My Hand Planes

[cae2100]

Thank you richard, and very nice boat. Ive always been interested in the old wooden boats and old ships also, but just dont have the room to make one. As you saw by the razee style of the scraper plane, and quite a few of my patterns in the past, Im a fan of the style of old ships, which just have the right flow to them imo, lol. Alot of my stuff seems to follow the same flow to the design as was commonly seen in old shipyards. On my good patternmaking toolbox, I was experimenting a bit and used a few coats of the pine tar, BLO, and turpentine mix that was commonly used on old dingies and wooden ships, which no matter what Ive seen for stains and such, you cant beat the finish you get off of that stuff. I just let it cure and soak into the old plywood (my toolbox was made from an old foundry flask I made up ages ago), and it went from old and grungy looking of plywood, to a vibrant color that cant be beat. I put a shellac and paste wax finish on top of that after a week or so drying out in the sun since that stuff needs the UV from the sun to cure.

We have plenty of black cherry, normal cherry, black locust, oak, hickory, ash, dogwood, maple, hedge apple, etc, around here to make planes from and Ive used most of them trying it, and my favorite honestly has to be black cherry due to it's higher hardness, ease of working, and very high stability. I have some black locust sitting here, but have never actually worked it before, beyond carving a block out as a form for working sheet brass/copper for my copper smithing projects. I love carving black locust, and it's hard enough that you can work sheet metal down into it and it wont even think about trying to deform, lol. I think it's harder than the soft brass and copper, so it works great for that kind of stuff. Ive never actually turned it or tried planing it smooth into a board.

I agree with you on the wooden planes, which even the metal planes I use, they have replacable wooden soles, so it just glides on the wood, and has a burnishing effect on the wood too, so gives alot better finish. I only have one iron plane in my toolbox, and it's an old low angle block plane with an adjustable mouth on it, which I keep the mouth set very tight. That gives the best finish, least amount of tearout, and it just glides through the wood. I commonly just use it as a small shooting plane to true up edges, that way the parts line up, or tilt the piece on the bench hook with a wedge to cut draft on a piece for a pattern.

[Rasper]

I too loved to work with cherry. I used it a lot in boat work. I was something of a collector of various woods. I lived in the country, back when the land around the Chesapeake hadn't yet been damaged (destroyed) and turned into resorts by the developers. I combed the countryside for logs and trees: cherry, sycamore, black walnut, black locust, sassafras. I had an Alaskan chainsaw mill with a Solo two cylinder chainsaw. When this thing ran it did not sound like a chainsaw; it sounded like a crotch-rocket motorcycle under full acceleration.

For my serious sawing there was a retired sawyer who had a big Frick sawmill out behind his house with a bed long enough to handle my 25 foot logs. Talk about work. Try turning a 25 foot white oak log thirty inches thick on a sawmill bed with a cant hook.

I sorely miss those days. All those men who built boats and sawed logs are dead now, and the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, which was once the most beautiful, unspoiled place imaginable, is now just fucking real estate, swarming with millennials in their L.L. Bean weekend wear. I haven't been back there in years and I don't plan on going. I prefer to remember it the way it was.

Richard

[cae2100]

richard, you would like it here then, it sounds exactly like what youre talking about here, all forest and farm lands around here, and next town over, there's a local massive sawmill that the guy cuts up lumber for everyone to buy. Im out in the middle of nowhere, so none of that hippy-dippy crap here, and people dont take too lightly to people like that either around here, lol. Im in the middle of 3 decent sized lakes, so there's lots of boats and bait/tackle shops around where I live during the summer.

But I go over from time to time and the stuff he cant cut into solid boards, like there's only half a board good due to it being live edge or not being thick enough for a normal board, he usually just cuts it up and takes it off to burn it so it doesnt accumulate, but we get so much stuff from him all the time that he lets us come over and dig through that pile of stuff, then we bring it home, cut it into managable sizes and stack it, and let it dry/season in the garage. Ive gotten alot of wood that way for patterns, which mostly what he cuts there is old growth southern yellow pine, oak, and cherry usually. Thats why the scraper plane gets used as much as it does, to clean up the rough cut surfaces on the boards. You also find alot of people that are cleaning out old barns and garages that have done the same and dont need the wood anymore, and you'll find an ad posted where they want to sell a truckload of the stuff for around 30-35 bucks, just to get rid of it and make room in the garages/barns, so it's hard not to take advantage of that for the cherry for the patterns, lol. Most of it has been sitting in the barns/garages so long that it's very very dry and very stable, planed to thickness, and ready to be used, so cant ask for more than that, lol.

Ive never worked with sycamore, it just doesnt grow locally here, and black walnut, it grows everywhere here, but I never cared for using it really. Ive made stuff from it, and it makes nice handles for screwdrivers and such, but other than that, it just doesnt interest me all that much. Im finicky when it comes to woods and they either fit into 2 or 3 categories, patternmaking usefulness, hard/stability for hand planes, and shock resistance for hammer handles, which walnut just is nice looking, but doesnt fall into either of those 3 categories to be useful for me, lol.

Here's some pics from just down the road from in front of my house at leesville lake.

[Jammer]

I love that area over around Chirpy. I live in a rural area but there are several large towns and cities nearby. I grew up on the family farm and we had some woods. I cut a lot of old walnut treetops left by the guys who cut all the trees out in the late 30's. We used it for firewood, just a bunch of limbs and junk but it burned great. There was a lot of other wood, Oak, Birch, Cherry, and Locust. There was so much wood on the ground we didn't have to cut very many down, just cleaned up the drops. I wasn't in to much wood working then and didn't have the tools for it. My uncle made some things out of the Walnut.

[latzanimal]

I've made a couple drums out of walnut....

[cae2100]

Only thing Ive used for walnut for that it worked good was just some handles for my screwdrivers that I forged out. I got tired of the cheap screwdrivers always twisting off/bending when I went to use them, so forged some out of some coil spring from a garge door spring, then heat treated them to a bronze color at the tips, and blue temper (spring temper) for the shanks.

The one on the far left is what the flat tips looked like before grinding to shape, made a bird cage awl that I use quite a bit for reaming out holes to 6mm for dowel pins for the patterns (I order cheap 6mm wood dowels from amazon usually), and rest are flat tipped, a square bit blank, and some rough forged phillips head bits.

Ive had trouble with carpel tunnel for years, and have been trying to work my way around them, and since most of the screwdrivers have a rounded back that presses right on that area in the hand, I got tired of them hurting my hand, and the fact that the ones I had kept twisting off trying to get screws out of stuff, so I just went out one day and forged those out. They're octagon shape, a little larger than normal ones since I have big hands and I can get a better grip on them, flat in the backs like the really old ones are and dont really press in that area on your hand, and just all around alot more comfortable to use for me. They're cross drilled through the shank and handle under the ferrule, then after they're epoxied in and pinned in place, the copper ferrules were pressed on over top to lock everything solidly in place so it'll never come back out, and hides the pin and everything.

Other than that, I really havnt found too much that the stuff is really all that useful for, it just moves too much, or is too soft for most of what I do, and I rarely care if something looks pretty or not, lol. The handles for the screwdrivers were just a random block of firewood that I pulled from the burning barrel and had left to sit over winter to dry out.

[cae2100]

As I said earlier, Ive been working on a plow plane, but knowing me, I do it patternmaker style instead, adding interchangable bottoms/soles, and making it much much more useful than to be able to just cut a simple square groove, lol.

The bottoms are held on with a recessed metal keyhole plate, and slide in a tongue and groove joint, which means the only way they can slide is back into place, or forwards to disengage and be removed, but as soon as you put the blade and wedge in, it pushes back on the back of the mouth and locks the bottom in place solidly. I dont have the grooving part cut on that one yet, but that is easy enough to do. I also have a dozen other bottoms ready to go that just need to have the mouth drilled and chiseled out in them, cut to length, then cut to profile.

The normal plow planes have a metal skate on the bottom of it that kinda guides the plane through the cut, but because it's much more narrow than the plane blade, the wood in front of the blade is left unsupported and can really chip out badly if your wood youre trying to cut the groove in has some wierd grain or something going on with it. The wooden bottoms, the way it's designed, it'll have the bottom of the plane profile the same width as the cutter, or a few thou smaller, but it'll allow me to have the mouth of the plane very tight and allow for the wood fibers to be supported ahead of the cut, reducing the chance of tearout, easier cut, and less fussy about the wood grain on the pieces youre working on.

The other reason I made it with interchangable bottoms is because I can shape it to various profiles, like round bottoms, V shape, whatever you would use a molding plane for, and put it on there with the shaped blade, and it'll let you take advantage of the fence of the plow plane. That'll allow me to set up to do half rounds and I dont have to try to find some way to clamp the small pieces I work on with a seperate fence or some jig just to cut the groove/half round/V groove/etc. You adjust the fence by just pressing/tapping on the arms to get it to the width you want and get it parallel, then press in and tap the wedges on the arms in place with the knocker to lock everything rock solid, and to releases it, just tap on the other side of the wedges and they slide freely.

Ill probably take the bottoms and shape them so they're all the same depth, and the one that's in it now, Ill cut a groove in it and put some hedge apple/osage orange as boxing. (hard wearing strip of wood) It is made of a different type of cherry than I usually use, which is normal cherry vs the black cherry I usually use, so it's not as dark/vibrant red color as the other planes are. In the end, Ill probably have some round bottoms for cutting various half rounds, V groove, a few sizes of square grooving bottoms (like you'd use to cut the groove for drawer bottoms, etc), tonguing, and maybe some molding profiles for stuff I'd use for patterns.

I still need to cut the escapement mouth on it still, but that's honestly easy enough to do with a saw and a chisel tbh. It'll have flat blades made from bed frame as usual vs the normal tapered ones, that way with the molding profiles, half rounds, etc, the bottoms can be full width like a shoulder/rabbet plane, and slide up from the bottom. I know it's virtually a combination plane, but it'll have alot more capabilities and be less picky with wood selection than the normal combination planes like a stanley 45 or 55 are.

Edit: I kinda had a bit of an oops when drilling out the mouth and the angle was messed up a tiny bit, so I took a piece and cut it to fix the wedge angle, and close it up a little bit, which while I had that little bit on the top sticking up, I figured I'd carve it and make a little backer for the blade and a neat little decoration/finial thing, lol.

[cae2100]

Well, I got the mouth cut on the plow plane, which after alot of debating, I decided to go with a side escapement style, like a typical molding plane, which makes designing everything much easier and less likely to jam up with chips in use. I still need to shape the bottoms and cut the mouths on them, but that's easy to no end now with the side escapement setup since I just have to lay it out and cut to depth with a saw to shape the mouth and throat out, no need to and chisel everything out.

Im not sure if this would be counted as a plane or not, but it is a scratch stock that I put together. It has the typical black cherry and hedge apple/osage orange bottoms where any wear would happen. I have one I made ages ago, just using the conventional style, but it is a bit of a pain to set up and use, but this one has an adjustable fence and is much easier to deal with. I used a scraper like you would use in one of these to cut the profile on the little plane above where it has the half round shape to it, for cutting the groove at the bottom of vise jaws and along the rims of patterns/machined areas.

I know the screws will wear out eventually, but Ill replace those when they do and put threaded inserts in. They're handy because you dont need a custom plane to do a profile around the edge of a pattern, just take a thin saw blade, like a hand saw blade, hacksaw blade, razor blade, etc, and file or grind the profile you want into it, then put it into the scratch stock and just drag it back and forth to cut the profile into the edge of the pattern. It can also be used to cut grooves, slots, etc, but it's just not as fast as a normal hand plane or power tool, but if you need a custom profile for one off job, it cant be beat for ease of use, lol.

I have no idea why I put the ball knob on there, but it is pretty easy to lock everything in place. I just put it on there till I could make a wing nut for it, but in all honesty, the ball knob works well, and has really been growing on me since, lol.

[cae2100]

Well, another plane for the list..

I was wanting a small bullnose plane for getting up into the areas I couldnt get normally, so after thinking about making one, we were working on the casting/forging shed, and we were trying to chisel out the board for the window trims and such, which that bullnose plane would have excelled at, so I decided then and there that I would make one, lol.

The body and wedge of it is black walnut burl, and the bottom of it is hedge apple/osage orange, with a brass plate over the front of it. it's around 3 1/2" long, and has a 1 5/8" blade (from a block plane). It's taken quite a while to shape it because that stuff refuses to be chiseled out, so alot of it had to be shaped by hand with files, rasps, and belt sander.

I have two more planes Im also working on, which all they need is wedges and the blades ground/sharpened, which all of the blades need that on alot of my planes right now, so Ill just do it all at once, lol. The other two planes are some custom small spokeshaves, which are bullnose style, that way I can use them to shape the stuff and it'll easily go right up to a shoulder on a pattern, and is small enough to get into everywhere. Ill show those when I get them done, which will hopefully be within the next day or two.

[cae2100]

Also, I hammered out a small claw hammers and a plane setting/adjusting hammer. The heads are made from some sucker rod (4130 or 4340 steel), which the drift, I made from a piece of coil spring from off of a train, claw hammer is 4oz, and plane setting hammer was 3.8oz

I made the claw hammer because I use these tiny brad nails, or thats what everyone else here calls them, for my patterns to hold them together while gluing up, and for pinning things in place, but I dont need a massive hammer for these tiny nails, so decided that I was done with smashing my fingers and I would just make a small hammer, and I wanted a plane setting hammer more, so it was easy enough to make both at once, lol.

The hammers were exactly identical to each other in making them, which I started by tapering out the end of them into a square taper that was around 2" long, then I let them cool down and air cool next to the forge for a few hours, drilled a 5/16" hole in the middle at the base of the taper, and took it back to the forge and hammered the side of where the hole was to turn it from round to an oval shape. The drift was oval shaped like a normal hammer eye, and indexed in the now oval shaped hole, and I just heated the sucker rod up and started to drive the drift into that hole, flipping the hammer head blanks after each heat, which stretched it out and made the hammer eye. I took it to the guillotine tool on the anvil to neck down and create the groove at the base of the hammer head, and the hammers were then ready to be cut off and heat treated.

The only difference between the two is that I took the claw hammer to the hot cut/hardy tool, which is just a chisel that fits into the square hole of the anvil, and used that to chop down through the end of the tapered section on the hammer, which split it and gave it the typical tapered section that you would get on a claw hammer, then just bent it over the horn of the anvil. Other than that, they are both exactly identical to each other.

The face of the plane setting/adjusting hammer was drilled out clear back to the eye using a 5/16" drill bit, I just put it in the lathe and drilled it out and faced it off, then made a small plug for the end of it out of dogwood, which has a tenon that's a snug fit in the 5/16" hole, and the same size, if not slightly larger size than the face of the hammer, and the dogwood being a hard wood, it still feels very rubbery in a way, but using this, I can smack the wedges and various parts of the planes to adjust them/set them without damaging the planes, and can tap on the blades with the back end/tapered end of the plane setting hammer to adjust that stuff.

The handles are made of black locust, which is just as good as hickory, but is much finer grain and I really like carving it, so I have a small pile of logs of it here that I split a few small hammer blanks and used a draw knife to shape them, then scrapers and sandpaper to finish them to shape. They're very nice to use, and I no longer have to worry about messing up the planes or being too agressive with setting them using a larger hammer/mallet, plus no longer need to worry about smashing the fingers trying to drive in the small brad nails, lol.