Thread: The ever-changing block plane makeover

Ok, you might have already spotted or thought of it. The plane hase the following problems:

1. The mouth is far too big. It did not work very well. Look at it



I feel I can drive a truck through that. In this stage I might have no mouth at all and turn it into a chisel plane. Keep in mind it is a bevel up plane with no chipbreaker, etc. The body was not from a good quality plane clearly.

But as I said, once I have a stupid idea I stick to it. So I went and made a small brass insert from a scrap piece.



Much better and it performed quite well after that. I would liked the mouth a tad smaller, but my scrap brass dictated the result. Anyway I am happy with that. If only I would have thought of it earlier. Then I could have drilled some small holes for some pins to hold it as well. Now it is just kept in place by epoxy.

2. After it works now quite good I found that the rear end of the blade pokes into your hand and quite uncomfortable to push. Would not want to use it for extended time. There is a reason why these type of block planes have so different lever caps.

The only solution I could come up with was to sort of use my original design feature, but instead of a hump for the palm of you hand on the lever cap I attached it directly to the blade.



First I thought of peening a piece of thick brass at the end of the blade. But that might have made it awkward for sharpening. So I opted for a removable piece. I drill two holes in the blade end and taped two corresponding holes into the hump. It is fixed now with two M5 screws and can be taken off for sharpening. Feels very good now and I would keep it to use myself, but it is already promised. At least I left my name on it ;-)



I couldn't help myself and had to take a foto together with one of Ian's planes. Not that I think it can compare with it.

Now what is left to do is to make a small box for it. And I would like to also make a small adjustment hammer for it. Sadly I ran out of hairy oak. So I am hoping someone here might have some suitable pieces for a small hammer handle and maybe to accentuate the box I can come to an agreement with.

In conclusion with all these changes and turns I am happy with my result, but if I had foreseen that before I probably would have made the body as well from scratch.....



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That's impressive, CK! Good design iteration to consider both form and function.

Is the cap iron design similar to the one that you use for your plane build challenge?

Nice salvage job, in the widest meaning of that word.

I also tried to do some research on that plane starting with the engraving on the blade - "Mohawk Shelburne" - assuming that the blade was part of the original plane - big assumption.

Miller Falls made a series of economy planes from 1931 through the 1960's and their #700 was remarkably similar to yours - but not identical. Maybe it evolved over the years?

Mohawk Shelburne No 700 Block Plane, Miller Falls Line, 1935+ | #1924264126

TimeTestedTools

Mohawk Shelburne #700.jpg

Cklett lock Plane.jpg


Sorry, but I showed your penultimate or WIP photo as this clearly shows the branding engraving on the blade.

CK,
Your story telling is getting excellent,
I think you have done an outstanding job, on turning basically a piece of rusty cast iron, into a very attractive and usable Block plane.

I especially love and can relate to your work methods, I sometimes need to make a part, look at it study it, bin it and start again.

What angle did you sharpen your blade too,just so we can all debate weather you used the “correct” angle.

Cheers Matt.

Ck, another good job & an excellent write-up with all the twists & turns & changes of mind that "prototyping" entails. I think you've managed the impossible & made a silk purse from a sow's ear! You're right, I think it would've been easier to start from scratch, but the experience gained has been invaluable, so it's been a worthwhile exercise, I reckon.

I haven't got any large bits of H.O. left, but I'm pretty sure I'd have a piece of H.O. big enough for a small adjusting hammer amongst my scraps of casuarinas. I'll have a look tomorrow (not at home atm) & text you if I find some.
Cheers,

Hi CK. Great post. Especially like the idea of closing up the mouth with brass. I have a plane that could be improved that way too.

I saw this video recently, quite a clever idea. My Polish is non existent and sometimes I get a bit lost but his projects are right up my alley.

Stary, drewniany strug zamiast marketowego badziewia?/Old wooden plane instead of cheap metal anchor - YouTube

Originally Posted by Andy_B

That's impressive, CK! Good design iteration to consider both form and function.

Is the cap iron design similar to the one that you use for your plane build challenge?

Andy, I am not quite sure what you mean. My understanding is that a cap iron is the same as what others call a chip breaker. Chip breaker are directly screwed onto the blade like at Bailey pattern planes. Neither bevel up nor scraper planes have chip breaker. They wouldn't work on them. The block plane is a bevel up plane and my challenge plane is a scraper plane.

Here is a Stanley #3. You see the cap iron = chip breaker screwed straight onto the blade in the middle.



Unless you referred to the lever cap (left in above picture) which holds the blade in place by pressing it firmly onto the bed. In this case for both my planes the style/ functionality is the same. I used lever caps typical for infill planes (unlike the one above) which are connected to the plane body by pivot points and then use a thumb screw to put pressure on the blade so that the lower end of the lever cap presses the blade onto the bed. Or in case of the scraper plane onto the frog.




If I misunderstood the question please let me know.

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Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Nice salvage job, in the widest meaning of that word.

I also tried to do some research on that plane starting with the engraving on the blade - "Mohawk Shelburne" - assuming that the blade was part of the original plane - big assumption.

Miller Falls made a series of economy planes from 1931 through the 1960's and their #700 was remarkably similar to yours - but not identical. Maybe it evolved over the years?

Mohawk Shelburne No 700 Block Plane, Miller Falls Line, 1935+ | #1924264126

TimeTestedTools

Mohawk Shelburne #700.jpg

Cklett lock Plane.jpg


Sorry, but I showed your penultimate or WIP photo as this clearly shows the branding engraving on the blade.

Yeah, that was a big assumption. I can confirm the body and blade most certainly did not come from the same plane. I got them in too different lots of old tools.

Also the body had no markings and the front knob was not screwed but simply pressed onto a square stump. You can still see the remains in one of the pictures. I just shortened it a bit.

It's good to know a bit more of the history of the parts. Thanks for that and may the guardians of tools forgive me to drill holes into the blade.

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Originally Posted by Simplicity

CK,
Your story telling is getting excellent,
I think you have done an outstanding job, on turning basically a piece of rusty cast iron, into a very attractive and usable Block plane.

I especially love and can relate to your work methods, I sometimes need to make a part, look at it study it, bin it and start again.

What angle did you sharpen your blade too,just so we can all debate weather you used the “correct” angle.

Cheers Matt.

Oh Matt, why, why did you have to ask this question. Now I do not know if shall be angry with you for destroying my illusion of happiness or be grateful.....

As it turns out I forgot to check the bevel angle and just maintained the angle.the blade came with. After you asked I went and checked it. I assumed it should have been 25 degrees. I thought that should have been the angle for a blade for such plane where it came from. But no, for whatever reason it was ground to 35 degrees! Darn it!



The bed is about 25 degrees. So I had a cutting angle of 25 + 35 = 60 degrees!

Then again, grateful I checked thanks to you. I would have used 25. However, this gave me the opportunity to experiment. So I took a blade from another similar plane which was ground to 25 degrees, sharpened it and put it into the new plane.

The result in terms of surface on the woods I used (pine and tassy oak) were not different. But no surprise the 25 degrees were much easier to push especially for heavier cut.

So now the discussion on the best angle can start. I lean back and watch as it unravels before I decide to what angle I'll regrind the blade. [emoji6]


In any case it makes nice full width shavings.




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Having a 60 degree cutting angle means you won’t get such bad tear out on cranky grained timbers; I have both standard and high angled blades for my Luban LA jack and Record 65 block planes and use whichever is appropriate at the time.

The downside to a high angled blade is that it makes it considerably harder to push the plane through the timber.

Originally Posted by Cklett

Yeah, that was a big assumption. I can confirm the body and blade most certainly did not come from the same plane. I got them in too different lots of old tools.

Also the body had no markings and the front knob was not screwed but simply pressed onto a square stump. You can still see the remains in one of the pictures. I just shortened it a bit.
.....

Thanks. But it is also possible that you accidentally scored a "correct" blade for that body. Apparently the Mohawk Shelburne products were reabsorbed into the Miller Falls product line c.1946 and the block plane continued for many years.

Here is a quote from the Time Tested Tools citation above:
"... Here's an all-black (thus MF [Miller Falls]) #700 block plane that arrived today that still had the old Mohawk Shelburne iron in it. Note that there is no maker's mark nor model number anywhere on it. ..."

Miller Falls #700.jpg


Comparing it to your body you will note that the front Knob in both planes is retained by a screw, wheras the Miller Falls has two "Blade support piers (*)" whereas yours only has a single "pier". [* I do not know the correct name for this feature.] Both have similar reinforcing around the mouth, and similar tail molding. Overall, more similarities than variances in the gestalt.

Ckletts Block Plane Body.jpg


One possibility is that yours was an early model, they later realised that a single "pier" did not anchor the blade sufficiently, so they modified the design an added the second "pier".

Another possibility is that early models had two "piers" and they thought that they could reduce costs by 2 cents by cutting back to a single "pier".

A third possibility is that the two bodies are not related.

So now the discussion on the best angle can start. I lean back and watch as it unravels before I decide to what angle I'll regrind the blade. [emoji6]



If you could just move over on the couch CK, and would you like some pop corn before the fireworks display.[emoji6]

If at a combined cutting angle of 60 degrees, your happy, end of story I reckon.

The debate for what is optimum angle is like a perpetual motion machine it never stops.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by IanW

Ck, another good job & an excellent write-up with all the twists & turns & changes of mind that "prototyping" entails. I think you've managed the impossible & made a silk purse from a sow's ear! You're right, I think it would've been easier to start from scratch, but the experience gained has been invaluable, so it's been a worthwhile exercise, I reckon.

I haven't got any large bits of H.O. left, but I'm pretty sure I'd have a piece of H.O. big enough for a small adjusting hammer amongst my scraps of casuarinas. I'll have a look tomorrow (not at home atm) & text you if I find some.
Cheers,

Thanks Ian. No rush. I anyway have to resaw the main timber for the box and have another project for my better half to do first now...

I had the idea to redo this plane before I had my first attempt on dovetailing a plane body and therefore I still followed through.

At that time I thought the dovetailed plane body is out of my league. Little did I know. I think a lot people think that and so you can find quite a few examples of people using existing cast bodies because the shy away from the metal work. Now I can say that making your own body isn't as hard and you are not restricted in the design as much.

However, I am still glad I did this one as I learned again a lot as you pointed out. And these learnings will go into the next one.

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More or less what the Chief said & Matt implied (I think!), that it's horses for courses. There are tasks for which a 60* cutting angle will serve you well & times when the more 'conventional' angle of 20* + 25* will be better. Having owned a 110 for 60-something years, I know they need all the help they can get to prevent tear-out at times.

I think the ideal solution is for you to send two blades, one ground to 35-40 & one ground to 25, & think of some way your elegant palm-saving "biscuit" can be attached/detached & switched to the other blade. Or maybe just fit both blades with a biscuit?

Cheers,

P.S. Found a bit of H.O. that should do for a hammer handle & sent you an email...