Thread: Making my own moulding planes

Thank you very much!! I was playing in the workshop again today. I had 2 #10 hollows so turned the worst one (big chip in front of the mouth) into corresponding round. Re shaping the iron was a lesson in trusting my eye. No other way to do it but freehand. And it turned out fine and cuts nicely. Next is a #4 hollow and I found a blade that might work but looks like something better has come along . Do you want to PM contact details?

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Thank you very much!! I was playing in the workshop again today. I had 2 #10 hollows so turned the worst one (big chip in front of the mouth) into corresponding round. Re shaping the iron was a lesson in trusting my eye. No other way to do it but freehand. And it turned out fine and cuts nicely. Next is a #4 hollow and I found a blade that might work but looks like something better has come along . Do you want to PM contact details?

make yourself a purpose made tool for this. A long knife looking thing that comes to a rounded point, and harden it - the point should be at the bottom of the rounding on the profile, and it should be hardened to about chisel hardness with slight rounding near the tip so that the tip doesn't break off. It's just a poor man's version of a carbide scribe, but one that lays parallel to the sole and marks an iron inserted through the plane right in line with the sole.

marking knife.png

Hi DW. Great idea. I have an old Marples striking knife and I like the way it works but the awl end means a very skinny handle. The japanese style kiridashi comes to mind......

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi DW. Great idea. I have an old Marples striking knife and I like the way it works but the awl end means a very skinny handle. The japanese style kiridashi comes to mind......

pretty much what it looks like. There may be something more ideal in terms of shape, but this works reasonably well and is easy to make. more or less start with something that looks like a kiridashi blank, file the edge that goes against the plane sole into a radius, and then shape the bottom of the radius into a point. my first attempt was very sloppy, but I've never had a reason to remake it - it works reasonably well, marks blade, and if it's not that durable at the point, you can reshape it reasonably easily with a coarse stone until it's blunt enough of an angle to hold up better.

you can file or grind off the profile square on an unhardened blade to this line, and then file or grind the bevel and you'll have very close to a finished iron once you reharden. One that can be adjusted just with very light grinding or stoning.

Some good Moulding Plane stuff in here.

Mazzaglia Tools

Thanks Rob. One day I hope to make planes worth stamping Latest effort, converting #10 hollow to a #10 round. Went well but height a bit less now. Probably closer to a #9 too but don't tell anyone. Cuts well and that's the point.

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

.....Cuts well and that's the point.

Hi WP. I know it's late but I don't get the emojis. As Pauline Hanson so eloquently said.....("Please explain" - I realised that you might not get what I meant now )

It was the bad dad-pun.... I couldn't find the emoji for --> kids-collectively-groan "daaaaaaaaddddd..."

I found a discussion on planes cutting don't use a point - but an edge ....


Sometimes Im a bit esoteric and my humour weird

Hi WP. I love it. Becoming a dad legitamized a whole lot of my "humour". Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and not being too cutting in your response. Edgy huh?

Originally Posted by heimlaga

One more suggestion for materials.
I have used worn out files for plane irons with good results. Annealed and gruound away the teeth and cut to shape and roughed out the profile. Then hardened and tempered. Then ground the final profile. The resulting blades aren't tapered but they work okay in my home made profile planes.
New-ish files from Tomo de Feteiera in Portugal usually sold under the Bahco brand seem to be water hardening. They are good. Elderly Sandvik and Öberg and Viiala are my favorites. Nicholson are usually oil hardening but they have proven difficult to harden consistantly so I avoid them. I have yet to test a Pferd file. I avoid the Chineese file shaped objects.

heimlaga

Thanks for mentioning files as a source of high carbon steel. They are indeed a good resource. However I always feel obliged to mention when the subject is raised that they should not be used for anything that is subject to stress and not captured within the body of the tool. The teeth in the files have created stress lines that can fracture under extreme provocation even after the teeth themselves have been mechanically removed. Turning tools and chisels are the immediate woodworking tools that come to mind. The possibility is there that they will break and cause injury. For plane blades there should not be a problem.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi DW. Great idea. I have an old Marples striking knife and I like the way it works but the awl end means a very skinny handle. The japanese style kiridashi comes to mind......

MA

Kiridashi? A bit like this:

P1060244 (Medium).JPG

Styled on the Japanese kiridashi but really a lot thicker: Probably twice as thick at 6mm.

P1060246 (Medium).JPG

This one is for a left hander.

P1060248 (Medium).JPG

It was actually made as a grafting knife for SWMBO.

P1060249.jpg

To my knowledge it has yet to be used for it's intended purpose.

Regards
Paul

WOW! I'm not necessarily a knife guy but that looks beautiful. What is the wood? Rosewood? Zebrano? I was not thinking somethingas nice as that. More all metal but....

DW, reading your post a little more closely won't I wreck my knife (when I make it) using it to scribe the profile onto blades?

Big thanks also to James for the steel blank. Your generosity is amazing.

you want the point to be somewhat robust, it just needs to be sharp, but it doesn't need to be extremely acute. Use marking fluid on the iron to be scratched, and do it with an iron (preferably) that's unhardened and you should be good.

The marking point should be something like light straw temper - too hard and it will break off, too soft and it'll bend over and not make a mark that's deep enough to see well.