Thread: More metal-bodied planes

This little plane had a very roundabout path from concept to completion. I wanted to try some cold-rolled steel I’d got for soles, and make a test-bed for the blade I’d made from some 1080 knife steel I’d bought after it was mentioned by Doug3030 elsewhere. Initially, it was to be a “Scottish” version of a so-called “thumb plane” with continuous bent sides, and a practice run for the box mitre plane I’ve been avoiding starting on for about a year. Then I thought I might want to add a screw adjuster, and a rounded, bent back would make that awkward, as well as the 1/8” material being a bit thin to take the stud for the thumbwheel. So it morphed into something very like a Norris A31.
The blade is 32mm wide because that’s the width of the steel blank, which is a close match to the 1 ¼” of the Norris original. The main departure from the Norris configuration is the bed angle (15*) is probably a bit lower than the Norris. Nothing I can find mentions the bed angle, but Norris typically used about 18* on his low-angle planes.

The originals have a long toe like a shoulder plane, about 1/3rd of the sole length which I wanted to retain, so I drew up a plan & elevation & made a full-scale model to check that everything would fit in its proper pace. 8 TP model.jpg

I wanted to keep the profile low for comfortable one-hand use, but had to be sure I had enough room for an adequate wedge & a bridge for the thumbscrew. The model looked to be in-proportion & fitted my hand nicely. The wedge on the Norris is very long and looks a bit out of proportion to me, so I shortened it a lot on my mock-up, then decided it would look better & be more comfy if I made the bulge a bit longer than on the model. Again, the piece of Macassar Ebony I had for the wedge & front bun was just the right amount – I knew it would find the perfect use someday. However, with absolutely nothing to spare, I was rather nervous fitting it in case something went wrong!

With those details sorted, it was time to cut up some brass & steel. I used the ‘hard’ 380 brass (3.2mm) for sides and the cold-rolled 5mm steel for the sole. Cold-rolled plate has less mill-scale than hot-rolled stuff & I thought that would make it easier to clean up. It was, but only marginally; it still has a goodly coating of oxide that is as hard as the hobs of hell & takes a lot of sanding to remove. I should buy myself a decent linisher but I’m not making any more planes!

Apart from the sole, this was an easy build. The sole had to be split & re-joined because with a bed angle of 15 degrees, there is no other way to cut a fine mouth slot with hand tools. This is my 4th split sole, and I was determined to get an ultra-fine mouth (not because I think they are absolutely essential, but for the challenge) and an invisible join. Typically, the two pieces of sole are rejoined with a ‘tongue & groove’ joint or simply indexed with a Vee joint.

I cut & filed a ‘notch’ out of the front (toe) piece, 1.5mm deep, to make two lugs at either edge, and then marked & cut the “tongues” on these. I sawed as close to the lines as I could with a junior hacksaw, then used a flat needle file and a thin scraper ground from an old saw file to square the corners. Flat needle files range from ~ 1.2 to 1.5mm thick, depending on brand, which is comfortably less than a third of the 5mm thick material I used for the sole. The other tool I find essential is a spent 3-corner file ground to a short flat about 1.5mm wide, which I use to square the bottoms of the grooves & the shoulders of the tongue: 9 Tonguing tools.jpg

The corresponding grooves were marked out & cut on the heel piece after I formed the bed. The long, low bevel of the bed gives plenty of room to work on the grooves without fear of damaging it.

Making this T&G joint isn’t half as difficult as you may think. You can close a loose fit up to some extent at least during peening, but you want it as accurate as possible so it keeps the sole pieces aligned. I have never got it absolutely perfect, but a tiny mismatch is easily dealt with when it comes time to flatten the sole. You want the joints to hold together firmly while scribing the tails, so if a join is a bit loose I very gently tap the top of the groove side to tighten it enough to hold. Apologies for the blurry pic, the camera decided to focus on the front edge, but here it is ready to scribe: 10 TP sole.jpg

Still more....

Making the blade bed is the most tedious (& critical) part of these planes. To speed things up, I first marked out where the back of the bevel falls, then made a series of cuts with a hacksaw. Note that I marked another line in front of the line marking the full extent of the bevel cut; this was my line to work to so I wouldn’t over-cut. Experience has taught me that with the saw at such an angle, it’s really hard to see when you are at the line. You can see I did over-cut this ‘safety line’ a couple of times, but fortunately, not as far as the ‘real’ line, which is what I want to file to: 11 TP filing bed 1.jpg

Now I knock out he dags of spare metal, then clamp a guide to the sole & just file away for a day or two (actually it took less than an hour, but it feels like days!): 12TP filing bed 2.jpg

The last stages take the most care, ensuring that bed is dead flat. I used layout dye applied thickly to the back of my blade & rubbed it over the bevel to test if they were mating. Another crude scraper made from a spent file helped to finesse it (& square the corners) until I was happy I had better than 80% contact between blade & bed. The corners at the sides have to be scraped square because files are never square at their corners and you cannot make dead square corners with a file alone.

With the bed bevel made, the pins can be scribed & cut. Fitting sides to sole is no more difficult than fitting a single-piece sole: scribe, cut out, file & fit, but you do need to fit the tails to their sockets very carefully with split soles, so the two pieces can’t open up when you start peening.

This one went without a hitch: 13 TP fitting sides.jpg

Peening straight sides is also a lot easier than peening curved sides – half an hour or less of hammering had it looking good (or should I say pretty ugly at this stage!): 14 TP peening.jpg

Then, much filing!
And eventually, it begins to look like a plane body: 15 Side cleanup.jpg

Still a ways to go, but I won’t finish filing the sides completely until I’ve fitted the bridge & rear cross-piece.
I decided to fit the bridge permanently on this plane. On my chariot planes I used ‘floating’ screws to hold the bridge, but I decided to go for the ‘clean’ look & use brass pins. I threaded some 3mm brass rod & screwed these into holes tapped into the bridge, then peened them into recesses on the sides: 16 TP pinning bridge.jpg

You can also use tapered pins (called “clockmakers pins”) hammered into undersized holes in the bridge, instead of threading the rod. I’ve used this method a couple of times and been very impressed by how firmly the pins hold – you cannot get them apart without a LOT of force once hammered in. Using threaded rods just allowed me a bit more leeway, I don’t have to commit to the final fitting until I’m happy everything is properly in pace.
With the bridge fitted, I glued in a wedge of wood to fill the space between sole & back piece. This isn’t really necessary, the blade will sit perfectly well on the sole bevel & the back piece and is unlikely to bend under thumbscrew pressure. The makers of the original old box mitre planes didn’t bother & just left the space empty. However, I had a small scrap left from cutting the wedge, so I thought I may as well fill the void, it’ll stop garbage accumulating in there.

The plane can now be assembled to lap the sole. No matter how carefully I fit & peen, two-piece soles always end up slightly out of alignment. The first half-dozen passes show the toe-piece is lower than the rear bit: 17 TP sole cleanup.jpg

But it was only a thousandth of an inch or so, & soon started to straighten out: 18 Sole lapping 1.jpg

It didn’t take too long to get a nice, flat sole (small soles are far, far less work than big ones!): 19 Sole lapping 2.jpg

At last, the fun part has arrived, first shavings: 20 TP2.jpg

I had a bit of bother with the mouth – I’d made it very tight, and the blade would barely come though enough to cut. The thinnest needle file I have wouldn’t fit through, but I needed to take a few more thou off the front of that mouth. However, where there’s a will there’s a way, I found I could just get the end of one of those plastic paddle diamond-file thingies in, & took a wee bit off the sharp edge of the blade bevel (that knife edge is a liability anyway, & needs blunting a bit). Then I could just get the thinnest file in and take off the fraction needed to leave a mouth opening of somewhere between 0.1 & 0.2 of a mm with the blade extruded enough to cut. That’s what I consider a practical gap for a plane like this that will get all sorts of general use rather than the ultra-tight, barely-visible-at-all mouth of a mitre plane.

I’m not sure about my blade, yet. I haven’t tempered it after its oil quench. It’s not as hard as the blade I quenched in brine so I’m using it as-is for the moment. It sharpened up nicely & isn’t chipping, so I’ll see how it goes. I’ll feed it to some she-oak sometime, that will soon show me how tough it is!

Cheers,

An absolute master class as usual Ian.

The stainless steel you've used is most likely to be 304, it's much more common than 316 due to it being extensively used in the food industries. As you have noted these 300 series stainless steels can be work hardened. One of the more interesting side effects of work hardening is that the metal becomes magnetic. This is dramatically demonstrated in the old pressed stainless steel hubcaps where the flat areas remain non-magnetic but the 'bent' areas where the metal has been put under more stress becomes noticeably magnetic.

Wow Ian, 3 new planes in less time that it’s taken us to contemplate making ours for the challenge.
Thanks for the inspiration, I just caught this thread while having my mid morning coffee.
Just finished a few jobs on the bathroom Reno, and about to head down to the shed to do a bit more on my challenge plane, I will go over your posts here again after my days proceedings, I am sure to have missed some detail.

Bloody show off.


going now.

Originally Posted by Ironwood

Wow Ian, 3 new planes in less time that it’s taken us to contemplate making ours for the challenge......

Just two, Brad, unless you count the mock-up...

Yeah, I am showing off a bit, but my intention is to encourage a few more lurkers who might be thinking of giving the challenge a go, but are still feeling it might be beyond them. I didn't keep track of how long those planes took me, but it would've been less than 20 hours each, spread over almost 2 weeks. I'm probably four times quicker now than when I first made a dovetailed plane, but even at that rate, there's still lots of time before the closing date.

Cheers,

I think I would need to do eight hour days for the two weeks and still wouldn't end up with the result you have.

Ye Second the show of thingy,[emoji6]

Nice effort again Ian, were would be with your inspiration a.


Cheers Matt.

Thanks for the masterclass

You moan that you could not enter the challenge and yet you show us all how it's done and how far we still have to go...

Great little planes. Actually I do find them even more impressive when next to the bigger Stanley. Then they look so neat.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by IanW

Just two, Brad, unless you count the mock-up...

Yeah, I am showing off a bit, but my intention is to encourage a few more lurkers who might be thinking of giving the challenge a go, but are still feeling it might be beyond them. I didn't keep track of how long those planes took me, but it would've been less than 20 hours each, spread over almost 2 weeks. I'm probably four times quicker now than when I first made a dovetailed plane, but even at that rate, there's still lots of time before the closing date.

Cheers,

Ok. So my master plan is to go straight to the tenth plane I make thereby circumventing all the potential mistakes and vastly increasing my skill level without spending wasteful time on the intermediate planes.

Easy!



Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Ok. So my master plan is to go straight to the tenth plane I make thereby circumventing all the potential mistakes and vastly increasing my skill level without spending wasteful time on the intermediate planes.

Easy!



Regards
Paul

Seems the most sensible idea and definitely more cost effective

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Ok. So my master plan is to go straight to the tenth plane I make thereby circumventing all the potential mistakes and vastly increasing my skill level without spending wasteful time on the intermediate planes.

Easy!



Regards
Paul

Will you be documenting that climb ,so we can enjoy the journey with you.?

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Will you be documenting that climb ,so we can enjoy the journey with you.?

Cheers Matt.

Absolutely, but you will be required to provide your own safety harness.



Regards
Paul