Cocobolo Smoother Build - #2

[David Weaver]

I don't love taking the time to describe build threads, and I can get carried away, so I'm going to do bullet point style in this build thread.
Please keep comments to legitimate questions until the end. I'll keep my answers brief. I can't make you do that, but I'd appreciate it.

Main points are:
* I already built another smoother. It works fine. I want the aesthetics of this one to be a little better (wider front, better eyes, generally a little better fit and finish), and the mouth to be tighter. The little things about the aesthetics of the other one are really starting to bother me. I intended to cut the front of the other plane back a little (which would make it look fatter), but even then it would still be a little too narrow.
* Length of this plane (not sure, same as other one. I'm limited by my piece of wood. I think that one was 8 1/2 inches or so)
* Cocobolo. Not the nicest wood to make planes out of Beech would be nicer, but I like the weight of the cocobolo a little more
* This plane will have a slightly shorter wear, but it's still going to be a long one compared to most planes on the market - that adds a little bit of a challenge for feeding and forces a bit more precision
* The height of the plane will be about 2 7/8" when all is said and done
* bed angle 45 degrees (I want a plane that's nice to use for everything)
* Iron is a vintage i&H sorby double iron set purchased on ebay, 2 1/4" wide
* You might not like my workmanship, I am not george, but you can build a plane of this sort and correct anything I do to be to your taste
* I have not read a book to find these things out that we're going to delve into, especially the serious bits about wedge fit and such that we'll talk about later for the plane to feed well without having a large mouth. There may be definitive answers on them (and other things like some of the angles on the mortise or wear) - I don't know what they are. I got here by trial and error and never thought I'd build a coffin smoother until I was able to locate two planes that were properly made.
* It is absolutely critical that this plane function well. It will be an expensive waste of time if it doesn't. A pretty plane that can't feed properly thick or thin shavings with the cap iron set close or far away is junk. One that can feed well no matter what is capable and practical

Here's the blank that I have. Somewhere between rift and quartered (which is what i like). Dead QS looks like slab sided steak knife handles on the top of the plane. The first plane is there, you can see the aesthetic shortcomings. Both it and the plane beside it came out of a turning blank I got about 3 or 4 years ago. It was already partially dry then, it's dry now.
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I mark where I want the mouth to be on the sole of the plane first and go from there, marking the 45 degree bed first. The layout ultimately will look like this. The wear at this point is 85 degrees. I may cut it a few degrees shy of that and try the plane, I don't know. It should work OK, though. Figure the shavings will be coming off of a 45 degree bed and a 50 degree cap iron and hit the wear at a fairly low angle of incidence so that even if they don't have any strength, they shouldn't bunch.

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Last time I had a little problem with the mouth, because I thought I had a 3/16 iron and I didn't. So I use the actual iron to make the mark for the front of the mouth - sticking the iron on the bed line and marking the front of it on the sole (this step was actually before the last picture)

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Critical numbers.
* wear length - 1 inch (last plane was a quarter more than that)
* Top angle for the escapement or whatever you call it (Front of the mortise) 68 degrees. I might make it a little less steep, I don't know. Not critical right now.
* Distance from front of the plane to the back of the mouth - 2 3/4". that's just a tad long compared to most coffin smoothers, I'd imagine.

At this point, the blank is 3" tall. Gives me a little bit of wiggle room to work with.

I'm using a large japanese marking knife. Cocobolo is a funny wood to mark - I'd rather knife it. Bits of it are slick and bits aren't, and my white pencils just don't work well on it. Layout needs to be accurate and the blank needs to be square, but the precise work that's done isn't just done to the marks, so they don't have to be absolutely perfect, just good.

[David Weaver]

This is a wide blank, almost 4" I think. I'm going to work right in the middle of it. I forgot to take good pictures of my marking, but I basically went right down the center with a marking gauge from both sides to get an accurate center.

The iron is 2 1/4" inches, and I want to cut my mortise, which is going to be the width between the abutments (the narrowest point of the mortise) to be 27/16". In the end, i'll make it just a tad wider than that, but not much. I get that from referencing off of the other plane, which is just a bit narrower than I'd want. If that's not a decent guideline, we'll find out. It puts 3/8" of the iron under the abutment on each side, and that's just a bit chubby (it can always be made less later).

I take the initial marking lines across the top of the plane and mark out my mortise (which I also forgot to picture) and I get started with an old stanley "made in USA chisel". I have the finest mortise chisel ever made (a kiyotada tataki nomi), but I want a wide chisel for this.

Side comment - years ago, I would've noticed the edge damage this chisel took and searched for something tougher. Instead, I went to the washita and steepened the bevel a little bit and you'd be surprised how well it holds up in cocobolo. I have such a sinful amount of chisels, from these old flea market finds, to sets of japanese chisels, to the kiyotada (thanks stan) to high speed steel mujingfang chisels (which really do treat cocobolo like it's nothing) to an M4 chisel that I got from stu. But of those, this stanley chisel is my favorite for plane mortises.

* I take my time first taking a shallow cut at the top (cocoblo splinters easily - you can chisel out just inside the marked lines to start if you want to make sure it can't lift and chip out at the top).
* I get halfway through a second pass and I'm out of time for tonight

This mortise is probably only going to take 15 minutes to cut, and you need to not overcut it. Taking it at a lazy pace and taking small cuts of a 16th or a little more makes it easy. Cut it with the chisel bevel down, you'll be more comfortable and the chisel will be easier to keep inside your marked lines for the bed.

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Oh yeah, by the way. I should be using a pocket knife (remember the stockman thread?). I reground the sheepsfoot blade on a chinese stockman knife to be single bevel for marking (works fantastic), but somewhere in the shuffle of getting knives that would go in my pocket and be safe to keep there (as in be in a case), I got this cased kogatana. Either the auction wasn't that clear, or I didn't read it that well - it's bigger than I expected. With the case it's something like 10 inches - a monster marking knife - definitely won't fit in a pocket, which was kind of a downer. It works well for this, though.
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[Kees Heiden]

Great thread allready David.

Interesting that you use a firmer chisel instead of a mortise one. William Armour in the 1898 article used a strong gouge for roughing out the mortise. A bit like a cambered jackplane i guess.

http://www.handplane.com/32/practical-plane-making-1/

[Chris Griggs]

Excellent Dave! This is very cool. I'll be following along.

[David Weaver]

Great thread allready David.

Interesting that you use a firmer chisel instead of a mortise one. William Armour in the 1898 article used a strong gouge for roughing out the mortise. A bit like a cambered jackplane i guess.

http://www.handplane.com/32/practical-plane-making-1/

A gouge would work for a start - it'd be interesting to watch someone use one. I intend to make this plane (and we'll see if I can manage to do it) without using my floats except to open the mouth. I will use a vixen instead, and a couple of shop made tools. A vixen is cheap if watching ebay.

I like the bench chisel/firmer for this because it's wide and easy for me to keep track of what it's done. Easing bits out of the mortise and keeping a visual reference is more comfortable to me, though if I had more experience, I'm sure I'd tend toward speed. I'm just trying to make *one* good plane that's good all the way around, so extra time is no big deal, especially if it's on the order of 5 or 10 minutes of extra time.

The most shocking mortise work I've seen is a video of Hisao (a now deceased daimaker) removing enormous amounts of wood at a time from a macassar ebony dai, and using a 6 pound hammer. That kind of capability is beyond anything I'll ever approach, a true professional with a lot of experience removing material fast and accurately. He used a japanese firmer, which is similar in cross section to this chisel.

Incidentally, I purchased a 1 inch imai chisel for about a hundred bucks a few years ago just for this job. The stanley chisel is better for it in the end. The imai chisel was no tougher in this type of work but took a lot longer to sharpen. Sometimes $10 beats $110.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Great thread, I will be reading every bit.

[David Weaver]

Little done tonight, but I did sharpen an old saw and got some kitchen cabinet work done. For the plane, I only cut the mortise to depth and cut a dent into the mouth area. I cut this because I'm going to drill the mouth in next time I work on the plane and I don't want the drill bit wandering. A wandering drill bit means a large mouth.

Side comment on cutting the mortise - when you're doing it, pare the sides of the mortise vertically cross grain. Some parts of this mortise are going to be showing in front of the abutments and you don't want to lift quartered grain, so cut the mortise as you normally would, but when cleaning up the sides, do it straight down and not by paring down the length of the plane.

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It should go without saying, but cut the mortises safely shallower than marked angles. You can mallet them closer later and I will show the bill carteresque tool that I use to do the final trimming when we get to that part. It is a super help for cleaning up and trimming all of the end grain parts of the mortise.

Beware of the diving chisel close to the marked line, too- you may start a cut shallower than your marks, but as the cut gets heavier, the chisel will dive in toward the angle. It may not be a fatal error, but it's ugly.


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Note, the mouth is only cut to the width of the mortise. I just set the gauge on the same marking lines as the top. We will mark width of the mouth with the iron later when we open the mouth and cut the abutments.

FTR, I sharpened the stanley chisel two times to do this thus far, a reality check for sure in terms of new wondersteel chisels vs. vintage. The process of sharpening this chisel on a single washita stone and then giving it a quick strop, limiting the sharpening time to less than a minute (and still having a shaving sharp chisel) cannot be discounted. It is the most satisfying tool use and sharpening I've had of any combination of tools, matched only buy wrought iron and white steel.

[David Weaver]

Drill the mouth by making parallel holes with whatever you want. A cordless drill is probably easiest. Choose something smaller than the mouth opening. Take care not to drill into the wear or into the cheeks of the plane. I've got a stray mark in the cheek of this plane, a bonehead move.

Break out the waste between the drill holes however you want to. I suppose there's probably other ways to do this (you could use a saw on both sides, like a drywall saw). I use an edge float because I have it.


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Then I continue working the mortise down toward where it needs to be. I can ignore my marking lines at this point and work the mortise to the mouth.

Chisel and mallet, of course.

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I work fast until I get to about here (this is the bed behind the mouth, notice that it's a bit thick yet.

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Thinner more careful chisel waste. Careful to not bang your chisel into your wear at the end of a cut.

Once I'm getting close, I use a chisel modified to be a scraper and work, the chips look like this (they're like smoother shavings).

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[David Weaver]

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This is the chisel modified to scrape. It's just a socket chisel that I had that was too soft, something that was about five bucks. I honed a flat on it about 70-80 degrees, and then rehardened the chisel and didn't temper it (leaving it full hardness, it doesn't matter if it's brittle when the bevel is almost square). It has a slight camber. I sharpen it freehand on a 400 grit diamond plate and nothing else, it doesn't need to be finely honed, it just needs to have a crisp edge.

The handle is an epoxied in paring style handle about 10 inches long so I can use two hands with this thing. It removes wood fast, and far more smoothly than you can fine tune things with a chisel which would dive in and out of cuts.

It's also next to magical to set up a japanese plane. You can set up a new japanese plane in about two minutes. The long handle is critical to making it easy to use for this. You work with it like a sewing machine with fast light strokes.

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This is where I am with the mortise. I beveled the back of the mouth very slightly. Cocobolo is a little chippy. I don't want it to chip out. My wear is about 85 degrees and the bed 45, so I don't want to remove much off of the bottom of the plane later - best to avoid chipouts. From early on, any work that removes wood near the edge of the mouth goes from the mouth in, and not coming from the other side.

Now I'm going to mark the width of the mouth using the iron. I want room for lateral movement on the top of the plane, but a good lateral fit at the bottom. this is mocked for the picture. Try to get this as even as possible (which I did after this picture was taken. If you have to measure and mark center on the iron and the mortise then do it).

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I will cut the abutments next, but before I do that, and after this picture was taken, I flattened the back of the iron that I have and prepared the cap iron. Sometimes old irons need a lot of flattening and I want to cut abutments and all of that stuff with an already prepared iron. Take your time preparing the iron. When you're finishing things up later, you don't want to try to troubleshoot problems with the plane with an iron (and cap iron) that's not prepared to perform well.

[David Weaver]

Cutting the abutments with a japanese flush cut saw. I don't know if it's better than anything else, it's just what I have.

Making the cut at the bed is no problem, just go slow, hold the saw against the bed and don't overcut at the top or bottom.

To make the cut toward the front that runs into the wear, I have to make a spacer.

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I mark it by holding the iron against the bench top and I'm using a wedge from another plane. This wedge tapers from just under 5/8" to just under 3/16" over a distance of just under 3.5 inches. I don't know how I got to this point with the wedge pictured, I probably just copied the taper of another wedge off of a "real" plane.

If it results in something not steep enough I can add a degree or two to the abutments.

I cut that template out and then. hold it against the bed and make the front cuts. Slow is good, it's really important that the first few strokes of the saw are right against the template. (the picture is just to show it in the plane, I lay the plane on its side to make the cut)

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If you look closely, you can see that I have a stray drill hole that's going to cause me a real problem. I'm going to have to fill it with epoxy, it's right where the taper at the tip of the wedge will be, a real problem. I was really disappointed to find that, but you may find if you use an exotic blank that even if you don't have a stray drill hole to deal with, that you have bug damage or something.

A picture of the saw I used (you can also see the length of the handle on the scraper) - these saws are only about 20 bucks and they do work well.
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The cuts as made:
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[David Weaver]

The mistakes are starting to add up. The wear is somewhere around 85 degrees, and at the outset, I was aiming more for 80, just a couple of dumb mistakes, and the drill hole now. You can see that the cocobolo chipped out on one of the cheeks some, also. If using beech or maple, it will be less chippy. We'll see if the wear is a problem. As of right now, the drill hole is sitting full of epoxy.

When you're removing the waste between the cuts, work carefully around the top of the plane, you don't want it to be too nasty ugly from something splitting out and crossing the line. If the grain runs a little less than perfectly in line with the plane's cut direction, make your chop at the marking line (you're working cross grain to clean things out) - your finishing one after most of the waste is removed - where the grain runs into the marking line. If you make it elsewhere, you might get a split running right through the marking line.

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Worked a little less than to the marks, I break out the iron to check the fit. I'm hoping for about twice as tight as what is. I like lateral movement somewhere around a fat 16th at the top of the plane, and I'm somewhere around double that. Bummer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Vlt-lpVOY). It just makes a sloppier looking plane. It's a little worse than the picture looks, you can see where the marked lines are. I can work just shy of them, because I'm going to plane a 16th to an 8th off of the top of this blank in thickness before all is said and done.
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I said something about not using floats on this plane, and I'd be happy to use only chisels if it was beech, but I'm going to use the side floats to keep control of what's going on. I liked, you can buy them if you'd like to if you're making a plane.

[Steve Voigt]

Looking good Dave. The mistakes don't look bad, and surely won't compromise the plane's function.
Just wanted to add one thought on cutting abutments. I don't like using a japanese saw. Too much flex. All the references I've seen suggest that 19th c. planemakers used fairly thick blades on abutment saws. So far, my favorite tool for this is a flush-cutting saw made from an old drywall saw. The blade is about .060, twice as thick as the japanese saws. I recently picked up a box of 10 vintage compass saw blades, also .060 thick, and am planning to make a nicer saw.
Anyway, it's coming along nicely; looking forward to seeing the rest!

[Kees Heiden]

A question David. The front abutment line doesn't run all the way through the mouth I guess. Ending somewhere in the wear? How do you cope with that when sawing?

I wouldn't worry too much about the slightly wider abuttments at the top. The wood might still shrink a bit, and you sure don't want the blade gets stuck in the plane after a while! That drill hole is really a bummer, but shit happens.

[Mark Almeidus]

Awesome work. So far its the most in depth tutorial Iv seen on the internet. It will be my prime guide for making mortise planes. Im also in the middle of making another jack plane and i encountered lots of problems with the mouth opening and the place where the wedge goes. Those parts reguire a lot of patience.

Also an easier way for making sure the mortising will end right where i want was to transfer the line at the bottom of the mouth to the top.
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here i was experimenting with the front of the mouth to be paralel with the bed of the blade, so when sanding is reguired later to not widen the mouth
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But the problem was probably the wood wasnt dry enough, maybe because of sitting in moist for one year, and when i was planing the sole of the plane to open the mouth, the wood was cracking a lot and the mouth came wider as seen bellow
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[David Weaver]

A question David. The front abutment line doesn't run all the way through the mouth I guess. Ending somewhere in the wear? How do you cope with that when sawing?

I wouldn't worry too much about the slightly wider abuttments at the top. The wood might still shrink a bit, and you sure don't want the blade gets stuck in the plane after a while! That drill hole is really a bummer, but shit happens.

Yes, the top line runs right into the wear. I guess where it runs into it is just a matter of geometry involving the wear, etc. The japanese saw has a tooth all the way out on the end so it nearly cuts the whole thing to full depth, leaving only a little bit of extra stuff to pare at the bottom of the abutment.

The drill hole is a bit PITA, because it's a spot where the abutment tapers into the side of the plane, and the area is already chippy. It's easy to see damaged wood on my plane on the cheeks, and that damage occurs easily when paring that taper. Put a drill hole in the middle and all of the wood around the drill hole breaks when you pare it. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully the epoxy can be pared. that whole set up there is relatively critical to feeding when the plane is run on a skew or when a full width shaving is taken. Since I bungled the wear and it's at a rather open angle, which I think is more of a problem in the long term for mouth size opening up, maybe it won't be quite as critical, but that is the part of the plane where a lot of cheaply made planes fall short. I've noticed that many newer planes that still have a mortise (like a mujingfang) just have a really short wear to avoid feeding problems. The wear on my muji might be something like 3/8", and it feeds well. There was a pattern posted here, too, that looked like a copy of one of Larry's planes, and I don't know if it was really a copy, but it also had a fairly short wear. When the plane is single iron, the danger of having a short wear and having the abutments terminate above it (and look bad) doesn't exist.

Of course, I want a double iron plane for obvious reasons, and the fact that the wear is not the angle I wanted because of carelessness is more cosmetic.

The tearout on the cheeks that's occurred to this point could probably be avoided by roughing with a gouge instead of a bench chisel or paring chisel. Or by using a wood less chippy, like beech. The discussions of all of this started, though, because I wanted a plane significantly heavier than beech.