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  1. #1
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    Default A Panel Plane with a Twist, part 1

    I started on this project in early December, but work on it has been sporadic, with the total time spent so far something less than 30 hours, and there is still plenty to do. I had intended to do a real-time WIP, but didn’t get myself sufficiently organised, but I’m using the notes I made as I went along, so it’ll seem a bit like a WIP.

    First, I had better offer the usual excuses for making yet another infill. I’ve actually been stumbling towards this project for a very long time – about 30 years, in fact! I tried to convince myself I wasn’t making another plane, and certainly not a large one like this. However, I think it was a fate I couldn’t avoid because it was an article in FWW in the early 1980s on making a panel plane that introduced me to the possibility that an ordinary mortal can actually make an infill plane, in a backyard shed, without the resources of a large machine shop. Up ‘til then, I’d built a few woodies, with mixed success, but this business of dovetailing metal together to make a plane body was a whole new world to me. It started a slow-burn ambition to have a go at a dovetailed infill. This took a very long time to come to anything, but eventually, the stars aligned sufficiently and I made my first all-metal plane, a high-angle, coffin-shaped smoother. I started the thread on that first plane almost 10 years ago to the day, so perhaps it’s fitting I round off the decade with this build, ending where I wanted to begin.

    A couple of years ago I did get to make a panel plane. Due to issues mentioned in my thread on its assembly, there are a few faint joint-lines visible on the finished plane, much to my annoyance, but the plane is rock-solid & turned out to be a superb user. That should have been the end of my infill-making career and end of story, but, well, never being able to leave well-enough alone has always been my downfall….

    At some time in the last decade, I came across a “badger” infill plane (it wasn’t this one, but it’s a good example if you haven’t seen one before). The skewed blade and ability to cut to a shoulder intrigued me & the idea of making one has been quietly festering away at the back of my mind ever since.

    I already have too many planes, so I needed a semi-plausible excuse to make another one. This presented itself in a roundabout way, as part of my quest to find a brass alloy with better cold-working properties than the C385 brass which is the most commonly-available alloy in Oz. So I am making this plane from 4mm H62 brass bought on ebay. I hope you all appreciate the lengths I go to researching plane-making materials on your behalf….

    Before I realised it, I was up to my neck in this project, & laying out more on materials than I ever have before, with the brass ($75); a 5 x 75 x 500mm piece of gauge plate for the sole ($85); a Veritas PMV11 blade ($85); a piece of 3mm stainless steel for the cap-iron (~$20), and a large chunk of 19mm thick brass for the lever cap. The latter is the bargain bit, it's an offcut I got for scrap price ($15), which was quite a saving over what it would have cost if I’d had it cut off a fresh bar. 1 All bits.jpg

    There will be a little more spent on bits & pieces like rivets, glue, & wood for infill, before it’s all over, but that was the major expenditure, I hope.

    (As a side-note, I could have reduced the cost a fair amount by using rolled mild steel for the sole, but cleaning the mill-scale off a large chunk of rolled steel is a huge job and the accurately-sized, shiny-clean gauge plate is far nicer to work with. I could also have used a cheaper O1 or A2 blade, but I’m pulling out all stops for this project. I’ve made enough planes by now to be reasonably confident it will turn out to be useable, but with so much invested in it, I will admit to being a bit nervous, so I’ll be taking things nice & steady & hoping to avoid any silly mistakes!)

    Now, ‘badgering’ this plane would mean skewing the blade approximately 10 degrees to the front/rear axis, and leaning it over to the left so the leading edge can protrude though a small gap in the right side. It’s essentially a single-sided, skewed rebate plane (on steroids!), but instead of using a blade with a ‘shoulder” that protrudes through a wide slot on the side, most badgers have the blade tilted over at an angle with just the tip protruding (like this example by Konrad Sauer): 2S&S mouth side.jpg

    As a ‘dress rehearsal’ I made a smoother-sized plane with a skewed blade a little while ago. Instead of canting the blade to get a corner through the side, I used a rebate plane blade and opened up the right side with a fairly large slot. That allowed me to keep the blade parallel with the sides, and have more cutting edge exposed across the sole.

    While I was waiting for my raw material to arrive, I busied myself working out the details for the plane. I planned on cutting both sides from the 100 x 300mm piece of brass, which turned out to be a more interesting exercise than I expected. I made 3 different mock-ups from cardboard & wood before I was satisfied I was on the right track. The first try was way off – I miscalculated the positions of the centre hump on the left side & it was hopelessly out of kilter with the lever-cap. There was nothing to support the pivot, as shown in the picture: 3 Mockup PP a.jpg

    I needed to place the hump further back on the left side to cater for the skew, & also bring the blade pivot-point a little further forward on the right to match the lever-cap better. It made fitting the two sides into a 100 x 300mm rectangle tricky, but with a little juggling, I managed to arrange the curves & dips of the two sides to meet all essential criteria: the lever-cap pivot points are in the centre of their respective side humps, the sides have a good flowing profile: 4 Mockup PP b.jpg
    AND they fit very neatly in the rectangle – bewdy! 5 Side patterns.jpg

    With so much at stake on this build, I decided to make a full-scale wooden mock-up to check my calculations and & test-fit a lever-cap which, as I’ll get to later, is the part of this build that I’m most concerned about. I have a block of ¾” brass which is just the right size, so I don’t want to mess it up & have to go back for another. 6 PP full scale model 1a.jpg

    On the first wooden LC I made, the shape was clumsy; the second was more like it & fitted nicely, but I’d used an M12 thread on the thumbscrew, which I thought looked a bit over-sized, so I made a third for an M10 thread. When viewed in situ, there is little obvious difference between the two screws but I think the 19mm head with a 10mm shaft diameter looks a bit more in proportion, so I’ll go with that.

    After a bit of fiddling to get the LC sitting at a comfortable angle with a sufficient gap to slide a blade assembly in & out, I marked the positions for the axle holes in the sides and drilled them through. Drilling these axle holes has given me cause to be careful with the real thing. The long 1/8” diameter bit I used had difficulty maintaining a straight line through the wood and both my attempts ended up with the drill wandering off-course & exiting a good mm or so out of line. When it comes to drilling the metal, I’ll drill from each side & start with a shorter drill, which should reduce run-out (I hope) and produce a more accurate hole.
    Despite the slightly wonky axle hole, the LC fitted in nicely. It needed a bit of trimming of the LHS of the LC so it can rotate enough to let the blade & cap-iron in comfortably. Now all I have to do is to copy those positions for my pivot holes on the real thing but I won’t start making the real thing yet, it’s safer to wait until the body is banged together and I can get the exact measurements.

    If you don’t use a screw adjuster, it requires very little clearance to insert & withdraw the blade assembly, but I intend to leave a bit more room in case I decide down the track that I do want to fit a screw adjuster. With adjusters, as on my original panel plane, you need a bigger gap between lever-cap & blade-bed to be able to get the blade assembly in over the banjo that engages the cap-iron screw to move it up & down. I have an idea for an adjuster that is a hybrid between the original Norris & Veritas’s version, which I may or may not try to fit to this plane. If I do, I’ll get to that in good time, & if not, we’ll just forget I ever mentioned it.

    Here is my model alongside the panel plane I made from the kit: 7 PP cf.jpg

    End part one - more to come (lots more! )
    Cheers,
    IW

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  3. #2
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    Default Part 2

    At this point, I made a decision not to ‘badger’ my plane.
    What influenced my decision most is that in order to cant the blade over at a sufficient angle to get the corner through the side, I would need to use a much narrower blade. If I use the 2 3/8 blade I bought for the job, I would need to grind or cut a significant taper on the left side of the blade (and make a matching alteration to the cap-iron), which I think would look a bit weird. I tried a 2 inch blade, & that would give me enough “lean”, but I would lose a significant amount of cutting edge. So after tossing various alternatives around in my mind for a day or two, I decided to give the badger the flick. I definitely want the skewed blade, which I think will be useful, but I already have several rebate planes, including the “pseudo-badger” I just made, so I see no benefit in adding yet another rebate plane to my kit.

    I’d made a start on the metal work by turning the brass thumbscrews for the mock-up lever caps, and making the cap-iron was another little job I could do whilst waiting for the main event to start. I still have the Heath-Robinson bending jig I made for plane #1, so that was dug out & conscripted for the job. It required lots of gaffer tape to hold the blank at the correct angle for the skew and more tape to keep the dolly in position while I got it all into the vise: 8 CI bending 1.jpg

    The first bend came out very well and I was just starting to think what a clever chap I am when I realised I’d made the angle the wrong way! Fortunately, the blank was quite a bit longer than I needed, so I cut off my mistake & (very carefully) went through the motions again, this time with the skew going the correct way. I ran the inside of the curve over the grinder to neaten and thin it down a little, then set it up on the bending jig again & made the second (reversed) bend with no further dramas: 9 CI bending 2.jpg

    The outer curve was filed smooth and tapered to a clean, sharp edge to mate with the blade, then the top tidied up & chamfered. Finally, the entire outer surface was sanded to 1200 grit. It’s now beginning to look like a proper cap-iron (with a twist), it just needs a hole drilled & tapped for the screw: 10 CI sanded.jpg

    Perhaps you’re wondering why I bother with a double bend when the second bend is even trickier to set up & there is a distinct risk of getting it out of parallel with the first bend & wrecking the whole thing (it has happened!)? A single bend works, and indeed, the after-market cap-irons offered by the likes of LN & Veritas only have a single bend. But a thick cap-iron with a single bend can bow even modern thick blades noticeably when the screw is tightened. It’s much worse with the thin old Stanley blade, which I’ve used here to exaggerate the effect: 11 cap iron single bend.jpg

    But you need the cap-iron & blade screwed tightly together, or the cap-iron may slip when you are adjusting the blade, & I suspect this was why Stanley et al made cap-irons the way they did. With the right arc on the business end, most of the cap-iron sits flat on the blade, & you don’t end up with a banana when you screw cap-iron & blade together, as demonstrated with the cap-iron I just made (& the same blade): 12 cap iron double bend.jpg

    The brass duly arrived, a couple of days before Christmas, & I eagerly ripped open the parcel to see what it looked like. It had the same colour as the first bit I’d bought, a more coppery hue than the C385, which is a bright yellow when fresh (they have much the same Cu/Zn ratio, so I don’t know why they look so different). I cut a sliver from an area that would be waste, and pounded one end of it severely. I was able to peen out a wide flat on it with no sign of flaking or splitting. A piece of 385 (left) started splitting & flaking long before I could spread it a similar amount, whereas the H62 (right) remained intact. 13 C385 vs H62 b.jpg

    Whatever the reason(s) for the difference, at least I have established that H62 is a good brass for cold-working. It would be the one to try for your first attempt at forming metal dovetails because it is much more forgiving than the C385.

    Right then, down to work. I traced my side templates on the chunk of 4mm brass, took a few deep breaths & started sawing. My larger saw frame is only 125mm deep, but I reckoned I could make the full cut by taking advantage of the waste gaps at the front & back of my laid out sides. It went according to plan, but not smoothly! I had broken my last #8 saw blade using my jewellers saw as a parting tool on my lathe (which I regularly do because it reduces waste ), & the only blades I had left were #4s, which are really not suited to cutting 4mm thick material. Besides being painfully slow, I broke several blades trying to get at that last 25-30mm in the centre because the gap wasn't wide enough to allow the frame to turn sufficiently. I was trying to follow the curves & putting far too much side-pressure on the blade trying to force it to follow the lines. Eventually, after at least 3 blade breakages, I got them apart: 14 Sides cut out.jpg

    I cleaned up the saw cuts with files, then inked the bottom edges with layout dye and set out the dovetails. I decided to hit the pause button here, because I was well into my last dozen blades, & given my rate of breakage, was likely to run out of blades before I finished. Cutting the matching pins in the 5mm thick steel sole with #4 blades would be even worse!

    So I called my ‘regular’ supplier, and they scrounged around their boxes of ‘leftovers’ and found a few packs of #6s in a box at the back of the shop. They were supposed to be “premium” blades & I assumed that meant Glardons or Pikes. I don’t know what brand they are, since they arrived with no id of any kind, but I’m pretty sure they were not Glardons, they cut brass ok, and I was able to get most of the waste out using my 125mm deep saw frame without too much drama. However, the centre sockets were out of reach & I had to resort to the cruder method of sawing a series of fillets: 15 Slivers cut.jpg

    ….then prising these out with a screwdriver. 16 Slivers removed.jpg
    This leaves a much rougher surface to clean up, but in this situation, you have no other choice

    I used the trick I picked up on a UK forum to level the sockets. Clamping the side carefully behind a straight, square piece of hard wood makes a very handy guide so you can file the bottoms of the sockets straight & square. You just file away, trying to hold the file parallel to the wood at all times. When the file just grazes the top of the wood evenly, the bottom of the socket should be both square & straight (note faint file marks on the wood in front of each socket): 17 sockets levelled.jpg

    End part 2..
    IW

  4. #3
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    Default

    This is a most informative WIP, looking forward to next instalment.
    The person who never made a mistake never made anything

    Cheers
    Ray

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    Default Part 3

    OK, here y'go Ray, a couple more instalments....

    Cutting the brass was relatively easy, now it gets a bit tougher (literally).
    The tails of the sides were scribed on the sole: 17a Tails transferred to sole.jpg

    Cutting steel is always going to be slower work, but the “premium” #6 blades did not like the 5mm thick steel at all & I could not saw for more than about 12mm before the blade started binding & jamming, my diagnosis being that the set was wearing off quickly. It took an average of two bldes per 3 sockets, whereas with the Glardon #8s that I would normally choose for this job, I would probably cut a whole side without trouble. But with perseverance and a few expletives, I gnawed down the ones I could reach one by one. I’m lucky I started out with good blades on my first plane, if I’d used this lot, I think I would’ve given up in disgust! Moral: don’t skimp on saw blades, the good ones cost very little more than the cheapies, and last 5 times as long, so you gain on all fronts.
    I couldn’t reach the two sockets in the centre & had to use the multiple-cuts method I used on the sides to remove the waste from these. I straightened the sockets using the same bit of wood I used for the sides.

    [Note: obviously, you need to clean up the top of the piece of wood after each use, but tiny filings can get lodged in the wood and will dull plane blades quicksmart. I give the surface a good scrape with a cabinet scraper before hitting it with a plane. The scraper doesn’t like metal filings either, but it’s much easier to re-sharpen!]

    The edges of the pins were now carefully filed to the scribe-lines until the brass sides would tap on nicely. This part of the fitting has to be done freehand, but fortunately, it doesn’t need to be as accurate as the bottoms because the peening will fill any gaps if you get them a little off-square. All being well, you should have nicely-fitting pieces, with only very fine gaps where the metals meet: 17b good fit.jpg

    The last step is to form small bevels on each side of the tails. It only needs a bevel about .5mm wide & .8mm deep. That’s heaps to form a very solid lock and will need plenty of hammering to fill. Making the bevels larger won’t make you plane much stronger, but will give you a lot more work filling them! On old Spiers planes, instead of a bevel, the makers filed a notch in the corners of the pins & tails, which reduced the amount of peening required. This is a useful trick for an all-steel plane, but would produce wonky-looking dovetails on a mixed-metal plane like this. Bevels mean a bit more work peening, but give a neater result when filed off after the peening is completed.

    The final job before assembly is to form the mouth & fit the blade block. This would be very difficult to do once the sides are attached, so don’t get carried away & forget it! I decided to try a slightly different approach than I’ve used previously. On earlier planes where I fitted a blade block, I formed the mouth bevel & blade blocks separately, then attached the block and trimmed the bevels to match as necessary. But you have to be excruciatingly careful doing it this way to keep the bevels aligned, or within a whisker of it. My not-too-flash drill press has a bit more runout than desirable, so drilling 5 or 6 holes through 10mm of blade block & 5mm of sole with the required degree of accuracy can be quite a challenge, and even if your holes are deadly accurate, riveting can cause things to squelch a bit & get the bevels out of alignment by enough to feel with your finger. I decided a better approach might be to make & bevel the blade block, rough-form the mouth, then attach the blade block, aligning it with the scribe-line on the sole, and file the bevel in the sole to it, using the bevel of the blade block as a guide. That all went according to plan & saved me a bit of extra work.

    Normally, I would use the jeweller’s saw to cut away some of the waste for the bevel, then get a hacksaw in & rough-cut the rest, saving an hour or two of filing. But the blades I had were hopeless & just couldn’t manage the deeper, angled cuts. I managed to get a hacksaw in & cut some of the waste away, but the results were a bit messy & left a lot of metal to be filed away.
    Making the mouth is one of the more critical operations. There is no moveable frog to adjust the mouth size on an infill, if you mess it up, you’re stuck with it. The old infills usually had very thick blades (~5mm), which needed a large mouth slot. These allowed plenty of room for a file when forming the blade bevels. But modern after-market blades are about 3mm thick, which is roughly the thickness of a 6 inch flat file, so even if you can get it through the starting slot, you won’t be able to tilt it down enough to file the back of the bevel without hitting the front of the mouth, which would cause a too-wide mouth gap. Fortunately, there is a class of file called “warding” files. A 6 inch warding file is about 2.25mm thick & these will fit through a 3mm slot with enough play that you can angle it down to start forming the bevel without filing the front of the mouth. (compare the warding file on left, with a 6 inch flat file on the right): 18 Files cf.jpg

    Even with the coarsest cut of warding file, it takes a lot of filing to form the bevel. Also, because the file is so thin, it bends slightly under hand-pressure and you can too easily form a rounded bevel, so I switch to a regular 6 inch flat file once the bevel has been filed back enough to get it into the slot safely. About the time my arms were ready to drop off, the bevel was done:
    19 Mouth forming b.jpg

    At last I'm ready to peen up the body. Note the rivets that secure the blade block have only been roughly levelled on the sole side, they’ll be properly dealt-with when the dovetails are filed flush after peening: 19a ready to peen.jpg

    .......
    IW

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    Default Part 4

    Before picking up the hammer, I need a “peening block” to hold everything in place & keep the sides square to the sole while I bash away at those pins & tails. For my first few planes I made elaborate peening blocks with cut-outs for the sides to support them when hammering on the tails. It takes a lot of extra work because the cut-outs need to be made very accurately, or they don’t serve their purpose. Lately, I’ve swung over to using a simple block that fits the internal shape of the plane accurately. The sides are held tight to the block & supported by bolts through the block. This seems to work just as well & is much quicker to set up. I used 5 bolts for this plane , but 3 or 4 bolts can hold a small to medium-sized plane securely enough: 20 Peening clamped up.jpg

    The block needs to be made accurately so the tails & pins can close up tightly, with no gaps. I sit the body on the block with a shim of thin cardboard under the sole, and mark around the tops of the sides. The bolt-holes are drilled so that they just touch the pencil mark. The cardboard is dispensed with when the body is bolted down, which leaves a small gap between sole & block. That ensures the sole closes firmly on the sockets in the sides during peening.

    I apply a couple of clamps to pull the sole against the sides and begin peening the pins of the sole at their inner corners, in the belief this also helps to pull sides & sole together. (Some people peen the tails first, to drive the pieces together. Both approaches seem to work, so use whichever seems most logical to you). The clamps are a nuisance and need to be moved a couple of times until all of the pins have been peened enough to lock the joints firmly. It doesn’t take much, you can usually remove the clamps when the peening is about ¼ of the way, giving a clear go for the rest of the job. This is at the stage where I’ve just removed the clamps: 21 Peening 1st stage.jpg

    Now it’s just a matter of working away from end to end, gradually moving the steel over to fill the small bevels on the sides of the tails. On a big plane like this, a lot of hammering is required & my striking arm starts to tire, & I begin losing accuracy, so I take a few breaks or I’m likely to ding the brass. I’ve seen various recommendations like applying gaffer tape around the joints, or placing shims beside them, but neither is foolproof. You need to be able to clearly see what you are doing, so you can watch the gaps closing and keep moving the metal appropriately. The best solution, I think, is to practice hammering ‘til you can strike accurately. Because you need to strike at a slight angle in the direction you want to move the metal, an occasional slip is inevitable, but that will only make a small ding, which will file or sand out during clean-up. A full-on miss is another matter, it may leave a dish that is too deep to get out, so try to avoid that.

    Eventually, after about an hour of hammering, it looks like it’s done. At this stage I like to put it aside for a while & take a long break. As it happened, it was time to pack up for the night anyway. On close inspection next morning, I found I hadn’t properly filled the gaps for couple of pins, so they got more treatment before I stared to clean up. I forgot to take a picture before I cleaned up the sole, but this is what it looked like with the tips of the brass tails levelled: 22 Peening_bottom smoothed.jpg

    I used a coarse 10” file to knock the sharper bits off, followed by lapping on a 60 grit sanding belt stretched over the tablesaw. The sole is roughly flat, with a slightly low area around the mouth (I get this commonly, probably because of the extra hammering along the wide pin). This is as far as I will take it until the stuffing is in & the lever cap can be tensioned up, then the final lapping will be done: 23 Peening cleanup.jpg

    My peening has improved with all the practice, and the hammered-up dovetails don’t look quite as ragged as my early ones did. Those still cleaned up well – the main object of the game is to be sure you’ve filled all those cavities thoroughly before you start cleaning up. If you find voids when you’ve filed most of the metal away, it’s too late to do anything about it. Cleaning up the ends of the tails on the bottom is easy, it doesn’t take much effort to get the brass flush with the steel and I like to do that first. It is a good check on how well you’ve peened; The tails are pretty easy to spread to fill their sockets, so if there are gaps here, you are likely to have more on the steel side, so if that’s the case, go over the pins again before you do any more filing.
    Levelling the steel pins is a more serious work-out. Even with a 10 inch bastard-cut file, you file & file while the lumps of protruding steel diminish ever so slowly. It’s made even more of a chore because you have to be careful not to graze the brass with the coarse file, which can leave very deep score marks. I go as far as I feel safe with the coarse file, then switch to a 10 inch smooth-cut, and draw-file to get things level. I try to keep the file contacting steel at all times, if it hits the brass too soon, it will create depressions. As you can see in the pic., brass plate is rarely dead-flat, but the dips are something of the order of a thousandth of an inch deep and will sand out easily enough at the final clean-up. There is no need to take it further yet, because riveting in the woodwork can also cause minute depressions in the sides, so it is best to do the final cleaning-up after that step.
    This is the moment of truth, when you see just how well you’ve closed those dovetails. I’m pleased to say this lot are as close to perfect as I’ve ever managed – the H62 brass was delightful stuff to peen, and made that part of the task easy. The gauge plate is surprisingly good too. When I first used some, I expected it to work-harden under the hammer, being a high-C alloy, but it peens at least as well as mild steel and remains soft enough to file easily. In mild steel, files tend to drag out large crumbs of metal which lodge in the teeth and cause nasty deep scores across the work, particularly when the file starts to dull a bit, but the gauge plate seems to be a bit better behaved in that regard so while small crumbs do break away, they do so to a far less extent than with any mild steel I’ve used.

    Cheers...
    IW

  7. #6
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    Default

    Another great read thanks Ian. My understanding of "Gauge Stock" from what I have read is that it is annealed O1 tool steel. Does that sound like what you have and, based on your comments of how the dovetails turned out, you seem happy with it?

    Tony
    You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. ~Oscar Wilde

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    Love your work Ian!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    Quote Originally Posted by tony_A View Post
    ..... My understanding of "Gauge Stock" from what I have read is that it is annealed O1 tool steel. Does that sound like what you have and, based on your comments of how the dovetails turned out, you seem happy with it? ......
    Hi Tony, yes indeed, gauge plate is O1 steel which is most commonly sold in the annealed state. It might be a wee bit harder than mild steel, but I can't say I notice it much, it saws & files much the same. As I said, I expected it might work-harden when hammered, but it doesn't do so to any detectable degree. It's a common choice for both soles & sides with infill plane makers.

    You could use the leftovers for making blades - I've made a couple frm scraps, one turned out ok, the other not ok. My main problem is I don't have a decent heat source to get something the size of a plane blade hot enough...
    Cheers,
    IW

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    Default Part 5 - the lever cap

    Normally, I wouldn’t make the lever cap until the rear stuffing is in place, but the wood I wanted to use for the infill hadn’t arrived at this stage, so I went ahead with it. I reckoned I could get it close enough by working off my mock-up, and if any adjustments are required when the time comes to fit it, they should be minor & easily managed.

    Judging by what I’ve read in various threads, many aspiring plane makers are intimidated by the idea of making lever caps, imagining it to be a very difficult task, as I did, before I tried to make one. In fact, it’s one of the easier (& fun) parts, particularly for an uncomplicated plane. Brass is easy to saw & file, and seeing a shapely cap emerge from a plain lump of metal is very satisfying. Provided you work with a little care, using a template or two & following layout lines wherever possible, it’s all pretty straightforward. The critical part is getting the axle (pivot) hole accurate so the toe makes even contact across the cap-iron, which is not especially difficult if you have a drill-press and a decent DP vise (at least not for a ‘normal’ straight blade setup). Even if you get the axle slightly off, you can file the toe a little to get good contact (it often needs a teeny bit of attention to get a light-tight fit), so you shouldn't have any complete disasters. One advantage of using screws rather than a rivet for the axle/pivot makes it easy to take the LC out as many times as necessary when setting it up.

    This LC is not quite so straightforward due to the skewed blade. I spent a good bit of time thinking about it and how best to make & fit it. There are two (at least) possible ways to fit the LC for a skewed blade, and I’ve discussed these at some length in the relevant section of my “manual”, explaining what I see as the pros & cons of either method, so I’ll keep this brief. For my “pseudo-badger” plane (A pseudo-badger plane ), I chose to install the lever cap square in the body, which necessitated making a pronounced twist on the toe end in order that it contacts the cap-iron evenly. For this plane, I decided to go with what seems to be the more conventional approach, which is to install the lever-cap so it is parallel with the skewed bed. This means the whole LC is twisted with respect to the body axis. It simplifies making the lever cap a little, the toe end remains co-planer with the body of the LC, but it does complicate fitting it in the plane. We’ll get to that part in due course.

    First, with hacksaw & files, I cut the sides to the required angle for it to sit parallel to the blade bed (the angles were taken from the mock-up). Then I drilled & tapped for the thumbscrew, rough-formed the cove underneath the toe, and finally cut out the shoulders around the thumbscrew. This pic will give you an idea of how the lump of metal starts to morph into a lever-cap: LC 1.jpg

    The wedge hacksawed off the nose greatly reduces the amount of filing required to shape the toe curve. Further shaping is done with coarse & fine files – straight, round and half-round files all come in handy at various points - and finishing with sandpaper wrapped around a flat block, or cloth-backed paper for the curvy bits. Brass sands very easily..

    While it still had substantial flats top & bottom to sit square in the drill-press vise, I set out & drilled the axle hole (almost forgot!): LC 2.jpg

    I plan to use my usual ‘cheese-head’ screw arrangement as stub-axles, but not sure if it’s going to work as well as it does for a square-set LC due to the angled holes in the sides. I may end up riveting it in as the infill makers of old did, so I drilled the hole right through. Remembering the wandering drill bit from my mock-up, I set up very carefully, & drilled from each side with a short 4.2mm bit. Happily, the holes met nicely in the centre. I tapped a 5mm thread into each side about 15mm deep for the axle screws. If I decide to use a rivet instead, I’ll need to enlarge the axle hole to a clean 5mm, but I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it, as my eldest daughter likes to say. The axle is skewed to the fore-aft axis of the LC (it follows the pencil line, which looks close to square in the picture because of the perspective, but it’s about 10 degrees off square).

    From here on, it’s just a matter of refining the shape with round & flat files and sandpaper wrapped around dowels or sanding blocks until it looks as much like a lever-cap as I can make it. Here, it’s rough-finished, I will probably need to make some small adjustments to the shoulders once it’s mounted in the plane, so won't polish it yet: LC 3.jpg

    Cheers,
    IW

  11. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2018
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    1,865

    Default

    Thanks again Ian for sharing and thus, inspiring us all. I have only worked brass a little (dovetail jig from AWR) but it was fun to see the screw heads "disappear" into the brass sides.

  12. #11
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    Default Part 6. The woodwork goes in

    About the time I finished the lever cap, my “Ebony” arrived, so I could get on with the last major item on the agenda.

    The woodwork on smaller planes was often installed so it came over the sides (“overstuffing”) but, I’ve never seen that done on the larger planes. Maybe it was & I just haven’t seen enough to have come across one yet, but in any case, I decided from the start that this plane would be “understuffed”, partly because I do think it might look a bit too contrived on a big plane. It also has to be done with great care - the joint between wood & top must near-perfect, or it spoils the effect entirely.

    I spent a happy hour filing & sanding the tops of the sides, making chamfers & some lamb’s tongues with files, then smoothing them with various grades of W&D wrapped round paddles and bits of dowel to tidy them up. This was followed by some buffing with green compound. The body is now ready for its stuffing: 6a Tops chamfered & polished.jpg

    She-oak is a wood I favour for stuffing, it’s hard & stable & takes a very tactile finish, though maybe not the easiest of woods to work with. However, I am down to the last dregs of the stash I got from the old home farm about 6 years ago. I had a long rummage through my various boxes of “useful bits” & managed to find enough to do the job, but it was not choice quality. Good enough for a practice run, though.

    I made up a front bun, to see if my design was going to look decent. I was happy with how it came out, so made a similar bun with a piece of the precious Solomon Island “Ebony”. The She-oak looks ok, but I think the Ebony has the edge: 6b Buns cf.jpg

    The colour will darken a lot, judging by the outside of the block, which looked a lot like Macassar Ebony.

    I was expecting the ‘ebony’ to be a real challenge to work, since it’s even denser (ADD ~1.2) than Penda, a close relative with which I'm fairly famiiar. But it isn't as bad as I expected, it cuts & planes a lot like real Ebony, I could plane it either with or against the grain without tear-out (with a close-set cap-iron). There are no evident growth rings, but narrow bands of alternating darker& paler wood give it some figure, which I expect will fade as the exposed surfaces darken.

    The rear stuffing is made up with 3 pieces; the centre part that includes the handle, plus two cheek pieces. The handle was shaped and finish-sanded, as were the tops of the side cheeks because this is much easier to do while the bits are separate: 6c Stuffing ready to glue.jpg

    I left a mm or so of extra wood on the blade bed sections for planing & refining the slope after glue-up, to align it with the sole & blade-block.

    I sanded all the mating surfaces to ensure they were clean & fresh, mixed a batch of Araldite, & carefully spread the glue, and clamped it up. I have a love/hate relationship with Araldite. I like it for its strength and gap-filling properties but it has to be the messiest damn stuff ever created. And worse, it has no tack whatsoever, so the pieces slide around like greased banana skins while you're trying to get the clamps on. To add insult to injury, I always mix far more than the job requires so with that, & the copious squeeze-out, about 50% of every pack ends up as waste, which is really annoying given the cost of the stuff!

    Eventually, using hands, feet & teeth & some strong language, I got the pieces together in proper alignment, & clamped up with squeeze-out all round. I cleaned up with metho-soaked rags, checked it again (twice) over the next ½ hour while I did a few other little jobs & tidied up, then tippy-toed out of the shed for the night…. 6d Stuffing glued.jpg


    Next morning, I took it out of the clamps and was relieved to see nothing had moved when I’d turned my back. I’d also allowed plenty of spare wood each side to plane down for a tight fit. I wish I’d cut it a bit closer – while it’s not that hard to plane, it's definitely an edge-dulling wood. I found my couple of PMV11 blades a godsend, but even they needed a touch-up before the job was done. The glued-up stuffing was also awkward to hold – my solution is to hook the finger hole over an extended bench-dog, & clamp the grip on a spacer. That held it still while I attacked it: 6e Stuffing-fitting.jpg

    Cutting the slot in the blade-bed for the cap-iron screw was another demonstration of this wood's toughness. I tried drilling a shallow 19mm hole with a Forstner bit using my battery drill, but even with a pilot-hole, I was making glacial progress, so I finished it on the drill press. Then I chiselled a ramp to the hole to allow the blade assembly to be slid in & out easily.

    A final tidy-up of the visible surfaces and a quick coat of Shellawax to help ward off glue squeeze-out, and the stuffing is ready to install: 6f Stuffing ready to fix.jpg

    I will do the rear stuffing first so I can fit the lever cap without the front bun getting in the way.
    I mixed up a big batch of Araldite, smeared it over the wood & inside the body, slid the stuffing in carefully, checked that the blade bed & blade block were aligned, and lightly clamped it. As much as possible of the squeeze-out was removed with metho-soaked rags. I set it aside for 10-15 minutes, made a final check that everything was in place, and left it to cure….

    Hang in there, we've turned onto the home straight...
    IW

  13. #12
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    Default Part 7 - First shavings!

    After the glue was sufficiently cured, I fitted the LC. I was so keyed-up about this part, & concentrating so hard on what I was doing, I forgot to take a single picture, I’m afraid. But briefly, what I did was to figure out where the axle hole had to be on one side of the plane, then drilled this through using a battery drill, lining up the drill bit by eye so it pointed at where I’d estimated the hole should be on the opposite side. With the first hole through, I put the LC in and pushed the drill bit through to the other side. Holding everything firmly in the correct position, I drilled the hole on the opposite side. A somewhat crude bit of engineering, but both screws went into the LC perfectly, and it seems to tighten squarely on the cap iron. (Insert big sigh of relief here!) LC fitted.jpg

    The last bit of the construction was to put a few rivets through the body to hold the stuffing. The epoxy would probably suffice, but the rivets give long-term insurance. Drilling was very slow-going because the oily wood packed in the drill lands and I had to withdraw the bit & clear it every cm or so. When setting the rivets, I had to be extremely careful not to over-strike & hit the brass of the sides. While the soft brass was lovely to peen, it’s also easier to mark than the harder 385 brass I’ve used previously. Lots of careful hammering got them pounded down, with just a few dings where they weren’t supposed to be. Then a bit of filing & sanding to level the sides. This is off 120 grit, so it’s a bit rough-looking, the final spit & polish will be the very last step: 7a Done.jpg

    OK, at last, I can get a sneak preview of what all that work has achieved. I put the lever-cap in, popped in the blade assembly and tightened it down with the blade well-retracted, then lapped the sole for about 10 minutes on a stretched 60-grit belt. That got the sole roughly flat, then impatience got the better of me. I took out the blade & cleaned out the swarf, then set the cap-iron about .8mm back from the edge, put it back in & tapped it to begin cutting. Shavings straight up!
    However, all wasn’t well, it started cutting erratically after a few strokes. I pulled the blade out, & as I suspected, my cap-iron wasn’t seating properly on one side, so I spent a few minutes sorting that out & tried again. This time it produced some decent shavings: 7b First shavings.jpg

    When I pulled the blade out, there were some shavings under the cap iron at the leading edge, so either my cap-iron edge isn't as straight as I thought, or the LC isn't applying enough pressure on that side. I have a few minor issues to sort out yet....

    But as far as the build is concerned, thats’ that. It will probably take a few more hours of work to polish it up & fettle it. The sole is far from properly lapped yet & the sides need final sanding & polishing. I also need to decide how I’m going to fix the lever cap in – obviously can’t leave those ugly screw heads sticking out! I’ve got a couple of ideas, so we’ll see how I go with those.

    I'll tender my final report in a week or two.

    Cheers,
    IW

  14. #13
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    Mar 2004
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    Default Epilogue

    I was going to put the plane aside for a week or so while I caught up on some domestic chores, like mowing the couple of acres of grass that is growing rampantly now we've started to get some rain at last. But the rain gods dumped another 16mm of water on us last night, which left half the yard too sodden to mow, and the mower battery was dead flat, which is hardly surprising since I can't remember whe it was last fired up.

    So, back to my plane...

    Frst, I made a couple of chees-head screws & replaced the temporary things. They sat very nicely in the holes & I cut them off so they sit below the surface - the skewed heads don't scream at me, you have to look closely to see the tops of the screws aren't quite parallel to the sides.
    nn
    Turned out my diagnosis of why it wasn't cutting well was correct on both counts. The cap-iron wasn't sitting flat on the blade. It looked fine, but I could easily get a 1 thou feeler gauge blade under the first 4 or 5 mm. I must have spent an hour lapping it on diamond plates, screwing it back on the blade, checking, pulling it apart & lapping more, check again, until I finally gave up with about a mm that still isn't sitting hard on the blade, but I hoped it was close enough to be pressed closed by the lever cap. The lever cap also needed a bit of attention, it was not sitting evenly across the cap-iron, & that took another 1/2 hour of careful filing & testing to get right.

    I also did a bit more lapping of the sole - it could still do with a bit more, but the critical areas are all flat & co-planar, so it can wait for some afternoon when it's a bit cooler & less humid & a bit more suited to the hard yakka of lapping a heavy beast like this (it weighs in at 3.868kg, 6g less than my other panel plane, which surprised me, I thought it was going to end up a bit heavier).

    Anyway, the remedial work greatly improved things and it will now take full-width, 1-1.5 thou shavings:
    1 thou shvngs.jpg

    Now, time for a little confession. Just to show I'm as good as anyone at making stuff-ups, how's this for a good one? Disaster.jpg

    Yep, the bleedin' drill bit went way off course when I was drilling the rivet holes, and exited about 5mm above where it should have, right on the edge of the side! I was stunned when I saw what had happened, I felt like I'd just ruined the whole thing! After tossing up several ideas on how to fix it, I decided to go for on that was risky, but might get the best outcome.

    I carefully marked where the hole should have exited, centre-punched the point, and drilled carefully with a short bit until it hit the other hole about 1/2 way through. I set the rivets, then sat down and worked at the ragged edge for a very long time, carefully scraping the side back to a semblance of a circle with a file ground to a chisel point. It's not quite right, yet, but I got sore fingers and decided to leave it where it is for now. Another job for a rainy day.

    The hole in the wood was easy enough to patch, almost invisibly, so you have to look closely to see it: Rt side.jpg

    I guess I'll never achieve perfection.

    At least the left side looks ok: L side.jpg

    As always, I learnt a few lessons on this build - one is to frequently retract & clear bits when drilling dense, oily wood! Apart from such minor vices, I am more than happy with the "Queen Ebony" as infill, the finish on it is superb, it just invites being picked up & held by the woodwork.

    One of my main objectives in building this plane really was to check out the H62 brass. Typically, you get one property at the expense of another. It's great stuff to peen, and from that aspect is great for a beginner to cold-working metal. OTH, the softness that makes it good to peen means mis-hits make deeper dings - not something a beginner who is learning to strike accurately needs! The C385 I am given to moaning about is a bit more forgiving in that respect.

    Ok, thanks to anyone who has hung in through what was a long build - it seemed even longer to me because I was doing it in a very piecemeal way....

    Cheers,
    IW

  15. #14
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    Nov 2004
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    Default

    Ian

    I found your thread when it was almost complete. The advantage was I was never hanging out for the next installment and during the early stages I didn't know what I was missing!

    Wonderful description and wonderful build.

    Thank you.

    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

  16. #15
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
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    Default

    Nice build Ian but I do feel your pain. Perfection is one of those mythical things that is never achieved, just a matter of how close to it we can get.
    Is there any science that goes into deciding what skew angle to use?

    Tony
    You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. ~Oscar Wilde

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