My Hand Planes

[cae2100]

Well, when I was learning pretty much everything I could about patternmaking, I saw all of the hand planes that was used in the old patternmaking books, and with my allergies to wood dust, and how high of precision I could get using a finely tuned one,I really began to appreciate a good hand plane, lol. So after a while, I tried making myself my own patternmaker's plane.

I made the pattern in two pieces, the frog (where the blade sits) was held in with pins and was made as a loose piece, since it had to be pulled at an angle to the rest of the casting. The blade angle is a bit higher than normal planes, which I deal with some pretty knarly wood at times and some hard woods, and the higher angle blades help alot with that.

The plane was poured in a harder silicon bronze, and here it is after machining. The blades are forged out bed frame, which is commonly just recycled old railroad track, so around 1080 steel with added manganese, so it can get quite hard and still hold quite an edge. Thats why you hear that people cant drill it, weld it, etc and hate it. It's a higher carbon steel and the heat treatment on bed frames can be hit and miss at best, but when forged out and annealed, the steel machines easily and can be heat treated to hold a very nice edge.

I found a piece of firewood that I had sat off for a few years and had thoroughly dried, I cut up with the chainsaw into slabs, and turned the front knob on the lathe. The handle/tote was cut out and carved to shape with my whittling knife to fit my hand.

The soles on a patternmaker's hand planes are usually wooden, that way they can be shaped, and are numbered along with a set of blades to match each bottom/sole, which allows the owner to shape the profile, radius, etc that you would need, and just by swapping out the bottoms/soles and blades, you can change it to a completely different plane, which when toolbox space is limited, having one plane that can do many things is alot better than alot of individual planes.

That's the patternmaker's plane, and the start to this really really deep rabbit hole so far, lol.

[cae2100]

Next one was the little router plane, which I really just wanted something small to get into the areas on patterns that I needed, and I use the living crap out of this thing so far, lol. The blade was made from a piece of 1/4" coil spring from a garage door spring that I straightened out, forged it almost 90 degrees, ground to shape, and heat treated. The bottom has a 1/4" plywood bottom on it, which the wood on wood makes it glide really easily, and is held on with two countersunk bolts into the main casting. It's made that way so I can use that one as a template and make much larger bases or odd shaped bases to fit certain jobs, without needing a large router plane, and without taking up alot of room in the toolbox.

I really didnt like the shiny hex nut on it, so I got creative and forged out some thumb screws, but after a little playing around, I decided on the exact one I wanted and can say I wouldn't chose any different, lol.

It was poured in a 6-7% aluminum content al-bronze, which is still pretty tough stuff, but looks more like rose gold when first machined, and tarnishes to a very nice old gunmetal look.

[cae2100]

Here's a random shoulder plane I made up, it's maple with osage orange (hedge apple, bodark are other names for it) bottom on it for wear resistance, which allows me to plane down into a sharp corner, and gets used quite a bit also. At this point, Ive switched over from making bronze planes, and started making wooden ones, which this one is a krenov style construction (laminated and glued together), but I really didnt like the look of it that much.

About this point I started refining my style and started to develop my own style, and upon reading in multiple patternmaking books, they all were talking about hollows and rounds molding planes, which I had ran into a situation shortly before of needing a shallow half round in a piece of wood to be used as a pattern, so I decided I would try to make myself a set of molding planes of my own style. The bodies are made of a local type of cherry (black cherry), and hedge apple for the bottoms and wedges, which also grows locally. I realized after doing these that drilling and cutting the wedge pockets in the plane really doesnt take any more time than trying to cut up and laminate the planes together, and they looked alot better, so I just went with the traditional style from then on and started adding that into my style.

The sizes are 1/2" diameter, 3/4", 1", and 2" for the oddball one. The blades are made from old bed frame as usual, and have worked great so far through the many many hours of use that I use them and abuse I put them through. I think they hold up as well or better than the commercial plane blades, if not better, so they work really well for me, lol.

Normal molding planes and wooden planes in general had the cutouts for the top and in various sections, which back then, the wood was more expensive than the labor, so they would cut the material to make the wedges from from the plane body themselves, which in mine, I just made the planes thin enough that there would be no waste, which made for a more blocky, but more streamlined look and feel to them, which imo is alot more comfortable than traditional ones.

In these pics, they dont show the wedges after they were fully shaped or with the blades in them, which I have no idea where the pics I had went to, but you get the general idea of what the planes look like anyways, lol.

[cae2100]

Here's some little oddball ones that Ive made too. They are all black cherry and hedge apple/osage orange, with bed frame steel blade that's been hardened/heat treated.

Here's some palm planes, which my brother works on and builds guitars and needed something to clean up the glue or whatever he uses to cover over the rosettes on the guitars, so I made a pair of these planes, one for him, and one for me.

A spokeshave that I made up using cutoffs from my patternmaking plane blades. It's made from a log of hedge apple/osage orange, but chiseling the mouth out on that thing is defenitely something I would not recommend doing again, lol. Wedge is made from a small piece of black walnut that I got from the firewood pile and had dried also. I quite often use this plane for shaping hammer handles and such, so it gets used quite a bit.

And a small grooving plane from black cherry, which cuts a very shallow 1/4" groove in the corner of a corner to create a radiused shoulder, like you would have on a milling vise or drill press vise casting, that way it allows you to machine the ways of the casting, without ever needing to touch the back jaw, and the radius cast in vs an endmill or slitting saw, which would create a sharp corner in the vise casting, and would create a weak spot in the part. 4-5 passes with this plane and the groove is cut, and that issue is elminated. It also can create machining pads in parts wherever you need it, and the bottom and everything is cut at an angle, so it can go against a part with a 2-3 degree draft angle that I have my saw and belt sander's table set to, and it can deal with the draft and everything, then just stops cutting when it's at depth.

Those are the more oddball ones Ive made so far for doing certain jobs and such.

[cae2100]

I wanted a scraper plane for a while now, that way I could just scrape and clean up the surface of a rough cut board, which alot of the lumber I get and use is rough cut, and also to clean varnish and such off of old scrap wood that I get also, so I decided I would just make one, lol. I found a 2 7/8" wide scraper blade from a stanley cabnet scraper plane, probably from the early 1900s or so, and knew I wanted a scraper plane with a large blade, so it was perfect for what I wanted.

I got out a block of cherry as usual from the firewood pile and it was rough cut and just came from a furniture place (we had just bought a semi truck load of wood blocks for firewood for winter), so I cleaned it up the best I could, planing it down with the patternmaker's plane. At this point I have it set up with the sole with a very closed mouth and set up as a smoother, and was getting a very good finish on it. I tested the moisture level of the block and it was right in the range I needed, and started carving on it with hammer and chisel.

As you can see, I kinda ran myself into a problem with the mouth and needed a keyhole saw to cut the wedge pockets and the mouth out to shape, so a bit of a side tangent to make a keyhole saw, lol. The blade was an old power hacksaw blade I had gotten last year at algonquin, but was a 14" blade, and my power hacksaw takes a 12" blade, so couldnt use it, so I cut it with the angle grinder and cut a tennon on the blade where it would go into the handle. The handle is the same black cherry that I use for most of my planes.

But with that done, I could get back onto cutting out the mouth and various parts of the plane.

I cut the back out and created a nice curve to it with the oscillating spindle sander, then cut and shaped the sides into a coffin plane shape, that way I could put a nice full tote/handle on it. I get a bit of a chuckle at how much it looks like a little tug boat at this point, lol.

I chiseled out and put a pocket in the body of the plane using some forsner bits and chisels, that way I could shape it exactly how I wanted it. I then recessed the handle/tote down inside the body of the plane, then did the same to the handle/tote pattern and created a tenon on the bottom of the handle, that way it would fit just right into that pocket.

(Ive run out of pic slots in this post, see next one)

[cae2100]

The handle was cut out with a jigsaw and I used my whittling knife to shape it exactly how I wanted it so it fits my hand perfectly, and the handle was glued into the body. I also took the whittling knife and cut chamfers along all of the surfaces on the plane with stop cuts in the front to leave the very bottom sharp, which looks much better imo and Ive used that style for a while, as you can see above with the palm planes I made up.

The wedge setup holds the blade at 90 degrees for scraping soft woods like pine and such, since it normally wants to tear out with a higher angle, or with really knarly grain, then if I take the wedge out and flip it around and put it behind the blade, it sets it forward around 10-12 degrees, which gives it a bit more of an agressive cut, and works great for cleaning off the fuzziness of rough cut boards, or wood that's pretty nasty looking with old oxide layer on it, or cleaning off varnish off of rough boards, or whatever I would need it for. For now, Im dealing with alot of cherry with quite some crazy grain, so normal hand planes do not like it at all, but the scraper plane just plows right through it and leaves a finish that is honestly comparable to have sat there and sanded on it for hours with an orbital sander.

The plane had it's first coat of boiled linseed oil in the pics, so that's why it looks really wet, and has darkened up quite a bit since and really looks nice now. It has since had a few coats of shellac, went at with fine bronze wool, and paste wax finish, so it feels very nice in the hands without being glossy, and shellac protects it from getting grungy over time from the oils and dirt on your hands. For cleaning up rough stock, this plane has been absolutely invaluable and makes roughing out and flattening boards a piece of cake, and unlike a normal electric planer/jointer, there's really no noise or sawdust, lol.

[cae2100]

I apologise for the pic and text spam, but the site wont let you post very much at once, lol.

I have a custom plow plane Im working on right now, but it's become a bit of a rabbit hole in and of itself, so I might not show that for a while, lol.

I do have to say that since going down this very deep rabbit hole of hand planes and patternmaking toolbox, my casting patterns have seriously improved by a massive amount, and Im able to produce much better patterns, and in turn castings with much better dimensional accuracy, and they're much much easier to pull from the sand too.

That's all I have for now, just a small collection of planes Ive thrown together to do this job or that for making patterns with.

[Jammer]

Those planes are a work of art. You've got me looking for some Osage orange to make stuff with.

[cae2100]

Thanks, and Ive got plenty here, you can just grab some if you come out this way anytime soon.

It is very hard, and not one you want to try to chisel/carve, but it's ability to resist breaking is amazing too. You can turn it on the lathe like nothing, and if you part it off and leave only a 1/4" section connecting the part to the rest of the wood, you'll get a bit of chatter because of it flexing, but you can actually continue turning it and it wont break unless you really try forcing it. Stuff is very very dense, and from turning with scrapers, I hit it with 240 grit sandpaper and the stuff is like glass, no grain that you can feel at all nor catch your fingernail on it. Thats why I like using it for plane bottoms and plane parts, the blades will probably wear out before the wooden bottoms will with that stuff, lol.

As hard, yet as resistant to splitting as the stuff is, I really think it would be a great material for chisel handles and such where it's being struck with a mallet tbh. In the light, with shellac on it, it has a metallic sheen, which if you look at it in the light one way, it'll look like gold, and another way, it looks like bronze tbh.

The stuff I use is american osage orange, which is alot harder and tougher than the stuff you commonly find online, which is usually from argentina. The argentine osage orange has alot straighter grain, grows as alot bigger trees, so you can get more wood from them, and the wood is quite a bit softer too. That stuff is like hard maple to chisel or plane, where as the stuff we have here is like trying to carve out a block of granite, lol.

[Rasper]

Fantastic stuff. I am doubly appreciative, both for the beauty of your work, and as an old time wood boat builder, I have made and used similar planes. After using a wooden plane, a commercial steel faced plane feels like I'm using an ax.

Being from Virginia, I had cherry and black locust available for making planes.

Good work.

Here is one of the small boats i built.

Richard