Thread: Making planes & making mistakes

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I really envy your plane making skills, I need to get my shed tidied up and have a go at one......add to the list of the roundtuit projects.......

Whenever I see the pictures of your miniature planes I ask myself "How did he make such a big 20c coin?"

It's my ambition to eventually make a range of infills; mainly rebates, smoothers and a panel plane. Your plane building threads are waaaay too inspiring!

Ian

In a way I like the posts/threads with failings even more than the perfect outcomes. It describes the pitfalls and the remedies as well as giving encouragement to others to keep going despite the trials and tribulations. I think it is the toolmakers equivalent of the cinematic "bloopers."

Glad it came out well in the end: Your planes are an absolute treat.

Regards
Paul

Ian,

Love the these little bits of wonder, an really love the down to earth honest reviews.

How are the little tackers to use,ie are they comfortable in the hand, or do they cause you to Cramp up a bit due too there size.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

..... In a way I like the posts/threads with failings even more than the perfect outcomes. It describes the pitfalls and the remedies as well as giving encouragement to others to keep going despite the trials and tribulations. I think it is the toolmakers equivalent of the cinematic "bloopers." ...

That's my cunning plan, Paul. While I hope my confessions might save others from potential mistakes, I'm sure there are plenty of mistakes I haven't made (yet!) so don't be afraid to share 'em round, folks. The good thing about working entirely by hand (or almost entirely, I wouldn't be without the drill-press), is that the mistakes happen fairly slowly and there is often time to avert complete disaster. Only the very dumbest mistakes mean starting over, like cutting the dovetails on the sole of my first plane the wrong way round despite clearly marking which was supposed to be OUT & which side IN.... The mild steel I was using is cheap as chips, so that blunder only cost me a day or so's work, but you have to be a complete dummox to ignore your own markings!

Originally Posted by Simplicity

.......How are the little tackers to use,ie are they comfortable in the hand, or do they cause you to Cramp up a bit due too there size.....

They vary, Matt. Some are no problem at all, but this little chariot would be a 'cramper' if I tried using it for any length of time due to its rather low profile. But I only use any of them for very little things (like making little tools ) and not for long, & they are fine for that.

The smallest "practical" plane I have that I can use for extended periods, is this little smoother, which looks very much like one of the minis above, it has some of the same (Victorian) bull oak for stuffing, but at 170mm is 70mm longer (and 13mm wider). It has pretty much the same footprint as a Stanley #1: Bull oak 170mm.jpg

Paul was watching me demonstrate it one day & noticed I had my index finger in the throat, which just happens to be a 'natural' way it sits in my hand (& I can flick out the shavings on the go.. )

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

....Whenever I see the pictures of your miniature planes I ask myself "How did he make such a big 20c coin?" ...

Yeah, & I think I need to make an even bigger one, Chief, as my eyesight & dexterity fade. I definitely don't advise starting out with a miniature unless you have masochistic tendencies, but you've already been that route & managed successfully, so that's probably gratuitous advice....

All good fun, when time's no object,
Cheers

Ian, I think that there is an important extension to lesson number 2 that should be highlighted: When the serious / seemingly insurmountable problem occurs it is wise to put the project aside for a while, at least long enough for a cuppa (or whatever) and get the head straight. Leaving it for a couple of days often allows the mind to be able to shift to a different approach and see solutions that were not apparent earlier. In the case of the crooked mouth you actually used this technique with great success although the storage of the project in a scrap bin is not the recommended method.

Originally Posted by labr@

.......although the storage of the project in a scrap bin is not the recommended method....

Ah well, not so dangerous when you only empty the "shed" bin into the wheely bin about once a month, Bob......

But absolutely agree, sometimes we just need to step back from a problem, empty out the mind (a pretty easy task for me!), & come back later with a fresh outlook & maybe a little more optimism. Doesn't always work, of course, but it's remarkable how often it does.

A good friend of mine talks about "the Domino effect", where something minor goes wrong & starts a series of escalating incidents that end in disaster. He's referring to sailing, but I reckon it applies to just about any endeavour. Fortunately, in the shed we have the option of breaking the cycle by stopping what we are doing & going for said cuppa - jumping overboard several miles from shore isn't always a good way to break the cycle....

Cheers,
Ian

PS: Hmmm, just as I pressed "send" I thought of one situation where you can't take the "cuppa break" option. Have you ever been in the middle of a complicated glue-up & discovered you've done it in the wrong order, or a part that fitted perfectly on the "dry fit" refuses to go into it's allotted position? Meanwhile, the glue on parts you've already assembled is rapidly going off & the whole thing is turning into an unmitigated disaster? Panic & hysteria are the only logical responses.......

Originally Posted by IanW

Panic & hysteria are the only logical responses.......

Technically that statement is completely self contradictory but actually it makes sense!

Of course there was another option for that plane with the crooked mouth - just make it a bit more crooked and tell everyone it was a skewed design .

Originally Posted by labr@

.......Of course there was another option for that plane with the crooked mouth - just make it a bit more crooked and tell everyone it was a skewed design .

I actually thought of that, briefly. Trouble is, it wasn't quite skewed enough to look deliberate, but skewed enough to look like a stuff-up. I've managed to straighten it enough that it takes a second look to notice it's not quite perfect - at the expense of a larger gob than I wanted....
Cheers,

I don't think I've ever made a plane without a mistake in it or small visual flaw of some type, but I have made planes where the mouth got a little bit and it really bugs me because it's such a visually easy thing to see.

As far as making mistakes, I used to make mistakes and throw things and get angry (still have a temper problem and probably always will), but now even though it sours things to make mistakes, I realize that literally nothing I do well is something that didn't improve due to contemplating how to avoid prior mistakes, which then lets you focus on aesthetics and make things more complex, more design oriented, more freehand and less safe.

The state of making no mistakes just turns into the more nebulous "well, now it's time to think harder about design and make this more difficult".

I remember reading an account of someone who built period furniture (I don't mean like a little hall table, either, but a chest on chest with sculptural well polished and complex details) and whatever he was being asked about had won a national award here. They asked the maker what he saw when he looked at the piece of furniture (pepping him up to say something about his achievement and how long it took to get there) and he said "I just see all of the mistakes I made in it".

Beautiful work Ian. And like the others, I appreciate your honesty. The main problem I have with mistakes (apart from dents to my ego) is the amount of time required to get to the same point if I was to make version 2. Shed time being so limited magnifies the impact. Yes the journey is important (really important) but it's good look at the end result with satisfaction. "Apron dusting" is a phrase I picked up from an old boss, meaning to stop, brush the saw dust off your carpenter's "apron" and admire your work. Much pleasure is to be derived from a job well done. Enjoy your results, everyone.

Yep, I think you nailed it, MA. No matter how much we enjoy making something, most of us are striving for the best possible result. I've never made anything that I thought I couldn't do better "next time" - like the bloke in D.W.'s anecdote, when others are admiring something I made, all I see are my mistakes too! You can look on it as a personality flaw that is never satisfied, or a virtuous striving to do better......

I'm not sure what personality flaws are driving me at times (but if you ask my my other half, I'm sure she'll have a goodly list!). If Holtey-ish perfection was my only goal, then I could get myself a CNC milling machine & a bit of other gear and go for sub-thou tolerances. It would probably take me the rest of my life to learn to drive the machinery, but in any case, that's simply not the way I want to do things. I know very high levels of accuracy are achievable with hand tools & I'd like to get as good as I can be with them. There is a different sort of involvement in making something like a plane entirely with hand tools, and a different sort of satisfaction at the "apron dusting" phase (I like that expression!), so the "journey" is important. However, I think I'd adopt a different attitude right smartly if I were to go into commercial production of infill planes.

Of course, another aspect is that with practice & repetition we get better at anything, but we usually also become more critical, so we become the proverbial tail-chasing dog. If I was a sensible, practical, person I would have stopped a long time ago, when I had good working examples of the few planes I really wanted, but curiosity & my slightly obsessive nature just didn't allow that. I'll seek help when I think it's getting serious....

Cheers,
Ian

The only reason stopping me from making more mistakes is the lack of time.

Even with little flaws which only the maker sees, your planes are pieces of art and I hope one day I have enough time to repeat all these mistakes and then curse myself not to have read all the posts more closely [emoji6]

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Well, as I indicated in another thread, when I thought I'd stuffed the mouth on the plane above beyond redemption, I immediately had a scrounge through my scraps tray & found a couple of pieces of 2.5mm that were juust big enough for a pair of sides:
pic 1.jpg

So the die was cast, but there was a pause in proceedings while I fished the first attempt out of the bin & finished it off...

This time I was more careful to keep the mouth straight & in fact over-compensated by leaving it a bit tight. My first attempt at shavings produced strange stringy bits - the mouth was far too fine, in fact it was practically non-existent!.
pic 2.jpg

But better too tight than too wide & after careful filing (with a very thin file), & much testing, it had no trouble in producing thick or thin, full-width shavings:
pic 3.jpg

It's really hard to photograph plane mouths, they always look bigger than they actually are due to refraction of the light coming through. The new plane (top) has a mouth somewhere between 0.1 & 0.15mm, while the first plane's mouth is probably somewhere between 0.8 & 0.9mm:
pic 4.jpg

However, on camphor laurel, each was able to produce clean 1-1.5 thou shavings and leave a clean surface:
pic 5.jpg

Camphor laurel is a soft wood, but can be hard to plane cleanly because it almost always has rowed grain. Both little planes managed the test piece easily, but it's far from the most challenging test, I think if I were to run them over a bit of ringed gidgee the tighter mouth would make a difference, but for what these little things are likely to be used for, I think both will give a good account of themselves. So the question, is, which one to put in the tool cupboard? The first one has a nice bit of figured black wattle out of my yard for wedge & infill, while I put some mulga in the second - not highly figured but the super-fine grain of of mulga is soo tactile:
pic 6.jpg

And just to confuse Chief Tiff, I ditched the giant 20c coin & took a pic of it in a giant hand instead: pic 7.jpg


I think I've done mini-chariots to death now.....
Cheers,