Thread: Tips, Techniques and Theory

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

What do some of the "professional" makers do (or have done in past)?

Well, as I said somewhere else, the front piece is most often encountered in cast bodies. The only place I can think of, off-hand, where the front piece is typically added later, is on a box mitre. In his video series on making one, Bill Carter put the front piece in with dovetails. I think he used two each side, but Matt will be scratching for room on hs plane, so one will have to do. One should be plenty strong enough, there should be no forces trying to pull the sides apart once it's all assembled.

Matt, I reckon the bestest solution is to dovetail the piece in, but make a 45 mitre at the top, like is often done with blind D/Ts on box sides. That way, you can have your cake & eat it too! The layout & execution will be easier here, because you can make a half-lap D/T, which is going to disappear after peening, so the mitre only has to be a few mm deep from the top (which is convenient 'cos you don't have a lot of depth to play with there). You'll have to cudgel the old brain a bit laying it out, but it's not that difficult, & unlike wood, you can close up any small gaps with your trusty hammer (but I'd still do a practice run on some scrap if it were my plane.

A simpler way would be to cut the front piece to a neat butt-joint fit (with or without a mitre on the top 3 or 4 mm) then fit it with a couple of pins either side. You could thread a short piece of brass rod, screw that into the cross piece, then peen it down into a countersink in the sides & again there should be no evidence left.

But you don't need to thread the rod. You can use the 'clockmakers' pin method of tapping in a slightly over-size, gently tapered rod & peen that down. I've used both methods for putting cross-pieces in the back of chariot planes & both work well (I thought I'd done a post on it, but can't find anything, but I'm pretty sure it's covered in the "manual" in the section on the chariot plane). I made a practice joint with the tapered pin method & was amazed at how much force it took to get it apart. For a joint like your cupid-bow piece, with no lateral force to speak of, it would be more than adequate, imo.

Cheers,

Woolworths have strong 8% vinegar too. I have some large horse shoe files or rasps in vinegar at the moment, been in for two weeks. They are coming up sharp. Some finer files too. The large 3 cornered file that I took out last week was very blunt, now it cuts very well. The car putty file that I put in broke when I went to use it. But it was sharp. It is amazing the amount of brown foam that is coming out of of the pipe I am using to soak the rasps in. I think it is worth trying the vinegar. I couldn't get one of my gidgie planes to cut. I found out the bed was not flat which was why I was looking to sharpen one of the rasps. It works much better now.

Thanks P. I was at the shops this morning! Should have checked this thread 1st.

I wonder if you are within 5k?

I've used double vinegar on a few files. I found it worked pretty well.

Lyndon

Originally Posted by Pagie

I wonder if you are within 5k?

If you're near the southern end of the ridgeline I could be.

I am near Emerald

I grew up in Emerald. Beautiful place. I have family still living there. I just checked on Woolworths website. Neither Monbulk or Belgrave stores stock the double strength vinegar.

We got it a woolies Emerald last week

I'll keep my eyes open.

Hi, I have a question regarding coffin shaped infill plane build. Like the one Ironwood is doing. But thought I ask this here.

I understand for such shape you first cut pins into the side profiles. Then bend them and then cut the tails in the sole.

But how do you transfer the pins accurately onto the sole plate?
I googled, but couldn't find good instructions for that step. Can anyone elaborate what best way for doing such body is?

Thanks

CK

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

I haven’t put a real lot of thought into it yet, but I will probably just sit the sides on top of the sole plate and scribe around the pins , I will cut leaving a bit of waste beside the lines, then sneak up on a good fit with the file. Hopefully I will get it right, I want very little gaps so I don’t have to move much metal around with the hammer.
After I get a chance to have a go at it, I will report back.

Different people seem to go about it differently. The way I do it may not be the best way, but it works for me (most of the time! )

First, you need to get your sides bent as close as you possibly can to the side curves of your sole. Obviously that is going to make for the most accurate scribing of tails to the sides of the sole. With my very first curved-side plane, I was a bit cavalier and just bent them 'near enough', thinking I would pull them into the sockets with clamps when it came to assembling the body. That meant I had to roll the sides around the sole as I scribed them, with the result that the transfer wasn't very precise, and I ended up filing a few sockets way too wide. Fortunately, I'd allowed plenty of steel protruding, so I was able to beat the metal over enough to fill the gaps, but it was nip & tuck on a couple.

Sooo, lesson taken to heart. I now make sure to get the sides bent as close as I can get them. It's a bit of a fiddle, because the amount of springback is really variable, it depends on how thick your sides are, and what alloy you're using -the softer alloys like 260 or the H62 I've used don't spring back as much. So you just have to make some guesses when you make your bending form -I've made a few suggestions in 'the manual' on guestimating how much 'extra bend' to put on your form. The good news is you can have several goes at it, the brass will tolerate the amount of bending involved very comfortably, so you can add a bit more or take a bit off several times without danger of cracking the brass.

Once I have a close fit (I aim for no more than a mm out at either end), I clamp the sole to a board which is roughly shaped to match the sole sides (I usually modify the convex bit of the bending form for this job), sit the side neatly on the sole & hold it there with one hand while I scribe the tails. This is where it pays to have decent layout dye, because all it takes is a light scratch against each tail to leave a clear mark.

Now you have to extend the side lines you've just made to the inner lines on the sole. If the sides are straight, you can use a small trysquare, but on curved sides, I just estimate a line perpendicular to the tangent of the curve at each point. Don't sweat it too much, small errors are easily filled by peening. I do try to fit the tails in their sockets as neatly as I can because the neater the fit, the easier the peening and the less extra metal you need to allow for it. I can get away with 1.5mm of pin protruding, but on your first plane, maybe allow 2mm. Every half mm means a lot more filing at cleanup time, but it's far better to have too much than skimp & not be able to pen your pins over properly - there ain't no 'fix' for that short of an arc welder!

One last thing while we're talking curved sides. Bill Carter says to bend the sides before you cut the profile. His reason is that the shallow parts of the sides tend to kink in the form rather than take a smooth bend. I saw this tip after I'd bent the sides on this one: Side bends b.jpg

You can see the sharp bend indicated by the arrows. It's actually not as bad as it looks, the lighting is making it more obvious, but it illustrates his point. Most of the problem was because I didn't fair the curve very carefully on the bending form. Since that one, I've been much more careful with my bending forms & haven't had that trouble since. The sides for this one were cut out before bending, but took a nice curve: 3-sized Smoother.jpg

But I thought I should bring it to your attention. It's a lot more hassle cutting out the profile if you bend the sides first; it's do-able, but I think I'll stick with cutting the profile and tails before bending. I would find it pretty difficult the get the bottoms of the tail cutouts perfectly level on a pre-bent side!

Cheers,

Hi Ian. What timber have you stuffed the planes with? And a little unrelated but I think I saw photos of saws you had handled with Silky Oak. Do you think this species would work as replacement totes and knobs for cast iron planes?