Thread: Steiner 1859 Handplane

Originally Posted by IanW

Yep, Aluminium is a beast to work with ordinary files, it's a little better with the 'proper' soft-metal files, but you still need to stop & clean the teeth every few strokes. Brass is abut a million times better to file, that's for sure (that's a conservative assessment, of course ).

I appreciate your conundrum - you need such a little bit (1/2 x 1 1/4 x 2"??), but you'd have to buy a minimum order of 10 times as much from most suppliers, plus postage, & it would cost you more than the plane by a goodly margin. Then you'd have to decide what to do with the rest of it - I can see a slippery slide into metal plane-making coming on....

I reckon you should go ahead with your plan A, & see how it goes. If, as I suspect, the Al is even worse than the plastic at seizing on the blade, then mac's suggestion of casting about for a bit of brass in any likely spot might turn something up (got any bronze statues in your town?), or next time you drive by Pullenvale, drop in & we'll see if I can find a suitable scrap in my pile of leftovers.

The place where I get my brass puts the little bits left over from preparing orders for customers on a couple of shelves in the front office & sell them at scrap prices, which is considerably less than what you pay for a requested piece they have to cut for you. It's total pot luck what's on the shelf at any time, but it's always worth a look, I've picked up a couple of lever-cap's worth for less than 10 bucks, for e.g.. You could do a quick detour on your way home from Brisbane next time, & check them out, it's only about 5 minutes each way off the highway....

Cheers,

Ian

Thank you for the offer of brass. I may take you up on that in the future, but I might also get more information about you supplier and perhaps call in there one day on the way to Brissy. Brass and wood are such a wonderful combination: Possibly the best there is.

In the meantime of course I am merely experimenting with what I have. I drilled the hole first before I lost the square reference and cut a lump of aluminium off with the a fibre disc in the cut off saw. That aluminium sure does get hot.

P1050481.jpg

To replicate the original I routed a grove down one flat side, started to do the second one and promptly broke the bit.

P1050482 (Medium).JPG

I must have been a bit too pushy. I had another bit, but it would not cut (probably blunt and I tried sharpening it unsuccessfully.) So I cut two guides with a hacksaw and filed out the waste for the second groove with a 12" bastard file using the edge. The edge teeth were very coarse and it was relatively easy with almost no clogging, although I did have a brass wire brush on hand to clean:

P1050483 (Medium).JPGP1050484 (Medium).JPG

After roughly beveling all edges with the same file I cut the corners off, this time with a thin cutting disc in an angle grinder:

P1050485 (Medium).JPG

I finished shaping the block (Formerly referred to as the "thingy") on a linisher and disc sander:

P1050486 (Medium).JPG

It was then polished up to appeal to those of you who like pretty things. It is still aluminium, but is now shiny enough to reflect the surroundings. I think the gold look was coming from my halo .

P1050487 (Medium).JPGP1050488 (Medium).JPG

At first, after installing the block, I thought it was a disaster as it wouldn't plane at all. Then I realised the chipbreaker had slipped down and the chipbreaker was actually doing the planing!! After adjustment it works OK. The blade seems to release by tapping the button behind the front handle. The blade has not been sharpened and no other tuning has been performed so performance is understandably "moderate" at this stage.

P1050489 (Medium).JPGP1050490 (Medium).JPG

The only slight problem is that tapping to release the wedge caused the front handle to also loosen and jump out. I will glue that back in next time I am making up some epoxy.

P1050491 (Medium).JPG

Regards
Paul