Some new plane billet stock

[ron david]

Black Locust was always the material of choice here in NH for fence posts because of its rot resistance. A black locust fence post will outlast 5 post holes.

It is also used in boatbuilding and is occasionally available at lumberyards in NH and Maine which cater to the boatbuilding trade. A friend of mine built an 11 foot sailing dinghy as a black locust strip boat with a mahogany transom and centerboard trunk from a Gordon"Swifty" Swift design. The 1/8" thick strips were a bear to machine on the few occasions I helped him.

but how long should the post hole last?. does this mean that you have to keep making new holes??
ron

[Jeff Heath]

Now that I know it's something much more pleasant than what I was thinking of (black locust) and have on hand, like a lot of other people, I'm sitting here wondering when you're going to put billets in the S&S



That's about the perfect size for a woody jointer. Even the width and height are pretty close to where they'd need to be. The only thing missing is something appropriate to make a handle and a wedge.

Sorry.....I won't be selling billets anytime soon. I'll be selling finished planes, but not in the classified section......it's just a guess, but I'm guessing they don't allow that here.

As far as handle and wedge stock are concerned, I've been thinking about that very topic myself for a few days. I'm going to try a few different combinations and see what looks good. I love cherry for handles, and have some great curly cherry stock on hand. I have all sorts of dense hardwood on hand for wedges, from exotic import stuff, to locally grown osage orange, hard maple, white oak, hickory, more honey locust, and a few other goodies.......the benefits of having owned a sawmill for years.

I cut these 28" long (plus a little) to accommodate a jointer plane, but I can also split that size into a combination of of two or more of any of the other plane sizes necessary. It's been soooooo cold here lately (below zero most of the time, and -14° this morning at 6:30 am when I fired up the shop heating system) that I actually cut these by hand with my two trusty Disston D8's. What a workout cutting across and ripping a 3.5" slab of this stuff. I was quite warm when finished.

[David Weaver]

Yeah, no commercial items in the classifieds. Welcome to the club on the crosscut. I don't really have any other way to do it comfortably (I do have a chop saw, but no good place to put it in my shop). You'd be shocked how fast those cheap 20 inch stanley saws will crosscut something. They're floppy, but you can lean into them with a little practice. They're hard on the back side of the cut, but I doubt you'd care much about that on a 3.5" square cut. I keep a 6 1/2 point saw (or something thereabouts) for crosscutting 8/4 stuff and other thick lumber.

[Jeff Heath]

It's a 10 pt. crosscut saw. I definitely need to buy another one that's more aggressive, and keep this one sharp for the purty cuts. It cuts pretty fast, and leaves a nice, clean line though.....I did use the same saw to crosscut my bench to length last year, which is a 24" wide roubo-style maple top that's 5" thick. That was fun.

My rip is set up proper for this job at either 5 1/2 or 6 tpi......I forget, and it's 40 below outside, so I'm not running up to the shop to check.

Cheers.

[Frank Drew]

I'm sure the locust would be fine. Beech really isn't an extremely hard wood,and it gets "hairy" when turned on a lathe.

Locust lasts 10 years longer than stone when buried in the ground!!

I agree with others that it's black locust that's everlasting in contact with the soil; I made some compost pile posts from honey locust and they rotted off at ground level within 4 or 5 years.

[george wilson]

I had forgotten about black locust. I remember the poor guys in the museum in the "Rural Trades" department, who had to fence in a large pasture with a historically correct hand made black locust fence. Posts with round end mortices cut into them for the split rails to fit into. That was not an easy job by any means. I think they made hundreds of those posts. The type of thing hardly anyone would notice was authentic,either.

Most of the time,fences were made by stacking up zig zagging split rails. A person who was drunk was said to be in "Virginia fences" in the 18th. C..

[Jeff Heath]

I finished bedding an iron and wedge in one of these plane blanks today. I can honestly say it's not much fun to work with. The stuff is hard as iron (it seems) and wreaked havoc on my chisels and plane floats. I've never had to sharpen my floats so many times for one plane mouth and bed before. By no means is this finished. I still have to make a tote, shape and finish the wedge, and shape and finish the plane. However, it cuts very well. Iron is bedded at 50°.



I'll post a pic of the finished plane when complete.

Jeff

[David Weaver]

That type of plane is territory for beech (if you're going to work that mortise by hand). It works easily and nicely and has plenty of density. I haven't had a whole lot of luck finding any beech billets, though, it's much cheaper to get a good tight vintage plane (most of the time) than it is to source a good blank (that still has to dry), a good double iron and a small piece to make a handle (actually, the last two are pretty easy to find, but add them all up and you have a plane that's not worth anything on the open market compared to an old stylish plane with a reputable maker's mark).