Thread: Dem bones. And a hand plane .

Originally Posted by AJOE123

Rob
I think the original wedge was Elephant ivory as the dimensions are too great for Cow bone.And it has a higher gloss.
perhaps cow horn might be usable; Wadkin used it for handles.
The white chess piece wood ,Oleander? might be OK

Cheers
Tony

Hi Tony.
I don't agree with the original being ivory or horn. Its bone . Ivory doesn't have grain like bone does. Its more dense. And Horn is more like our fingernails. like you I have those Wadkin handles all over the workshop. They are Buffalo horn. And its easy to see the fibrous strands. Specially if they get weathered and aged. I think Ivory is more like Tooth material? Next time you see some old dog bone lying around have a go shaping and polishing it on a sander and buff. You'll be amazed with how it comes up. The dimensions I have are good now . I just needed to find older larger cows or a Bull. Which I got.
Getting an old milk cow piece would be interesting to see. I wonder how old they get before they are no longer good producers. You'd think producing all that milk may leave them low in calcium? And they make all that calcium eating grass? Ill have to go google some of this.

Originally Posted by AJOE123

Rob
I think the original wedge was Elephant ivory as the dimensions are too great for Cow bone.And it has a higher gloss.
perhaps cow horn might be usable; Wadkin used it for handles.....

Tony, ivory is very similar to bone, the main difference for our purposes is it comes in larger chunks and the orientation of the mineral element is a little different because tusks need more bending strength while bones are built primarily to withstand compression. Dense cortical bone can be polished up very nicely, it has a very long history of being used for all sorts of things, like knife handles etc. & survives well as long as it's not regularly put in dishwashers. It looks like Rob is going to get the size he needs for his small wedge from his macabre collections.

Rob, bone is made by laying down mineral (calcium apatite) on a fibrous protein matrix - like a carbon fibre material. So fresh bone can tolerate more distortion without breaking. But the protein is going to be lost whether you boil it out or let it weather out like the old bones you find in the bush, so yes, your treated bone is going to be a bit more brittle. However, a chunk of 'dry' cortical bone will still be plenty tough enough for a wedge, I would think.

Cheers,
Ian

A few months back I sent Bill and Sarah Carter in the UK an email with some questions about another plane I have. We got talking back and forth and I asked them about the Davies plane as I knew Bill had handled it. I asked if Bill knew what the dimensions were. Bill and Sarah very kindly offered to send me a plan of it but he first had to collect it back from the owner. I was not expecting such kindness. They are two very nice people and Id like to send him back some bone but I think that will be very hard reading on the web about sending bone products to the UK. They also sent me a video with Bill handling and describing the plane.
Anyone ever sent processed bone overseas to the UK?
Probably not I would think but if there is a way to do it Id like to hear it. I doubt it would be easy. And it sounds like lots of paper work and some paid for opinions as well.

Here's the plan I received.

IMG_5317a.jpg

I started cutting some metal today. First thing I did was to decide to change the sole to 3.5mm from 3mm.
So I cut that mild steel blank out on the right. I have an unfinished project and have the sole to copy on the left. Its a thumb plane sole. Ill do similar to that but the top mortise cheek Ill do the same as the bottom I think. Not angled on top like that one is. I made that with Peter Mcbride and am glad its not together yet so I have something to go by.
IMG_5481.jpg IMG_5481a.jpg

From this point on I'm flying by the seat of my pants a bit. Ive been re reading a little of your pages on plane making Ian. But just thought Id go with what I remember from that and Peters help as well and decide what to do as I go along. And if I stuff it up Ill have to do a part twice maybe. Flying along is how I like to work. I was going to draw the plane up again with detailed measurements in mm but that didn't happen.

I usually cut brass sheet on my band saw with the 3/8 wood blade in it. Even though I do have a metal cutting band saw as well. Ill use that on the sole with its steel cutting blade.
IMG_5483-copy.jpg
I then glued the strip of brass to some blackwood backing using button shellac. Like jewelers do. Heating the sheet on my trusty workshop grill. I used to cook lunches on that years ago . And its the hot glue heater as well.
IMG_5486.jpg

Melt a few drops of shellac on using a lighter and when its all hot enough I pressed it to the wood and then wet it to cool it down. Instant glue job.
With the DTs and rear pin marked out I used the band saw to notch out the waste and run it sideways to sort of mill the bottoms flat. Using my magnetic fence to slide along. It worked well. Ive been thinking of trying that for some time. Its makes it like a 10 minute job. I also decided on 4 DTs each side and not 3 odd sized ones like the original has.


IMG_5497.jpg

I had to cut in to leave enough for the filing of the angle .Then file them after. The timber backing was great for stopping the ragged brass tear out on exit of blade and for the filing of the angle. And the shellac held OK.
IMG_5497a.jpg

I did the angles at a 1 / 2 ratio which is , I realized later, to great an angle. The reason I did this was because I measured a Spiers smoother I have for the angle and copied that. I had no access to the original sole pictures.
IMG_5503.jpg IMG_5490.jpg

That's the Spiers sole above left and I realized the angle is so great on that because the Gun Metal has been cut and then peened across to fill the filed extra angle. So they didn't start at 1 / 2 ratio. They ended up that way after peening. The sides of the gun metal are parallel .
Anyway I can adjust mine back and do the filing and peening in both sides and bottom to give the double DT look and get all the strength possible that is specially needed around the mouth.
Getting the brain around these things is tricky! And the different assembly of the dovetails between planes types is not that easy and straight forward to work out sometimes.

Rob.

Originally Posted by auscab

Thanks Ian. Those side heights, that's just the side height on top of the sole? It must be.
So the mini is 18.2 mm total. Wow!

Nope, Rob, those measurements are of the full side including sole thickness. I started with a slightly wider strip, of course, you need 1.5 to 2mm extra for peening & filling the sockets. With separate sides, where the pins & tails can be cut to a close fit I keep the 'peening allowance' to 1.5mm (the less you have to file off at the end the better!), but with the mitre planes, the dovetails have to be formed by peening so I needed extra metal on both to fill larger voids. An extra .5mm doesn't sound like much, but it makes a big difference. For your first plane or two, it might pay to allow a little bit more for peening, but don't go too wild, the more 'spare' metal you have, the harder it is to see if you are filling the voids (something that's hard to explain, but you'll discover it very quickly when you do it), & the more work you have filing it all flush at the end. I would strongly suggest to anyone who hasn't made metal dovetails before that they either practise a bit with some scrap, or build a small plane with separate sides to get the feel of how metals move.

And don't start with a stainless steel sole for your first one, either! The steel I used for the larger of those two was a piece of unspecified 4mm stainless I bought on ebay. Any SS is significantly harder to peen than mild steel but this stuff was the worst SS I've struck so far! Despite my prior experience & taking utmost care, I got several pin-holes through not properly filling the corners.

Picture1.jpg

That's the bad side, there's only a tiny pin-hole on the other, but I'm so annoyed - I got the mouth straight & tight, as close to perfect as I think I'll ever get and the little thing works beautifully, one of the sweetest small planes I've made. I guess in time I won't notice the small blemishes. It's always those darned corners that give you grief, even on a separate side where you can fit the pins & tails closely you need to be careful here, but with the straight 'tails' on a mitre plane you have to move more metal into the corners to form the slope of the simulated tail, so the danger of not quite filling it is greater.

I'm making a small coffin-shaped smoother atm (it's a commission from a friend I can't refuse, so it doesn't count as making more planes ), and I wanted to use 4mm steel for the sole, which is not a size readily available in rolled mild bar. If I had access to a good milling machine I could plane up some 5mm, but I'm certainly not going to do it manually! In view of the experience I just had with the SS I decided instead to shoot the moose & buy a piece of gauge-plate for the sole. What a difference! Gauge plate is O1 (good for blade-making), but it comes annealed & is much the same to cut & file and peen as mild steel. Add to that, it's a joy to work with a piece that's clean & ground dead flat, makes life so much easier. What's more, it doesn't seem to crumb & jamb in the file teeth the way mild does. It's only drawback is a 4mm piece 50mm x 500mm cost me $96 landed, which is at least 10x the cost of an equivalent piece of mild steel!

Cheers,
Ian

Coupla points after reading your latest post:

1. My advice on the joint for the sole pieces, after having done more than a dozen, is keep it as simple as you can! Its only function is to register the parts while you lay out the sockets from the sides. Once peened up, it contributes little to structural strength of the body, the metal 'dovetails' do that job (& do it extremely well). In fact, on that little thumb plane you are now the proud owner of, it appears to me that the joint is just a simple scarf, which was possibly soldered together (I studied it very carefully, but could not tell for sure, but soldering it would make sense). I don't know why Peter cut the cheeks like that, it seems like an unnecessary added complication to me, but I'm sure he would have had a reason (which I'd like to hear if you remember to ask him sometime ).

Anyway, my advice is to keep that T&G simple & shallow, no more than 1.5mm deep is plenty. If you cut it carefully & get a nice fit that needs gentle tapping together, that's perfect, but you can close a slightly loose one by tapping the top cheek down a teeny tiny bit. Tapping the top is safest, any very small dip that causes can be closed when you peen the edges of the join, but a dip on the sole side will give you lots more work when lapping to get rid of it (damhik!).

2. Dovetail angles: Yes indeed, the apparent angles on peened-up tails & pins is greatly exaggerated. Again, experience has taught me to be very sparing with the angles, otherwise you create larger voids which take a lot more filling. On a small plane I made some years ago, I forgot to file any bevels at all on the tails on one side. I'd only just begun to peen when I realised it, so I tried to pull the side off but the pins I'd just barely begun to close were already holding enough that I would have caused major distortion if I'd persisted in trying to separate them. So I decided to carry on & see what happened. By the time I finished, you could not see any difference between the side that had been bevelled & the side that hadn't, and even after filing flush, you'd have been hard-put telling them apart.

One of my books says that early mitre planes had straight pins & tails, and relied on the pressure of the metal to hold them together. I'm not sure how accurate that information is because you can't tell much by looking at sides & soles if they're the same material - the joints are usually invisible. Some makers put a small notch in each corner of the tails (Peter McBride showed it on an old Spiers, in one of his very old posts), which you cannot see once it's filled & flushed, only if you tear the joint apart. You couldn't do that with brass sides because it would be obvious & look a bit messy, but brass deforms so easily under the steel that I don't think the notch is at all necessary.

So my advice is, take it really easy on the D/T bevels - some slope on the sides looks good, but don't go for something like you can do (quite easily) when making separate sides.

This is my first-ever mitre: 7 pic.jpg

...those pins & tails started as straight cuts and a reasonably close fit (a couple of gaps were ~0.5mm, which caused some anxiety but I'd left almost 2mm extra on the steel expecting extra peening would be needed (it was!) and ended up with a fairly satisfactory job. The slope of the tails was achieved by filing a tapered bevel on the tail edges - not much, even at the 'deep' end it was less than half the depth of the side material & less than a mm wide, tapering to nothing at the ends. The result looks like a slope of somewhere around 1:7 or 8. If you look carefully, you'll see that the slopes are not all exactly the same angle, but close enough that you don't notice on a casual glance. I guess by the time I've done as many mitre planes as Bill Carter, I'll get them closer to perfect....

Cheers,

I know I'm late to the party, but I've hacked up a couple large animal carcasses. A freshly sharpened set of tree loppers are your #1 friend. Just start clipping, and you'll make quick work of all the connective tissue. Next tool is a quality kitchen knife. I want a boning knife that's razor sharp. That will deal with any mushy hanging bits that the loppers won't snip through.

On bones... They are a greasy mess that takes a LOT of effort to make usable in projects like this. They also have a lot of salt/blood that will horribly pit steel irons and etch metal plane bodies. Every extra hour you spend boiling and degreasing is an hour that doesn't wreck your tools later on.

You can purchase chunks of prepared bone for musical instruments via luthier supply shops. I would encourage you to look that route, as it is already prepared out of old, tough animals
suitable for the task - like say 10+ year old oxen or water buffalo used for plowing or some such...

Best of luck. Better you than me.

Personally, I not a fan of all this blood and guts stuff, my butcher is an I’m fine with that,

But if was me wanting some fresh bone, I would let Mother Nature do her stuff.

Flesh Eating Beetles vs European Deer Skull - YouTube

She’s very efficient, I must say.

Cheers Matt.

Rob

As a teenager I used to work for a guy who made shell souvenirs and part of my job was to clean small sea snail shells - about 15 mm long and in batches of 20 or 30 litres. They were put in a shaded position in the garden, quickly got fly-blown and the maggots chomped away for 3-4 weeks - the trick was to keep them moist but not wet. After a month they were washed in hydrochloric acid - brickies acid - and then rinsed thoroughly in fresh water. And we then had lovely, shiny, clean shells.

Also, for cutting bone, butchers used to use hack saws, now they use band saws.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Personally, I not a fan of all this blood and guts stuff, my butcher is an I’m fine with that,

But if was me wanting some fresh bone, I would let Mother Nature do her stuff.

Flesh Eating Beetles vs European Deer Skull - YouTube

She’s very efficient, I must say.

Cheers Matt.

" Not a fan" ! And you put that up.

That air compressor trick is pure .

Rob.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Rob

As a teenager I used to work for a guy who made shell souvenirs and part of my job was to clean small sea snail shells - about 15 mm long and in batches of 20 or 30 litres. They were put in a shaded position in the garden, quickly got fly-blown and the maggots chomped away for 3-4 weeks - the trick was to keep them moist but not wet. After a month they were washed in hydrochloric acid - brickies acid - and then rinsed thoroughly in fresh water. And we then had lovely, shiny, clean shells.

Also, for cutting bone, butchers used to use hack saws, now they use band saws.

Hi Graeme. Thanks for that. I'd happily let the Bugs do the job if I had a dead 4 year or older bull on my property. I did attempt getting these parts to early really. And just wanted to secure some as the chance may not come again soon. Now that I have a few pieces I'm happy to wait longer and go back for the rest later. Not that I'm going into miniature mitre plane production big time. There is a few I'd like to do and some other stuff as well. As well as share some around when I have enough. So a little stockpile would be good.

Ive been cutting the stuff on one of my band saws. Its fast. But messy. The gooey fresh bones Ill keep outside and try a hand saw the ends off after the first boil down or the second possibly. Then they may go in again for the internal spaces. After that the breaking down can be done inside on the band saw but Ive found out the hard way that a strong fan to blow everything away from me is smart. Dust extraction would be nice but I haven't got it hooked up on that that band saw yet. Maybe I should put a new small blade on my larger band saw which does have good extraction.
Hydrochloric acid sounds good. I may try that out.

The lady with the decaying bull is on 300 acres and has a couple of herds. She said she has a dumping area where there are plenty of older bones lying around in a forest and some of the Cows were 4 yo big ones. Hopefully they are mostly still in place. I'm going for a look in a few weeks when I go check on the bull. The mitre plane sized pieces needed may not be there but there could be a number of canon bone pieces that are perfect for the flat objects like escutcheons and some larger things. Left outside to long and they start cracking and splitting as well.

Rob

Originally Posted by IanW

Nope, Rob, those measurements are of the full side including sole thickness.

I'm making a small coffin-shaped smoother atm

I decided instead to shoot the moose & buy a piece of gauge-plate for the sole. What a difference! Gauge plate is O1 (good for blade-making), but it comes annealed & is much the same to cut & file and peen as mild steel. Add to that, it's a joy to work with a piece that's clean & ground dead flat, makes life so much easier.

That mini is 15mm high then Ian. That is a tiny mini !

Thanks for all the tips.
01 for the sole sounds good.
Ive got some 5mm for the blade and need about 3.5mm I think . Ill probably weld 1 inch of 5mm 01 onto some 3.5 mild for the blade then grind the 5 down to 3.5.mm rather than buy more in.

I'm looking forward to the peening across of the metal. Ive done rivets and all sorts of peening before but imagine with this you cant just have the metal just roll over like a wave on top as it could do if not struck right. It probably needs shifting across down low first finishing with the top moving over last to best fill voids? I was imagining trying with a blunt cold chisel then a hammer and that may work? Ill find out soon enough though.

Another thing I was thinking about was the 4 drilled holes in the sides for the bridge. Rather than drill them before bending, and then bend the side. It could be bent first and the end temporarily dovetailed on, not peened. The holes then marked and drilled with an internal wooden block fitted inside and then take it apart to spread it a little to fit in the bridge in to mark the 4 pin positions on it, cut and file them round , slightly ream the four holes with a taper to the outside and then fit and peen the bridge in when the whole thing is assembled and the end is peened on. That should work ?

Rob

Originally Posted by auscab

......but imagine with this you cant just have the metal just roll over like a wave on top as it could do if not struck right. It probably needs shifting across down low first finishing with the top moving over last to best fill voids? I was imagining trying with a blunt cold chisel then a hammer and that may work? Ill find out soon enough though....

Yep, the mini is a tiddler alright, Rob, but surprisingly useful & not at all difficult to hold & use. The long blade sticking out the back really helps give me a firm hold.

And wrt the peening, you've nailed it - the trick is to bring the pin metal over evenly so it fills the deeper gaps before you force it down onto any chamfer on the edges of the tails. What I quickly learnt was that having just the right amount of metal to work on is critical. Too little and you won't have enough to completely fill the edges, obviously, but too much is almost as bad because it's then easy to bring the edges over without filling the gaps deeper down, as you rightly surmised. You will also have a lot more filing to clean up.

What method you use to move the metal is a personal choice. I do as much as I can with the ball of either an 8 or 4 oz ball-peen hammer. That way I can hold the job in my left hand & move it to get the best 'seat' on my anvil block & the best direction for striking as I work along. This is one situation where a 'choke-hold', i.e. holding closer to the head, works well, you don't need heavy blows & your accuracy is improved. Bill Carter used a punch in the video I watched, for at least part of the process and I know of other makers who used punches for the whole process. With a punch or a small cold chisel (not too sharp or it cuts rather than makes indents), you can bring the metal over from further away when there is a big gap to fill. The drawback with this method is you need 3 hands, an extra one to hold the punch! Of course you can hold the job in a vise, but I find that awkward because a) it's hard to grip the job firmly enough without risk of distorting something & b) I can't easily move it into more convenient positions as I work.

Peening the brass tails on the sole side is easy-peasy, the brass is much softer and easier to squash into the gaps (but watch those corners, as I said above), & don't use a hard brass like 385, or it will crack & split rather than deform nicely.

I do use a punch rather than the ball of the hammer when it's hard to get at the metal, like the bottom tails on the cross-piece at the front of a mitre plane. I've tried peening the cross-piece before fitting the sides to the sole, which seems logical, but it's awkward because it's really difficult to hold the unattached sides firmly enough to peen. Peening it after the sides have been hammered up makes it a bit easier to ensure it sits tight against the sole, but getting at those bottom tails is a challenge.

And I think your suggested approach to cutting the bridge mortises will work - a little bit awkward once the sides are bent, but do-able (much depends on your brass & how much springback there is). But here's an alternative way of fitting the bridge that I've used with my chariot & thumb planes:

Instead of using tenons on the bridge, the bridge is cut to fit neatly (& firmly) in the body after it's peened up. I then drill two holes from either side, into the bridge itself which are tapped for 3mm rods. The rods are screwed in tightly, clipped off & peened into counter-sinks on the side: 6 TP pinning bridge.jpg

When flushed, the only difference is you have round 'tenons' instead of square: 4 pins levelled.jpg

But they disappear anyway after a bit of 'patina' develops. You could use through-pins, (like for infill lever caps), but I wanted to use a thumbscrew to tighten the wedge as Norris did on his screw-adjustable thumb planes and the pin would've been chopped in half when I made the thumbscrew hole. I could still have used a through-pin for the lower one, but it seemed easier to do both pins the same.

If you do something like that, be careful to choose rod that will peen well. I've found the K&S brand sold by places catering to modellers is the best. I tried some unspecified stuff off the web that was cheap, but it peened like glass!

Finally, wrt the blade - I would suggest the easier course is to get some 1084 from Artisan Supplies. It's really easy to harden to a good hardness & cheap enough that it doesn't matter if you screw up the first blade (as I did!), & I'm sure you'd find plenty of use for the 'leftovers' in time. I've got heaps of 2.5mm at the moment, which you are welcome to a bit of, but only a couple of pieces of 3mm which are ear-marked for specific projects.

It'll all unfold for you as you go - I predict you'll have very little trouble getting a good result - you are putting more thought into it than I did with my first one, which is an excellent way to go....

Cheers,
Ian

Originally Posted by auscab

... The lady with the decaying bull is on 300 acres and has a couple of herds. She said she has a dumping area where there are plenty of older bones lying around in a forest and some of the Cows were 4 yo big ones. ...

The bones of bulls have to be "fighting weight". My guess is that they are thicker and possibly denser than those of a cow of similar size.

Would it be worth looking around for a larger cattle breed in your area - such as charolais or limousin , or possbly even water buffalo?

Sorry, I don't have a spare elephant or whale.

PS: My dog is incredibly efficient at removing all traces of meat from a bone.

Originally Posted by auscab

... I'd happily let the Bugs do the job if I
...
Hydrochloric acid sounds good. I may try that out. ...

Rob, The maggots removed 95% of the snail meat; but ladies don't like smelly shells around their neck, so the acid both removed the last traces of meat, but also removed the outer layer of shell to reveal the shell colour. We stopped as soon as the colour emerged or the shell got really brittle.

Maireener necklace.jpg


Also, with boiling the bones, what is the risk of making them brittle?