My Hand Planes

[Jammer]

Yes, #9 is the ones I've seen at an antique shop. Couldn't quit figure out how you were supposed to work it. I like the color on the planes. I don't think I've heard of using Lye. We had some dressers when I was a kid that were stained with Ox Blood. They were almost black but had a little reddish tone to them. The shellac was very heavy and kind of a rough surface. Not sure if it was made that way or because they were pretty old.

[Rasper]

When I was in the boat building business I used a good bit of cherry. Wonderful stuff to work with, and holds up in a boat. Cherry and black locust were the two best local woods I had available in Tidewater Virginia. Lots of white oak of course. Some sassafras but the trees were small. The commercial manufacturers used to make summer houses and gazebos from sassafras years ago; it is very resistant to rot.

I had an Alaskan mill with a two cylinder Solo chainsaw. It sounded like a Kawasaki motorcycle. My God would that saw cut.

Keep posting your tool making work. I love making tools. I have recently taken up bookbinding (in my old age). I have built a book press and a bench press.

Who knows what will come next. I never was much for sticking to one thing forever. I figured I had one life to live and a million things available to do----I may as well try as many of them as I can.

Richard

[cae2100]

Very cool richard, another friend of mine was into book making a while back and I found it to be pretty interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... htegvgoS26

I have no idea why my T&C grinder video is in the playlist tho, lol. I thought about trying to do some up since I was printing off some old books and manuals, and thought it would be handy to be able to do up the books like that, but eventually I just used the hole punch and laminated covers with the plastic binder thing to bind them together. Still think it's pretty cool tho and maybe one of these days, Ill get into going down that rabbit hole again, lol.

[cae2100]

Well, I got invited to go to a wood carving group and put together a little toolbox for my carving tools, and moved all of that stuff out of my patternmaking toolboxes since I didnt use it all that often. I had quite alot of fun at the group, but I got into whittling on the plane tote/handle that I had brought with me and kinda went into my own little world and listened to everyone else joke around the whole time, lol.

Anyways, I wanted a small plane to throw in the toolbox to take with me, but the only ones I had left over is either one that I found online for almost $500 (original victor block plane), and some crap stanley/craftsman ones that were waay too big anyhow. I was out working on cutting up a piece of pipe and what I think is an acetylene tank to make a scrub plane from, and I had this piece of 2" steel pipe sitting there, so I cut a section off to forge out into a mini pipe plane, lol.

I used a 1 1/4" round bar as the form for the ends and to space the sides of it apart, so it'd take a 1 1/4" wide blade, but when I forged it out, I really wasnt happy with it and decided to go at it with the angle grinder.

Well, that tab that I left in the front, I kinda thought about forging it out and making a scroll out of it for a finger grip, but then I started looking at it and had a different idea, lol...

I filed the finger grip in the front so it was like a tail/fin, so figured I'd make it look like a little whale/cartoon fish instead, lol. After brazing everything together in the forge earlier today, I drilled the holes for the cross pin and peened that over, it really looks like a cartoon fish/whale now, with the peened over ends of the cross pin, lol.

But yea, it has a 1 1/4" wide blade, 3 1/2" long, and just fits right in your hand comfortably, lol. Ill find something for wood to put inside of it to use as some infill, just to support the blade, and need to make a new blade, the one in the last two pics was just a piece of mild steel that's sharpened really, but it worked long enough for setting everything up and testing everything, lol.

[Jammer]

That's a nice one. Along with all the others. What all are you planning on planing.

[cae2100]

That one is actually a small one to throw in my carving toolbox, to use at the carving group, and the other one Im working on is a scrub plane, which is the meat eater of hand plane, and is designed to just rip wood off quickly. Ive seen people compare a scrub plane to an electric planer or jointer for speed of removing material, and it's very close to the same amounts of time, but with alot less noise and sawdust, lol.

I just got home from the carving group really, and that little carving plane was a massive hit, lol. I just wanted something really small that was comfortable, just to throw in the carving toolbox and take with me for cleaning off the fuzz and uneven surface of old rough cut boards and such that I usually use for patterns and for carving.

The blade I forge welded together for the scrub plane, it wasnt flat by any means, so I was trying to bend it back cold and ended up popping the weld, so I might either try to re-weld it somehow, and if it doesnt take, Ill cut out a blank from some leaf spring and just forge that down to thickness probably. The blade is nicely welded, but it just has some area in the back where I was hammering on it that had popped, so I could take the chance and grind it up and try heat treating it, or I can say screw it and just start over, not sure yet tbh.

[cae2100]

Well, finally the big and crazy pipe plane, lol. If youve been watching the videos on youtube, then youve already seen half of it, but I had this idea for a scrub plane, but pipe plane style. I doodled up the design I wanted, and since it was going to have some serious forces on it probably, I wanted a full closed tote.

After that, I went out and got some 4 1/2" OD, 1/4" thick wall pipe and the bottom of a acetylene bottle that had holes all shot through it, that I had saved to use as a crucible, but never did using it for that and ended up using the dished bottom as a form for forging ladles and such in instead. I cut a 2 1/4" wide ring from the pipe, which was turned down to 2" and split with the angle grinder, then opened up and flattened out in the forge. That became the bottom of the plane, and a ring from the acetylene bottle was forged out to make the sides and the extra was just cut off to leave the backside open.

Then everything was wrapped in fencing wire and brazed together in the forge along side of the little fish/whale plane above (they were made at the same time).

The blade for it was a piece of mild steel that I forge welded a piece of carbon steel/bed frame onto, then forged out to create a nice parallel blade that had carbon steel just at the cutting edge, but mild steel to support it everywhere else. I like the edge retention of the bed frame, but it wasnt thick enough for a scrub plane blade (I wanted 3/16" thick), so I just forge welded the two together to make the thicker blade how I wanted it, lol.

The handle/tote, it was transfered off of the drawing using carbon paper, cut out with the jigsaw, then I carved it with a whittling knife as usual. I got invited to a local woodcarving group, and I didnt have anything to take to do, so I just did that up the day before and took it with me, and whittled on it while I was at the group and getting to meet everyone.

I set the plane body up on the mill and ran the fly cutter across the bottom of it, which had a little trouble with the fly cutter and mill as usual, but I got it flattened in the end even tho the bottom got a hair thinner than I would have liked. It was then set up and clamped down really well and the scallops were cut in the back corners and then softened and deburred with a file.

[cae2100]

I then got some cherry off cuts that I had and planed them down to width to fit at the sides of the handle for the infill, and to make the front bun, then the offcuts, I traced around the scallops and everything and cut it out so it fit just right to the steel, with around 1/16" sticking above on the top, which I added a nice chamfer on the wood to blend the wood and steel together, then everything was sanded and glued together using hot hide glue. The front bun was just a piece that was sitting on the workbench and was just perfect for what I was after, so I ended up sanding it down to fit and just used it, shaping it on the disk sander, lol.

Everything was sanded again lightly and I soaked all of the wood pieces using a brush in a mix of 100% lye drain cleaner and water, 1tsp lye in 1 pt of water, but that turned it much darker red color and aged it alot. Then it was left to sit for around 4 days next to the dehumidifier to dry it back out. It was a very old type of finish that was used back in the day, but has kinda disappeared today. After it dried, it looked kinda a mud color, which with some light hand sanding again, it went really light till some blonde shellac was added to it.

The lever cap was drilled through the sides of it from each side, and two holes were drilled with heavy countersinks were done into the sides of the plane body, one each side for a cross pin to go through, through the lever cap, and everything could pivot, then it was assembled and the cross pin peened over to fill in the countersinks and sit flush pretty much. Then the infill was put in with some 2 part epoxy, and a few screws coming in from the bottom that was ground off flush and made to be invisible, then the whole thing was lapped on some sandpaper to get it flat.

The thumbscrew for the lever cap, I forged out a piece of coil spring from a train and just turned it down in the lathe, put a 1/4" thread on it, and knurled the outside of the large part. Then I cut it off using the angle grinder and stuck it in the cordless drill, running it against the belt grinder in the slack belt area, which created a nice shallow radius on the top of it and got it down to the height I was after.

[cae2100]

And here it is, after 5 coats of shellac on the infill and it being epoxied/screwed in, blade cut to width and ground to shape, heat treated, etc, and bottom lapped flat, it's finally done.

I really like how it turned out, and it is very comfortable in the hands. The drain cleaner mix really made it look like really old mahogany, but with a bit more of a red color to it.

It is very easy to use, and it just rips through the wood, which is alot easier to do than I thought it would be to use tbh, lol. It weighs around 2lbs, 14oz, or almost 3lbs, and is a very solid little thing, lol. It has a 1 1/2" wide blade, 3" radius cutting edge/camber, and is almost 10" long, so very close to the stanley #40 1/2 scrub plane.

Overall, Im very happy with it and it's hard to believe it was hammered out of some scrap metal, a piece of pipe, and a ring from an acetylene tank, and some random cherry wood that I had sitting around, lol.


Also, here's the video links of making everything, in case someone gets really bored, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYm9ji4rqQQ - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5FXlJMre68 - Part 2

They're really long, but easily watchable because of so much going on, lol.

[cae2100]

I wanted to show something with the blade, the forge weld joint between the two pieces of steel was so good that you cant even see where one stops and the other starts after it was sharpened, lol. This is before grinding and sharpening, straight after heat treating and taking it to the wire wheel and quick touch on the buffing wheel. The mild steel is really shiny, but the carbon steel had crystalized and you could see the two types of steel, one hardened and crystalized, and the other was soft and shiny/smooth.

I also threw together an old woman's tooth plane (a type of a router plane) for my carving box, for flattening out the backgrounds of carvings, and getting everything to an even depth.

I still need to heat treat the blade, but that's easy enough to do whenever I go out and fire the forge up again. It's just made from a piece of hard maple for the body, a cherry wedge, which the pieces were just laying around and traced out to be the same size as an altoids tin, then roughed out on the table saw and carved with the whittling knife, and the blade was a piece of bed frame that was cut off the sides of the bed frame when I made some other blades up, lol.