Thread: Fallen off the wagon again - onto a box mitre plane

Originally Posted by IanW

Almost! I cut out my first saw blade (a small one) with a hacksaw; I demolished a couple of blades and did my hearing permanent damage to boot. The screeching those poor blades made should have been enough to earn some sympathy, but I cruelly pressed on. Thankfully, Ray Gardiner straightened me out & told me to get some 1mm cutoff wheels for my angle grinder & things improved markedly on the next project! I have come to love the things and go through a tin-full with great regularity these days, but there are places I can't/won't go with them & so the old hacksaw has to step up.

If only I'd known when I started this foolish plane-making caper that I was going to end up making so many, I think I would have invested in some more machinery; a decent linisher, for starters, it could have saved my arms & shoulders much discomfort. But as I'm (almost) finished making them, it wouldn't be worth it now.....

Cheers,

Ian

I too am a great fan of the thin cut off discs, but if like me you were going through a large quantity this video demonstration shows how to achieve better life from the disc.

This Trick makes your Grinding Disc last longer. It Works! - YouTube

FireballTool has quite a number of very interesting projects in the metal working arena. I think we have highlighted the cutting test on the Forum before so apologies if I am repeating old news. My own experience with changing my cutting technique, and without counting, is that the discs last around ten times as long. I was cutting some of that SS that is so unfriendly to shoulders. However, there is always a downside, and the cutting time is a lot longer. Nothing comes for nothing!

If I was cutting saw plate, for example, I would, in addition to using a thick piece of steel as a heat sink, wipe the cut with a wet cloth after each couple of passes to eliminate the chance of local overheating.

Regards
Paul

Thanks for posting that link Paul, I found it very interesting! I actually use that "gouge-cu"t technique quite a lot, especially when cutting thicker material, but not with thin stuff, which eats discs up faster, but when cutting something as thin as saw plate, it's hard not to cut right through first pass. I evolved the method simply because the disc feels happier cutting in light passes, there is way less shudder (as the camera showed), but I had not realised or even suspected it was saving disc wear. Now I know why it is better & I've been saving myself a few $$s without knowing it!

Cutting saw-plate is pretty foolproof. I used to go to great lengths to protect the plate when I started out, but discovered it's only necessary when cutting off very thin strips. If you don't clamp those firmly between a couple of chunks of 3mm steel, the strip will turn into a pretzel. I use a chunk of steel as a guide for the disc anyway, when making most straight cuts, though I frequently nip off an end or cut the round edge to fit in a handle without any form of heat sink & have not found any softening of the material. Quite the reverse in fact, the thin material can air-cool quickly enough to harden if over-heated, especially that last little dag as the pieces separate, that can be as hard as glass when you run a file over it, but two or three swipes gets you back to regular hardness....
Cheers,
Ian

OK, back to the main theme.

I had two reasons for adding the thumb plane to this thread, one was because the discussion wandered into stainless steel & its merits & de-merits, but what I really wanted to highlight is this business of forming a tight mouth by cutting & joining the sole.

When I first made a split sole plane I reasoned it didn't matter whether the tongue was formed on the toe piece or the heel piece. It can certainly be done either way, but after making a few I've decided it's easier if the tongue is formed on the front (toe) piece, like this: 10 sole prep.jpg

It's easier because it leaves the bottom finger of the groove (on the heel piece) supporting the edge of the bed bevel, and it's just all-round easier to set out & form this way.

But the first time I did it, I filed the bevel to a sharp edge as in 'A' in this diagram: Bed bevels b.jpg

That meant very little metal needed to be removed from the toe piece to form a mouth. However, forming a long, shallow blade bed with hand tools takes a LOT of effort, there's a lot of metal to remove for a 15 deg. bed! Also, you need to remove that sharp edge by filing it back 'til it is about .25mm thick, otherwise the sharp edge distorts under lever-cap pressure, and it also has a nasty habit of cutting fingers during the assembly process (damhik!).

So I decided the smart thing to do was to set out the bevel so it finishes about .25mm above the sole, as in B in the diagram. That means you need to take out a little more metal from the toe (indicated by the dotted line) to form a mouth, but the amount of metal to be removed is much less & saves much filing. However, it is not easy to estimate just how much metal has to come off the front piece to form the mouth - I assemble the two bits & try sitting a blade in there, but it's really not until the thing is fully assembled that you can know for sure. The problem is that even with the most meticulous setting out, & greatest care, teeny tiny errors can throw things out, especially the final bed angle, which can end up a degree either way of what it was meant to be, and at low bed angles, a degree matters a lot.

Anyway, I took great care with both of these planes, aiming for really tight mouths. The mitre plane is pretty good, the best I'd achieved so far, but just a fraction more than I'd hoped for. So I over-corrected with the thumb plane & although I thought I had it perfect, by the time it was all assembled, the mouth was too fine & the blade would not come through at all. That meant a very tedious time to enlarge it, even a fine flat needle file would not fit in the gap, so I had to grind an old one down 'til it would fit through, then file away (very gently so as not to snap the darn thing!) 'til I could get something a bit more substantial in.

It took about two solid hours of filing & testing, but eventually, the tip of the blade came through and it made some lovely fluffy shavings: A.jpg

The mouth gap is absurdly small, but shavings pass through without any apparent catching: B.jpg
I cranked it up to >4 thou shavings & they still passed through easily. The mouth is so fine it barely lets light through at all: C.jpg

By comparison, the mitre plane looks like a very loose-mouthed individual, the flaring light exaggerates it, but it's something less than 0.2mm as near as I can measure: D.jpg

So, I've finally managed an ultra-fine mouth, low angle plane. It still needs a little final fettling & detailing & I'm not sure I got the blade temper right, I think I may have over-softened it, but I'll deal with that as necessary. The extra-fine mouth seems to make a bigger difference than I expected, it's even better at taking a clean shaving on my cranky-grained test piece than the mitre plane, which had impressed me with its performance.

So now is the time to quit & go out on a high...

Cheers,

Love your work!

So, how many planes do you have? Or do you sell them on?

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

So, how many planes do you have? Or do you sell them on?

Some get sold on, but I still have too many! I had a cull last year, but curiosity has caused a few more to appear to take their places. I feel another cull might be coming on later in the year....

Cheers,

I actually began making the mitre plane with some of the 5mm SS Paul gifted me, but gave up because I had run out of quality jewellers' saw blades and switched to cold-rolled steel instead for the sole. The half-started SS had been sitting on my bench ever since & I had a strip of the "sift" brass left over, so decided to see if I could follow my original intention & make another plane with a SS sole. While waiting for some better-quality blades to arrive, I did part of the sole by "filleting" the sockets with a hacksaw & filing, but I dislike doing them this way because it's tedious and when making endless cuts to form the fillets, it's too easy to over-cut & spoil things. I needed a decent blade to cut out the hole for the end pin anyway - I tried some "budget" blades and they were absolutely useless - they barely cut brass & gave up completely after two strokes on the SS.

Anyway, a week or so ago, my blades finally arrived (#6 'Super- Pike') and I was able to proceed. The Super-Pikes made short work of the brass-cutting and with my experience from #1 I had no dramas bending up the sides & fitting the front. 1 Front fitted.jpg

Then it was back to the SS sole and a very different story!

The jewellers' blades just hate this stuff! They will cut about 10mm with much pushing, getting more & more hard to pull through the steel. The teeth dull a bit, but still have some bite, but the set wears off & with no set the kerf gets too tight & the blade keeps jamming on the swarf. I have cut other SS before, but it was a different alloy that gave nowhere near as much grief as this stuff - I used up blades like they were going out of style!

I thought maybe they are dud blades, so I cut out the sole for another plane from some 5mm cold-rolled plate, and the difference was amazing. I cut all of the sockets out with one blade. Here they are for comparison - the SS on the left, the mild steel on the right. One blade cut all of the sockets on the right, and it took two blades to (barely) cut the hole in the SS on the left!
2 soles cf.jpg

Peening up was another struggle. As described above, to simulate "dovetails" with these planes takes some extra peening and I found the SS was work-hardening quite noticably. I ended up filing it down a bit (twice) to expose some softer metal then peening some more. It was hard going, took an entire afternoon (filing them down was a monumental job too!). But eventually I had the body done:
3 Body done.jpg

There are some small pinholes in the corners of a few tails, but the sole side is perfect and it's as solid as a rock, thank goodness.

I thought I had the mouth spot-on before assembling, but it wasn't, & that was another struggle to open it up a bit. Just so you know I can be a complete idiot, I over-did it & the mouth ended up twice as wide as #1's is.

Lapping the sole was another major chore - I've got it usable after a ridiculous amount of lapping but there are some deep marks at the toe & heel that are going to take a lot more effort to eliminate than I was prepared to put in today. It needs a minor tweaks, but already planes nicely. I only tried it on "easy" stuff, so I'll be interested to see how it compares with the tighter mouth on #1.
4 Shavings.jpg

And this arvo I peened up the other little plane - what a doddle the mild steel is compared with the SS! It took less than 30 minutes and I'm reasonably confident there'll be no voids, but I'll find out tomorrow when I file it down....
5 Chariot peened.jpg

I think it will be a cold day in hades before I tackle another SS sole!

Cheers,

Ian

It looks like your persistence is paying off. I have acquired some other SS, but as before it is an unknown alloy and I am reluctant to mention this out loud as my product liability insurance does not cover shoulder injuries.

In the same way that you have found some brass peens much better than others, it would be interesting to know if there are similar variances with SS. Always going to be difficult to assess with recycled material of unknown specification. My impression is that all SS have a tendency to work harden and this may be a difficult property ultimately for the plane maker.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

...... My impression is that all SS have a tendency to work harden and this may be a difficult property ultimately for the plane maker......

Paul, there is great variation in SS alloys, for sure. In that lot you gave me, there are two distinctly different types. The stuff in the pressed box (which is ~1/8" thick) is hardly different from mild steel to work; jewellers' saw blades cut it much the same, it's not noticeably any harder on files than MS and peens well. I used some to make this mini-chariot & apart from the challenge of making a T_G joint in such thin material, it presented no memorable difficulties: SS mulga.jpg

The other (thick) stuff, from the shims or whatever they were, is very different. It cuts ok with the cut-off wheel, but kills both hacksaw & jewellers' saw blades mercilessly. It's tough to file, even without any work-hardening, though a bit of walloping makes it tougher still. You also notice a big difference when lapping, it takes more effort to move the plane over the abrasive - you would think you are ripping off lots of material from the "bite" it gives but when you tip it up after 50 strokes or more, you see a very disappointing amount of progress. The surface gets smooth, even with fairly coarse paper, which I think is due to the metal riding on the swarf and preventing full contact with the abrasive, causing the slow progress (I've taken to brushing off the swarf every 20-25 strokes which seems to help speed things up a bit). It does clean up very nicely with finer grades, except for any deep scratches & pits, and buffs to a mirror finish that no MS can match.

The work-hardening doesn't go very deep, at least not at first. I just noticed that after a few passes I got smaller depressions from the same hammer blows & it became more difficult to direct & control the flow of the metal. If I filed the hard surface off, just a few thou, it made a difference & things improved for a while, but it was never as 'soft' as the mild steel I used yesterday. Doing one after the other really brought home the difference - it took every bit of the limited peening skill I've managed to acquire to get those SS pins over the tails enough that I was satisfied I'd filled the gaps (which I hadn't quite, in a few instance). By comparison, peening the MS was a walk in the park - a fraction of the time and far easier to direct the metal where I wanted it to go.

There may be different alloys in the thicker material you gave me. I made this small rear-bun smoother not long after you gave it to me: Bull oak infill.jpg

I don't recall it being that much extra struggle over a similar plane for which I used the cold-rolled mild steel. I'm sure I sawed out the sockets without killing a dozen blades, and I don't recall peening being that much of an effort, though with the separate sides & close-fitting dovetails there is far less peening required so it wouldn't have been such a struggle anyway.

I'd sure like to know what the differences are. I do like the way SS polishes up & seems to be a bit more slippery on the wood than MS, plus the thought that there will be no rust worries (apart from the blades) over the generations I hope they'll last. If you can get the softer & easily-worked alloys, it would be the material of choice for soles, I reckon. Trouble is, I have no way to tell them apart without making a plane....
Cheers,
Ian

Ian,

Through years of observation, nearly 52 to be precise, I thought as one got older, not necessarily saying you are “Old” but from memory of last meeting you were at least 12 months senior on me.

That one chooses are more simpler softer noble pursuits and left the hard stupidity of youth behind as one become more dignified an senior in years.

So ,why in Name of all the bloody gods are you playing with unknown type of Stainless steel from some self named heathen,
Who himself I’m fairly sure, has never made a plane with “Stuff”
Have you completely gone mad ?
By the way , nice Plane I say.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

........So ,why in Name of all the bloody gods are you playing with unknown type of Stainless steel .......

Well Matt, I wish I knew! But I should point out that age & wisdom do not necessarily increase together..

Originally Posted by Simplicity

........ Have you completely gone mad ?...... .

Yes. But that happened a long time ago....

Originally Posted by Simplicity

........ By the way , nice Plane I say....

Thankyou. It is ok, not quite as nice as #1 yet, but I think I'll get it 99% of the way with a bit more fettling. I'm quite taken with these things, & beginning to understand why Bill Carter has made hundreds of them (fortunately, I don't have enough time left to make many more).....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

I'm quite taken with these things, & beginning to understand why Bill Carter has made hundreds of them (fortunately, I don't have enough time left to make many more).....

Cheers,

Plenty of time yet Ian.
You have an improved pattern Mitre Plane to do yet .
Then a skewed mouth improved pattern.
Then a boxed set of two left and right Skewed mouth Mitre Planes.

Don't You ?

Rob

Originally Posted by auscab

.........You have an improved pattern Mitre Plane to do yet .
Then a skewed mouth improved pattern.
Then a boxed set of two left and right Skewed mouth Mitre Planes......

Rob:


It was the continuous sides that had me intrigued, done that now (twice) so curiosity is well satisfied...

From what I've read, skew-mouthed mitres are even rarer than skewed shoulder planes, and since I'm not sure what the straight mouthed types were used for in the day, I'm even more in the dark as to where one would wish for a skewed mouth example.

I have to tell you that doing a skewed mouth on a low-angle plane is a pita! Any errors are magnified & you have to grind the blades to a near-perfect matching angle because it takes a lot of blade movement to correct the tiniest error in the edge angle. When I made some shoulder planes for my old uni mate a couple of months back, I had some spare core material from cutting out the blade beds & I had a rush of blood to the head & decided to make a 3/4" with a skewed mouth. I made a very small one years ago (inspired by that little one of yours that Peter McBride made a copy of). But I made the mistake of canting the blade the same amount on the low-angle job as I'd done for a standard-pitch rebate I'd made previously, which resulted in an extreme skew of the mouth and a very acute (& dangerous!) leading edge on the blade

Being a little wiser & more practised as I am, I went at the 3/4 a lot more cautiously, starting with the desired skew angle (15*) and working from there. AS you can see from this rear pic, the blade cant is very slight (~5*) to give a mouth skew of 15*. Wedge & blade bed.jpg

It went pretty well except that I managed to get the front of the mouth a little crooked, despite all my care. I can't straighten it or it will get too wide, so just have to put up with it (maybe some day I'll sweat a steel sole on it, but don't hold your breath). It was still a pita to get the blade edge right, I had to re-grind it 3 times because I kept over-correcting the 'error'.

It does cut a little easier across the grain, but not stunningly better than my straight-mouthed example. Perhaps the neatest thing about it is the way the shavings roll into a spiral & spew out of the escapement. My straight blades rebates do have a tendency to fill up with shavings at times...
Curly shavings.jpg

But I really can't see the advantage of skewed mitres......

Cheers,

I thought I might sneak this in on a Friday afternoon while no-one's looking & avoid being berated by Matt for yet another transgression. But again, it's not a real plane, it's a miniature, so doesn't count.

I made it in many small installments and didn't have the camera with me most of the time, so only a couple of "in progress" pics. Here are the components at a fairly advanced stage:
1.jpg

I made a blade from half of a very worn-down old Stanley which was just the right thickness to match the scale. The blade was old enough to be worn almost to the screw slot, but modern enough to be the same material throughout. The remaining steel was soft & easy to cut & shape and rivet on the 'knob', after which I hardened the first 25mm or so. I quenched it in oil, but I suspect it is a water-hardening alloy, it's hard & takes a good edge but not brittle-hard so I haven't bothered to temper it:
2.jpg

No more pics until it's first trial-run. As with its bigger brother, the long barrow body gives little room for lateral adjustment - I had to grind the blade perfectly square to get an even cut, but once I did that, it produced full width (19mm) gossamer shavings with ease:
3.jpg

It was a horribly fiddly little thing to make - took longer than its much bigger brother!
6.jpg

But after a few anxious moments & a couple of minor blunders along the way, I got there, & even LOML said "Cute!" when I showed her. That's high praise for a lowly hand tool.....

Just a couple more pics, then I will leave you in peace:

5.jpg 4.jpg


Cheers,