Smaller bent back mitre plane

[wayne Jepson]

Here is the second of the three bent back mitre smoothers I am making. 6" long and 1-1 1/4" wide with 1" wide blade bedded at 22 degrees. Infill is boxwood with danish oil finish. I have been looking at Bill Carters small mitres from the UK for years. This is my first attempt at one this small. one picture shows it next to the other i just finished for size comparison.

wayne
http://infillplanemaker.blogspot.ca

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[george wilson]

It is always extra interesting to see pictures posted of work,Wayne!! They look very nice.

Just a bit more peening of the dovetails here and there and they will be perfect,but you know that. I'd advise making the cap a little thinner to keep more in scale with the size of the plane. Also,if you just glue in those infills they will be fine,and you'll have no screws or rods showing. Plus,it is practically guaranteed that eventual wood movement will make them no longer quite flush. That has been my own experience. Gluing in the infills might seem a bad thing to do,but on those simple,flush infills it works quite well. You aren't yanking at the infill with a tote. you could put a "sacrificial screw" on the rear end of the plane into the infill if you wish,but with a brass plane I wouldn't want to be hitting on it. Better to put a sneck on the iron to facilitate withdrawing it for fine adjustments. On small planes,sometimes a sneck can just be a long notch on one side of the iron.

[Jack Curtis]

I think it looks great, but George has a better eye than I for these things. Why do you make the iron so long? It seems that it would make it difficult to hold when using.

[David Keller NC]

Wayne - I can add to George's thought about just gluing in the infills. Many of the most celebrated British infills of the late 19th century (Norris, Spiers, Mathieson, etc...) were made with exactly that technique. Typically, the technique applies to infills with continuous steel sides such as a rabbet or shoulder plane. I've repaired quite a few of these, and the only thing holding the blade-bed wood (typically a cheaper wood such as beech) into the plane is hide glue. Even the show rosewood is sometimes just held into the plane with hide glue.