Dave Weaver's recent threads on his cocobolo smoothers motivated me to get cracking on a plane I've been planning. I made a little smoother last year (also cocobolo, with a 1 1/4" iron) that is just about my favorite plane, so I want to make a slightly larger brother. I have a 1 3/4" vintage Buck double iron that I bought at PATINA for $10, and a dry block of goncalo alves that I'm anxious to use, so I might as well do it.
I'm not going to do anything like an exhaustive thread; it's completely unnecessary at this point. I'll just show a few progress pics along the way. Some of my methods are different than Dave's, so that might be slightly interesting to some.
To start, here's the basic geometry I'm planning.
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It's a little confusing to look at because of the way the lines extend. The important thing is to look at the only vertical line--that's the wear. I'm making this one 90°. The line that intersects the wear from the right determines how tall the wear is (about 1/2"). The line that intersects it from the left is for the abutments. To make the abutments properly--which is what Dave, Kees, and I have been talking about over 3 or 4 threads for the past couple months--they have to terminate in the middle of the wear.
After I lay out one side, I transfer my lines across both top and bottom with a square, then mark the other side. Then I cut the mortise. For the finish cuts, I like to use a guide--just a piece of scrap with the correct angle cut on one end.
Anyway, here's the mortise chopped out.
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The goncalo alves looks very nice, particularly on the tangential plane, and it chops much more easily than cocobolo or jatoba (the nastiest wood I've used in planes). I can see why planemakers like Phil Edwards use it so much.
Before making the saw cuts for the abutments, I decided to do a little side project and make a new abutment saw. In the past, I've used a repurposed drywall saw. It works, but I wanted to upgrade a little. I recently got a box of vintage compass saw blades, 14" long and .060 thick, perfect for what I want. The blades come with an obscene amount of set, so I squeezed them in a vise, then jointed the teeth down to little nubs, and finally flattened both sides on some sandpaper. I cut the blade down a little so I'd have 7" of teeth. Last, I sharpened it and made a simple handle.
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Why go to the trouble of making a saw (besides that I like to make tools)? I think it will make sense after you see the cuts.
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Here you can see the cuts for (left to right) the bed, the abutments, and the front ramp. The bed is just a through-cut, 1/4" deep. The front ramp is also a through cut, but angled; it's 1/4" deep at the top and zero at the bottom.
The tricky cut is the abutments. It's a stopped cut, and the closer you can get to full depth at the bottom, the better. With the thick .060 blade and the saw filed for a push cut, you can really get aggressive, lead with the front tooth, and cut to the proper depth. A floppy japanese flush saw won't do this. If I didn't have this saw, the next best tool is an edge float.
I use a spacer block to make the cut for the abutments. I spray a little Spray 77 on it and stick it to the bed. It pops off easily with a mallet and the glue comes right off with mineral spirits.
Oh by the way, the homemade saw works like a dream. And yes, that is an ugly stray chisel divot on the left side. It may come out later; if not, I'll live with it. Bummer though.
The next thing is to knock out the waste, chisel everything as smoothly as possible, then finish up with floats. If you don't want to buy or make floats, you can use small vixen files, which can be found for less than $10 on the bay, or you can even cut wooden wedges to size and glue on some sandpaper.
Here's the last pic for today.
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This shows my favorite technique for fitting the abutments. Take a piece of 1/4" scrap and make a wedge of the proper angle (mine is 10°). The first thing obviously is to make sure that the angle is correct. Once you're done with one side, make a pencil mark flush at the top of the plane. Then work the other side. If you look closely, you can see the pencil mark is about a 32nd high, so I've got a little more to do. You can match the two sides to a pretty phenomenal degree of accuracy this way.
Just below the bottom of the wedge, you can see I've trimmed the abutment so that it intersects nicely with the top of the wear. It's an awfully small thing to make such a big deal out of, but it is so much cleaner than any other way of doing this. I never saw this detail until Dave started showing pictures of some of his vintage planes.
More in a day or two, hopefully.