Cocobolo Smoother Build - #2

[Pat Barry]

Attachment 292035
(don't look at the huge elephant eyes!! I may yet remove some more material from the cheeks of the plane to make them less fat and then lengthen them some.)

My understanding, if I recall George's previous commentary, was the eyes are there specificallly to provide you with finger clearance for clearing material that may become stuck, hence, why not make them a bit larger, rather than be worried about the "huge elephant eyes"? None the less - this is coming along nicely and I appreciate your thorough documentation of the process and learning points.

[David Weaver]

My understanding, if I recall George's previous commentary, was the eyes are there specificallly to provide you with finger clearance for clearing material that may become stuck, hence, why not make them a bit larger, rather than be worried about the "huge elephant eyes"? None the less - this is coming along nicely and I appreciate your thorough documentation of the process and learning points.

Well, it's just a matter of proportion and ugliness. If I correct them, it won't
have anything to do with functionality, it's more about disappointment that I didn't at least draw out the plane as it is and go from there to prevent overcutting them.

On a manufactured plane, those cheeks have less curvature and heft to them and are closer to a single plane from front of the abutment to the back of the escapement, leaving less material to deal with and making cutting a longer cleaner eye a little eaiser.

I left a bit too much heft and belly in the cheeks to get an optimal result and then fell into the classic trap of trying to improve something and instead just making it worse. I will say this much, most people are going to have the objective to make a nice working plane, and hopefully they'll be trying to make one that they enjoy using and that is effective with everything. The cosmetics and proportions are *much* harder to get nice than the functionality, and that's a good thing, I guess. I'd just like to have both, but I don't have enough experience to get there. I have a good enough eye to see when things don't look good, but not enough experience to know what method I could or should use to avoid them getting there.

Some people have no eye. I'm lucky enough that I have some eye for things. Some people have a good eye and are gifted they can create stuff that suits their eye right away (and in a way that suits others, too). George would be in this category, and inasmuch as these discussions turn into competitions and larry won't like this, larry's body of work is not close to the level of georges. We're in a contest here about plane design, but george is an instrument maker of the finest order -and of many different types, a jeweler, a machinist, a die maker, a smith of a lot of metals when needed (black, silver, etc), a gunsmith able to either machine or *hand make* functioning gun parts out of steel stock, a carver of the highest order, a restorer, conservator, fill in the blank wherever you want to go with it. And able to do all of that and tie together design and execution like few can.

That is precisely the reason that I get frustrated when people can't tolerate a little bit of arguing between parties on this site, and folks troll George. It shows a complete lack of respect for those of us who want to learn or know things that are not easy for us to find elsewhere, and the same would be true of larry if he were getting harrassed by the general membership (which would probably happen if he stuck around as much as george).

I get that a few people don't enjoy the discussions sometimes, because they put manners above substance and they can't look past posts that bother them, even though they are not directed at them. But for the aspects such as the simple stuff like the eyes in the planes here, when you don't know what you don't know, who are you going to ask? You can ask George and you will get a reliable answer on design, and if you need it, on execution. No manner minder in the forum is going to offer any such thing, and we could degenerate back to the days when this and other hand tool forums were just a bunch of people giving attaboys and "everyone's opinion is worth the same".

[David Weaver]

To fully understand what you write, I made this quick sketch. When cutting off the back of the plane and looking forward, I suppose you see something like this. Grey is the sides of the plane, brown is the wear, yellow the abbutments and light yellow the escapement.

Attachment 292032

One comment that is, of course, obvious - I the taper into the side of the plane should be a bit more gradual. Shavings that are very fine may not escape the wear right away, but we don't care as long as they can be pushed up and out by subsequent shavings. Some folks like to use their planes on the skew, just out of habit, so we want a gradual taper of that triangle, as much as the "triangle" will allow. It's nice when the taper starts at the same level as the wear ends, it's cosmetically pleasing, but if it was an issue that the wear was low, that line could be moved up some if needed.

Of course, the mechanics of the wedge (being strong enough so that you don't break off a tip every time you handle it) and the fact that it needs to hold the iron down also play into this dictating that it can't be *too* gradual, or it'll just have to terminate in a sharp angle and that will be counterproductive, too.

My triangle is probably tapering from a little over an eighth to nothing over a span of half an inch or so down there.

[Kees Heiden]

Now I am starting to understand why the wear is so high in these old planes. Somehow you have to get the wear, the abutments and that all important little triangle, meeting in a logical position. High enough for the tips of the wedge to end somewhere on the bulge of the capiron, but certainly not higher.

[David Weaver]

>>the abutments and that all important little triangle, meeting in a logical position.<<

Yes, and that's exactly why I'd draw it out in a pattern if there was no plane available to copy. At least with a pattern, you can just place the pattern on the side of a blank and lay it out. If the pattern doesn't turn out right, you can just redraw it before the cutting starts.

[Kees Heiden]

Just looked back through the thread and I saw that I made a mistake in my first diagram. You tapered the abutments from the top down to that little triangle. From 1/4" to 1/8" I guess.

[David Weaver]

Kees, I did, but it's not enormously important. The first smoother that I made of cocobolo, I didn't do much of that. it's just an attempt to make the interior of the plane a little less chubby and provide some relief.

I may have tapered off a bit too much on the cheeks of my plane, at least compared to what I'd like, but once you remove it it's gone! It'll still hold the iron, I'd just rather have a little more left for ease of the wedge.

Anyway, my first smoother feeds fine, and the wedge prongs aren't even the same length on each side (my triangles were different sizes, both starting at the top of the wear but they didn't end up being the same length. I also cut everything freehand on that plane and had to do a lot of adjustment to abutments and the wedge to get everything right. Chiseling and floating the bottom side of the abutment is a good way to get a bellied abutment, so that wasn't really optimal.

A bellied abutment will obviously lead to a small gap at the critical area where the wedge and triangle meet, which isn't ideal. The cut could be biased so that the fit is engineered at the bottom and top of the abutment, but I don't want to do too much of that if it's not necessary. I haven't to this point, but all of the freehand fitting in the other plane did make things a little more sloppy than I'd like. You makes your cuts and you takes your chances, though, and the performance of the plane comes first - it was fine in the end. Better planning initially would've yielded a lot less work and better cosmetics. that's sort of a running theme here in terms of the the first and second double iron plane vs. what would be the 12th of the same design. Experience and repetition counts for a lot.

[David Weaver]

Where did I leave off? The eyes. Here’s a New York maker plane with nice eyes (Baldwin? I can’t remember). Look at these instead of the eyes on my plane. What I didn’t look at closely enough is that if you notice the escapement, the cheeks of the plane are flat, and there is no curvature on the cuts.

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So, I thinned the sides of mine a little and corrected the eyes as much as possible.
And then, it’s on to beveling the sides and front. I don’t know what production would be for this on a curved palne. It’s easily done on a straight one with a smoothing plane. I used a plane float. Anything more aggressive just tore out, and I don’t have anything to give up around the top of the plane here. The cocobolo pins the floats and the Nicholson shear cut files, it’s oily and it’s a pain.

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Use your sense to figure out which direction the wood lets you cut. You might be thinking a spokeshave would be good here, but it’s a no no. It’s the quartered face of a cocobolo board more or less and little bits tear out everywhere.

Mark your bevels. You want to be careful and hit the marks, a wavy bevel looks terrible. These are half an inch tall and about an eighth deep at the top.

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[David Weaver]

Pare the bevels on the front and the back of the plane to the mark. Careful not to overcut into what will be a quick gouge cut.
You pick the gouge once they’re cut and just pop the cut at the end of the bevel. I have no clue about carving, so there might be a way to make this a lot nicer looking.

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We’re at the point in this picture. I wanted two things, I want the back to be narrow and the front to be wide. I’m using the full length of the blank and could stand to have another half inch at the back, but I don’t have it. This is going to come back to bite me. Looks OK here (thinner with a curve a little flatter at the back would’ve been better from a design standpoint).

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But then when I round the back slightly, I just didn’t have enough length and it looks fat. I know some of you guys don’t care about this stuff, and if you don’t, then don’t worry about it.

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After looking at this, if I were redrawing the lines on this plane, the widest point would be between the escapement and the abutments, but further forward than it is. It would just look better. When you do that, though, you have to be careful and give yourself enough material to work with at the abutments.

[David Weaver]

Next order of business, we need to cut the mortise in the bed for the cap iron screw. This is a quick thing, just mark width, then give yourself a little extra width (remember the iron needs to have lateral adjustment, and if you did good work at the bottom of the mouth, it’s snug at the mouth and moving back and forth at the top of the abutments).

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You could figure out some way to mark this accurately, but I don’t do that. It’s not critical, it just needs to be the screw size plus lateral room for adjusting the iron.
Saw it left and right at your marks as much as you can with a dovetail saw and work material out like you’d mortise (bevel down). If you go bevel up, the chisel will dive into the plane and you’ll fight it. Bevel down is pleasant work because you’re cutting with the grain and not back into it.

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Make sure the cap iron can get all the way to the mouth when you’re done without the screw bottoming out on the mortise.
Looking down into the plane for curiosity looks good. You can’t see it here, but our triangles terminate above the cap iron, so we’re not going to run into wedge fingers projecting past the cap iron apex.

P1030845.jpg

Pardon the feet. I live on the edge by using chisels barefoot sometimes.
Anyway, this isn’t a purposeless look, either, it’s the first time the cap iron has been in the plane. It’s a check to make sure that both the iron and the cap iron will get through the mouth but be a tight fit – too tight and you’ll blow out fibers when you insert an iron.

[David Weaver]

Let’s have a look at the junction on a good plane. This is a mathieson jack plane. The abutments stay at a certain thickness and then taper down at the triangle. You’ll see a picture of the wedge later to get an idea of it. It looks nice.

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I haven’t thought about why my triangles are so much smaller, the matheison doesn’t have large mouth. I guess the wear is a lot taller.
Here’s where we are.

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Grab the wedge stock, and mark it to width and make it so that it just fits at the top of the plane.

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This plane tapers in toward the mouth, so this wood isn’t going to go in really far.
Mark your wedge stock (I used a prior wedge, but you should know what taper you used to mark your abutments from the beginning. I mentioned just under 3/16” to just under 5/8” over a 3 ½ inch length of wedge). That’s about where we are. I found a white pencil that works well on cocobolo.
Cut the waste off and then plane down to the line. A machinist vise is nice to hold the wedge stock to plane across the grain if the wood is really hard.

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I’ll plane a taper in from each end a little. Do this slow, you want to stop just before it actually fits down the abutment – the fingers can have a little bit of spring into the sides. Once it gets in suitably far, leave it up tight against the abutments and mark the stock so you can cut out fingers.
This has to be done without the iron in because there is no mortise for the other side of the cap iron where the top of the screw goes through.

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[David Weaver]

Here’s the fingers drawn on. I didn’t measure where I terminated the fingers, but you have two lines to think about. The one that’s drawn here where all of the waste removed , and then another one up about an inch and a half where you taper the wedge material to full thickness. It’ll make sense in pictures.

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Remove waste to this first line.

Here’s the picture sense with the mathiesen. You can see how they choose to keep the abutments full thickness and then taper off at the triangle and that’s it. You can see the taper transition in the middle of the wedge. Notice also that they have fingers that meet the abutment but the bottom of the fingers are much wider to get a good surface on the cap iron.

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Back to our wedge, mark the underside of the wedge to make room for the top of the cap iron where the screw comes through.
Cut a mortise here with a gouge if you have one. I guess you could do this with a chisel or power tools, but it’s quick and easy with a gouge.

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It’ll look like this after cutting. Make sure the fingers can reach the apex of the cap iron before you’re done here, and make sure nothing bottoms out. Again, you need room laterally for lateral adjustment, too.

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First test fit – not bad. We want the wedge to go in further, though, so we’ll have to thin it. The work we are about to do is where keeping a nice straight abutment will pay off.

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[David Weaver]

Be sure for all of this fitting work that you have the iron and cap iron tightened together and set as if you were using the plane to smooth. If you don’t do that, you might end up with a terminal problem.

I plane the fingers carefully, and check the fit every few strokes. You do *not* want to have an overly thinned finger at bottom or you’ll have a shaving trap, and you don’t want it overly thin at the top of the plane, either. Sharpen your plane before you do this work and keep the shavings light. You may have a tendency to plane off the end of a finger or under do it, observe what you’re doing and make corrections as needed. The sharper your plane is, the less chance you’ll have to bear down on it and flex a finger to plane.

I do this alternating between planing a few stroke and checking the fit until the iron is in as far as I’d like it to be. Tap the wedge firm at this point (as if you were setting the plane) and mark the wedge fingers.

By this process, I get to here.

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Mark the fingers and then pare to the marked line. You don’t have to remove all of it if you’re feeling cautious, this fit has to be decent but the wedge fingers can stand just proud of the abutments and still work fine.

Take care to make sure the underside of the fingers is supported or they will break out at the end, which is a toxic no-no.

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I have a decent fit now, just out of curiosity, I’d like to check the mouth.

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This shows just how fat the plane is.
Chisel or file or float the taper into the top of the wedge. Mind your lines. Everything after that point is cosmetic, so I didn’t take many pictures of it.
If your mortise on the bottom side of the wedge is irregular, you’ll see a half circle shape that doesn’t look too great appear as you’re doing the tapering of the wedge. Just take a round file (or coarse sandpaper on a pencil) and make it the shape you want by working perpendicular to the length of the wedge.
I like to clip the corners off of my wedges and file some facets onto the wedge. Don’t get carried away with any of that, though, you still need a fat flat surface at the top of the wedge to strike with a mallet.

[David Weaver]

It’s time to get a test shaving. If you’re irons not sharp or finished, do that. If you did all of the following:
· Got a good fit at the abutments with the wedge at the top and bottom of the abutments
· Bedded the iron properly
· Trimmed the wedge fingers fairly close to the abutment width
· Eliminated any interfering bits and pieces around the mouth

Then the test shaving should be a formality.
In this case it is. Heavy shavings with a Washita-sharpened edge yield something like this:
Nice bright finish on cherry. The shavings shown are just under 5 thousandths.

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This is inexpensive cherry. It’s not really dense and it’s very dull when scraped and extremely dull when sanded.
These shavings are straightened out because the cap iron is set close and they are thick.
Check the plane with full width shavings, the feed problems often will be at the corners. You can add camber to your iron later if you want.
Then check straight and shavings askew, and check with fine and coarse shavings. The only problem I have with a feed is with the plane very askew in an exaggerated way. I don’t ever use a smoother like that, so it’s not something I’m going to bother with. Skewed 30 degrees or whatever there is no problem with feed, and even when there is a bunch up, one through shaving pushes the backup right out (no need to take the plane apart).

You want the plane to feed in such a way that you never have to take it apart.
Thinner shavings. They don’t look that thin, so I laid one over a caliper box to show that they’re not as thick as the camera flash makes them appear to be. I don’t work with shavings that thin, but the really wispy shavings often cause feeding problems when thicker ones do not, so it’s good to try them.

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This plane is a joy to use. Despite some of the cosmetics, I’m pleased with it.

It weighs 3 pounds 6 ounces, just a few ounces above what I think is ideal for a 2” smoother, and this one is 2 ¼”, almost as wide as a 4 ½ Stanley, but not as heavy.
After some oil and wax, this is the final coloration. Notice how dark the front and the back end are – I cut those only to square them, they are otherwise the end of my turning blank. That’s just what happens when you’ve got limited stock.

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Final thought given all of the moaning and groaning. I could’ve gotten away from all of the design issues if I’d have done two things:
1) Looked a little closer at my English planes before cutting this thing up
2) Drawn patterns with the escapement and side mortises below the escapements (or whatever you’d call them) shown so that I could lay out the proportions I actually wanted. I didn’t do that. It would’ve resulted in a prettier plane. You can do it when you make yours if you want a better result. It’s less about the escapement and the abutments, etc, in this plane, those are a given, but more about where the outside of the plane was cut on the bandsaw.

[Brian Holcombe]

Looks fantastic, and that is a gorgeous finish on the cherry board with a 5 thou shaving.