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Thread: Wood plane blade/iron types and adjustment

  1. #1
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    Wood plane blade/iron types and adjustment

    I have a challenge I am facing with some planes I made and am in the process of improving. I made these planes from parts I bought from Steve Knight just before he closed up his plane making shop. I have a good supply of Steve's old blades but many of the 2" irons are not tall enough for use in the planes I have. That is, the blades barely protrude above the top of the plane body leaving little or no room, once a wedge is added, to adjust the iron with a hammer.

    I have noticed that some plane builders add a recess in the mortise for the blade that will accommodate the screw head in a cap iron. Any reason this feature can/should not be added to a wood plane originally designed for a thick solid blade? Other than less wood surface for the wedge to clamp the blade to I don't see one. I realize the wedge may need to be modified or a new one made. I also realize that the bevel on the plane blade needs to be at a compatible/usable angle.

    I also have a couple wood planes I bought from a Creeker that were made by Steve Knight. These planes have 2 3/8+" wide mouths but use 2" blades. The plane blades are restricted from moving side to side by a set screw in each side of the planes body. Another feature I am thinking about adding to my planes. Might I be able to design wood planes that could use a variety of blade types?

  2. #2
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    Sounds like you are well on your way and pretty much answering your questions your self.
    I will enjoy seeing what all you come up with. Partly because, and this will put me down another peg here in the Creek, but I don't know much about Steve Knight and his planes so I will learn some things right off.

    As far as the short blades needing to be longer I immediately pictured in my mind attaching extensions to those blades if you really want to use them in the planes you mentioned.

    If you make up some mild steel extenders it wouldn't take much to "tack weld" them on. Especially with a TIG welder. Some one who knows what they are doing could make three or four tacks (spots about the size of a pencil eraser head or even smaller) and they would be on there for ever and would not warp the blades, for sure, and it would be child's play to remove the tacks if you ever wanted to revert back to the original length.

    For example I wanted a metric square like the one in the photo but I couldn't find one so I bought a couple of thinnish stainless steel rulers and made a square. I intentionally made it as you see it so I could simply pean the tack welds and very precisely correct the square for out of squareness. It came out sweet and has held up for decades.

    I put one tack on each side to balance the stresses so it would stay flat.

    If I wanted to separate them again I could by lightly touching the spots with a tinny abrasive wheel to score them and crack them apart. If I wanted to get all crazy I could build up the blemished edges with more weld and grind and hone them to near original condition with no pitting. I love TIG welders.

    There should be quite a few one man fabricators in most towns that would be wiling to do this for you. I know my friend Ken or I would have been glad to do it when we had our shop. Ask a sports car mechanic or motorcycle mechanic where to find one.

    PS: the dime gives the illusion in the photo that the edge is curved but the square is within ten thou square and straight and plenty flat enough.
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    Last edited by Winton Applegate; 07-16-2014 at 11:45 PM.
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  3. #3
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    Mike,

    Sounds like your planes are fairly tall. Any reason you couldn't cut them down a bit - at least in the middle where the iron/wedge rises out of the body - and create more space for adjustments? Maybe cut off the wedge a bit, too. How high is your cross pin?

    If you are thinking of switching to a double iron just to get something taller, perhaps you might want to look at single Hocks or the wooden plane irons from LV. Besides the obvious need for a mortise in the bed with a double iron, you will make the mouth opening a fair bit larger. Your wedge will likely still work but may need to be shortened at the thin end.

    What would be the advantage to being able to switch iron widths in a plane? Mostly, we adapt to different uses by varying the length of the plane and maybe the mouth opening. I can see switching between straight and cambered irons (or even to a scrub iron). But you can do that with irons of all the same width. But something smoother-length won't function well in a jointer capacity.

  4. #4
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    I've had the same problem, with modified Gordon planes that have an even steeper bed angle.

    I'm attempting to ad "saddles" behind the blades of my planes as designed by Yeung Chan.

    Handplane saddle.jpg

    Ron Hock posted a video on his site addressing this with Isaac Fisher in front of the camera.
    His later plane designs show clearance abaft the blade to allow space for a hammer.

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    I do not know WHY some makers made such short plane irons. Or,HOW you are supposed to use them at all after they get worn and resharpened till they are GROSSLY too short. This includes Krenov planes. I'm sure all the Krenov devotees will take offense,but his irons are just TOO SHORT. Spend a nickel more. Make the irons decently long. It will also give you something to hang on to when honing them. I don't want to start out with a plane iron that peeks out 1/2" under the wedge. They DO get shorter when you re grind them.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    Or,HOW you are supposed to use them at all after they get worn and resharpened till they are GROSSLY too short. This includes Krenov planes.
    I think most of the people making and buying those planes won't use them enough to find out that it's an issue. I'll bet there are hundreds or thousands of them out there with very little wear on them.

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    The plane bodies I have from Steve Knight may not be what people are use to. Steve had a CNC router that he was making his living with at the time. He routed the plane patterns into the edge of 8/4 boards for me. Purple heart boards that Steve suggested and I bought from his local supplier. I glued the two boards together to make the plane bodies. Then, of course, I had to finish the surfaces, particular those supporting the plane irons. Steve routed out four sets of boards for four planes for me. The longest is a 26" jointer, followed by a 15 1/2" jack/fore plane, and two smoothers. One smoother has a normal blade angle and the other has a high blade angle. Steve routed out a few totes for me with the remains of the purple heart. Steve was out of tote stock at that time. I believe Steve did make some thinner, more like Japanese Kanna bodies, maybe the short blades were for those thinner bodied planes?

    All four of these planes have sliding pieces of IPE? wood in recesses at the mouths of the planes. These function as adjustable & replaceable mouths. The jointer and Jack planes have recesses cut into the rear end of the plane bodies for totes. The smooth planes are not long enough for totes. I put the parts together and made wedges years ago. Now I am making some changes to the very basic, square plane patterns...
    Last edited by Mike Holbrook; 07-17-2014 at 12:43 PM.

  8. #8
    I had one of steve's planes. They're a little fast and loose in the wedge and mouth area (if someone is used to a very tightly made - laterally I mean - vintage plane), but they were generally finished when you got them and he sure didn't charge much.

    Once he was really into making kits, I think he was tired of making planes. I got a kit that someone else had bought, and it didn't line up to well, and shortly after, steve shut it down. I don't know where he got his O1 irons, but the are some of the finest-made O1 irons that I have ever used, they just aren't in a proportion that I use any longer. He managed to get irons hard without them being too brittle and they wore well.

    At one point, he was trying to get japanese blades in a proportion similar to that of his normal plane blades, but I had a discussion with him about them and he said the maker just really wasn't that interested in making them to his specs and it made it hard for him to keep them in stock.

    He had the bug to make planes more than the bug to work over customers, and it was nice while he was around making stuff.

  9. #9
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    Ooooooooo . . . purpleheart planes. I think I could do with out those. If the purple heart is like the stuff I have.
    I mean part of the advantage of my purple heart bench is that it very faintly "oozes" a sap with a light tac to it.
    the work doesn't slide around as bad as on a "normal" work bench. I like that.
    But
    if your purple heart is like my purple heart then keep the plane waxing stuff near by; lots of drag on the sole of the planes.
    Sharpening is Facetating.
    Good enough is good enough
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    Better is Better.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    I do not know WHY some makers made such short plane irons.
    You won't be the last to mention this, either.
    It makes no sense to me, and I hardly know which way is up.

    When the irons are that short, I'm just as likely to adjust my thumb with a hammer.

  11. #11
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    Building them was enough woodworking to satisfy their owners?

    - OR - they never worked as well as a middlin #4 in the first place?

    There's some alchemy to woodies that I can't puzzle through.
    My Gordon planes worked the first, and every time.

    The smoothers I have tried to rehabilitate are hopeless.

    I built one of the Hock block plane kits and the wedge won't hold the iron still.

    If all the shop time a hobbyist has gets wasted making a tool that never works well, it's a dream killer.

  12. #12
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    I wrote follow ups to this thread at least twice but lost them to some horizontal scrolling feature that I have yet to figure out. I think I have it turned off now though and I have a different mouse too.

    My experience building wood planes would tend to verify Jim's consternation over some of the detail work necessary to get them working properly. It seemed to me that the area supporting the iron and how it matches to the corresponding wedge could be very exacting. I actually did not find the work objectionable just exacting. It takes me a good while to make a wedge that holds an iron properly. I found I needed to carefully customize my wedges with careful rasp and sandpaper work to get the fit I wanted/needed.

    Although I have found purple heart to be very hard for most tools to cut, I found Iwasaki rasps to work well although not very quickly. The combination of hardness and stability in this wood is what I believe Steve found attractive about it for plane bodies. Even my 26"x 1 3/4" jointer plane body has remained stable, suffering almost none of the warping or cracking that I find in many wood plane bodies. None of the wood I have used has shown any cracks. The small issue I have with the wood is it has a tendency to chip if roughly worked.

    I have two planes Steve made for fellow Creeker Tom Vanzant. These planes are very different than the ones I made from Steve's kit parts. Both planes have tall, heavy Razee bodies, made from Cocobollo. They use a strange wooden insert in the mouths of the planes. The insert is sort of like a wedge on the wrong end of the opening for the blade & wedge. It appears that these inserts would need to be physically altered to change the size of the planes mouth. They do provide an easy way to replace the wood next. Steve also cut the corners off the plane blades. I will try and post pictures later.
    Last edited by Mike Holbrook; 07-21-2014 at 2:41 AM.

  13. #13
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    Mike,
    Are you using a Mac ?
    The latest operating system has been driving me a bit nuts with a similar horizontal feature.
    It would help if I read the destructions. I usually am a manual reading hound but have not for this update.
    Mouse . . . do people still use those ?
    anyway . . .
    with my track pad (Bob I love my track pad I waited on the edge of my seat for a couple of years trying to will them to make this puppy)
    if I swipe side ways with three fingers it changes desk tops (I have four desk tops I work from right now; one for photos, one for work with text, one for music and one for surfing the internet) . . . and if I use a four finger swipe I stay in the same desk top but go to a previous "tab" / website.

    On the iPad I get into all kinds of trouble loosing stuff but only in this forum so I have just learned to brows from there and post from the larger machine.
    Sharpening is Facetating.
    Good enough is good enough
    But
    Better is Better.

  14. #14
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    Good guess Winton. We must be dealing with the same feature/bug. Yes, I use a mouse. You must not play games. I din't play games much but I have come to like all the programable buttons on gaming mice. I can adjust my mouse so my hand is in a very relaxed posture and does not rub the desk when I use the mouse. I have multiple DPI settings, vertical & horizontal scrolling, paging buttons...

    We have a track pad on the iMac we use for our business. I find myself getting confused switching between the iphone, iPad and iMacs sometimes too.
    Last edited by Mike Holbrook; 07-21-2014 at 2:53 AM.

  15. #15
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    You must not play games.
    Not a one ever.
    I must be wrong because so many love the games but for me it is hours and hours spent for no new skill or progress in my current ones.
    Don't give me the "hand to eye" argument or I will give you T'ai Chi which actually does improve hand to eye coordination to quite an astonishing degree.
    For me, one hand while sitting on my butt is not coordination.
    How ever
    I watched me some Red vs Blue episodes and enjoyed those guys immensely.
    Ha, ha,

    I got to say it . . . "I am happy to say I haven't washed any mouse balls in years".
    I couldn't pass up saying that.
    The one at work is due.
    Fiddly fart around with the little roller wheelies in side.
    Nah dude, nah. I have seen the last of that for the Winster.

    But then what do I know ? I don't even power grind my plane blades unless some thing disastrous happens or I am making a new blade (rare . . . extremely rare).
    Sharpening is Facetating.
    Good enough is good enough
    But
    Better is Better.

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