[OP]
Member
Has anybody built a Bevel Up Jack Plane out of wood i seached the creek and did not find anything.
I would love to buy a LV bevel up jack but with my work cutting hours i can't take the money out to buy new toys,i could get a new blade and make the body justwanted to know if its been done?
Robert
Member
From some brief research I did, a bevel up jack plane made from all wood and using a wedge to hold the blade would have a dickens of a time keeping the blade in place. It would just keep getting pushed back.
However if the design was more like a transition plane with a wooden body and metal "guts" it would probably work.
An infill style might also be made to work.
The key is constructing a mechanism to hold the blade in place against the planing force.
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
Member
Try a search on that and we've thought it through several times. The wood would probably split under that much pressure - that's the usual conclusion.
Also, if you like the low angle possible with a bevel up, you can make a wooden plane with the 37° no problem.
On the third hand, if you make one and figure out the stress problems, that would be fun.
Brian
Veni Vidi Vendi Vente! I came, I saw, I bought a large coffee!
Member
To make it work you will need to bed the blade at a low angle.
The only problem here is the fragility of the thin wooden bed.
There are successful infill planes like this but the base of the plane is iron or steel so this protects the thin wooden edge of the bed.
I know of one person who has taken an old Stanley base and successfully made a bevel-up plane from it.
See here:
http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMad..._smoother.html
Derek's website is a terrific place to visit
Cheers
MC
Member
That's a right handsome plane. I may get around to trying one myself.
Member
Robert, what is your driver for making the plane bevel up? Why not just make a bevel down plane? I don't think there really would be any advantage to making a wooden plane bevel up and actually think it would make for a weaker plane and one that would be difficult to keep the iron from moving in the mouth. Bevel up wooden planes are a very rare find for a reason.
The whole purpose of the introduction of the bevel up design was to lower the bed angle to make planing of end grain easier. Bevel down planes can really only have bed angles so low (about 35 degrees) before clearance of the iron bevel becomes an issue. The bevel up design solves the clearance angle issue and permits for lower bedding angles, however, the effective cutting angle doesn't change much from a bevel down design. This is because in a bevel up design, the cutting angle is dictated by the combination of the bed angle and the angle of the bevel. On the other hand, in a bevel down design, the cutting angle is dictated by the bed angle only (unless you use a back bevel but that's a topic for another dicsussion).
Low angles and long grain don't really play well together. If the grain is realtively straight, they work fine but throw some gnarly grain at it and a low cutting angle has more of a tendency to lift the grain. To handle swirling and reversing grain you typically want a higher cutting angle. For this reason, when wooden planes were in their prime, smoothers were offered in several bed angles from common pitch (45 degrees) up to 60 degrees or even higher. While wooden planes with bed angles lower than 45 degrees were available, I don't think they were as common (I could be wrong here but at least I don't see many).
One of the touted benefits of the low angle jack planes like the LV is supposed to be that you can switch blades to make the cutting angle higher (i.e. use an iron with a steeper bevel to increase cutting angle). While this seems useful to some, I doubt there are that many situations where a lot of blade swapping is going on. I'm guessing that most folks use a single blade the majority of the time so the added "versatility" is probably more of a good idea in theory but probably not actually used all that much of the time.
Regarding the wooden plane, as others have said, making a bevel up low angle plane from wood would result in a very weak plane body that would be subject to flex and possible breakage at the mouth. Most low angle wooden planes that I've seen were bevel down with bed angles around 35 degrees (though bevel up wooden planes were made they seem to be more rare even than the bevel down low angle ones). In my experience with a bevel down low angle (35 degrees) wooden plane that I have, they are finicky because of the small clearance angle behind the bevel. My solution is to try not to plane end grain if I can avoid it or simply to use a common pitch bevel down plane with a really sharp iron.
If you want a plane mostly for use on end grain then the new bevel up low angle planes like the LVs are hard to beat and I'd say save your pennies rather than trying to make a vastly inferior one from wood. Wood just isn't stiff or strong enough to do well in a bevel up low angle design without making the plane cheeks really thick and bulky. However, if you intend to use the plane primarily for long grain work, there really is no advantage to the bevel down low angle models.
If you want a wooden plane, I'd try to get my hands on a common pitch plane and then make a higher pitch plane for the tougher grain. This was my exact solution. I prefer wooden planes but higher pitch wooden planes are rare to find in the wild. Common pitch planes however are, well, common. So I found a common pitch smoother in good condition and made a second smoother with a higher bed angle for situations when the common pitch plane caused too much tearout. So far I've yet to have a situation where one of these two planes couldn't handle it. I will say that I typically only work with domestic furniture woods and am not into exotics so YMMV but for the domestics a common pitch (45 degrees) and a 50 or 55 degree smoother should handle 99% of boards. For the other 1%, I scrape.
Good luck!
Member
I have made quite a few. They are wonderful and problematic. The real problem is the low angle. A low angle means a thin bed. Thin beds can flex, making the plane unstable. You need a stiff hard wood and you don't dare get to thin. Unless you try an odd experiment, Like this.Originally Posted by Robert Flowers
Here is a rather squirrely Rabbet Plane that works quite well.
The easiest and most problem free is the Flush Cut Plane.
Bob
Member
I make use of this versatility quite frequently and it is a good idea in practice. Having all the different blades makes the Veritas Low Angle Jack, a jack of all trades. The toothing blade gets used for the really troublesome grain; the high angle blade for difficult, but manageable grain; the low angle for the shooting board. I don't use the medium angle that often as this plane tends to get pulled out to either solve difficult grain problems or to be used in the shooting board.
Whether other people actually make use of this feature, I don't know. But the ability to change blades around in a bevel-up plane is useful and a great feature. Thanks to Lee Valley for making it easy to take advantage of this feature by making all the different blade angles available, instead of having to grind them myself.
Member
I make full use of blade swapping as well. Swapping blades takes very little time and effort, it seems like such a great idea in theory and practice, if most of people are using just one blade with set angle, it seems like they are missing out much. Maybe for someone using a group of similar wood specie and tendencies don't need that, but I deal with soft and hard wood, from straight to gnarly grain, so I find different angled blades for my LV BU/LA planes very useful for most planing tasks that I do.
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