Thread: A couple of laminated shoulder planes

Originally Posted by IanW

I thought I had laminated shoulder planes sorted about as well as I’m ever likely to get them, having made close to 30 of them now, but even if I made another 30, I’d probably still learn something new. So it should have come as no surprise when I learnt a little bit more when making a couple of recent commissions (yeah, I know, I’m a hopeless case……)

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They are beautiful. The new owner is very lucky and sure is going to enjoy them.

I might have missed that, but what did you learn this time?

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Originally Posted by Cklett

......I might have missed that, but what did you learn this time? ....

I guess I didn't make it very clear, Ck, so not surprising you are puzzled!

There were a couple of things: First, I tried a different approach to lining up the core pieces. I took extra care that the blade bed slope was matched to the front of the mouth, by cutting the front core piece & filing the section that forms the front of the mouth accurately so it needed very little attention after assembly. In the past I've sometimes been a bit sloppy with that, thinking I could just file everything to match after assembly, but a couple of times it has required more cleaning-up than intended & I ended up with a bigger mouth gap than I wanted. It's not as easy as I first thought to get the mouth just-so. The end of the blade bed needs to be cut off a bit - bringing it to a knife edge is not good, it's too fragile (& highly dangerous to errant finger-tip, damhik!), & this makes it more difficult to judge the right distance from the front of the mouth - too far bck & the mouth will be too big, too far forward & the front of the mouth will need to be filed out, which is a cow of a job because there is so little rook to get anything but a flat needle file in, which makes the job tediously slow! The low bed angle is the problem, a very small movement for or aft makes a big difference to where the edge of the blade exits.

Another thing I learnt was that soldering the main pieces is quite easy if you go about it the right way & use lead solder. I know lead can be a nasty environmental toxin, but I'm pretty confident that in this context it won't imperil future generations.

Another lesson was to make sure I use the correct blade thickness when fitting the wedge! When I was doing that on the bull-oak version, I had not yet filed the sides flush with the blade bed - it's a tedious & painstaking job so I never rush to do it. That meant I couldn't use the actual blade I had ready, it would not have sat on the bed properly, so I used a narrow scrap of what I thought was the same material when marking out for the brass cup in the wedge. Well, it turned out the piece I used was 2.5mm thick, not 3mm. It would've been a big problem if it had been the other way round, but all I had to do was take a little off the bottom of the wedge & all was well. Why I didn't spot the difference sooner, I don't know, it's pretty obvious when the two are lying side by side. It's just another illustration of how fussy things get with low-angle planes; there was no way that wedge would fit once I put the proper blade in until I removed the excess 0.5mm!

Perhaps the main lesson I learnt (or had re-enforced, more accurately) is that taking the time to check & re-check as I go along pays dividends. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending, these two should be very good working tools and yes, I hope the new owner will be happy with them. I've still got a bit of fiddling to do with the adjuster on the one inch version, the disc of the thumbscrew is binding in the blade slot, so I have to carefully file that out a bit more 'til it runs smoothly, but otherwise they are good to go...

Cheers,

Here's a new tip for you; how to stop solder spreading where you don't want it!

1. Cover the joint area with permanent marker (or proper layout ink if you have it)
2. Run a sharp scriber along the joint line through the ink layer and into the metal. Don't go mad; just a visible line is enough.
3. Remove the ink on the joint side of the line, preferably with a solvent rather than an abrasive. If you clean past the line just reapply the ink on that side; the scribed line can act as a barrier and prevent the ink crossing over the other side.
4. Apply flux, again the scribed line will act as a barrier and if any flux does cross over the ink stops it reaching the metal.

This works for both lead/tin and silver solders.

Thanks Chief - I didn't know layout dye resists solder. I'll most definitely put that tip to good use!

Cheers,

They are just beautiful Ian.
I would love to see a pic of the actual soldering process next time if possible.

Originally Posted by IanW

Thanks Chief - I didn't know layout dye resists solder. I'll most definitely put that tip to good use!

It’s pretty much the reverse of cleaning the jointing surfaces to get a good joint. As you’ve no doubt discovered many times in the past solder will only stick to clean surfaces; any contamination will have the metal obstinately flowing around it. All I do is make the area around the joint deliberately “dirty”.

I used to demo silver soldering brass flanges upside-down onto 1” CuNi tubing; the rod would get pulled into the joint through capillary action as designed and so long as you didn’t try to overfill the joint there would be no metal run-off. You kept an eye on the inside of the flange and when you saw a ring of solder flash around the pipe/flange join you then only applied enough additional metal to make a pretty pretty fillet on the outside. A nice thick Texta line around the tube helped keep the flux and the solder where I wanted it: at the joint and no further.

Originally Posted by Woody1

They are just beautiful Ian.
I would love to see a pic of the actual soldering process next time if possible.

Hmm, sorry woody, I didn't take any pics of that step - I had the torch in one hand & a stick of solder in the other, so I'll try to be creative & get some pics next time....

Chief, yairs, I did a lot of soldering & brazing back on the farm & got pretty good at the process, though I'm pretty deficient in the theory, never having had any formal tuition. I certainly knew that cleanliness is key when soldering (& the right flux for the particular job). As an apprentice radio tech I spent most of the working day with a soldering iron in hand. Those were the days, you could actually see the components of a circuit...

Cheers,