Thread: A teeny-tiny plane

My teeny, tiny plane has a V4 & 5.jpg

With this one I added some convexity to the sole, which I'd intended to do with the first one, but lost my nerve & ended up doing it flat. Here are the two soles (new one on the right): Soles cf.jpg

(The blemishes really stand out in the pic but they are very minor in reality.) You'll notice I reduced the length of the toe a little, and filed a shallow convexity into it. I'd planned to do that for #1 after I'd assembled the body, but lost my nerve, I decided it risked exposing gaps & weakening the dovetails. For this one I filed the convexity I wanted (or most of it) before adding the sides & peening it up. That way, the dovetails were filed flush as for any other build with less risk of exposing any gaps. There probably are a few in there, it's not easy peening such a tiny body & especially the two front dovetails on the curve!

There's also a shallow side to side convexity as well as around the toe, and a pronounced rounding at the heel, and being narrow & short, the plane can follow a shallow concavity in any direction. You can't see it very well in this pic (if at all), but I started with a flat bit of scrap & quickly planed a small concavity it: Shavings.jpg

I need to fiddle a bit more with the blade, I eased the edges to create a slight convexity but it needs a touch more so that it is more than the sole curvature. It's not easy to make an accurate, symmetrical curve on such a small blade, I will have to cobble up a jig that can hold the blade against my grinder rest and allow a sweeping pass at the right radius. I tried adding it with a diamond file, but it's HSS and it would've taken me all day.

So I'm quite pleased with the result. The job I actually wanted it for is long finished, but I'm sure it will come in handy sooner or later, & it takes up very little space in the tool cupboard...

V5.jpg


Cheers

PS. For the first time ever, I pinned the lever cap in. It went ok, not as perfect on one side as I'd like, but it's given me the courage to try again on a larger plane (someday, maybe). I used a shim cut from a jam tin between LC & sides when peening. It came out quite easily when I was finished and the LC moves freely, which was a relief...

Great little addition to the family.


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Love them, Ian! How is the piece of brass at the rear attached to the sides? I like the idea of the shim for the LC. I didn't use one on my infill. I recently bought some NOS Eclipse piercing blades from ebay, as I am gearing up to make another metal bodied plane. The blades came wrapped in the original wax paper and had recommended thicknesses of steel to be cut. How relevant is this?

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

... How is the piece of brass at the rear attached to the sides? I like the idea of the shim for the LC. I didn't use one on my infill. I recently bought some NOS Eclipse piercing blades from ebay, as I am gearing up to make another metal bodied plane. The blades came wrapped in the original wax paper and had recommended thicknesses of steel to be cut. How relevant is this?...

MA, the rear piece is held by two, 2.5mm through-rivets. I tacked it in place with solder before drilling for the rivets, which was probably not necessary in this case ços it was a very tight fit. The brass rod I used is the K&S I've mentioned before, it peens very nicely and matches the H62 brass I used for the sides perfectly, which is why you can't see them (I think one rivet is barely visible on one side, but you have to look very closely). Soldering would probably be plenty strong enough, but I'm a belts and braces sort of bloke...

I haven't used Eclipse piercing blades, but I hope they are better than their junior hacksaw blades, which I've never been happy with, but they're the only game in (my) town, so I have no choice. With the Vallorbe jewellers saw blades, I cut up to 4 times their recommended thicknesses regularly with no problems - it just gets slower as the thickness increases. But I will be very interested to hear how the Eclipse blades perform. For comparison, I can cut 50mm or more in 4mm mild steel with a #6 Glardon blade, and forever more in 4mm brass (I usually do something stupid & break the blade before it stops cutting in brass). All of the 'budget 'blades I've tried gave me way less, one lot of el cheapos would not cut 2mm in steel. But any of the better-quality Swiss or German blades I've tried have been either as good or almost as good as the Glardons. It's a real nuisance that nobody seems to carry the good quality coarser jewellers blades any more - Cookson Gold sell Glardons at a reasonable price, but postage more than doubles it!

Cheers,
Ian