Set of floats

[Ryan Baker]

I finally finished up my set of floats a couple weeks ago, and am finally getting some pictures done. (I may make some others some day, but this was MORE than enough for now, considering they were all done by hand.)

Edge floats: (The bigger ones are for mortices.)
1/8" push
1/8" pull
3/16" push
1/4" push
5/16" push

Cheek floats:
1/8" push
1/8" pull

Bed float: 3/16" push

Side float: 3/16" push

All of them are 1" wide. 5-6" cutting length. 9-10" overall. They are all 8tpi except the bed float, which is 10tpi. They are made from O1 steel, hardened and tempered to 50-52ish rockwell -- hard enough to hold an edge but still soft enough to sharpen with a file. The handles are one-piece octagonal maple handles mounted like knife scales (epoxy and brass pins all the way through). They aren't the best looking, but they cut nicely.

The teeth are all hand filed without any guides, so they aren't always very uniform -- but other than looks, that's not a problem. Hardening/tempering does cause some distortion/warping, so they need to be jointed and resharpened after the heat treating, but the result is dead flat.

Here are a couple pics:
floats.jpg
floats_close.jpg

[Jim Koepke]

Those look nice. Have you given them their maiden voyages yet?

Any tips for those of us who may want to follow your lead?

I can't tell from the pictures, is there any rake to these?

Thanks for sharing.

jtk

[Pam Niedermayer]

Gorgeous work, Ryan. I'd love to hear more about your how.

Pam

[greg Forster]

Now that is alot of work! Very, very nice Ryan.

How did you heat treat and what kind of issues did you run into?

Greg

[Matt Sullenbrand]

These look great. I have a couple of questions as I hope to make my own set in the future. Where did you source your materials from? I hear that the old ones were made from used up files, but new material would probably be the best I assume. What angle did you use for the teeth? They look like 0 degrees of rake, but the LN undercut them by 10 degrees, so I was just curious.

Thanks for sharing,

Matt

[Ryan Baker]

I started doing these with 6" XX slim taper files. That works, but it sure is slow. Find yourself a much coarser triangular file to "rough it out", and use the XX slim for the final work. And plan for lots of time -- 5-15 minutes per tooth adds up. I did it in a lot of short spurts. The edge floats are not very bad to file. The bed and side floats are a big chore.

The teeth don't have any rake -- at least not intentionally. I start with 1" wide stock the thickness I want. Always try to put the toothed edge on a factory milled edge, not an edge you cut. After cutting out the blanks with a hacksaw, I give them a coat of layout fluid (layout fluid is critical for doing this), and quickly marked out some quide lines for approximate tooth spacing. Then get a file and go at it! I like to work from the end back toward the handle (right to left, as I am right handed). Try to keep one side vertical, and square across the piece (that's where the layout lines come in). The other side will naturally be at 60 degrees from vertical. File down until you have almost eliminated the layout fluid on the angled (right) side (meaning you have just about brought that slope to a sharp edge with the previous tooth). Start with the coarse file if you want and switch to the finer file when you get close. Just don't go too far. If you take the top edge of the previous tooth off, the float won't be flat any more.

If you aren't going to harden your float, then you need to continue filing right up to a sharp tooth (eliminate the layout fluid). Because I was going to harden mine, I stopped just short of sharp. They have to be sharpened again later anyway.

I don't have acetylene available to me right now. I use high-output MAP torches. MAP is hot enough, but the trick is to heat the entire part to the desired temperature at the same time. I used four MAP torches to get a nice even heat across the part. I quench in peanut oil (I am using O1 steel). Clean off the oxide and temper the parts with the MAP torch. You need to get to the 750-800 degree range to temper the steel down to around 50-52 rockwell. If it's too hard, you won't be able to sharpen it with a file. My toaster oven don't DO 800 degrees, so I just use the torch. Watch the color bands as you heat. You will pass the yellows and blues into a very light robin's egg blue, and then back to a steel silver color -- just like the base metal. Just as the light blue goes away into silver is a good place to stop. It's quite easy on pieces this size to work your way down the part with a MAP torch, and you are not likely to heat it too far.

After the parts have cooled and been cleaned up again, you have to finish the teeth. The part probably warped some during the heat treating. I coat the teeth with layout fluid and use a large flat file to joint over the teeth lightly (like jointing teeth on a saw) until all of the teeth have been touched by the file (look at where the fluid is rubbed off). The flats at the top of the teeth are now in the same plane. Coat the teeth again with the layout fluid. Run down the teeth again with the small file, filing each tooth to just take away the layout fluid and make a sharp tooth. Don't go too far. Work from the end toward the handle on a push float. (The file cuts on the vertical face too, so you don't want to screw up a tooth you have already finished.) That part is really like sharpening anything else. No glint of light from the edge (but no further) -- you can tell by feel when it really is sharp.

There are a lot of ways to do the handles. I chose to do mine like knife scales, because it is easy and solid (compared to a tang for example). I left the handle end soft so that I could easily drill through it for the brass pins.

If you are going to do the hardening, staying with a thicker metal when you can will help. A 1/8" thick piece will warp a LOT more than a 3/16" thick piece. When I rough out my teeth, I stop a bit short of sharp. Among other things, I figure not having those sharp tooth points helps avoid heating them too much and burning off the carbon -- but try to avoid heating the tips of the teeth too far. Heating from the back side is useful, as it also helps keep the heat even -- even heat helps avoid some warping.

When I did the bed float, I switched from 8 to 10 tpi. For one thing, it makes the teeth easier to file, because they aren't cut so deep (but there are more of them, so it is questionable if it really saves much time). The shallower teeth also leave more solid material under the teeth, which helps prevent a lot of the warping when heat treated. That is more important on a long surface like the bed float, where the warping would show up more. The small surface of a cheek float can warp significantly and not be very hard to flatten out.

Ryan

[Ryan Baker]

These look great. I have a couple of questions as I hope to make my own set in the future. Where did you source your materials from? I hear that the old ones were made from used up files, but new material would probably be the best I assume. What angle did you use for the teeth? They look like 0 degrees of rake, but the LN undercut them by 10 degrees, so I was just curious.

Thanks for sharing,

Matt

I got my material from McMaster, but any of the similar places would work too (ENCO, MSC, etc.).

I was going for zero rake, and the other side is 60 degrees as determined by the triangular file. Some undercut might be good, but it isn't easy to do with a file. If one had access to a milling machine, one could do these pretty quickly. Negative rake would seem to be bad. I have a few of those, especially near the end when my arm was ready to fall off.

[Steve Branam]

Nice job, except for the shape of the handles they look just like the ones I got from LN!

[Mark Baldwin III]

Nice floats! Thanks for sharing your process for making them.