Small bevel up infill smoother

At least 15 years ago ... possibly 20 ... I purchased a brass casting of a small block plane that someone had started but then abandoned. I think that the idea was that it would eventually resemble something like this ...

https://i.postimg.cc/ys77Cxjp/Large-...1-1200x800.jpg

... but the casting was rough as guts and the parts all needed machining. It looked like a LOT of work, and I was not that inspired at the time, and so it went onto a shelf for a later time.

Every now-and-then I would think of the project and pick it up, and then put it back. A few days ago I decided that it was time. Also, by this stage, I had something simple in mind .... it helps to let ideas percolate for a few decades :) I have enough block planes. What could be useful is a small bevel up high angle smoother ... which is really a block plane with a high angle bevel :)

So here we have it ...

https://i.postimg.cc/XNS7Cgwn/1.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/hgTGqHBv/2.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/w6rB6zMy/3.jpg

The mouth was originally designed to be adjustable. This seemed unnecessary, and it was just made reasonable tight.

https://i.postimg.cc/q4rvBjJL/4.jpg

Set up with a 60-degree cutting angle (Hock O1 blade), it planes Pine effortlessly. That is to be expected ...

https://i.postimg.cc/Vfbkvh07/5.jpg

It does the same with Jarrah, and here it is into the grain ...

https://i.postimg.cc/tbLgw988/6.jpg

In the hand this is comfortable.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Looks like its there to work. I like it.
Regards
John

Nice D. How does the lever cap work? Is the pivot rod drilled through the timber? How is the steel base attached?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Nice D. How does the lever cap work? Is the pivot rod drilled through the timber ?

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I were just wondering the same thing, I think Derek May have have used the brass levercap that is shown in the first pic, and housed it inside the piece of Ebony. I could be wrong though :rolleyes:.
Its a nice looking plane Derek, very sleek .

Hi MA and Brad

The lever cap" is pinned via a steel rod running from one side to the other, as surmised by MA. Look carefully for the holes. The lever cap was drilled and tapped for the screw. I have no concerns about its durability in this timber. Plus, very little tension is needed for blade holding. The plane is adjusted like a woody. Of course, with a 15-degree bed, it can be used as a block plane as well.

Incidentally, the photos revealed some mill marks on the front chamfer. These are now sorted (the wood is Ebony, which is easy to plane but tricky to file).

Overall, the plane is 5 1/4" long with a 1 1/2" O1 blade (by Hock).

Regards from Perth

Derek

I guess you could call it an 'English-style thumb plane', a cross between the Norris A31 and the 31.

The 31 preceded the screw adjuster model by quite a few years. As far as I can determine, the 31 had the bronze lever-cap from the start, but for the A31, they switched to a wooden lever-cap. I haven't seen any reason given by Norris, the adjuster would work just as well with the original style of LC, but imo, the wooden wedge-lever is far nicer to use.

I fell in love instantly with the one I made (so much so I made several more! :roll: ), I reckon these are just the most useful little things you can have on hand for small work.

Attachment 531508

It worked perfectly well without a screw adjuster, but I added one later anyway (just because I could) & to all subsequent iterations:

Attachment 531509

The screw is M6 and a bit coarse (but no worse than factory-made adjusters on typical block planes), so adjustinjg for a very fine cut can sometimes be a fiddle....

Derek, I assume you had to add the steel sole to cover the large mouth that would've resulted from filing the bed? One of the problems with cast bodies on low-angle planes.....

Cheers,

Hi Ian

This particular plane was intended to use a lever cap as in the example I showed at the start. I love the Norris 31, and would have preferred this ... which no doubt influenced the design in the end.

And you are correct about the sole being steel. This was sweated on by the previous owner (who then gave up on the build). He did not do a perfect job, and there is a smidgeon (really tiny tiny smidgeon) of a gap at the front ... you can see if if you squint.

You know, a few months ago I was thinking about sending the "kit" to you, then decided that was wimping out :-

Anyway, here are more detailed photos ... if anyone wants to use the design ...

https://i.postimg.cc/SymFP5NH/7.jpg

I assume all this will be self-explanatory ....

https://i.postimg.cc/kC13jTrh/8.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/WN3RNkZn/9.jpg

Here you can see the steel rod used to secure the lever cap. Also the angle of the lever cap screw. This was tapped into the Ebony ...

https://i.postimg.cc/TGK8Bnf2/12.jpg

The bed is also Ebony. The bed angle is 15 degrees (the original bed angle was 12 degrees). The adjustable mouth was epoxied in after bevelling the edge against the blade ...

https://i.postimg.cc/DvY98wdK/11.jpg

And a last shot of the plane smoothing some really nasty, interlocked Jarrah. Cutting angle is 60 degrees.

https://i.postimg.cc/HHFGmjkw/13.jpg

Regards from Perth

Derek

Well looks like I couldn’t have been more wrong on the levercap, I thought you had acquired a kit off someone, and the first pic was of another plane assembled from the kit, so I had assumed you would have had the brass levercap and incorporated it into your plane build. I guess the old story about assuming rings true again :- .
Anyway, it’s a great looking plane with a more modern look to it, than the 31. And it works well, by all accounts.

Derek, I've never had a Norris 31 in my hands, but my intuition says the wooden "lever-wedge" as on the A31 and our knock-offs would be more comfortable to hold. However, I could be dead wrong on that and there may well be very little difference. The only comparison I have is the mitre plane I made with a lever-cap. It's slightly longer than the thumb plane & I tend to mostly hold it by the blade, so the LC doesn't really enter the equation in its case:

Attachment 531524 Attachment 531525

One would assume Norris road-tested his designs (well, actually, very few were his original design, most had been around for a while), but I'm not sure comfort was all that high on the list of things to check. I always found the sharp edge on the top of the front bun on my A5 became quite uncomfortable in a long planing session.

I like the look of the extra wood a "lever-wedge" brings and wood is a more tactile material than metal, so wood tends to be my choice where it is likely to make hand contact. I don't think threading the thumbscrew directly into the wood as you've done is likely to be a problem, at least not for a generation or two, wooden threads seem remarkably sound in hard, fione-grained woods. I used a very similar system for my first shoulder-plane, but instead of a through-pin, I used a couple of short heavy-gauge screws driven in from each side (I like to hedge my bets & have things able to be dismantled where possible :U ) to act as an 'axle': Attachment 531526

In this case, I happened to have a threaded brass insert in the size I wanted to use, so I put that in the bottom of the wedge, then tapped from it through the wood above it for the thumbscrew (I'm a belts and braces sort of bloke). It was still going strong nearly 40 years later when it left for a new home....
:)
Cheers

PS - I suggest the tight mouth on your plane is doing at least as much for performance on gnarly wood as the high blade bevel. I have a very low sharpening bevel on my mitre plane and it performs amazingly well on wild-grained woods like ringed gidgee....