Cocobolo Smoother Build - #2

[george wilson]

It looks great,David. I think the eyes are fine. What I like to see in eyes is when their top edges are parallel with the outside edges of the plane(after they get flared out,of course). A coffin smoother's shape offers a nice opportunity to sculpt the eyes in this manner,and still have all the edges in nice,elliptical curves.

[David Weaver]

I think I said this already, but I'll summarize the tools I used:
* regular bench chisels
* two paring chisels (for the bevels and a narrow chisel to clean up in the abutments and at other joints. Floats work nicely, but it's nice to let them do their thing and then clean out the corners with a paring chisel instead of trying to force them into corners
* The shop made push scraper
* a card scraper
* four planemaking floats - pull side float, push cheek float, bed float and edge float (the edge float could be omitted with a keyhole type saw like steve voigt mentioned). If you have nice working wood like beech, you could omit the floats entirely and just use chisels.
* bandsaw - but only to cut the profile, and I did square up the block at the beginning with an old chop saw - those were the only power tool uses and they could've been done without power tools.
* a marking knife or sharp pocket knife to scrape areas, like to clean up the eyes after cutting them across the grain with a gouge
* two gouges - I use the inexpensive japanese gouges that come in a set of 6. They work really well and are about $20-$25 each, IIRC and they give you a decent set of standard gouges to work with for junk like this if you're not necessarily going to be a carver matching sweeps.
* I used some mill bastard files to to drawfile surfaces on the plane, and since steve voigt mentioned the nicholson shear cut file, I used that for all of the surface finish on the plane, except the end grain. It did well on the sides and top, though.
* a sanding lap to get the bottom in plane quickly (you can flatten the bottom anywhere on a short plane like this, though), but scrape out the sanding lap marks on the bottom to remove any trash and to get to good solid wood. This is a good quick

I think the only things people won't have in their shops are the floats, maybe paring chisels (which aren't necessary, bench chisels could be used), and the nicholson milled tooth files (which also aren't necessary - you can sand if you want, I just don't love the look of a sanded surface).

If someone doesn't have gouges, that can be worked around, too, by cutting with a cheap round metal file and then sanding.

I personally think the plane floats are worth the average person having, they can be sold later, and they can be sharpened with the xx slim 6" files at the borg, mexican or otherwise sharpens them fine. The fact that they have lie nielsen written on them means that you might be money ahead buying them if you plan to sell them because getting people to buy a hand filed float might be difficult, and making one will probably cost at least $10 in files.

[David Weaver]

It looks great,David. I think the eyes are fine. What I like to see in eyes is when their top edges are parallel with the outside edges of the plane(after they get flared out,of course). A coffin smoother's shape offers a nice opportunity to sculpt the eyes in this manner,and still have all the edges in nice,elliptical curves.

Thanks George. I had to thin the sides to get the eyes as small as they are and move them back, but that's OK - they were too fat and the sides didn't need to be that fat in the escapement. It's hard to see eyes and details in dark wood, but they have a slight curve on the bottom as per your point last time that elements that are curved should remain curved and not trade back and forth between curved parts and straight parts.

[David Weaver]

One last caveat that sticks in my head for a rookie, since I'm basically a rookie - this is the second double iron plane I've made, and only the third coffin smoother. The first was a single iron plane that I really didn't have anything good to copy, and it turned out OK, but was a real disappointment compared to planes I use well.

That caveat is, once you have your mouth opened up, when you float or chisel anything, do not let your floats travel from inside the plane to out of the mouth. You stand a chance of getting a long split ahead of the mouth that you won't get out unless you plane off a fair amount of the plane bottom.

If you're tempted to take a stroke or two from inside the plane to out through the mouth with a chisel, scraper or float don't do it!!!.

[David Weaver]

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

thanks Brian, that is precisely the benefit of a double iron and one of the reasons I push about it now. The plane is only washita sharp, the shavings thick, and for anyone dimensioning wood by hand, you can take those healthy through shavings off and essentially have a surface that can be finished. It might be a little less useful for someone taking off machine planer marks, but it's useful to me.

Moving up the ladder to something like a try plane, you can take shavings off full width a hundredth of an inch thick and get very little tearout regardless of grain direction. That's incredibly useful.

The double iron gets a lot of press in terms of smoothing, but it's cuts heaver than smoothing where it really shows its usefulness, protecting against tearout but allowing you the benefit of having a plane that's relatively easy to push and that will still leave a bright finish on softer woods.

[george wilson]

My sculpture teacher early on,told me to either make something round,or square,not square with half baked rounded off corners. The same applies to curves. Make them curved or straight. Don't mix the 2 unless it is just not possible to avoid it(and there are such instances). For example,the nice eyes on your New York plane with straight sides. Then,the eyes flow with the straight sides as they should. I have said that coffin smoothers offer the best aesthetic opportunity to design beautiful eyes.

[george wilson]

Ready to try one in solid black ebony? Very hard on cutting edges,hard on bandsaw blades,and chippy as all get out. Especially when it's over 60 years old.

[David Weaver]

Ready to try one in solid black ebony?

I don't think I could see marks in it!

I also don't think I'm at the point where I'm making a plane nice enough to blow through a $150-$200 chunk of wood.

I don't have any back lighting, just a little bit of overhead lighting. If I got the lighting out that I have that could be used as back lighting, I'd be too lazy to use it, anyway. That made seeing the marks in the cocobolo fairly difficult. The way it looks fuzzy (without necessarily tearing out) also makes it hard to see things like the bottom lines of the eyes. I guess a brush with mineral spirits would be useful, but I'm lazy, too.

[Steve Voigt]

Looks great, Dave. I'm impressed that it worked so well right out of the box, without a lot of fettling.
Any thoughts on the iron, now that you've had a chance to use it a little?

[Brian Holcombe]

thanks Brian, that is precisely the benefit of a double iron and one of the reasons I push about it now. The plane is only washita sharp, the shavings thick, and for anyone dimensioning wood by hand, you can take those healthy through shavings off and essentially have a surface that can be finished. It might be a little less useful for someone taking off machine planer marks, but it's useful to me.

Moving up the ladder to something like a try plane, you can take shavings off full width a hundredth of an inch thick and get very little tearout regardless of grain direction. That's incredibly useful.

The double iron gets a lot of press in terms of smoothing, but it's cuts heaver than smoothing where it really shows its usefulness, protecting against tearout but allowing you the benefit of having a plane that's relatively easy to push and that will still leave a bright finish on softer woods.

I've actually put this advice to work after you mentioned it in a prior thread (thanks for the tips, btw). I normally do not dimension by hand, but on two recent and rather large projects I did literally everything by hand short of cutting the slabs, and the wood to start was 12/4 so in many cases the dimensioning was significant. It is very helpful in that scenario to use a heavy cut for the bulk of the work. Where I put it to use most often was on my jointer plane, where a heavy cut and a good finish is leaving very little work for the smoother to do. It's not always feasible to cut the lumber with a saw, so in those scenarios it's great to be able to set the plane for a large cut and get to where you want to be quickly.

[Brian Holcombe]

I don't think I could see marks in it!

I also don't think I'm at the point where I'm making a plane nice enough to blow through a $150-$200 chunk of wood.

I don't have any back lighting, just a little bit of overhead lighting. If I got the lighting out that I have that could be used as back lighting, I'd be too lazy to use it, anyway. That made seeing the marks in the cocobolo fairly difficult. The way it looks fuzzy (without necessarily tearing out) also makes it hard to see things like the bottom lines of the eyes. I guess a brush with mineral spirits would be useful, but I'm lazy, too.

I am in the same situation with overhead lighting only, and found myself contemplating a surgeons lamp the other day shortly after marking some dovetails while holding a flashlight to see the line. However, after coming to my senses (sort of) I think I've settled on an articulating floor lamp attached to a low roller dolly.

[Derek Cohen]

Nice work Dave! Excellent result. I have been following the build with much interest. Great looking plane (I really like the eyes, and indeed the whole aesthetic) and it looks like it is performing as well as you hoped it would - could one ask for more?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[David Weaver]

Looks great, Dave. I'm impressed that it worked so well right out of the box, without a lot of fettling.
Any thoughts on the iron, now that you've had a chance to use it a little?

Thanks steve. I guess some luck must've been involved. I check the fit as I worked the abutments until the wedge goes from not engaged to tight pretty quickly (which I think only happens when it beds pretty uniformly). I also was much more attentive to fuzz and junk down at the wedge fingers and pared it all cleanly before trying anything. I have never been as careful before test as this, and never as attentive to the fit of the chipbreaker against the sides before.

But there could be a lot of luck involved, too. Making a shim and using it to create both the wedge and mark the abutments helped a lot, too - it was pretty close other than thickness of the prongs on the wedge needing to come down almost uniformly from front to back. I either don't have books about this stuff or never paid much attention, so the fact that you mentioned a spacer is what brought all of that up on this attempt.

The iron is typical english or vintage US kind of hardness. It's hard enough, but not overly hard. Rolls up a wire edge on the washita fairly nicely (one that comes off on a leather strop without issue), but has good toughness and seems to wear evenly (i planed with it more today).

In the past, I've had one or two that were a bit chippy, but not enough to warrant testing them ahead of time.

[David Weaver]

Nice work Dave! Excellent result. I have been following the build with much interest. Great looking plane (I really like the eyes, and indeed the whole aesthetic) and it looks like it is performing as well as you hoped it would - could one ask for more?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks for the nice comments, Derek. As a hobbyist, and not one with dozens of years of experience, one can't expect a whole lot more, I guess!

[Kees Heiden]

My compliments too! Damned nice work (for a rookie ). I've got one last request. Do you have some pictures from the wedge alone? I am not quite sure how you finished the tips exactly.

This thread is about as good as it gets. The amount of information is terific, nowhere is a double iron woodie explained as thourougly as here.
You've wetted my apetite to give it a go too (but it'll be next winter until my workshop is back in order again).