My Hand Planes

[cae2100]

The mouth in the cooper's plane was horribly large, and was crooked also in the front, so one side of the mouth was open a bit over 1/16", and the other had over an 1/8" gap between it and the blade, so I took a piece of hedge apple/osage orange and planed it down, trued up the edges, and made a mouth closer for it. I took the plane itself to the garage for a few and used the electric router and one of the bits I just got earlier this year to cut out most of the pocket for the mouth closer to go into, then finished it up with chisels.

After it was glued in, I let it dry completely and took my planes to it to plane it flush with the bottom of the plane, that way it closed the mouth up, and all that's left to do with it is just file it back open enough for the blade to fit through, and a few thou for shavings to get through too. Usually in front of the mouth is the first place to wear on a wooden hand plane, so adding a hard piece right there helps prevent the wear on the rest of the plane. It's put in with hide glue, so when the mouth does wear out again in the future for some reason, you can just heat that up with a clothes iron by turning it on steaming mode, and it'll pop right out, and you can just make another one and put it in it's place. It'll probably be a hundred years or so before it would need that tho, even in daily use, lol.

Now all that's left is to file the mouth out again with a fine file, make the handle/tote for it, wedge, and finish up/fix the legs of the thing. Im not sure what I want to do for the legs yet tho tbh. They work, but they tend to wobble/rack quite a bit, and do have some issues that defenitely need to be addressed, but debating if I want to do that or just scrap them and start over from scratch.

[greentwin]

Nice looking hardwood for sure.
.

[cae2100]

Well, coopers plane is all done, I still need to make new legs for it, but I have an idea for that, but I dont have the wood right now, so its a bit on hold for a while. I think it looks really nice, and the figuring I was fighting with when planing it, it really popped out big time after it was scraped with the scraper plane, sanded, and the shellac added to it.

I made a new tote/handle out of cherry, same as the plane, and cut a mortise in the plane body, and a tenon on the handle/tote so that it would be inset down into the body of the plane, then it was glued in so it'll never come back out again. I just took a chisel to rough out most of the rough carving on the tote/handle, then used the whittling knife to get the areas I couldnt get, then took it to the palm sander to smooth out all of the facets from the carving on it.

And a bit of an action shot:

That's about it for it for now, Ill worry about the legs later on when I figure out what I want to do with them. I have some ideas for them that would really open alot of possibilities, but I just need a break from this project and to work on something else for a few.

[cae2100]

I finally got the video edited of it, and for some reason,the camera just refused to show the amount of figuring that was in the wood, so it doesnt show up as nice as it does in person.

https://youtu.be/VDKLzZvV0_Q

It's a bit of a long video, but there was alot done with it, and alot of the clips were speeded up to 1000% just to get everything short enough to make it watchable, lol. I looked at the amount of video I had shot of doing it and instantly thought "I hate my life...", lol. I had around 7 1/2 hours of video to try to condense it down into something usable, lol. Needless to say, after I went through all of that and got it condensed down, I needed to get outside and do something to say the least, lol.

[Jammer]

You sure have it looking brand new. I don't think I've ever seen a plane that large. Is it for cutting the tapers on the end of the staves or the angle on the side?

[cae2100]

from what Ive seen, you would rough in the shape of the staves with the one type of axe, then you would go back and clean up the sides with the cooper's plane and cut the angle on them. Ive also seen that after taking the axe to them and shaping them, they would pre-bend the staves of the barrels and then they would just run it over the bottom of the plane till it sat flat along the the stave, and then that would cause them to mate together perfectly when it was assembled, and create a water tight seal.

[cae2100]

Well, this one isnt really hand planes or hand tools, but it kinda applies to it in a way, lol. Ive been using an old wet grinder that I modified (water pump gave out ages ago in it), that I took the grinding wheel off and put a piece of MDF from a treadmill, the part that the belt that you walk on rides over, and put polishing compound on it to sharpen stuff. Ive used it for a few years now and it worked better than any other method for sharpening stuff, but the grinder I was using, the one bearing was going out and it sounded pretty clunky, power switch didnt want to turn it on half of the time and you'd have to turn it on and smack it around a bit before it would turn on, and it had very little power, so I was limited to smaller disks for sharpening.

Well, Ive had this motor from a top loader washing machine, and Ive used those motors for other projects in the past, and they have a stupidly high amount of torque/power, small size, and the speed I was looking for for the grinder. The motor I had tho, the shaft had gotten messed up when trying to remove the pulley I believe and the one bearing was shot, so it needed replaced. I tore it apart probably 3-4 years ago and pressed the shaft out of it, expecting to make a new shaft for it eventually. Around three weeks ago, I started messing with it and realized that the one bearing had the same OD and thickness as the old bearing, but a much larger ID, so I drew up some plans and used the much larger ID bearing on the top bearing end, that way it would have a fairly large flange on the shaft for the wheel/bushing to butt up against.

I stuck a piece of 5/8" sucker rod (4130 steel) in the lathe, drilled and put a center in the end of it, then started to turn it down, roughing most of it out, then coming back and taking a small finishing pass afterwards to get it to final size, after letting it sit overnight from roughing it out so any stresses can relieve themselves. That made for a shaft that stays straight as an arrow and is on dimension exactly. One end has the 12mm shaft that went into the bottom bearing and into the inside of the rotor, top is larger for 15mm for the larger ID bearing and to give myself a larger flange, which has a 3/8" thread cut on it for the sharpening disks to go onto. The back end is turned down to 3/16" so that I could put this little aluminum fan that I found on it, to help blow air up through the motor as it's running to help keep it a bit cooler in use.

I kept all of the original wiring and everything, which there's 4 wires on the motor, ground, common, and two wires, which you add live leg to it and it switches the direction of the motor. I wanted that because my grinder/sharpener Ive been using can only go one direction and when trying to sharpen things like pocket knives and such, you need to sharpen both sides, but if you try to shrapen the one side, you would be cutting into the MDF disk, which leaves a very high chance of a catch and throwing the knife and injuring yourself. With this one, the motor and spindle can run in both directions and I no longer have that issue. I have a 3 way switch to turn it off or turn it in either direction of rotation, so that'll make it easier there.

I built a test bed base for the motor out of some random scraps of oak that I had in the garage that I was going to cut up for kindling for the woodburner, but just kept building on top of it, lol. The whole thing is glued together, then hand forged nails driven in through the joints where the screws were to make it look less thrown together, and the top is a piece of the same treadmill MDF base just right side up. I also upgraded the small 4" disk I was using before and replaced it with a 6" disk, which the new motor has more than enough torque to handle it no problem tbh. I left the side of the motor and wheel exposed rather than putting a table around it because I tend to use the edge for sharpening some things, and when sharpening the carving knives, I use it so I can get right up against the top of the handle of the knife with the wheel/disk.

I started putting it together and it looked so bad that I couldnt help myself but to name it, lol. The top is pretty much flush with the wheel, with the wheel sticking above around 1/16", which will wear down over time as it's used, worn, and trued up again. I made 3 different MDF disks, and have two acrylic ones from a worksharp 3000 system, which is 6" also. The acrylic ones take sandpaper on them, but I plan on just using those for flattening the bottoms of plane blades or chisels after I forge them, just using it like a horizontal disk sander.

When sharpening larger chisels, plane blades, etc that I find just keep getting bigger and bigger, you run out of room for sharpening pretty quickly, so the 4" disk really wasnt big enough at all, but has plenty of room on the 6" disks. I made the design up like a worksharp 3000 machine, with the top on it, that way I could use it to grind the blades and chisels, and be able to use the jigs that Ive made over the past few years for sharpening different things. I have two 1/2" holes in the left side too, which I plan on adding some steel flanged bushings and a pull stud in it with wing nuts on the outside, that way I can put a cross bar on it and attach various attachments to it for sharpening pretty much everything. I thought about making it so I can use a faceting arm from a gem cutting machine to it, then I can use it for sharpening countersinks and various oddball cutters and such with it too, and get them to a razor sharp edge.

Ill make up a lid for it, and probably do wedges setup like I would with foundry flasks to keep it all aligned and my normal latches on front and back to pull it closed tight and keep it tight. The lid will cover over the wheel, side of the motor where it's left open, and the table on the top, that way it covers everything up so that when it's put away, no shavings, screws, or anything else cant fall down in around the motor or into the motor and cause damage when it's turned on again. It'll also allow me to put a handle on the top to make it portable and I can take it with me to carving group or wherever Im working at.

That's the state of my sharpener right now anyways, I did sand it down and added a few coats of shellac to it, which dissolved and made the name fade, but made the wood alot less grungy looking too and look much better. It runs really well and while the motor does get hot after prolonged use, it isnt that big of a deal if you only turn it on for a minute or two to sharpen one or two chisels as youre using them, rather than letting everything build up and having to sharpen everything all at once. A buddy of mine said that those motors do run hot, and they're not designed to run for very long, so it's not anything to really be worried about tbh.

[cae2100]

and after a bit of sanding and a few coats of shellac.

The holes in the end are for a steel plate to bolt to, and that'll hold a 5/8" round bar/rod that will come up and turn at a 90 degree angle, that way it acts as a grinding rest for various sharpening jigs. I also chose 5/8" because of how stiff it is, and I have a bunch of sucker rod that's 5/8". I also have plans for a faceting machine for cutting gemstones with, which is really just an indexer with depth stop, which I was thinking of making also to put on it for sharpening various things like countersinks and custom router bits and such.

[cae2100]

I did add on that tool rest bar and everything onto the end like I was planning. I found some 3/16" thick, 1 1/4" wide steel flat bar in the forging area and just folded it around a mandrel and forge welded it together, then ran a 5/8" drift through it to round it up and get it a nice tight fit. The tool rest bar is some 5/8" sucker rod I had there, just bent it into a 90 degree square using an old steel carpenter's square as a reference, and the knob is just one Ive had laying around for a while. I then drilled out the bracket where the holes were at, and ran a square drift through the holes to turn them square, just big enough for the square sections on some carriage bolts to go through, that way they wouldnt be able to twist in the holes/plate when I was tightening everything up. Some thick washers on the backsides with nuts and that was all done. I did coat it in some beeswax so it wont rust on me tho too.

But now I can use it as a rest to grind stuff easily, and also use it with various jigs for sharpening stuff like planer blades, spokeshave blades, and grind the cutters/blades that I did up for the tapering planes I did up a while back.

I plan on making a few more attachments for it to do different things on it, but it's semi gone on pause atm while Im working on a toy that was supposed to be a christmas gift that my parents got me, lol. I have some incannel/inside bevel/patternmaker's gouges that I absolutely love using, but they are a major pain in the backside to sharpen unfortunately, so I went back to the old patternmaking books and as usual, there was the answer staring back at me, lol.

So I plan on making up some MDF cones to go on my sharpener, then I can just push the chisels right up on them to sharpen the cutting edge to a razor sharp edge quickly and easily. Ill probably make 2, that way I can put sandpaper on one for rough grinding, then polishing compound on the other for getting the edge razor sharp. Ive been doing that for a while now with my flat chisels, whittling knives, plane blades, etc, and they easily get sharp enough to split hairs with yet alone sharp enough to shave with.

Here's the video of the motor rebuild, but rest of it is pretty basic I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckx8V1PS_-M

[Jammer]

Another nice video. Another tool I now have to have but will never make.

Oh, and yes the MDF from a treadmill is really good stuff. it's so dense. How does it cut? I've never tried to cut it. I use it for a cutting table.