need advice on making hollow & round planes

[Ed Barry]

After several years of trying to piece together a half set of hollows and rounds, I have found that I have more rounds than hollows, some duplicates, and most are odd numbers. I am considering just biting the bullet and making my own set. Anyone have any advice on the best book, DVD, or other instructional material on plane making? Any advice is appreciated.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I can highly recommend Larry Williams DVD from Lie Nielsen, "Making Tradtional Side Escapement Planes". While other works may supplement this well, I think that DVD is really all you need. (His sharpening profiled hand tools DVD is a great accompaniment as well.)

If you've got a lot of planes that aren't what you need, or are duplicates, and aren't of great value as collectors pieces, I wouldn't hesitate to re-make them as what you need, grinding the irons and reshaping the soles and planing to width into what you need; already having the mortise made, and at least a preliminary fit wedge would shorten the process considerably over making from scratch, and also avoids having to source stock - where I'm at, I've had some difficulty finding perfectly quartersawn stock of an appropriate size and species for making planes.

I'll have to search the forum, but there was a thread here recently by someone who re-made a plane into another profile. (I think it was Trevor? I'm unsure.)

[David Weaver]

Buy three floats from LN

Buy the Larry Williams DVD on making hollows and rounds

Buy 15 bd feet of 8/4 beech from mike digity (send me a PM if you want his number, I'm sure I can find it). (it'll probably be about $200 shipped, but I'm not aware of anywhere else you can get it, especially for that cheap, a lot of that cost is the shipping).

Decide whether you want to make your iron blanks, harvest them from other planes, or buy them from LN. If you make your own, you'll need to have a belt sander to put a mild taper on them.

When you're done making all the planes you want to make, you can sell the LN floats and larry's DVD and not be out much.

Making the planes isn't that hard if you have good tools and larry's DVD is as detailed as you could ever hope for. The only thing I didn't buy was the iron blanks (you can make them with a grinder, hacksaw, a file, and a $4 metal scribe, and the mortise chisel larry suggests (which is a 1/10th inch mortise chisel). The iron blanks would make things easier, but I am too cheap to buy them, and you can always find an old narrow file that has a tall cross section that's 1/8th or a little less. That'll all make more sense if you get the DVD.

It probably takes a little less time to refurbish old planes than it does to make new ones, but I found just finding good similar pitch h&Rs that were all in good shape and straight to be a real pain. There are a lot of half sets out there, but I would want a set that was actually in use before I'd buy them or you'll just spend a whole lot of time getting them in shape, anyway.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Yep. It was Trevor in the thread I was thinking of:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...83#post1972783

Just bringing it up because it sounds like you've got a few planes already.

[Ed Barry]

Thanks for all of the advice! I placed the order for the Larry Williams DVD.

[Jack Curtis]

The Todd Herrli dvd is also great (I have both his and Larry's and like them both), and you don't need floats although they can come in handy, often small chisels and chisel size scrapers can substitute.

[David Turner]

I am just back home after attending a two day class with Tod Herrli on making side escapement planes. What a fine gentleman. If you are any where close to Marion, Indiana, I would recommend attending his class. I have both the Herrli and the Williams DVD's and both are excellent. They differ in opinions on a few things and some methods between the two are different, but you can't go wrong with either one. I chose Tod because he trained Larry Williams back in 1994. If you attend a class, you learn a lot more than is shown on the DVD's.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

[Trevor Walsh]

I agree with Joshua's comment to re manufacture duplicates if you choose the process will teach you alot about how they go together, and how to tune them right. I've got rounds working really well. Now I'm working more on the hollow in the thread Joshua added. the corners dig in a bit if I'm not careful. I'm working on seeing if this is something that I can change or if, shock, I just need to be more careful.

Starting out with raw wood may leave you wondering where exactly the baseline is. Using some well tuned planes and looking at fresh, NIB tolerances/details will help you make good ones. The 1/2" wide throat some n00b cut into a complex moulder to keep it from "choking" won't help direct you in planemaking very well.

Larry, LN, and Mike Digity are sound suggestions. I got 16ft of 6-8/4 from him and was really happy with it. I can't wait to break into it.

[Joshua Hall]

I was wondering if you could give me the contact information for Mike Digity. Does he have a website? Any information would be great. Sounds like Mike is a reputable guy to order some beech from.

Thanks,
Joshua Hall