Thread: Shrinking a plough-plane

My main woodworking challenge was the fence, with its elaborate moulding, so I started with the easier part, the threaded arms. The arms are threaded rods, but continuous with a mounting bracket that sets the fence low enough to pass under the sole, enabling grooves to be planed close to an edge. The intact rod that came with the plane is made from a single piece, but when I made the new arm for the one I’m copying, I was very much a novice turner and I was afraid to try & turn the arm as a single piece for fear I would catch the mounting bracket with a chisel (or my hand!) & smash it off or injure myself, so I cut the bracket part off, turned the rod, threaded it, then glued the pieces back together. You have to look closely to see the join, but I’m a somewhat more experienced turner now & I reckoned I could get away with keeping the arms in one piece if I exercised a bit of care. In the event, it was easier than I expected & there were no dramas – the whirling bracket brushed a finger once, but didn’t make serious contact.

The thread pitch for the arms is another scaling compromise. The original arms are 7/8” diameter , 8tpi. Scaling that down exactly would give a size of 7/16” diameter and 16tpi. I considered approximating that by making a tap from an M12 bolt (~14tpi), but decided to use a ½” 8tpi tap & threading jig since I already have them & justified the decision by telling myself the wider lands would be more robust. It can be a devil of a job getting fine-pitch threads really clean in wood , which is another reason I was reluctant to try for a more “accurate” scale. Only the very observant will spot the discrepancy & only the very picky will mark me down for it…

Sandusky sometimes used ivory tips on their fence rods & I wanted to add that bit of decoration. I can’t get real ivory of course, but I happened to have several Tagua nuts I’d bought donkey’s years ago to use for some forgotten project that obviously never happened. If you haven’t encountered ‘vegetable ivory’ before, Tagua nuts are egg-sized seeds of an American palm (Phytelaphas sp.) which are a very convincing simulation of genuine ivory, but a little softer & very easy to turn. Unfortunately, each seed contains an irregular void that has to be worked around, so only very small pieces can be recovered. I managed by sawing out small pieces which I tapped to take 4mm threaded “mandrels” and held them in a chuck while I turned the little buttons:
5 making tips.jpg

The mandrel was shortened after turning the tips & the whole part glued into the ends of the fence rods. I was quite pleased with the result:
6 fence rod tips.jpg

Now for the trickiest bit – making the fence itself with its double-moulding & cutout for the depth stop. Fortunately, A. rhodoxylon is one of those woods that scrapes extremely well, so I made up a scratch-stock to the required profile:
7 Fence scraper.jpg

The same profile was laid out on the fence block, and I began the shaping by sawing away as much waste as I safely could:
8 Fence a.jpg

A gouge, chisel & small planes refined the shape a bit more and the job was completed with the scraper & a sparing amount of sanding:
9 Fence refining.jpg
(Notice how some of my mini-tools come in mighty handy when making mini-tools! )

But I had a problem holding the piece in a way that the scratch stock could get at it, so I made a smaller stock, but even that was awkward, & I ended up using the bare blade. That actually worked well enough since it was a short piece & I didn’t have to remove a huge amount of wood, but was a bit tough on my fingers! I should have glued an additional piece of scrap to it that I could hold securely in the vise, but I was too impatient for such niceties. The ‘return’ moulding on the leading edge was not amenable to scraping, & so I just sawed away as much waste as I could then used files and sandpaper wrapped around a dowel or flat stick to finish. The result is pretty convincing, though I left out one small fillet that I decided was too small to be worth the trouble:
10 Fences cf.jpg

More to come later....

Ian

I have particularly noted that there is a "part two."

It is going well even with the go-faster stripe and a very good recovery. Another "Diddy" plane: Remember Ken Dodd and the "Diddy" brigade? ( I think he plagiarised the name.)

Regards
Paul

Where's part 3?

Originally Posted by IanW

…particularly as I don’t have any small floats, which would have made the job many times easier!

You of all people should know how to sort that out…

O come on you guys give the bloke a break,he’s doing a sterling job,remember he had to eat a few pieces of humble pie regarding tool making.
If he takes a little bit to get to stage 3 we can wait.
Nice job Ian it’s looking fantastic.
I’m particularly interested in the fake nut ivory!

Cheers Matt.

Sitting on the edge of my seat. That's fantastic!

I will so look out for part 3 [emoji16]

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Patience, you lot, a man's gotta eat!

Roight then, where am I?

OK, I need the nuts that lock the fence arms in position. The original nuts on the Sandusky were rosewood & damaged beyond repair so I had to make some new ones for it. I was unable to source any matching rosewood thick enough for the job, & in the end made them from boxwood. At the time I was disappointed that I had to use the box, but I have since discovered that it was not uncommon for Sandusky ploughs to have rosewood bodies with nuts or even entire fence assemblies of boxwood, so I’m still in the zone. In any case, I’m sure box was far easier to manage than rosewood for the novice turner I was at the time!

For my little plane, I had originally planned on making matching nuts, so I tapped a couple of pieces of my ‘rosewood’, screwed them onto a mandrel made for the purpose & attempted to turn them to shape.
11a mandrel.jpg

That's one of the successful attempts with another wood, it quickly became apparent that the Acacia wasn't going to give up easily! The thread has to be tapped across the grain, if you try tapping wood along the grain you usually end up with a reamed out hole & something resembling termite faeces, and little or no thread. But this means the nut blank spins through two faces of end-grain per revolution. I used a very sharp bowl gouge with the most delicate touch I could, but the small size and brittle wood plus the wooden mandrel not being totally rigid meant vibration & the slightest extra pressure caused tear-out & splintering of the edges. I got a couple sort of rounded up ready to shape, but they looked messy & not at all promising:
11 Fence nuts 1.jpg

I could see this becoming a major exercise in frustration, so decided to follow big brother & give it boxwood nuts. The only bit of box I had was a pretty mankey piece that wasn’t big enough to get the 4 nuts out of anyway, so I hunted for other alternatives. I tried the same wood I used for the “speed stripe”. This came from prunings off a tree in my yard with the common name of “Kamala” (Mallotus sp.). They pop-up all over our yard thanks to my birdie friends & their casual approach to defaecation. It’s not a well-known species in woody circles, but it should be, the wood (of branches & young stems at least), is stark white with an extremely fine grain (an excellent substitute for holly, which is the traditional species used for string inlay). It seems to dry well with little checking or distortion & turns every bit as nicely as boxwood. It took a very clean thread, and I soon had what I wanted:
12 fence nuts 4.jpg

I am hoping the colour will mellow over time and end up a bit more like the boxwood on big brother, but I suspect they may need a little chemical help to look anything like aged boxwood:
13 Nuts cf.jpg


Starting to look like a plough plane: 14 fence done.jpg

I guess it ain't a plane until it has a blade or two, so time to think about some metalworking. I have a reasonable set of blades for the Sandusky, acquired from here & there. They include a Ward, two Mathiesons, a Marples & a couple of unmarked ones. They are all pretty similar, with a tapered main body approximately 14-15mm wide topped by a ‘sneck’, & the lower 45mm or so reduced to the required groove width. I wanted a 3mm & a 5mm cutter & I had some leftover 1080 steel 3.2mm thick, which is just about half the maximum thickness of the full-sized blades, & it was just big enough to get two 7mm wide blades from with a bit of careful cutting.

I spent most of a morning cutting out & shaping the two blanks with hacksaw & files, including making the groove on the back that engages a raised, triangular terminal section of the rear skate to prevent the blade slewing to left or right in use. Filing them to a taper was the most tedious part; it would have taken a few minutes to do with a linisher, but I don’t have (or need!) one & time is no longer a major factor round my shed.
So I just followed Simplicity & filed away, waiting for that Zen space he likes to be in (didn’t happen, I just got sore fingers…). But eventually, they were done & the taper matches closely enough that the wedge sits at the same depth for both, so I fired up the “forge” & hardened the business end:
15 Wedge & blades.jpg

Getting close to the end! The last task was to fix the rear skate in permanently. It has to be within a fraction of a mm of the right spot so that the groove in the cutter engages fully & I had been thinking about the best approach as I went along. Without a suitable tiny float (it did cross my mind to stop & make one, Colin! ), I had a good deal of trouble getting the blade bed flat & true. I persevered with a chisel and a small square file & slowly got it right but in the process I shaved away more of the lower part of the bed, which altered the pitch from the original 50* that I’d aimed for (as per the original) by a degree or so, which meant I had to alter the angle on the skate a little bit to re-align it. Finally, everything seemed to be ship-shape and ready to fix the skate in position. In order to guarantee it remained in the correct position I thought I should first glue it in the precise spot, then fit the retaining screws after the glue cured. However, both parts of the skate fit very snugly in their slot, so I decided to muster my courage & just drill & set the screws carefully. It went without a hitch, and the skate is solidly fixed in place & the groove on the blades engages it fully.

Time for the first test run: 16 working.jpg

It works! I was worried it might feel a bit flimsy, but the fence sits firmly with no hint of deflection & the whole thing feels solid. It needs a bit of fettling, I discovered the two parts of the skate don’t quite align along the bottom, so I will have to carefully joint it with a file or lap it on some paper. Then it'll be ready for a final spit & polish & adding to the “collection”.
17 Finished almost.jpg

Oh yeah, you need to see it posing beside big brother, don’t you? :
18 sizes cf.jpg


Cheers,

Wow Ian! You have inspired me to have another crack at scratch stocks (and reminded me why I bought the 60° router bit) . Lovely details.

Ian,
Another great build, love the work arounds.
Don’t panic too much with the Zen filling, it will come one day.[emoji6]

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

.... Don’t panic too much with the Zen filling, it will come one day....

Dunno Matt, I think my arms may give up long before the zen kicks in!

But it is kind of satisfying watching a shaped part slowly (sometimes very slowly) emerge from a piece of nondescript metal....

Originally Posted by Simplicity

.... love the work arounds.....

If you are referring to my stuff-up with the saw cut, I almost sat down & cried when I saw what a stupid, stupid blunder I'd committed! Surely the most raw novice would check where they were at a little more carefully if they'd put a critical job down for 10 minutes! But no, I'm far too experienced & clever to bother about checking myself. My mouth is still bruised from the punching I gave it.

What I think of as "workarounds" is figuring out how to make a part like the depth stop. That turned out to be relatively easy - I cut the inner rectangular piece out of a bit of 5mm thick steel and riveted that to the foot. I thought that out myself (honest!), but just a few days ago I was taking a close look at at another old woodie I have & noticed its depth-stop was made from two pieces riveted together. I suppose it's a pretty obvious way to go about it, so I shouldn't be at all surprised someone beat me to the idea by (at least) 100 years. Some day I'll have a truly original idea all of mine own...

When I first started down this miniature track, I was trying to make everything exactly like the original just shrunk by 1/2 or 2/3rds or whatever scale I was attempting. It soon became obvious that there are some things you can't shrink exactly to scale if you want a working tool, the parts get too flimsy or it's just impossible to make to that scale with my limited gear. A mini-mill would be rather nice, but that is a lot of expense (mostly tooling & the extra bits you need to actually do anything), a whole new learning curve, and a rabbit hole I'm not wanting to enter at this point.

I've been doing a bit of reading about making miniatures and it's apparent that almost everyone, even the professionals with all the right gear take some liberties & make compromises. In retrospect, I probably should have at least tried threading my fence rods with a finer pitch. They look ok when viewed on their own, but you immediately spot the loss of scale when you put the two fences together. I could have easily made a tap from an M12 bolt, done similar before today, and I have done some finer wooden threads successfully in the past (with a lot of fiddling to get the thread cutter set up!), so I'm a bit annoyed with myself for being so cowardly.

I might re-visit the idea in a year or three when I run out of things to do.....
Cheers,

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Wow Ian! You have inspired me to have another crack at scratch stocks (and reminded me why I bought the 60° router bit) . Lovely details.

MA, not all woods scrape successfully & few as well as the A. rhodoxylon I used here, but it is an extremely useful technique & always worth a try when you have short lengths of complex moulding to match (in a hardwood, softwoods are usually a dead loss for scraping), & a little bit safer than a spindle moulder or large router bit!

There are several approaches to complex mouldings, such as making them up from various moulded strips, which you did yourself fairly recently, iirc. I've done that too, for painted architectural stuff, but it's harder to disguise with something that will be left more or less 'au naturale', and I take the attitude that ALL glues are liable to fail at some point in the future. I wouldn't want to have to do an entire roomful of mouldings & architraving with scrapers & gouges, but for this job it was just the ticket, and took far less time than you might expect..

Cheers,

Hi Ian,

The finished Plough looks great. If i could have
thrown you a few ivory snooker balls I would have,
but i can t throw that far.

Martin.

All done as of this morning. I jointed the skate (the front & rear were quite out of line, not sure why/how that happened but screwing them down probably caused the front part to shift, it only has two screws so if one screw-hole in the wood was not properly centred it would have moved a bit as I tightened the screw.

A bit of time was spent adjusting the wedge & getting it to sit nicely, with full contact in the wedge slot. With the skates straightened and wedge fitting properly it made a huge difference to the action & it cut a nice 3mm groove comfortably:
Skate fixed.jpg

So that's another one off my list. Despite the near disaster of the tablesaw incident & a few anxious moments during the build, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. If I did it again I would use a finer thread on the fence arms, but everything else looks in proportion, and as long as I keep the big one out of sight, no-one will notice it's too coarse.

Time to pul out the well-used 20c coin for the final portrait:

Done.jpg

:)
Cheers,

Originally Posted by old workshop

.... If i could have thrown you a few ivory snooker balls I would have, but i can't throw that far.....

Thanks Martin. I've read that people look for old snooker balls as a source of ivory. I've not actually turned the genuine article, but I've had to saw though a lot of horse & cow teeth in my working life. If tusks are as hard as teeth, they can't be a lot of fun to turn!

For present purposes, the tagua did the job nicely, and at least I can honestly say that no animals were harmed in the making of my plane....
Cheers,
Ian