Thread: Mathieson infill plane

Plane and blade have now been cleaned up, sharpened and flattened. Handle has had split repaired and I am trying to let the glue set before taking a test shaving. Still on the lookout for a parallel iron and have yet to come up with a fix for the bun.

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Nice job on the infill restoration. It's a great addition to the workshop/collection.

I just restored a wooden 22 inch Mathieson trying plane. Those irons are beefy and re-establishing the primary bevel is a lot of work. Once sharp, those planes are sweet users.

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Looking good.

For the front bun I can think of two things

1. Make it a feature with some inlay or so

2. Slice the top off and glue a new piece of close enough timber on and reshape. At least then there is a clean line and not the residual crater of the know.

In any case unless you replace the entire infill it will always be visible.

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It works!! I only have one other plane that cuts like this, a wooden try plane. Oregon is the timber (and shaving

Thanks CK. Good ideas. Rob (auscab) also suggested a leather strike pad.

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Looks great MA . Nice shaving.
Yes leather. You see quite a few with leather strike pads. I couldn't find any pics last time I looked. Some well matched BRW and then touch it out with a pencil brush , some colours and some patina and it will disappear if its done well. It wont stand up to tapping with a mallet as well though . To get the blade to retract. Finding some BRW can be hard too. Parallel Blades show up on UK eBay sometimes.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...el+plane+blade

Originally Posted by AnthonySeiver

Nice job on the infill restoration. It's a great addition to the workshop/collection.

I just restored a wooden 22 inch Mathieson trying plane. Those irons are beefy and re-establishing the primary bevel is a lot of work. Once sharp, those planes are sweet users.

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Thanks Anthony. Really happy with how it has turned out. Funny you should mention primary bevels. I am working through a Lumber Jocks thread called Hand Planes Of Your Dreams (only 6500 posts to go). People are often complaining how long it takes to re establish primary bevels and I dont get it. I use a standard speed 6 inch bench grinder with a white wheel. I have made a wider tool rest and a couple of sticks cut at common angles (to set rest to wheel position) and then I grind away. Fingers rest right below tip. When things warm up, I dunk it in cold water, swish and get back to it. I then proceed to waterstones (or oilstones of late) and work through the grits. Primary bevel (even if I grind out chips by holding perpendicular to the wheel) just doesn't take me that long. Flattening backs however........

Looking like a good user you got there.
I think if it were mine, the front bun would get built up with some black epoxy, and smoothed off.
I reckon it would be enough to mask the damage. Maybe some coffee grinds mixed in with the black epoxy and it will blend in real nice.

Noice!

Apologies for coming late, but I don't keep a proper eye on this section..

That front bun is going to give you some bother, methinks. It rather looks like the plane took a bad tumble & landed on the bun. Without having it in my hand I'm just suggesting, but that crack across the middle looks serious & it will be so full of gunk by now that no glue will do anything for it. I'd be tempted to cut it off & replace the whole top. You should be able to get a bit of (legal) BRW somewhere, a luthier or antique store may be hoarding some scraps large enough to put a top on the bun. I've found BRW to be a difficult wood to match exactly, it had a very variable grain pattern, but the main visible part is all end-grain & if you can orient the growth rings of the new bit to match, it should not be too obvious.

The reason a parallel blade is preferred with a LC is because the LC bears on a single line across the blade/CB assembly. When you tap the blade forward it immediately loosens and goes way past what you are aiming for. Likewise, the blade can't retract when you whack the top of the bun or the back because it just tightens. With a wedge, the wedge tends to be carried down with the blade when you tap it, so you don't get the same loosening effect, but you can if you rap the blade very hard & sharply. How do I know this? Because I put a tapered blade in the old cast-iron relict I found a few years back and the discoveries came very quickly! You can get them set after much mucking about, but compared with setting a parallel blade, it's many times more difficult!

Setting the blade perfectly in an adjuster-less infill is definitely an art that took me a little time to acquire. One is generally aiming for a very fine & even cut, and this can take me several attempts to get just-so. What I 'discovered' with my infills is that a sharp rap on top of the bun retracts blades better than whacking the back as you do with woodies. It does work with woodies, of course (quite a few oldies had strike buttons on their noses), but for reasons I don't understand, it seems to work really well with all of my adjuster-less infills, and whacking the backs isn't as effective.

I'm sort of with Tom - I use a Bailey #4 for general "pre-smoothing" & the inumerable jobs that 4s are useful for, being able to adjust the cut easily & precisely 'on the fly' is it's strongest point. But I do love my infills for final smoothing. Just today I was planing some pine bench tops I glued up for my neighbor, I leveled the glue-lines with my 5 1/2 and did some preliminary smoothing with the #4, but then I switched to my favourite #3-sized infill and spent about 10 pleasant minutes going from end to end in overlapping strokes until it was taking off full-length shavings each stroke. P'raps I need to get out more, but I found that a most satisfying feeling.....

Cheers,