Thread: Tips, Techniques and Theory

Originally Posted by IanW

Brad, the optimum angle is the one that allows the shavings through. I doubt you will need even 50 dgrees, it doesn't need much more than75-80" of slope, in most cases.

The reason I don't give a set figure in the 'manual' is because it is a variable thing. Obviously, the higher the blade angle, the more forward slope you need to maintain a reasonable angle. For a single-iron blade, it doesn't need a very big angle because the cap-iron isn't blocking the throat & pushing the shaving forward where it might start to jam. If you are using a cap-iron, then you need to make sure there is enough clearance to get the blade & cap-iron down far enough to cut without blocking the mouth opening. And again, you can't give an exact figure, because cap-irons vary so much at that end.

So just estimate what you think and start with that, it's not that hard to file the front of the mouth when the plane is assembled, you can get at it reasonably easily, unlike the blade bed, having to adjust those after assembly is a right pita! I always leave a bit of extra metal at the front when I cut in the mouth, because it allows me to finesse the mouth opening when fettling, but I try to keep the extra metal to a minimum, 'cos I'm not that fond of filing.

Cheers,

Thanks for the reply Ian. I got a fair bit done this morning till I had to stop to go into town to do the voting thing, and get some supplies while there.
I have left the front at 90 degrees so far, and a bit over a mm short of where it will have to be ( just in case ). I will leave it till the end before taking any more off, or at least until I get the chatter block in place, and I can get a better feel for how far forward the blade will sit. Will update my thread later with photos.

Why are you all dovetailing your planes? Would not a piece of chanel, say 55mm square do as well?

Originally Posted by Pagie

Why are you all dovetailing your planes? Would not a piece of chanel, say 55mm square do as well?

Mr Bushmiller
Is actually using a piece of Chanel.

But it is not without its own issues,such as the radius fillet on the inside.
But some of us just enjoy the challenge(Pain at times)
Plus the appearance of course.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Mr Bushmiller
Is actually using a piece of Chanel.

But it is not without its own issues,such as the radius fillet on the inside.
But some of us just enjoy the challenge(Pain at times)
Plus the appearance of course.

Cheers Matt.

I am with Matt. Yes you cannuse channel. There are many examples too.

But I do like the look of the steel and brass dovetails. Plus if you want to have the nice curved sides then a channel will not do.

And then if you need an ultra fine mouth with a low angle bed like a mitre plane. Then being able to do the sole in two pieces is helpful.

That's where I am working my way up to.

All that is just a matter of taste.

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Originally Posted by IanW

Ck, I don't know any 'best' way. I've peened a lot of planes by amateur standards, perhaps, but I'm certainly no expert, so all I can do is describe what has worked for me.

I've tried a few different ways to make the peening block. Originally, I followed the instructions I read in a magazine or book decades ago, & cut out the sides of the block to match the sides of the plane (i.e. a mirror image of he tops of the sides). The idea is to support the sides when you peen the dovetails from the sole side. This works pretty well if the block is made very carefully so you get good contact all along the tops of the sides. However, it's a lot of effort to go to for a "one-off". Being frugal, I try to find some scrap of hardwood that is about the right size, and more than once I've used some horrible stuff that's hard & splitty which makes it really difficult to make the cut-out for the sides with the required accuracy. This results in the sides not being supported as as well as they should be, and when I peen the bottoms of the tails, some are a bit "bouncy" because it's not being supported directly underneath where the hammer is striking.

So I followed another suggestion & switched to using bolts to support the sides & clamp them to the block. The more bolts you can use, the better, but you still end up with unsupported bits in between, and so I find myself holding the work on the edge of my anvil block to support the any bouncy sections, which is often very awkward with the bolts gettin in the way, & only a thin edge to rest on the anvil. That will cause bruising of the brass, especially when the narrow side slips off the edge of the anvil block, but the bolts can cause bruises too. Neither is a big issue as long as you don't make a total mess, it's usually quite easy to clean up the bruising on the tops afterwards.

A tip I got from watching/reading Bill Carter is to make sure there is clearance between the sole & the peening block so the sole can be pulled down hard into the side sockets. I put a cardboard shim between the sole & block when setting up, & remove it before I start hammering. I always start peening with the pins on the side, working from the outer edge towards the bottom of the socket to force the sole down firmly in the sockets. Once the pins have locked securely, I switch to the bottoms of the tails & snug them up a bit, which should also tighten the sole against the bottoms of the sockets in the sides.

Likewise, make sure the width of the peening block is exact. Quoting B.C. again, it should be exact, or ever so slightly under sized. The idea is that it won't stop the sides from closing up to the sole sockets completely.

Once he tails look like they are filling properly, I go back & finish peening he pins, then go over the tails again. One place I still get an occasional pin-hole is at the inner corners of those darned tails.

When you have closed the pins & tails completely, the bottoms of the sockets should be pretty tight, but there are always a few visible lines, due to tiny filing errors or the metal flexing away a bit (the teeniest gap shows up so much more on a metal joint than it does with wood!). These should be easy to close by peening along the edges.

Remember, having the work well-supported & using lots & lots of small blows are the go. Watch how the metal is moving & coax it where you want it to go. It takes a while to get the hang of it, but when you do, it is very satisfying to see that metal go where you want it to......

Cheers,

Thanks Ian. Turns out my scrub plane body still came out quite ok. But now I know where to improve for my challenge plane.

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In his thread Ironwood has just riveted his "chatter block" or "blade block" on his sole, and it raised a coupe of issues I thought worth commenting on.

The first issue is that whatever metal you use for your sole, you should try to use exactly the same stuff for the rivets and chatter block. This isn't solely for disguising the joins & rivet heads, it's good insurance against galvanic activity occurring if moisture wicks into an area that isn't quite 'water-tight'. You will get some activity between any two dissimilar metals. Even when they are supposedly the same alloy, there can be enough difference in the mix to cause problems - back when I learnt surgery, it was always stressed that SS screws & plates always had to be from the same batch for that reason - sitting in a nice, warm bath of physiological salts can result in one part or the other being chewed away.

Fortunately, your plane is not sitting in nice warm saline solutions, so not such a big issue, but worth a passing thoughy. Of course we often want to join dissimilar metals in this business, like brass to steel, so we have to live with the risk, but we can minimise it by using the same material for the rivet as the 'outside' metal (& not leaving your plane out in the rain!). So if you are dithering about using steel rivets to hold the stuffing in a brass-sided plane or going for the contrast of steel rivets (or vice versa), using contrast is more decorative, but using the same material is the safer course. I see a lot of 'contrasting' rivets on 'modern' infills but I can't recall ever seeing them on the old planes - will time be less kind to them??

Ok, that's the theory, it's unlikely to be a big problem in our lifetime, but perhaps worth thinking about if you expect your hard work to be around in a few generations' time. A 'precaution' I observe with my planes is to bed the woodwork in with epoxy. This is to fill any small gaps and keep moisture out (& there have always been small gaps on the inside of every body I've peened up). I've seen a coupe of old infills gutted to replace woodwork, and one of them was a real mess of corrosion. It may have been left out in the weather, or something equally unpleasant, but it was enough to make me very cautious, especially as I have a penchant for using woods that are rich in tannins or other corrosive chemicals!

Finally, don't blame yourself if your rivets don't completely disappear when you clean them up after peening. I take care to select matching metals, I have even gone so far as to turn up rivets from scraps of the same piece the sides or whatever were cut from, and after cleaning up what I'm sure is very well-peened job, the rivet head is clearly visible as neat circle! I had a moan about this a while ago, & speculated that perhaps the peening causes a physical change in the metal that makes it reflect light a bit differently. Being colour-blind, I'm hopeless with colour, but acutely aware of shade & texture, so what is obvious to me isn't always so to others, I've learnt. I always check with my other half if I'm not sure if I'm seeing something real or not - she can usually see it too, so I'm satisfied I'm not making it up.

Anyway, two things seem to happen, either the metals tarnish over a few weeks and blend so the rivets heads do become invisible, or they become even more prominent as the metals tarnish to slightly different colours - it seems entirely unpredictable! This is why I said to Brad that I think it's more art than science. And perhaps it's why many makers opt for 'contrasting' rivets - if the darn things are going to show anyway, you may as well make a feature of them....

Cheers,

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter Ian.
On my plane build, I went with the 304 rod for rivets because it was the easy option, and I have about 5 metres of it in the shed, I never really put much thought into the different stainless alloys being a different colour. But on reading up a bit, it seems that 304 might have a higher chromium content, so might appear lighter and shinier. Which seems to be the case.

In regards to riveting I have another question. I understand traditionally the makers of infill planes have run cross pins through the stuffing and peened them in.
But hen I also saw people now going a maybe simpler way by using slotted cointersink screws and filing them off instead. Or some, e.g. Young Je, often doing nothing of that and just glue the infill with epoxy into the metal body without anything else.

What are the thoughts on that? Can it be that with the modern epoxy the cross pins might not be as critical?

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Ck, myself, I don't trust epoxy on a wood/metal bond, I've had too many failures, for reasons I've never been able to figure out. It certainly will stick sometimes, I had to remove the stuffing from one plane after glueing it in & it had stuck very solidly, I had to chisel out the wood & scrape & scratch the glue off the metal, & every darned bit hung on to the last. When it sticks, epoxy on its own certainly gives a strong bond.

I use epoxy for several reasons: to bed the woodwork in nicely; put a waterproof (or water-resistant, more accurately) barrier between wood & steel; & hold the stuffing in place while I drill & set the rivets.

Putting a few cross-pins in is really no big hassle (unless the drill bit wanders and comes out in the wrong place like it did on my panel plane ). I am a bit slack in that I don't bush my pins. The old makers usually set the stuffing in, drilled the holes for the pins, then pulled it out & reamed the holes to take steel bushes so that peening down the rivets pulled the sides firmly against the bushes. I assume the idea was that if the wood shrank, the rivets would remain nice & tight. I decided not to do that with any planes I've made so far, mostly because I have no way of making the accurate concentric holes for he bushes - I reckon if they are not put in snug in the wood, they are not much use. If the wood shrinks, you are going to have an unsightly gap anyway, whether you use bushes or not, and the wood is far less likely to expand and push the sides away from the rivets, so I decided they had little to offer. Laziness helps me convince myself of my own logic.....

So far, I've gotten away without problems on all but two planes. In both cases, I got a bit of shrinkage with the front buns - it was my own fault, I knew the wood I was using was probably not quite ready to use, but I took the risk (& lost). At least pulling out & replacing a front bun is much less of a job than replacing the rear stuffing, but it's still a pita, so I think I've learnt my lesson there.

That's my take on it....
Cheers

Originally Posted by IanW

Ck, myself, I don't trust epoxy on a wood/metal bond, I've had too many failures, for reasons I've never been able to figure out. It certainly will stick sometimes, I had to remove the stuffing from one plane after glueing it in & it had stuck very solidly, I had to chisel out the wood & scrape & scratch the glue off the metal, & every darned bit hung on to the last. When it sticks, epoxy on its own certainly gives a strong bond.

I use epoxy for several reasons: to bed the woodwork in nicely; put a waterproof (or water-resistant, more accurately) barrier between wood & steel; & hold the stuffing in place while I drill & set the rivets.

Putting a few cross-pins in is really no big hassle (unless the drill bit wanders and comes out in the wrong place like it did on my panel plane ). I am a bit slack in that I don't bush my pins. The old makers usually set the stuffing in, drilled the holes for the pins, then pulled it out & reamed the holes to take steel bushes so that peening down the rivets pulled the sides firmly against the bushes. I assume the idea was that if the wood shrank, the rivets would remain nice & tight. I decided not to do that with any planes I've made so far, mostly because I have no way of making the accurate concentric holes for he bushes - I reckon if they are not put in snug in the wood, they are not much use. If the wood shrinks, you are going to have an unsightly gap anyway, whether you use bushes or not, and the wood is far less likely to expand and push the sides away from the rivets, so I decided they had little to offer. Laziness helps me convince myself of my own logic.....

So far, I've gotten away without problems on all but two planes. In both cases, I got a bit of shrinkage with the front buns - it was my own fault, I knew the wood I was using was probably not quite ready to use, but I took the risk (& lost). At least pulling out & replacing a front bun is much less of a job than replacing the rear stuffing, but it's still a pita, so I think I've learnt my lesson there.

That's my take on it....
Cheers

Thanks Ian. I guess I am already thinking ahead how I would drill the holes straight through with my resources. And the potentially even on a coffin shaped plane body....


At the same time I want to make sure it works. It's good to get the different perspective.

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Found this on a Facebook site, but now can’t remember we’re I found this
I’m fairly certain it was either 15 or 16 century, from Germany.

Thought it was a little quite here and this might get a few of interested.



Cheers Matt.
I need to get my glasses checked, bottom right corner of pic [emoji3064].

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Pretty sure I have seen cigarette lighters made by the same people

Further to Simplicity's post # 102, here is some further info from Jim Bode Tools

Cheers
Bob

I am about to start making the rear infill and handle for my plane. I have been planning all along, to make the handle, and have two separate cheek pieces that fill in the gap to the sides. I think this is how most people do them, but I have seen them made out of one piece, which would need a fairly large lump of wood to begin with.
But have also seen them made with 2 pieces, one piece for the infill, and a separate handle, which I assume is mortised into the lower part. I think some Holtey planes are made this way. If he is doing them this way, there must be some merit to doing them like this.

I am trying to weigh up the pro’s and cons of each method, anyone care to offer their thoughts on the subject ?