Thread: Another mini-plane

Well spotted, Matt.

And just to show what a wimp I was, he was cutting his groove in 1/8" thick material, same as I used for my little plane sole!

I suggest you could make the process easier by forming the bevel for the blade bed first. That leaves just two lugs each side to cut the groove in, instead of making it across the full width, then filing most of it away as you form the bed.

However, you still have to make the tongue & I was waiting to se if he had an easy way to do that 'cos that is actually the harder part of the process - you have to get the two sides on the tongue cut out square & straight & even & that was actually the bit I baulked at on the thin sole. But he just says "You could make the tongue with a similar setup, but I prefer to do it by filing", which was a bit of an anticlimax...

Filing a tiny tongue from scratch isn't at all easy, you need an "equalling" file (which you can buy but I use a file with the edge ground so the teeth can cut a true 90* corner), and great care. For the 5mm thick soles I've made for larger planes, I used a junior hacksaw to rough out the tongue then refined them with some very careful filing. But on the 3.2mm thick sole, there isn't enough material outside the line to support the saw, & it keeps wandering out of the cut. I have the glimmerings of an idea of how to adapt the jig in the video to make the tongue & sometime in the next year or 3 I'll have a crack at it & get back to you.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Well spotted, Matt.

And just to show what a wimp I was, he was cutting his groove in 1/8" thick material, same as I used for my little plane sole!

I suggest you could make the process easier by forming the bevel for the blade bed first. That leaves just two lugs each side to cut the groove in, instead of making it across the full width, then filing most of it away as you form the bed.

However, you still have to make the tongue & I was waiting to se if he had an easy way to do that 'cos that is actually the harder part of the process - you have to get the two sides on the tongue cut out square & straight & even & that was actually the bit I baulked at on the thin sole. But he just says "You could make the tongue with a similar setup, but I prefer to do it by filing", which was a bit of an anticlimax...

Filing a tiny tongue from scratch isn't at all easy, you need an "equalling" file (which you can buy but I use a file with the edge ground so the teeth can cut a true 90* corner), and great care. For the 5mm thick soles I've made for larger planes, I used a junior hacksaw to rough out the tongue then refined them with some very careful filing. But on the 3.2mm thick sole, there isn't enough material outside the line to support the saw, & it keeps wandering out of the cut. I have the glimmerings of an idea of how to adapt the jig in the video to make the tongue & sometime in the next year or 3 I'll have a crack at it & get back to you.....

Cheers,

Just my thoughts, an there not very deep[emoji6],hack out most of the metal on the tongue,then using his similar idea,replace the hack saw with a file to to dial in the tongue.[emoji851]

Most of his other plane builds are worth watching,one I wasn’t so keen on.
But his workmanship is always first class.

Cheers Matt

Originally Posted by Simplicity

This just popped up in my you must watch this now thingy on YouTube,

Ive been following this YouTube er for a few years, some of his stuff is quite NICE.

Anyway as Ian an i were talking about split sole planes,tongue an grove joint or even superglue tho that seems to be no no.

This might help some

Cutting a groove for a metal hand plane sole - YouTube

Cheers Matt.

Thanks Matt, that was enlightening but too late!
I just finished bodging one in 5mm plate, but I got there.

Originally Posted by Picko

Thanks Matt, that was enlightening but too late! :)
I just finished bodging one in 5mm plate, but I got there.

I'm not sure how many split soles I've done now, it must be 6, at least. Can't say I've gotten a lot slicker at it, though I have figured out a sequence that minimises the work & makes it go reasonably smoothly. On every split sole I've made, there was at least one incipient disaster, but in each instance so far, I stumbled on & it turned out fine in the end. One or two tongues or grooves were not as perfect a fit as I'd have liked them to be, but a bit of peening got rid of the evidence and I couldn't tell you now which were the really good initial fits & which were the not-so-good ones.

Just a word of caution, if you haven't put yours together yet, Picko. If you do need to do any serious peening of the T&G joint, remember there is no support internally at that point & it's all too easy to force the steel inwards and narrow the mouth or worse, distort it & even buckle your carefully prepared blade bed (I noted Billl Carter warns about this too, on one of his videos). If that should happen, you are up the proverbial smelly creek 'cos it's exceedingly difficult to fix - you cannot get even a fingernail file though a typical fine mouth on a LA plane to file the bed. I have fixed very minor distortion of the sides of the blade-bed using a scraper made from a spent 3-corner file, but it's a tedious business & best avoided. So if I think the joint will need any serious hammering at all, I cut a piece of scrap steel that I can jam firmly between the edges of the blade bed to support those weak spots. It prevents the aforesaid distortion & makes peening much easier when the lugs are well-supported.

The most demanding part of making a low-angle mouth is being sure you have the gap right before you assemble the body. If you want the absurdly thin mouth of the old-style mitre planes, there is no room for a file once it's all knocked together. I spend a lot of time holding the parts together & testing the mouth with a wedge of wood to hold the blade at the right angle, but a) It's difficult to keep everything together & aligned with the required accuracy to be sure you've got it right & b) even if you think it's spot-on, the tolerances are so tight that a little bit of extra squishing together during assembly can close it a teeny bit more, to the point the blade won't come through enough to cut (damhik!). So in my 'manual' I suggest for your first split-sole that you file the sharp edge of the blade-bed back a little bit to make the mouth wider. That sharp end does little or nothing to support the blade & if you file it back a bit ('til it's about .5mm thick at the edge) you should be able to get a flat needle-file (they're generally about 1.5-1.6mm thick) in the gap should you need to extend the front of the mouth. It's rather tedious filing the front of a 5mm thick mouth with a needle file, but at least it saves the day!

If you do end up with a wider mouth than you aim for, don't despair. You don't need a super-thin mouth for the cross-grain work low angle planes excel at, and for long-grain planing of 'respectable' woods, a wider than optimal mouth makes very little difference. It's probably only 5% (or even less) of situations where having a super-fine mouth is critical.

If you can get a very fine, even mouth & all the other parameters right, you will have a superior plane, no question. My very best effort to date is my little "English thumb plane". It's a fluke of serendipitous circumstances - the size was largely determined by a spare blade I happened to have, & although I made a wooden mock-up to test that it was a reasonably comfy package, the end result exceeded expectations. I love using this thing - it will be the last plane I part with:

Adj 2.jpg

BTW, that adjuster was an afterthought - I added it "because I can" rather than from any perceived need. It was a perfectly functional unit without the adjuster..... :)

Cheers,

Thanks for that advise Ian. I have been going back and re-reading the manual at every step and now, following your detailed instruction above, I will be fitting a scrap of steel in the bed prior to peening. Thanks again.