've found that PNG Rosewood can be rather brittle. You can be happily planing/paring along, when suddenly a lump decides to fall off :eek:

I had the thankless task of making a mallet head out of the stuff once (not my choice of timber), leading to hours of frustration and a mallet that cannot actually be used to hit anything....

Rock maple would be my choice for a plane - drool

I have used cherry, maple, beech and oak of the 'regular hardwoods', the only viable option to make a whole plane from is beech and possibly oak if you need to. Maple will work, but it moves waaay too much for anything other than a plane where the sides moving around isn't a problem. In a Krenov style, that limits you to rounds and hollows. Not kidding there either unfortunately.

If your feeding the fire with ebony, then you are burning up good plane stock.

For a stuffing, anything heavy, reasonably stable and nice to hold works. And even heavy is fixable, especially on an infill. The darn things get heavy awfully quick, even my little shoulder plane I made comes in well over 1 kilogram. I think.

I think for a rebate plane, all brass would be fine. I used all steel as brass is scarce around here. If it's going to see lots of work, then a steel sole is a good option.

For brass, regular 'brass' of whatever alloy will prolly work fine. Best is gunmetal as it does not work harden, but almost any brass/bronze will work fine. Regrettably, plain old brass is about the only economical option as well as being relatively common.

Hope that makes things even less clear for you than before.

Good luck.

GWC, I'll second Schtoo. I think NG Rosewood would be a bit soft and a bit lively for infill. The Qld Walnut should fit the bill much better, and polish up more nicely with use. Some of the western Acacias (Gidgee, Mulga) ought to be excellent. I'm planning on trying some forest She-oak in an infill, (used it quite a bit for totes and knobs, and it is very good in that role). Just as soon as I get one of those round tuits eveyone talks about.
Rock Maple (Acer sp.) is very movy stuff (my bench is made if it, that's how I know!), and besides, it's as bland as bat faeces. We have at least a dozen species here in Oz that would be much more stable, and much nicer to look at on the finished item - even Qld Maple (Flindersia sp.) would be better if you got the right piece. (Personal taste!).

Brass is easy to come by (if you're anywhere near a major centre), realatively cheap, but not ideal because of its work-hardening properties - if you beat your dovetail ends too much, they start to flake - the trick seems to be to have just the right amount of extra metal, and a reasonably close fit, so you're not peining too much metal over. When you're working from scratch on your own, it's a good idea to sacrifice a bit of metal for a trial run or two. I THINK I have it about right after a couple of trials (and errors!). On the first dovetailed (shoulder) plane I did, I ended up cheating and filling the imperfect d'tails with solder. It has held up well for 20-odd years, but doesn't look quite a spiffy as it might have if I'd persevered with the d'tails a bit more. I've tried sourcing gunmetal, which is said to have better working properties, but can't find it in Aust in sheet form. There have been a couple of threads on the topic since, and it looks like no-one carries it here, so your only choice is to buy it from the States (several places advertise it there), but freight would be a killer.

Good luck, and keep us posted with your progress - you could save some of us a lot of time by finding the pitfalls first.....
Cheers,

Thanks, everyone, for your input.

Okay, so my PNG Rosewood probably ain't the best thing for the job. Oh well, I'll plug a slab of walnut in instead.

Now what should I do with the rosewood?

By the way, if I ever decide to build a larger infill (i.e. a smoother) then would 3mm brass be thick enough? Or do I need the 6mm stuff?

That link to the little brass-sided block plane sure is a good one. What a gorgeous-looking little plane!

Re: using beech for a Krenov-style plane ... how would it be if I made the plane out of beech and the sole out of rock maple? Or is it better just to stick with solid beech?

Regards,
GW

If you had the sole of the plane full width in maple, it would work pretty well. I have that on my scraper plane (used for the first time today!) and it gives little trouble.

On a small smoother I also have, I used maple as side plates with a bloodwood body. The sides are always poking past the body, and need jointing again almost every time I use it, which is rarely, thankfully.

On a bigger plane, 4-6mm should be enough for the sides. I think 3mm might get getting a little thin, but if you are stuck with the 3mm stuff, never hurts to try.

When I get around to making a new jointer, I will prolly use steel bottom and sides just to keep the costs reasonable. 5 linear feet of 5x60mm brass gets a tad spendy, whereas steel costs about $5 and doesn't work harden half as much as brass will. Still looks respectable too. Will cast a few pieces in bronze for it though, no point slumming it all the way, huh?

Hi GW,

I too have a HNT Gordon shoulder plane - 1 1/4" version. I bought the plane to work, but also bought it as a (very nice) template for when I make my own version of the 3/4" plane.

The most informative tutorial on making a shoulder plane was on here on this little old BB - a few months ago, prepared by Aaron. He went step by step through making the plane, and even went to the trouble of listing his suppliers - really excellent stuff! I intend to use the information when I get around to making my own. By the way, Aaron is really keen; he even made his own blade - I intend to buy a blade and make my own plane body.
The link is as below:
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=24393

I have an excellent book titled "Making and Mastering Wood Planes" by Fink, David. This is a brilliant book, way more than just how to build a Krenov style plane - sections on sharpening, band saws, tools.... It is available from Carbatec.

Hope this helps, good luck with the plane for lil GW!

Anthony

Hi Anthony.

I keep a pretty close eye on this forum, but I obviously missed that post on the shoulder plane. I had a look at the date, and that's when I was away on holidays. In any case, it's brilliant! Thanks. I can see now that a nice chunk of that Qld Walnut will do nicely.

Schtoo - if I were to use another metal cheaper than brass, what would be best? And how thick?

Arron - if you read this ... how much was the brass channel?

Cheers,
GW

I plan to use plain old hot rolled steel, ie: the cheap stuff that's everywhere.

Firstly, it's cheap! Secondly, its in a range of sizes and cheap! Thirdly, it easy to work with and it's cheap! Lastly, it will not move around very much if you take big chunks out of it (like cold rolled can) and it's still cheap!

See a pattern forming here?

I may however lash out and get some cold rolled steel for a plane. It's effectively 3 times the price of hot rolled here, but provided you take care, it saves oodles of time because it's on size, straight and clean. Hot rolled is covered with scale you have to remove (easy enough for me, lotsa practise) and then you should at least dimension and joint it.

Even cold rolled at it's higher price is less than half that of brass, and I know I can get brass in almost any size I want here, I'm just not that happy paying big $$$ for it when I need big lumps of it. Even though what I cut out of the brass/bronze I can self recycle so it's not wasted, it's still awful expensive here.

Mild steel (hot or cold rolled) is dead easy to work with. Almost any metal tools will easily cut it, files don't get upset with it and it's just nice to work with all round. Yes it does rust, but there are ways to combat that too. It's also nominally (I say that because some of the bronzes make steel look like play dough) stronger than brass which is an added benefit.

When I do the jointer, I will use 5mm sides, either 6 or 8mm sole with a 10-20mm bed piece just behind the blade. I will cast a plain bronze lever cap, maybe a chipbreaker, and make up a Norris adjuster. I'll also throw in an adjustable mouth, and prolly bed the thng at 37 degrees because I really like how that angle works and how versatile it is, only an option with an adjustable mouth though.

And that's about it for me. If I want a smaller thing, I'll prolly cast up some gunmetal plates for myself and have at it with the proper stuff.

That is until I get the cupola furnace made that I want. Once it working, mostly cast iron planes and other things like that.

The thing with gunmetal is that it does not work harden. IIRC, it's a copper/tin alloy, whereas brass and managanese bronze (LN planes) are copper/zinc (with a little manganese for the M. bronze). The reason it's called gunmetal is because cannons used to be made from it, before they worked out how to make iron do the job. If you used a common copper/zinc alloy, the cannon would work harden after a few shots, become brittle and explode. Not a useful thing for a cannon to do. Possibly the reason why it's expensive now is that brass can be either hard or soft which is useufl at times. Gunmetal is always the same, and maybe not quite so useful.
Nice stuff all the same though.

Oh yeah, need to find something to stuff the thing with. Jointers be awful big and need big chunks of tree. I can see that's going to be painful...

Schtoo, have you found a gunmetal supplier in the US?
Seems impossible to get here.

Gunmetal has largely been replaced with newer bronzes - phosphor bronze, silicon bronze, manganese bronze etc. Quite often if you ask a foundry to cast up something out of gunmetal they'll just use something like phosphor bronze anyway, which can be annoying. For most people that's OK (mainly because they wouldn't be able to tell anyway) but, if you're after the real stuff, it's important to try and find someone you can trust.

Most metals will work harden if you pound them enough - even gunmetal.

Any reasonably stable wood will work as an infill. The heavier, the better for smaller planes, but you can use a lighter wood (as in weight) on the battleships (jointers).

Beech is the supreme timber for woodies but you can use other woods as well. Basically anything that doesn't move too much. Try to use something tough for the sole unless you only intend using the finished plane for occasional work.

Clinton, not for strips or plate. Rods and tubes, yes.

I think I will end up casting up my own plates, depending on how well it pours. Some metals will not pour into a thin cavity very well, and if that's so, then I'd have to look at either using brass or working out some other way to roll the stuff thinner. Already pondering wether to make up a roller to thin out stuff, might also be useful for making saw backs.

Still gotta hunt down a source for scrap copper though. Tin, antimony, zinc and other soft metals are easy enough to find, it's just copper is not.