Thread: A split-sole plane (part 1)

The ragged bed obviously needs a lot of tidying up, and to make sure the bed is level & remains at the correct angle, I need a filing guide. This is simply a wedge of hard wood cut to the appropriate angle, which in this case is 15 degrees. Normally, I have the rear sole piece extra-long so I can attach the wedge with small clamps, but the short sheet I cut my sole from was only just long enough for the final dimension and I didn’t have any extra length to place the clamps out of the way. So I tried an alternative, I glued the wedge onto the sole with some pva glue instead: 9.jpg

I wasn’t sure if I’d get a good enough bond with pva but it worked like a charm. I gave it about an hour & a half to set enough before I started filing & my guide stayed put nicely throughout the procedure (& wasn’t too difficult to remove at the finish). As I got the bed close to what I reckoned to be flat, I slathered some layout dye on the back of my blade & rubbed it over the bed to see how well the surfaces were matching. After about 6 or 7 tries, I had a good 90% match: 10.jpg

It takes a lot of sawing, filing & fussing to make a low-angle bed and any inaccuracy is magnified by the low angle. The extra toughness of the SS made it an even more tedious job than previous efforts using mild steel so I was thankfull to get that part done successfully.

The most convenient approach is to make the tongue on the toe-piece and the groove in the heel piece. This allows you to make a very tight mouth because you can start with nothing at all & carefully open it by filing the front part before final assembly. Cutting out the front piece to form the tongues and forming the blade bevel on the rear piece first leaves you with 4 narrow side bits to cut the joints in. I’ve found it surprisingly easy to get a good joint with the mild steel soles I’ve made previously, but the tougher stainless steel blunts files & scrapers and makes it harder to work with the required accuracy, so I wasn’t feeling too confident about getting this one perfect.
I set out the joints with a small metal-marking gauge I made years ago, & as for laying out a mortise & tenon on same-thickness stock, the same setting is used to mark both tongue & groove. The tongue only needs to be about 1.5mm, it’s purely for alignment & has no structural role. The idea is to cut on the appropriate waste sides of the lines for each part, then carefully file to the layout lines for a tight fit.
I had one of my periodic brain-fades at the crucial moment & cut out the wrong part on the toe piece. This should have been a tongue!: 11.jpg

Oh well, only 1.5mm of metal and an hour of time wasted before I realised my blunder. There was about 8mm or more extra on this piece, so I just filed it square and started over.

This time I managed to stay focused & cut on the correct sides on each piece: 12.jpg

From there it’s a matter of careful filing & testing & more filing to get the joints to fit, and the SS did make the job twice as long, but eventually I got the two pieces together: 13.jpg

The joint is quite tight but not perfect and I should be able to hide it completely with some careful peening after the sides have been attached.

The next step is to ink up the sides & mark out the pins from the sides: 14.jpg

This is where I’m at tonight. I have used up my last decent jewellers’ saw blade & waiting for some more to arrive in the post so the next instalment depends on how soon they get here. As an aside, no-one in the country seems to have any stock of premium quality coarse blades & the coarsest I could get was #4, so I’ll just have to struggle along with those to finish the job. There are some coarser “budget” blades available, but I’ve tried these before & they are useless even on mild steel, so I doubt they’d go more than a few mm into the SS before giving up the ghost.

So the next installment may be a couple of days away…

I've always wanted to make that type of plane (despite having no use for it - still have the urge to make more infills of other types, too). I have a couple of thoughts on the metalworking (but nothing to do with the infills, more the hardening and tempering and the saw blades).

1) I've got no suggestion for jeweler's blades, as I've used hacksaw blades and files for infills, but the hacksaw blades in the US are seriously suspicious other than the lenox bimetal. Lots of HSS and bimetal blades, even US made, are not capable of tool steel.
2) if you can tolerate smaller blades, many times, bimetal bandsaw blades in small sizes, or porta band blades can be bent and snapped and used in saws. I have no metalworking bandsaw and have been using portaband blades (relatively coarse tooth) in a 700mm frame saw. (that's for long straight cuts, though, as the tension and blade length doesn't work well with cut starts)

Even here where there's probably more available all the time than anywhere else, the bits and bobs made for metalworking that used to be sold even at home centers are getting more sparse. Jewelers and other trades that still go at it are probably the only source, but one never knows - lots of their trades will probably be cut back due to mini CNC mills).

the hardening and tempering - am I correct that this is oil hardening steel? If it is, canola should do fine, but as you mention, with the preheat. A good rule of thumb for spheroidized steel (which most good O1 is) is heat to nonmagnetic plus another color shade, as fat as you can. Let the iron fully cool before testing for hardness as you can still file it, even if you finish cooling in water and then toss it in the freezer for half an hour to finish (not a bad idea), it may still be marginally fileable just out of the quench.

Heating the oil a little bit is a good idea - getting to cool and then switching over to cold water once the iron is cool to the oil to help it finish transforming as much austenite as possible. I guess it's winter there? I've been lazy about heating oil but not had incomplete hardening with the "plus one" color idea above (heating quick, though, prevents grain growth). It's hard to talk about color temps as background light greatly influences what you see. But if you see a bright red going toward orange, then get magnetic and heat until the color goes from red to a more orange shade. If you see dull orange, bring it up to a brighter orange (but not too bright), and so on, then shift to the quench as quickly as possible.

Probably not a bad idea to heat oil to around 150F or so, though, which you can do by heating a scrap of metal to orange and then just dumping it in the quench bucket and then stirring.

Quench oils like parks 50 are more predictable and will harden a wider range of steels (they'll harden something like 1095) and are more runny.

Finishing the job in icewater immediately after the oil quench may increase warp a little bit, but it can also increase hardness a point from an ideal oil quench, and probably more from canola oil, giving you more room to temper back.

You hit the acid test on the head, though - once it's fully quenched and untempered and has cooled, the stones will tell you the score. Anyone who thinks "carbon steel" is always easy to sharpen just hasn't had a go with it at 65/66 hardness.

Generally will want to temper first and then finish flattening - it'll be much easier.

i've recently figured out how to cycle grain growth out of steel without decarbing and without having an electronic furnace, but not looking to tangent off your thread.

(agree on the stainless - it can work harden, it can point harden and even if it doesn't, the chromium wears blades out and feels icy. The steel that is likely PM-V11 - if you so much as pause while sawing in the same spot, you'll harden the steel where the saw is contacting the metal and never get it annealed again - it fully hardens with a transition of 50 degrees F per minute. slow and heavy metal removal is best, but it's a pain and may require draw filing of the sole to get close (unless you have a grinder).

But when you're done, you have stainless on the sole with brass, and that's pretty cool.

separately, parks 50 is also very stinky - no big deal if you're in your own space, but a no-go with the mrs. I leaf blow the quench smoke out or fan it by having some air moving method pointed out the door right behind the quench tank.

Ian,

Fantastic too see another Build coming out of your stable, I’ve used these blades successfully to cut some 6 mm steel for a saw build,
I know there wood cutting blades but when you live in Virus Lockdown town, you do stupid things.

Not sure if anyone up your way would have then on the shelf, i think i Internet ordered these but not 100 percent sure on that.



Cheers Matt.

David, the steel I'm using is 1084, which is supposed to be the most forgiving of all, & ideal for beginners (which describes me very well when it comes to smithing!) I was getting the blade to a bright orange, I didn't want to take it any higher for fear of burning it (done that before!). It was certainly comfortably past being non-magnetic. Funny thing is, I've used O1 several times in years past, and just quenched in used sump (crankcase) oil with apparent success. My first attempt at hardening some 1080 using sump oil (recounted in another thread) was a miserable failure, but switching to canola did the trick with that batch.

It has to be the quenching, and I'm guessing that oil temp is the likely key. I did as much research as I could, but man, you sure get some conflicting "information" on the 'net, don't you?! Anyway, all's well that ends well, I have a nicely hardened, {almost} flat blade, and if it tempers as well as my last couple, I'll be a happy camper...

Yes, according to what I've read it's the chromium in SS that does the number on blade teeth & drill bit edges. It's weird stuff, with a fresh sharp blade, 304 cuts just like mild steel, but you don't go very far before you feel things slowing down a little. Actually, the blades we can buy in the equivalent of your "big box" hardware stores here are tolerable for sharpness & durability, but a) they come with a thick coat of paint that causes a lot of friction until it wears off & b) every second blade wants to veer to right or left, sometimes so much I just toss it & get a fresh blade - better to cut my losses & waste a $3 blade than ruin the job!

If you only ever make one plane I guess it doesn't matter much how you do the waste removal, I cut out my first couple of infills using nothing but a hacksaw. It gets you there, but you spend about 10 times longer than cutting out the shapes & the waste from between pins & tails with a jewellers' saw. A decent #7 or #8 blade will sail through 1/8 & 3/16 steel almost as fast as a hacksaw (bit slow cutting 3/4" thick brass for a large lever cap, but a #8 blade will do it faster than you may expect). After a little practice you can cut very close to your layout lines so that cleaning up becomes a doddle. But there is a world of difference between a good-quality blade & the also-rans. The brands that I have used successfully are Glardon (possibly the best of the lot), Eberle and Super-pike (only a couple of packs of the latter, but they seemed fine). I've tried other so-called "premium Swiss" blades & they were rubbish by comparison, they cut about 1/4" into 3/16 steel, slowing down with every stroke, then give up entirely. The problem atm is the unavailability of the coarser blades here - maybe it's yet another COVID related supply glitch.

I've done quite a few planes with SS soles now (mostly finger-plane size), & I think it has all been 304 that I used (two were done with gifted scraps of unknown alloy, but they worked much the same as the known 304), however, this is my first with a split sole. It was harder making the T&G joint than others I've done with mild steel, and I found when banging up this little rear-bun smoother Bull oak 170mm.jpg that peening the dovetails takes at least twice as long & twice the effort as with mild steel. When I first put a file to the peened pins on the plane above, it almost skated for the first few swipes, but gradually the file started cutting more normally, so the work-hardening didn't go very deep. I have certainly shortened the life of all of the files I used & by the time I finish this thumb plane, I'll be up for a set of new ones if I'm foolish enough to make any more infills (which I fervently hope I'm not!)

Cheers,

Matt, I've never seen Bahco fretsaw blades in any hardware stores up this way. I'm amazed you got anywhere in steel with blades meant for wood. Eclipse make 'junior' hacksaw blades labelled "wood" or "metal". I once bought a pack for "wood" by mistake & didn't realise until I put one on my saw & wondered why I was getting nowhere fast trying to cut through a 3/16 bolt! The teeth just disappeared after a few strokes. Bahco obviously use a better quality steel or a much harder temper on their "wood" blades if you managed to cut 6mm steel with them.

I've tried many different blades over the years & have found only the brands I mentioned to be truly satisfactory & consistent. The difference is night & day, good blades cut fast & track well, & more importantly, keep on doing so for a long time. They all dull eventually of course (if you don't break it first!), but I can usually cut the waste from all the pins on a full-sized sole with one "good" blade, vs one blade per pin (sometimes less than that) using a lesser brand. With the not-so-good blades, it's not just that the pace of cutting slows down (which it quickly does), the set wears off the teeth & the blade starts binding & jamming every few strokes. So you put in a fresh blade & because it has its set, it promptly jams in the narrowed cut left by the worn blade & you break it on the second stroke!

The 'budget' blades will manage brass, but not very well, even with the softer metal they wear quickly & start binding. So I'm happy to wait for the Glardons to arrive - #4s won't be as quick as 6s or 7s, but they'll let me finish the job with reasonable speed & comfort...

Cheers,

As expected, my blades didn't come today so no progress made on the plane. Instead, I spent the day fixing one of our boundary fences, a job I've been ignoring for over a year!

But whilst taking a break out of the sun this arvo I did a little experiment with the 1084 steel. I was pretty sure I was heating the steel comfortably above the austentitic temperature, so I heated a scrap to a good orange-red & quenched in plain water. DON'T do this to a real blade of oil-hardening steel, it's much too savage! My scrap certainly came out hardened, but it did not like being water-quenched, not one little bit: cracked blade b.jpg

It cracked right through near the edge of the really hot part (circled) , and the rest of the heated area is full of micro-cracks (arrow points to one, but there are dozens). The micro cracks don't seem to go right through like the circled crack, but they are quite deep (I tried sanding some out) and on both sides. You would not be pleased if a blade looked this this! However, it has confirmed to my satisfaction that it's not the steel temperature that gave me problems, the quench was just too slow with the cooler oil. It seems the viscosity of the quenching oil is a bit critical....

Cheers,

Ian

In general, stainless steel is relatively ductile (not knife steels of course), but as DW said, it work hardens very easily. For example the technique when drilling holes is to use a slow speed and plenty of pressure: In fact the sort of pressure that you can really only achieve by leaning heavily on a drill press. The cutting edge has to constantly be biting into fresh steel. If it makes a few revolutions in the same place it will work harden and then you are in trouble.

Your description of how the file performed fits in with the way SS behaves. I am not sure how you cope with this phenomena with regard to hand filing as I have not had to do that. I did try it briefly on the cap lever for the plane I made in the Plane Challenge, but gave it away very quickly. You may have to use the largest files that will fit and really lean into the job. Not a prospect I would relish.

The plane is coming along well having said all that and despite the hurdles.

Regards
Paul

ahh...1084, a wonderful steel. It's technically a water hardening steel, but it does OK in vegetable oils. Definitely good to get it in a quench that's a little "runny" with some heat if it's going to be veggie oil, or to maybe (if you plan to do a few more irons) spring for a fast quench oil. Everything will get file hard (for example, even files, if I do them in soy oil here - about the same effect as canola), but after the temper, there's a better conversion in the quench oils and the high hardness was a little higher and then so is the temper back.

But just in that you found it very hard to flatten, it's almost certainly going to be excellent.

I like 1084 a lot - it's generally a better steel for woodworkers and doesn't really care much about normalization, etc. Great toughness but good high hardness potential. Wear resistance is low relative to a lot of things, but for someone good with sharpening stones, it's not low.

Here is a picture of a 1084 iron that I made after it ceased cutting (clearance ran out - about 900 feet of maple or cherry, i can't remember which). The little lines all over it are oil from wiping the dust and shavings off - just a tiny bit on the back of an iron accidentally wiped over an edge and it looks like there's oil everywhere, but the uniformity at the edge....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....wonderful.
https://i.imgur.com/91mfOWI.jpg

This is a high speed steel iron (close to M2 chemically - someone else ran it through an XRF for me because they couldn't settle with my thought of "i think it's close to a really hard M2 sample.....turned out to test 65.5 hardness)

https://i.imgur.com/E4KQVMc.jpg


And A2 iron at slightly less footage (A2 would plane about 40% further than 1084, or maybe 50% (2 feet of life for 3 in A2, etc).
https://i.imgur.com/4oUaSbB.jpg

This is cryo A2 - notice how part of the edge is starting to leaf off (the dark spot) as it gets near the end of its edge life, it does that all over the place.

I'd venture to guess that physical effort of sharpening, 1084 at same hardness is about half of A2. It's ability to take and hold a uniform finishing edge is far better than A2. If folks got comfortable with fast sharpening regimens, they'd start to prefer stuff like 1084. You're practically done and walking back to the plane almost as soon as you get to the stones, and at good hardness, the burr just comes off all on its own on all kinds of stones- just a quick tease on a fine stone and its gone.

But the shorter edge life is death to the 7 minute sharpening militia. Like working with a musket.

(O1 and 52100 look almost as good as 1084).

Re the making - first two planes I did were both all O1, comb cut (Worked well). After that, I did two with mild steel, but mild steel types vary a lot - if it's large grained, then it's usually not very tough ,but if it's fine grained (I don't follow all of the mild steel types), it's like hard rubber. One with mild steel was all steel, and one was steel and brass. To avoid comb cutting all of those, I wasted a lot of the metal out with a coping saw and a portaband.

For thinner brass sides, I can imagine a jeweler's saw is a lot better, unless someone wants to spring for a mill (I don't).

re: the overcomplication of heat treating, I think the knife people get everyone off track. Most steel comes annealed, half hard or spheroidized-annealed. Anything simple usually does pretty well (1084, 1095, O1, or even 52100). The lack of microstructure perfection is overblown as long as the steel isn't overheated and exposed to significant grain growth. For simple users like us, it's more a matter of getting a decent temp by eye and having a quench oil that will transition the steel fast enough, and then getting it completely cooled (thus, I like to go from parks to water and then dump whatever I"m hardening in the freezer when done). But until a couple of years ago, I didn't do any of that - just veggie oil, and I've never had someone trouble me over anything I've sent them (sometimes offer to make a replacement iron if I get a cheap plane to "fit" for someone and it's clear that the iron is made of subpar strip steels when someone was getting *really* cheap).

For us, it's more about getting reputable steel, though, and then all is well. Anything up to 52100 is doable (but 52100 also likes parks or something fast - of all of these, only O1 really through hardens easily in slower oils).

Originally Posted by IanW

As expected, my blades didn't come today so no progress made on the plane. Instead, I spent the day fixing one of our boundary fences, a job I've been ignoring for over a year!

But whilst taking a break out of the sun this arvo I did a little experiment with the 1084 steel. I was pretty sure I was heating the steel comfortably above the austentitic temperature, so I heated a scrap to a good orange-red & quenched in plain water. DON'T do this to a real blade of oil-hardening steel, it's much too savage! My scrap certainly came out hardened, but it did not like being water-quenched, not one little bit: cracked blade b.jpg

It cracked right through near the edge of the really hot part (circled) , and the rest of the heated area is full of micro-cracks (arrow points to one, but there are dozens). The micro cracks don't seem to go right through like the circled crack, but they are quite deep (I tried sanding some out) and on both sides. You would not be pleased if a blade looked this this! However, it has confirmed to my satisfaction that it's not the steel temperature that gave me problems, the quench was just too slow with the cooler oil. It seems the viscosity of the quenching oil is a bit critical....

Cheers,

My apologies also reading this and using the term "water hardening". That's terminology given in the US here to steels that need to be quenched in water to through harden. However, they transition too fast and crack (even though they quench).

The cooking oil to water is a compromise to get full transformation as much as possible, but the top transition is critical (from full heat to being quenched - that early drop in temp has to happen very quickly and the core of water hardening steel won't get it, as will not thick cross sections (like 1/4" - if you make a pair of chisels, one thick, one thinner, you will be able to tell the difference in hardness between the two and they can't really be tempered together).

This is what all the love is for O1 - if you get it to critical and hold it there a little bit and then quench it, it doesn't take that much transition to get full hardness (and it'll even air harden a little - which may keep some blacksmiths and knife folks from liking it over water hardening types, as they can be more heavy handed with a water hardening type and not have it air harden a little while shaping - this seems like an issue of economy to me, and not one for us to ever worry about).

1084 and parks 50 is a match made in heavy, though - fast transition, no cracks. There's a white-steel-like steel made by voestalpine here (26c3) that I've been making chisels with, and it gets super high hardness out of parks (the vendor's sample was 68 hardness out of the quench, a couple of steps above 1095/52100/O1), and at tempering then, it tends to be about 2 points harder than most of what we're used to (so it can nail the hock hardness levels without the brittleness that hock irons have on a crisp apex - like white 2 and white 1 will do when they're nailed).

I haven't got much suggestion for sticking with canola other than warm the oil, knock the top heat off until it's almost cool and then transition to a bucket of water (with ice is even better), and you'll get about as good of a result as you can get without spending $80 (I'm guessing) australian for a gallon of parks 50 or whatever the equivalent is there.

The fumes from cooking oil quench and temper are a little more pleasant, too (parks just smells like the paraffin oil that goes in model trains to make smoke, and it flashes about as easily as that stuff, too).

(I'm sure many, though, do get tripped up into hardening steel that they bought out of the "water hardening" tool steel section on a website.....in water, to find cracking. I guess it's like a lot of things in woodworking - the difference between success and not is not really that much, but the results can be drastically different due to trivial things).

Re: high heat, too. Getting full transformation to austenite before quenching is to my understanding, both a function of temperature and time. If you can get to high temperature quickly, you can go past temp a little bit with a lot of forgiveness. If you get to high temp slowly, then that's a no-go. As in, my experience not having a furnace to normalize steel for 10 minutes and ensure uniformity, low stress and full transformation, shooting quick and a little high on temp gives good results and when I break samples, they look good. I asked a metallurgist here (larrin thomas of "knifesteelnerds" fame) why I get better results overshooting temperature a little bit, and it's easily noticeable both before and after tempering, and he said "in industry, when items are induction heated, they are often heated past furnace schedule temp several hundred degrees", sort of on the ground proof of the charts that talk about temp and duration.

I think those charts are over our heads with a forge, and we just have to find a "feel and sight" that yields good results and go with it. If you end up with little offcuts of tool hardening steel, it's interesting to heat them (little bits are quick) and quench them and then let them cool and break them to see what the structure looks like. If you can get a structure that shows almost no graininess under good light, then you're in good shape. Many of the disaster stories about difficulty of heat treating have folks missing badly one way or another (underheating, or just getting to magnetic and quenching with no steel time there, or what's also common is forging and overheating steel and then quenching after the forging - some thermal cycling is in order - they do that at the mill for us more or less as part of the rolling process and spheroidizing or annealing).

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

....In general, stainless steel is relatively ductile (not knife steels of course), but as DW said, it work hardens very easily.....

Paul, I did know that drilling SS can be a big problem, and some alloys are near-impossible to work without special tooling, but I have not had any problems drilling the stuff I've been using as long as I use plenty of cutting fluid (made up to the thicker, thread-cutting dilution). I haven't thought of sawing as causing work-hardening, I imagined you need to heat or really hammer the stuff hard & often to alter the structure sufficiently. However, from the way it eats hacksaw blades I can believe work-hardening could be adding to the effect of the chromium.

This being the 4th or 5th time I've used SS for a sole, I'm still very much a neophyte in working with the stuff & still on the steep part of the learning-curve. The first little plane I made (using 3.2mm SS for the sole) went very well. I guess it was because the sole was thin, it was a straight-sided design & I got the fit of the tails & pins very snug so that it didn't need a huge amount of peening to close the thing up. And I used some bronze for the sides that was lovely to peen, so all in all, I thought it no harder than using mild steel, that time:
Thumb.jpg

I used some of the SS you gave me for this plane, which is a lot larger, though still only about the size of a Bailey #1):

Bull oak 170mm.jpg

The sole material is 5mm thick, so a lot more metal to move, and with curved sides I never manage to get the fit of pins & tails as snug, so there were a few gaps that took a lot of extra peening to fill. It was slow-going & I hammered it up in 2 or 3 sessions, the metal seemed to get harder & harder to move, which of course is just what should happen as it work-hardens. I was half-expecting to see it start to flake or split around the larger gaps, but nothing like that happened. Out of curiosity, I grabbed a magnet & tested it against the peened pins (it stuck, lightly) & the centre of the sole (no stick) demonstrating there was work-hardening alright. So when it came to filing off the extra metal after peening, I was expecting a bit of a struggle!

I did what has been suggested, started with the coarsest file and used plenty of pressure - I had to, to get the file to cut, initially. But the work-hardening was not deep and after a few swipes I could feel the file cutting more easily, but it was still a lot more work getting the pins levelled than with mild steel which I put down to dulling of the file (the second side was definitely more difficult than the first!). The good news is that the SS is far less susceptible to "crumbing" than mild steel. I had a few little crumbs stick in the file & score the work, but only a couple and they were quite small, nothing like the great dollops that can peel off mild steel, particularly as the file dulls. So that was one good thing!

If I had a decent linisher or some other powered way of cleaning up after peening, it would make using the SS much more attractive. Peening is still a bigger chore compared with mild steel
(even O1, which I used for my panel-plane: Brass-side PP.jpg )

..but you can do the peening in sessions to lessen the pain, & in fact I recommend doing it that way because your arm tires after a bit (actually, quite quickly when you aren't used to using a hammer for long sessions!) and you lose accuracy & start dinging the surrounding metal. (It's also good to go over it all again after you think you've finished, to make certain you've really hammered the suckers down hard.. ).

But I have no other uses for a linisher, & I'm NOT making any more damned planes!!!!

Ian

Right, enough chitter chatter. My blades arrived late morning so I gleefully headed off to the shed after lunch to cut out the sockets on the sole. My glee quickly changed to disappointment when the first blade I put in the saw expired after cutting about 2mm! I thought it must be a dud that somehow slipped through the net but the next two blades were just the same! I strongly suspect these are NOT Glardon blades - someone has made a blunder. For starters, they are a bright coppery colour whereas every Glardon blade I've had before (& I've had a few!) was a dull oxidised colour, and they certainly didn't expire in a few mm. I used the very last Glardon blade I had to cut out the mouth (37 x 2 mm), which it did, no trouble, so summats amiss...

I'll give the supplier a call on Monday (they don't work Fridays) & see if I can sort this out, but in the meantime, it's raining on & off here & not good for working outside, so I really want to be able to get on with this darned plane. So I resorted to the "filleting" technique:Filleting waste.jpg

This is how I made my first plane, before I discovered good-quality jewellers saw blades. You can twist the fillets of waste out with a screwdriver, they break off quite easily if you make them thin enough. But I hate doing them this way now, it takes longer, there's always a danger of over-cutting if I'm not paying strict attention, and the rough surface with the broken-off dags makes for 4 times as much filing to clean up compared with sawing. So I compromised by sawing off the fillets with the sub-standard blades. It took at least one blade for each socket, and the surface was still very rough, but a bit better than if I'd just knocked them out.

So after much filing, the sides tapped onto the sole: Sides on.jpg

Now I'm able to clamp the two pieces of sole firmly together, and with the aid of a 15 degree wedge, I can test the mouth opening: Testing mouth.jpg

The aim is to have the blade either just barely peeking through or not quite, and enough of a mouth to get a (very) thin file through to open it a teeny bit more after the body is peened up & the permanent blade bed installed. So that was done (the pic of the sole above is actually at this point so you can see that it's still just the merest slit. It's going to need a tiny bit more filed from the front to get the blade through enough to do anything, but that will be the last job to be done after the sole is lapped.

The last thing I did tonight was start preparing a peening block. peening block.jpg

I still need to drill some holes through so I can use bolts to hold the sides firmly & that'll be task #1 in the morning. Then it's RSI time, bashing those D/Ts together. Actually, I'm hoping it won't be too bad, the fit is very tight on all but one of the sockets, and even that is only a slit that should close easily enough - if I was using mild steel for my sole I wouldn't be at all worried, but the SS might have its own ideas about co-operating....

Cheers

Ian,
I’m very impressed with the mouth opening,it’s extremely tight.
Also I had to think very hard, about expressing more thoughts, and not tripping my self up [emoji6].

Cheers Matt.

Again, I have my popcorn ready and watch with interest and learn something again...

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Ian,
I’m very impressed with the mouth opening,it’s extremely tight....

Matt, it's easy-peasy with a split sole, you can put them back together with zero mouth if you wish, although that wouldn't be too clever, 'cos you'd have no way of opening it after assembly. So before I joined sides to sole, I filed a bit more off the toe side. It's tricky to be absolutely sure you've got it right before the plane is put together, but I got it to the point where I thought the blade was just about to come through enough to expose the edge. I like to leave it there so I have just just enough metal to adjust & straighten the mouth after the sole is lapped...
Cheers,