Thread: Fallen off the wagon again - onto a box mitre plane

Originally Posted by IanW

So you all knew I couldn’t keep a promise for long ...

Yes, we did, but I'm happy to see it.

Originally Posted by IanW

...but if I ever did it again (I won't!!)...

Yeah, yeah.

My next job is to prepare the sole. I did this part in many short bursts of shed-time & was not very diligent about taking pics so you’ll have to fill in some parts with your imagination.

First I cut the sole into two pieces because you cannot form a very low bed-bevel with hand tools and maintain a tight mouth. At this stage I’ve cut it & squared the two pieces, formed a shallow (1.5-2mm is plenty) notch on the toe side for the tongues of the tongue & groove joint that will register the pieces on assembly, then set out the bevel very carefully, and cut a series of ‘fillets’ along the bevel with a hacksaw. These were I knocked out & filed roughly flat:
10 sole prep.jpg

To refine the bed bevel, I make a block of scrap hardwood the right angle & glue that carefully on the sole, aligned with the rear layout line of the bevel:
11 bevel block.jpg

I use Titebond, which is not the best metal-to-wood glue, but holds it plenty securely for the purpose if left to cure overnight but doesn't take much to knock it off when finished (it also rusts a shiny steel surface thanks to the water in it, but that sands off easily!). The block is a great help in filing a clean, accurate bevel. As I get it close, I start checking the surface by painting the back of a flat blade with layout dye & rubbing it over the bevel to show the high spots (dye removal on the blade should match that left on the bevel):
12 getting close.jpg

A few rounds of this & it's as close as I can get it:
13 bevel done.jpg

Now for the Tongue & groove joint. I couldn't do that until the bevel was formed, which takes out the metal between the lugs in which the grooves have to be cut otherwise it would have to be formed right across, then most of it sawn & filed away in forming the blade bed bevel. Apologies, I didn’t take any pics of doing the T&G. For my first attempt at this technique, I was quite intimidated at the thought of cutting a T&G joint on two short bits of 5mm thick steel, but it’s not half as difficult as I imagined. Set out the joint carefully (I use a small home-made metal-marking gauge with an old 1.5mm drill bit for the point) then cut as close as you dare to the lines with a hacksaw & use a small flat needle file to finish the job:
14 T&G fitted.jpg15 scibing.jpg

Even the first sole I ever tried to join with a T&G came out far better than I expected, despite my fears that it would end up a dog's breakfast. It wasn’t perfect, for sure, but plenty good enough that you need to look closely to see it, which was encouraging. After making a dozen or so of them the fear has gone out of it & it has become more just a tedious task (it definitely can’t be rushed!). Patience is the key, the only file you can work into the hacksaw cut is a dinky little flat needle file, so it's slow-going! Small gaps are tolerable as they can be closed by careful peening, but the closer you get the fit, the better the registration & the easier it is to hide completely on the finished plane.

Right, now to scribe the sides to the sole. I clamped the sole hard between bench dogs to make sure the T&G joint was as tight as it could be. The sides piece was then placed carefully on top so that the long “pin” spanning the T&G has plenty of metal either side & won’t collapse into the mouth area during peening:
15 scibing.jpg

The sockets were then cut out using a combination of hacksaw & jewellers saw. I use the hacksaw to cut down to the inner scribe lines because it makes a kerf wide enough to slip the jewellers saw into and twist it over just a couple of strokes to cut parallel to the inner line. Hacksaws are about the most imprecise cutting tool invented (or is it just me?), and awkward to start close to a line, but I try to get my cuts as close to the lines as I can to minimise the filing required to clean the sockets up & get the tails to fit. It’s another tedious job, but the neater & tighter you fit the tails & pins, the easier it will be to peen them tightly closed. Eventually, I had it all together:
16 together.jpg

If you look closely, you can see the tapered chamfers I’ve filed on the brass ‘tails’. The "pins" will be peeened over to cover these & form a semblance of a dovetail on the otherwise straight pins. I read somewhere that early examples of these planes were simply assembled with the straight pins & relied on the pressure of the metal to lock the parts. The fact that many survive after >200 years suggests that the ‘dovetails’, which became de-rigeur by the 19th C are as much about decoration as anything structural. I once realised, after starting to peen a plane that I’d forgotten to put any chamfer at all on the tails of that side to peen the sole pins over & create the second D/T. I’d only just started closing the joints when I realised my blunder, so I tried to pull it apart. Even after just some light preliminary peening it refused to let go & I feared causing major damage if I persisted so I just crossed my fingers & carried on. When finished, I could not distinguish the D/Ts on that side from those on the opposite side (which I had chamfered) from any angle, and what's more, the joint seemed every bit as solid. After that I reduced the size of the chamfer on the tails to just a very shallow bevelling of the outer edges. The steel easily distorts the brass as you hammer it over and forms the second "dovetail". So I have every confidence the small tapered chamfers on the straight pins will hold firmly enough and hopefully, will give the illusion of dovetails, albeit rather shallow-angled ones.

It's now ready to peen, but first I need a "peening block", which is a close-fitting, internal hardwood block that supports he parts and prevent them being distorted during the peening process (which usually tends to push the sides together a bit as the joints are tightened". That was quite simple for a simple flat body like this all it required was a block and some scraps of steel screwed on it to support the sides. They are placed so that the sole is about a mm clear of the block when clamped down, to ensure it will be puled hard against the sides as peening progresses. The only tricky part was fitting the block neatly in the curved end so it completely filled the inner space, but a bit of careful scribing & rasping & it was soon done:
17 ready to peen.jpg

Right, I'll take a break here & limber up my hammering arm.....

Some deep breaths, flex the ageing elbow a bit, and grab the 8 oz hammer...

I normally begin peening on the sides, working from the outer (sole) side of the pin easing the steel of the sole over a bit along the edge towards the corners so that the squeezing action pushes the sole into the sockets and the sides against the sole. If you peen the inner corners too hard to start with, you may force them apart instead of together (or so it seems to me). Once the sides are locked in, I go lightly over the ends of the dovetails on the sole side, striking at a slight angle so that they are driven against the sockets in the sole. Once I feel the joints are firmly locked, the clamps can come off, allowing a clear run at each side. Now I can work back & forth, alternating sides to keep it even, gradually bringing the sole pins over and down, and pushing the brass tail ends into the gaps from the sole side. I try to coax the metal over and fill the gaps from the inside up rather than just covering them over. If you just bang the metal over along the edges you are quite likely to end up with voids when you file off the excess. A small pinhole or two (particularly in the corners) may occur on your first plane or two and although that might be disappointing or annoying, it’s a cosmetic blemish than a structural problem.

After about 15 minutes of steady hammering, things are looking promising:

18 half peened.jpg

When I’ve got it looking like it's thoroughly closed-up like this I like to put it aside, preferably overnight. With fresh eyes, it’s much easier to spot any areas that look like they need a touch more hammering. You also have a fresh arm that strikes more accurately!
Sure enough, in the morning I could see a few pins where the corners were peeping through so I went over both sides again, working close to the edges to push the metal down into potential gaps. This is when you are most likely to make a glancing blow & ding the brass so I like to use my small 4oz hammer because it is easier to control & lighter blows are enough to complete the job.
Once satisfied it’s peened enough to fill all gaps, I start filing off the excess. I like to file until the hammer marks from initial peening are removed, then give it another careful inspection, & if necessary, a bit more peening. Not only can you see any faults better, it’s easier to peen now because the edges are thinner and any work-hardening has been removed leaving the remaining metal soft & easy to move.

Here is a side that has been filed down to somewhere between 0.1-o.i5mm clear of the sides and the edges of the pins gone over again with the small hammer. Extra peening at this stage is easy while there is still a bit of "spare" metal left to hammer into any potential gaps that might have been exposed:
19 part-filed.jpg

Then it was filed completely flush:
20 filed flush.jpg

As you can see, there are no visible gaps (yay!) and my tapered chamfers have helped to form what looks like quite respectable ‘dovetails’ on the straight pins that were cut on the sides. And the best news for me is that a quick lap of the sole shows it has remained quite flat & won’t need a huge amount of lapping at the end:
21 sole good.jpg

There is almost always a bit of a dip in the sole at the join on these two piece soles – it may be only a thousandth of an inch or so, but it adds a huge amount more work to get them flat and the longer the sole, the more the work! This one is very close and almost the entire sole is shiny after about 20 strokes on my zircon belt stretched over the tablesaw top(yay again!).

The only bad news so far is that there is a bit of a gap under the front cross-piece:

22 front gap.jpg

There were a few dings on the tops of the side caused by resting the tops on the anvil during peening:
23 top dings.jpg

…but they are superficial and filed/sanded out very easily.

Now I have to decide what wood I want to use for the stuffing. Scuffling through my stash of suitable woods it has boiled down to either Solomon island ‘ebony’ (Xanthostemon melanoxylon), or western rosewood (Acacia rhodoxylon):
24 infill choice.jpg

… and whether to fit a bridge with a wedge retained by a thumbscrew, like this: 25 wedge&thumbscrew.jpg

Or a brass lever cap, something like this:
26 lever cap.jpg

I much favour the wooden wedge with thumbscrew style because it gives the plane a nice comfy hand grip, but there is a problem. Because the sides are so low, there is very little room to install the bridge (see pic) and it would have to be placed very close to the end of the wedge. It will hold the blade firmly as the pressure will be very close to the business end, but it may mean that the wedge/handle flexes a bit when pushed. There is plenty of room for a lever-cap which will hold the blade very well, but I am not keen on the ergonomics of it.

Decisions, decisions...... :?
Cheers,

Ian

I always enjoy your plane builds even though I have never done the dovetail thing.

I thought I would be just an observer from the sidelines, particularly as I had not heard of a Box Mitre Plane. However, I looked up Box Mitre Plane in Salaman's Dictionary of Tools: Nothing! Not being deterred I kept looking through the extensive section as you might imagine and under Plane, Mitre (Metal) there was what looked like your design, albeit without the timber infill (P.337 in my edition).

(I am having trouble listing information so I will try a separate post. I keep getting wiped oof the Forum!! )

Regards
Paul

I don't want to test the copyright laws too severely, but these are some of the criteria listed in Salaman's dictionary.

The stock consists of a shallow metal box with the sides and sole often dovetailed together, surrounding a solid hardwood core. The toe is usually square, the heel often rounded and the sole projects beyond the body of the plane in front and often behind also.

Length 7" to 12'
Narrow mouth. As little as 1/32"
Single Iron 1¾" to 2½" long (I think that should be wide?) and often nibbed (?)
Low angle. Bevel up. Angle 25°. Sharpening bevel 35°
Used for shooting mitres of all kinds, but with the rigid bed and narrow mouth is valued for "it's ability to perform particularly fine work on end grain and hardwoods."

There is the comment that it became the starting point for the production of metal planes in England and in particular Norris and Spiers. There is also a note that this type of plane dated from around 1800. It may well be that later development in planes superseded the Box Mitre.

There are a couple of references:

Ancient Carpenter's Tools. Henry C Mercer(1929)
Turning and Mechanical Manipulation. Charles Holtzapffel (1846-1847)

Regards
Paul

Paul, if you look at this article on the Martin Shepherd Piano Service siteI linked to in my first post, you'll get a pretty good discussion of the type.

I'm surprised you haven't come across them before - they aren't common, and fell off the catalogues early in the 20th C, but as the very first type of (large) metal-bodies plane, they provoke some comment & discussion from time to time. They do get called a few different names, but "Box mitre" is probably the most common. The 'box' part of the name is pretty obvious, they are essentially just a metal box with a blade, but where the "mitre" part comes from is a matter of much debate - various authors including Bill Carter, iirc, have pointed out that they were not the weapon of choice for shooting mitres.

Any light anyone can shed on the subject will be welcomed by me...
Cheers,
ian

Originally Posted by IanW

Paul, if you look at this article on the Martin Shepherd Piano Service siteI linked to in my first post, you'll get a pretty good discussion of the type.


Cheers,
ian

Thanks.

Chistopher Gabriel seems to be the main contender there with planes individually numbered. Impressive. Ian, will you be numbering your planes?

Regards
Paul

Paul, you posted while I was typing...

Some of the info you posted from Salaman has been disputed, in particular the bit about shooting mitres. I think anyone really familiar with planes would probably agree that they are not particularly suited to the task.

The questions that are asked in any decent discussion are "why did they appear when they did (very late 1600s or early 1700s), and what was going on in the woodworking world at the time that these things (which would not have been cheap!) could do better than the woodies of the day?? I like the suggestion by the bloke in the Shepherd article that they were great for cleaning up the marquetry & inlay that was becoming popular at that time (& fell out of favour almost completely by the late 1800s). The matching timelines lend support to his theory.

And as someone reasonably familiar with planes of many types, I can see how the heavy box mitres with their ultra-fine mouths might be good for levelling complex inlay with grains running every which-way.

As I said, any discussion/opinion welcome!
Cheers,

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

...... Ian, will you be numbering your planes?.....

Nope.

For many reasons! For one, I have no idea what number I'm up to (well, the box mitre is #1 for that type, but it'll also be the only one in the series, my curiosity will be well-satisfied by the time I finish it! ).

While I've kept a fairly comprehensive pictorial record of the planes I've made, a few have slipped through to total anonymity, and my somewhat haphazard filing system does not allow for an easy count. My best estimate is that I've made about 40-something metal planes of all types since the very first moderately-successful attempt at a shoulder plane in the early 80s: 1 SP.jpg

....through to the last lot I completed 2 weeks ago (co-incidentally, also a set of shoulder-planes, done on commission for a very old friend from Uni days): 2022 lot a.jpg

When I finished that lot, I tried to count up just the number of shoulder-planes I've made but even they are a bit confused in my pic files so the number I came up with is something above 20.

By now, I reckon I've made enough planes to have made most of the mistakes one could make (including one I'd not managed before on one of those shoulder-planes! ), & have a vague idea of what I'm doing, but am very far from being an antipodean Carter or Sauer, so branding & numbering my products would seem like a conceit to me. I think I'm happier remaining anonymous...

Ian

PS. Strewth! The cost of brass has gone up lately - the brass for the 1" model I just made came to about $70, so with the blade you are looking at >$100 for material alone (& more if you want a very fancy wood for the infill). Those of you thinking about having a go at plane-making with brass or bronze alloys better get on with it before you have to mortgage the house to buy the raw material....

Nice Plane there Ian. If I was going to make a plane that type would be one I'd love to do.
I do have a few of the old ones and can pull them out to use when I feel the need.

Some of my thoughts on them

I think its generally that they were the final step towards the super fine end of shaping your woodwork in the an age when fine engineering using wood was at a peak 1760 to 1860 . Related to the engineering of steel that had taken off with The industrial revolution 1760 to 1840 and the making of metal machines. These dates and a bit later line up with when they were produced.

And its not all about where a cabinet maker could use one on furniture . Though that period in furniture saw the finest laying out and fitting together of things ever in England that ever occurred. If you could look back into the tool boxes of the men doing the finest fitting from those dates and later, Cabinet maker , Piano maker , Other musical instruments , Pattern maker and the rest of them. Then your probably going to find the Mitre Plane in the box of the Head guy, Boss or Lead Hand, in those workshops.

Plenty of mechanical things back then and way before that were first made from wood. One example I saw was Wind driven flour milling machinery with large wood wheels with end grain cogs fitted to the wheels. Just wedged in I think . They were probably making them that way hundreds of years before the Mitre plane .

The machine makers as we know start with wood patterns and the pattern maker was needed to construct very fine wood patterns for metal casting .

A lot of the old ones have the finest mouth that could be produced. Some Ive handled almost at the point of not being able to take any shaving incredibly. Maybe some just came that way and the owner had the choice of widening it if he needed to if he had the ability? Most Ive seen take a shaving but its at the very fine end of shaving thickness.

7" to 12" is common but very rare smaller ones were made as well. Bill Carter talks of them in a video and I was lucky enough to see and work on a couple as well . A Towel and a Cox . They were between 5 and just under 6 inches long and needed wedge attention.

I wonder ATM what and how the word Mitre was used for back in the 18th century and when was it applied to this type of plane . Basically we think of it as the 45 degree end grain join seen in picture frames or flat boarded similar joints.
The fine woodwork it was doing is a lot more than just that joint.

As you know they can be tricky to handle when used like a smoothing plane but they work that way and they do suit shooting boards .
There was a Robert Towell version with handles and other attempts at added handles have been seen.

An interesting type of Mitre Plane been showing up. R Towell was making them very early on. 1820s I think its said is roughly when he started. Spiers and the rest were later and there is a few makers known to be earlier. Wedges were obviously a common thing in wood planes and transferred to metal planes with the bridge . But Brass, Bronze or Gunmetal lever caps were possibly not even around then? No other metal planes existed to put them on in a commercial way.
Robert Towell was doing this for the lever cap in steel.
IMG_5123aa.jpg

And this is his handled version .

s-l1600bb.jpg
Not just the steel lever cap is unusual or a very early version of a lever cap? The body is rounded at both ends. The one end join in the body is angled at 45 degrees and brazed or silver soldered. I think there are 4 or 5 of these known . Only the one has shown up with handles I think.

Rob

What better birthday present could there be than to find that Ian has begun documenting another plane build?

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

What better birthday present could there be than to find that Ian has begun documenting another plane build?

Better? How about noting that the next birthday is still 364 days away!



Regards
Paul

Hi Ian ,

You mention Bill Carter,
My father bought the first metal
plane Bill made and I still have it.
It is a Mitre plane but it it was a
hollow cast Gunmetal plane. This was in 1989.

Martin.

Hi Martin - that's a pretty impressive boast, you can probably rely on that plane to fund a comfortable retirement!

Actually, although they were not cheap, Bill's planes were not priced as outlandishly as some I could name. I think he intended most of his early work, at least, to be "users" rather than "collectibles". I don't know exactly when he started making the miniature mitre planes using old brass saw backs, but I guess they were never intended to be everyday users. Although having said that, it's surprising how useful tiny planes can be at times (especially when you make more tiny planes! ). I made this mini chariot plane to use up some small scraps & to see if I could manage a split sole at small scale: pic 7.jpg

I'm surprised at how many times I reach for it!

The Mitre plane build is also curiosity-driven, but it's more like a medium-sized block plane, so I expect it to be a tool capable of earning its keep if it turns out as I hope.

No progress to report this morning, btw, I had to do a bunch of mundane yard jobs yesterday & got no shed-time except to sit at the bench on a coffee break, during which I decided that it probably has to have a lever-cap. The wedge/thumbscrew arrangement just won't fit comfortably in those low sides, the bridge would need to be placed so it's sticking out above the sides to get enough room to fit the wedge under it, which would look a bit unsightly, methinks. I also thought when wielding the whole thing with a rough wedge/handle in it that it would sit far too high & make it awkward to push (it just looked top-heavy sitting on the bench).

I thought I already had a scrap of brass big enough for a LC, but it is about 2mm too narrow & also a bit short. I needed some brass bar for another project, so I'll just add some 3/8" bar to the order. They like at least a morning to get small orders ready so I won't be able to collect it 'til later this arvo, & I still have a few other domestic chores to do anyway, so I don't think there will be any time spent on the plane today.

Tomorrow is clear, so a whole day should see some good progress & barring catastrophes, I should have something to report by evening.....

Cheers,