My Hand Planes

[cae2100]

The other day, it was around 72F for around a week with no chance of rain, which around here, that's just the world screaming at you to get your butt out and do some casting, so I poured all of those patterns, lol. I would have normally cast them in bronze, but I had a bunch of brass sitting here that needed to be cleaned up, so I figured why not. I kept the offcuts of the main pattern since the one leg of it sticks up in the air, and used it as a loose piece/follower, and just dug down to follow the parting line on it. The fences were a bit of a pain to ram up, but after looking back at it, I really over-complicated everything tbh.

I never have much luck pouring stuff in brass, and this stuff was just barely hot enough to flow into the parts, and it was fuming like nobody's business tbh, but they filled even tho the surface finish had some serious issues. I plan on grinding the surface down to get rid of any casting texture and giving it a few coats of black paint anyhow, so it's not that big of a deal anyhow tbh.

There are 3 fences like the original one has, one is wide and flat for going along a straight edge, one with a slight/large radius, and a short one with a pretty pronounced radius on it for going around and cutting a groove on the insides of radiused corners on parts. I just took them to the belt grinder to clean them up and remove all of the flashing, then cleaned up the mouth and a few areas on them with the dremel and flap wheel to blend it all together.

Ive since set the main casting on the mill and had to get very creative since there really is no flat surfaces on that whole thing, except on the bottom, which needed to be facing up to get a groove cut in it, and the leg that sticks up normally was sticking down, so there was no way it could be held in a vise. I ended up sticking it in a 4 jaw chuck, then bolting that to the mill table so that it could be held with the flat part up, and had clearance for the other leg/side to cut the groove. I stuck a 5/32" wide slitting saw in the horizontal arbor, and used that to cut the groove from the short finger grip area to the mouth of the plane, which the keys on the fences register into that slot and slide forwards and backwards in slots milled in the fences.

There are 3 drilled and tapped holes in the body to give the fences a clamping range, so I tapped those 10-24 since I have a bunch of that size of bolts here. I also drilled a 3/16" hole through the area the blade holds, then counterbored it slightly with a 5/16" bit so I had clearance for it. The original quirk routers had this weird clamping thing that pulled the blades back into a slot/groove, which seems a bit silly to me, so I plan on milling a slot in the blades instead and using a custom carriage bolt to hold the blades in place. The original design could only handle up to 1/8" cutters, mostly because of that clamping mechanism, but the carriage bolt setup would allow for a much broader range of clamping, and allow a much larger range of cutter sizes. Preston eventually did the same thing on thier other, later quirk router planes, so it shouldnt cause any issues really.

I had the idea to use a nail header in the forge to try to create some custom carriage bolts, just machining up the basic bolts with a cone on the underside of the head, then take them to the forge and hammer them down into the nail header to hopefully shove the material down into the header and form the square shoulder on them, then I'd just spread the head out into a large flat domed rivet head. I forged out a square drift to make the nail header up, just havnt done it yet tho. Hand forged nails have a square shank on them due to how they're forged out, so the header just has a square hole in it that the nails go down into to hold them in place while the head is smashed down and peened over to create the typical domed flat head that they have.

I still need to machine up the fences on it, but right now is just trying to figure out how in the world to machine the keys on those things, and due to such an odd shape, they actively resist wanting to be held in any way possible, lol. Ill have to probably end up making two jigs just to hold them, one to do the keys, and one to do the slot in them. There really is no flat surfaces on any of these parts, so they defy being held in any way, and the only surfaces that could probably be used as reference surfaces are the ones that need to be sticking up to actually be machined, lol.

The blades will be interesting to do, but mostly just because of needing to be certain thicknesses, so the blades will have to be carefully forged out and ground to thickness. Ill probably have 1/8", 3/16", and 1/4", but I can probably go up to 3/8" if needed, but at that point, it would start having trouble clearing the chips from the mouth. Here's a drawing of the layout of the shape for the cutter and dimensions I need to do them, which was doodled up in february, so you can tell that Ive been working on this thing at least that long, lol.

I still have some work to do with the flap wheels to clean up the castings, and a square file to get the mouth of it trued up, but it is defenitely a good start anyways, lol. It'll probably be a few days before I can figure out how to actually hold the fences to machine those keys up in them to fit.

[cae2100]

As a side note, I got tired of cooking my gloves and arm hairs when trying to add fluxes and such to the crucible while the furnace was running, so I cut out a disk from some 1/8" plate and forged it and some rebar into a ladle for adding the stuff to the crucible. I usually use a soup can with everything in it, but it can be a pain, and trying to do it with tongs can get a little toasty and instantly turn your leather gloves into gloves 3 sizes too small in a fraction of a second, lol.

I need to hammer out a new drossing scoop, the one Ive been using is a bit too short and I keep getting the hands a bit too close and a bit too toasty from the furnace's radiant heat, so Ill just make up a new one that has a much larger scoop and alot longer handle on it. I like using rebar for foundry tools because it's cheap, and you get a good grip on the stuff with the thick leather welding gloves on, lol.

I also have been going to a wood carving group and learning as much as I can from them, which I wanted to learn shallow relief carving, to do up stuff like the carving on old cast iron stoves and on the stove feet since those can get pretty ornamental. My biggest hurdle right now is just learning how to actually draw the acanthus scrolls and leaves more than anything, lol. I didnt know what to carve, so I found some of my great grandmother's drawings and traced over the one using carbon paper to transfer it to the wood, then carved it out. It was done in eastern white pine, which was honestly waay too soft and a bad choice to carve, but it wasnt too bad to carve once I got the hang of it tbh. It really looks better now and has really popped out now that it had a coat or two of shellac soaked into it to stabilize it, and seal it up.

I figured that I would try learning how to do the relief carving on the stuff, that way I could carve the ornamental stuff into patterns for oil stone boxes and other patterns to do really ornamental stuff to be cast in bronze if I wanted to.

[cae2100]

And the panel gauge is done. I just stuck the shaft (5/16" mild steel rod) in the lathe, drilled and tapped it for 10-24", then used it as a mandrel to hole a small 3/4" square piece of angle iron with a countersink on it, to turn it round and put around a 1/32" thick edge on it which I feathered it with a file to give it a razor sharp edge. Then I heated it up and quenched it in some water and put it on a steel bar and heated the bar till the heat traveled through it and the cutter turned a light straw color, then quenched in water again to set the perfect temper. The countersink was against the shaft while turning the flange, then reversed after heat treating, so it gave it a razor sharp edge that should hold up quite well over time.

Those were found in pretty much every patternmaking toolkit Ive ever seen, usually just cast in aluminum, but I figured while I was out pouring the other brass stuff, why not? lol.

[Rasper]

I've never poured brass. I have mostly scrap copper wire, and some copper pipe and tubing, which I use to make Everdur. Most of my other scrap is either red brass plumbing fittings or lathe chips from heavy machinery bearings.

Have you ever carved basswood? I had a friend back in Virginia who carved duck decoys and pins. He made a living at it. He used basswood for most of his carvings. A man we knew who was an executive at the big paper mill up the road in West Point, Virginia, called up someone, somewhere, and a few weeks later a truck came and dumped two thick sixteen foot basswood logs in my friends yard. A lifetime supply.

Richard

[cae2100]

brass is my mortal enemy.

That is about as simple as I can put it, lol. Ive done a large number of different types of various bronzes, aluminum, copper, iron, and everything in between, and they're not as bad as brass is to cast, lol. One, it fumes like crazy when it's up to pouring temp, which creates a white toxic smoke of zinc oxide fumes, which will make you horribly sick. It also creates this white dust that just collects everywhere inside the furnace and everywhere and is a pain to remove, and on top of the smoke, it forms on everything to create these cobwebs, which collect on the inside of the cope, so as the metal is flowing in, those are zinc oxide and just floats on top of the metal, forming wierd defects that look like worm tracks or really rough spots due to the nasty cobwebs and white sponge that forms everywhere.

The melting point is very deceiving, the melting point isnt that high, but pouring temp is much much higher and you literally have to have it so hot that the metal is burning as youre pouring it, and even at that point, the molds might not fill due to the metal instantly chilling as soon as it hits the cool sand, so creates alot of wierd defects from that. If the part actually fills, and due to the super narrow pouring range, if you pour it right at the right temps, it tends to want to flow in and be like hot taffy and just fold up on itself no matter what you do and chilling instantly, so you normally will have alot of blowholes and air pockets from it folding up on itself. Only way to get around that is to superheat the crap out of the stuff, but at that point, it fumes and creates the spider webs, sponge spots, and worm tracks on everything in the cope. It doesnt like playing kind to normal gating style that I use for litterally every other metal. The gating has to be absolutely perfectly sized, so that it flows in fast enough so the spiderwebs/junk doesnt collect on the top of the sand mold, but not so fast that it splashes around or it will end up with castings that are full of holes.

So in other words, it litterally tries to kill you, it sucks to cast with, its horribly ductile and bends at the slightest chance it gets, and is just an overall garbage metal, also machining it sucks too because it doesnt come off as chips, it sprays these tiny needles that get all through your clothes and shoes, which get infected very quickly. Brass is my mortal enemy. I just used it because I had a bunch of brass fittings sitting there and not enough bronze to pour the stuff with, so I'll have to mix up more of them. I honestly prefer to do cast iron or any other alloys out there than I do to do brass.

That is how badly brass fumes when pouring usually, when it's hot enough to actually fill a mold. It really isnt glowing yellow hot like that, the zinc oxide coming off of the brass tends to ignite on contact with the air and burns with a bright gold color.

As for basswood, I do have some small pieces here that I keep in my toolbox to whittle on when I run out of other stuff to do at carving group, but they're not big enough to do anything really useful with tho tbh. I think they're for carving little people or wood spirits or animals with, so I just keep whittling little birds out of, then Ill coat them in shellac and put a hook in them to hang on the christmas tree when that time of the year comes around. I found that basswood is ok, but I really like carving cherry normally, or ohio buckeye, which carves like basswood, but is just as hard as cherry. Ohio buckeye also has a very very fine grain, so as you cut it, it has a very high gloss to the cut and due to the very tiny grain, it'll take very very fine detail and hold it. Basswood is similar, but is much softer, it's like a mix between balsa and white pine for hardness, but very fine grain normally also. I think the janka hardness on basswood is around 400-450lbs, eastern/northern white pine is around 450-500lbs, ohio buckeye is 750lbs, and cherry is 800-950lbs, so that tells you how hard it is. It's good for little carvings that will sit on a shelf and do nothing, but I hate having stuff like little knickknacks and junk that sits around taking up space, so I rather have something that gets used as a foundry pattern and such, so I dont really use basswood for that when cherry is a better option imo for the stuff that I do.

Basswood is very very light, almost like balsa wood, so for something that will float on top of the water like a decoy duck, I can understand why he would use basswood tbh.

[cae2100]

A bit of an update on the quirk router. This thing has been one of the most difficult pain in the butt to hold to machine the parts for, lol.

I got the main body of it done up, and finally got the fences machined up, which I just ran the endmill over them to clean up the cast texture and create a flat seat for the screw, just need to create the bolt for it and a washer for that part.

I did design it to use a 10-24 carriage bolt to hold the blade in, the square section underneath the head of the bolt would go into the slot of the cutter, which would keep it from turning, and when tightened up, would lock the cutter in place. I couldnt find any 10-24 carriage bolts or wing nuts locally and didnt like the look of the ones I saw online, they were waay too shiny, so I decided to just hammer out some myself, lol. I made up a nail header, which hand forged nails have a square shank on them due to how they're made, so the header has that same square hole. The idea was to turn down some threaded bolt blanks that had a cone underneath of them, then when I heated them up and drove them down onto the header to form the head, it would shove a little material down into that square hole of the header and create the square shoulder on the bolt as the head was forged to shape.

It did work, but the bolt blank I did up got caught in the header and jammed up, then when I tried to drive it back out, it just jammed everything up and sheared the threads off of the bolt, but the idea was there and it did work. I didnt want to run back in to turn down another blank, so I just forged out a hand forged nail out of some coil spring, and just took it to the grinder to round it up and cut the 10-24 threads up on that.

[cae2100]

I got the bolts heat treated, so they're easily as strong if not stronger than grade 8 or grade 10 bolts, and should never snap or wear out, lol. I also filed the mouth out to get everything in line and where it needs to be, so that's ready to go now too.

Now all that's left is to make that one bolt and washer for the fences, and make the cutters, which the cutters are a real challenge in and of themselves. It'll probably take just as much time making up those cutters as I have for the rest of the plane tbh.

This was my test of skill for patternmaking and such, and I have defenitely learned more on this project than I have in many of my other earlier projects, even my T&C grinder. Whoever designed the original ones were seriously a genius at work holding, or seriously a masochist, lol. Saying that tho, this will probably by my last plane for the toolboxes, and even with all of the challenges at pretty much every step of the way, I can say that I wouldnt have it any other way, lol.

[Rasper]

Saying that tho, this will probably by my last plane for the toolboxes

Why am I suspicious? Seems to me I've heard that before. I know an unreformed toolmaker when I see one; I see one in the mirror every morning.

Richard

[cae2100]

Saying that tho, this will probably by my last plane for the toolboxes

Why am I suspicious? Seems to me I've heard that before. I know an unreformed toolmaker when I see one; I see one in the mirror every morning.

Richard

My one friend has said that many times and laughs. I told him that just for that comment, Ill do up the blades and get it all done up, but refrain from heat treating the cutters for that thing for at least a year and do up a dozen more planes just for that comment, then Ill go back and heat treat the cutters so that it will be the last plane, just to show him up, lol.

Nah, Im really out of planes and tools to make for the toolbox, and Ive finally burned myself out on all of this stuff after gaining as much info as possible to do everything Ive wanted to do. There is a few things I need to finish up, like making blades for the plow plane I made up, but I was waiting to get some bed frame forged out, which was just forged out a few weeks ago, just havnt gotten around to cutting them out. I thought about making up some small ones to take out to the local store that buys and sells hand planes and trading them for stuff like shellac flakes and different services like hand saw sharpening and such, but other than that, Im really done with making the stuff for the tool boxes tbh.

Ive honestly run out of things that I really actually will use tbh. Now anything else, it'll just be stuff that will sit and collect dust, and I absolutely hate the thought of that, so I wont bother with those if I dont need them. I have some stanley planes here that have been sitting there in that category and they're already in a few milk crates ready to take out to that store to be gotten rid of, either trading them, or selling them tbh.

[cae2100]

No update on planes, just saw we were at 99 posts and thought "I am defenitely claiming the 100th post!"