10 Attachment(s)
The lady hasn't sung yet....
After making the second version of the Veritas kit plane with my modified adjuster, as detailed above, I was left with the original Veritas adjuster shaft. Seemed a pity to just chuck it in a drawer & forget it, so I started thinking about a Vers3.
The little rear-bun smoother I made a few months ago has turned out a real winner, it’s one of those tools that makes me wonder why it took so long to discover I needed it! Attachment 460172
So, for vers3 of the Veritas kit plane, I decided to make a similar model, but with an adjuster. By making the rear bun about the same height as the instructions for the kit suggest, the adjuster shaft should fit & do its job. So I sat down to design my new plane.
The kit instructions suggest a length of 200mm for the plane they illustrate, but I wanted to make mine shorter – no more than 170mm long, if possible. I reckoned I could do this by shortening the rather long toe of the Veritas version (75mm) so I cut the nose down to 45mm, which looked a better proportion. That gave me the length I wanted, and kept the back the same, which is good, because if the rear bun gets too short, it’s uncomfortable to hold. I drew up a side profile accordingly and made some templates for sides & sole.
The Veritas blade that came with the kit is 1 5/8 inches wide (41mm). I reckoned a 1 ½” (38mm) blade would be more in proportion. But grinding 3mm off each side of a blade seemed a bit too tedious, so I resigned myself to making it to take the 1 5/8” blade.
This job, like the last, is happening in short bursts when I can get shed time. This is not a good way for me to work – I have to stand & stare a while each time I get back to it, to figure out where I am! It also means picture-taking has been a bit erratic, so not all steps are covered, but you’ve seen all that before, anyway, haven’t you...
Despite the stop/start progress, things were coming along pretty nicely. I’d got the sides cut out, & bent to shape, and transferred the tails to the sole. Got one side of the sole cut out during a coffee break, and the next day, I pressed on with the second side.
But things happen that shouldn't happen when I’m doing things on the fly & not giving it the attention it requires. I was well into my second cut when I realised I had screwed up. Spot the blunder: Attachment 460171
That pic might be a bit small, depending on how you’re viewing it, so just to make the point: Attachment 460170
Yep, I’d just made the most fundamental error that you can make when dovetailing. I was cutting off the wrong bit!
I sat & stared at it for fully 5 minutes, trying to figure out if I could gather up all those little dots of metal on the floor & put them back where they came from. In fact, it is possible to repair something like this by driving in a wedge of steel during peening, but I wouldn’t have been happy with a repair, so it was either start a new sole, or revert to my original plan & make the blade narrower. A quick ruler check showed that cutting off the pins on that side would leave me with a sole that was still wide enough for a 1 ½” blade. I decided it was Fate telling me my design needed to change, so I cut it down, re-marked the pins: Attachment 460169
And sawed out the correct pieces, this time. After some filing & fiddling, both sides went on with no further dramas: Attachment 460168
I cut out & bevelled the mouth, then peened up the body. Here it is getting its initial clean-up after peening: Attachment 460167
It’s still pretty rough, but I leave it at that until the infill has been installed & riveted in place, before doing the final cleanup.
For the stuffing, I’m using another chunk of Gidgee. This piece is more straight-grained, but has a very subtle fiddleback pattern, that I’m hoping will stand out a bit more when it’s polished, but in any case, I’m confident it will polish nicely enough to look the part. Over-stuffing a curved body is a pita – it takes patience & care, and can’t be rushed - I made sure I had a few clear hours to tackle this part. I marked out the pieces using templates for side & sole shape. With my ageing eyes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to see knife-lines in dark wood, so in situations like this, I do what we were taught by our woodwork teacher back in primary school – rub a bit of French chalk over the lines. Makes a huge difference! Attachment 460166
After much careful sawing, paring, & rasp-work, both buns are sitting nicely where they should, & ready to glue in: Attachment 460165
I sawed off the extra wood overhanging the sides, & was about to mix up the Araldite to bed them in when I realized I’d forgotten to fit the adjuster. Drat! It would have been a bit easier to set the rear bun up for drilling while the edges were still square, but fortunately, the swivel jaw in my home-made drill-press vise allows for holding odd-shaped objects. The reason I was leaving this 'til now was because I wanted to check the measurements after the rear stuffing was in place. The holes need to be put in pretty accurately for the adjuster to have its proper range of travel.
It only requires two 7/8 holes to be drilled in the bed, but the one that takes the Aluminium cup that the adjuster pivots in has to be just the right depth or the pivot will either bind against the blade or wobble in its hole if it’s too deep. The cup is a really tight fit in the woodwork, so it’s not easy to do a test-fit. I relied on checking the depth with calipers, and eventually snuck up on the right depth. All looks good: Attachment 460164
So, I glued the woodwork in & left it to cure overnight: Attachment 460163
Maybe I'll get some more shed time tomorrow...
Cheers
5 Attachment(s)
Done, still a little bit of dusting to do....
Had most of today to myself, so it was spent very happily finishing the plane.
With lever cap done, the next job was to put the blade assembly in & lap the sole to 'very close', before a final bit of filing to form a mouth. Having had the unpleasant surprise before of the blade going from barely through, to a too wide mouth, I took my time & checked frequently. Got this one near-perfect, so very happy about that.
With the sole barely flattened, I couldn't resist, I had to give it a test drive, so I honed the blade up and went at a bit of scrap. It made full-width 2 thou shavings on the first attempt - very encouraging! Attachment 460366
So I spent an hour or two doing the final clean-up, polished the lever-cap and the woodwork, and set it up for a portrait: Attachment 460365
The keen observers will note that I changed my mind on the rear bun. It started with a little camel-hump behind the bed, which I thought might prevent my hand bumping the adjuster knob & knocking things out of whack: Attachment 460368
But a) it looked a bit naff to me, & b) it fouled the brass knob & prevented the screw from screwing all the way down (which isn't a problem now, but would be when the blade wears), so off it came, & I think the lines are much better with it gone. From the few minutes I was using it, my hand was sitting comfortably clear of the knob, so my fears were groundless. The plane has a very nice action, with a solid feel, & the low grip the buns afford seems just right. I've come to like these "non-handled" infills as Norris called them. After a little bit more fettling I think it'll be a rather good little plane. I need to do a little bit more work on the sole, and I'm not altogether happy with the cap-iron - I used some 1.6mm steel because the 1/8" stainless steel I used for Vers2's cap-iron is really too thick, but 1.6 seems a bit flimsy. I'm searching for something about 2-2.25mm thick, 'cos I reckon that will be ideal for small planes like this. Any suggestions??
So here they are, Versions 1, 2, & 3: Attachment 460364 Attachment 460367
Who would have thought a simple kit could spawn so much fooling about??
:roll:
Cheers,