Beech Jointer Build

[David Weaver]

I might be too lazy at this point. Once I make the jack to go along with these, I'll do all three at once if I do that. I can't draw the lines I want to do with MS paint, I tried, so I'll either have to take a picture and print it on paper and draw the adjustments on that or just make a handle out of something soft like pine and adjust it to get an idea of what would look nice.

[george wilson]

Come on,David. If a tired out old geezer like me can do it,you can. Of course I do not have a small child and a baby to help the wife keep up with. And,you do work long hours.

[David Weaver]

Part of the reason for the laziness is that these are going to be planes that get beat up. The one I just made here already has 4 dents in it, just from horsing it around last night to get it flat and feeding properly. I'd like to unload most of my unused tools and use these hard. It's such a pain to ship stuff, though! Easier to buy the stuff than it is to sell it.

I might make more planes after these first three if I can get more beech, though. i've been getting more irons. If I do, I will try to do a better job on the aesthetics, whereas the aesthetics on these are pretty workman-like.

I still have two or three infills to build, but they take orders of magnitude longer (and you're obligated to do neater work to make them worth the time), so they're on the back burner.

[David Weaver]

One last update-after a 2 day soak with linseed oil in the mortise of the plane, the weight increased 8 ounces and the plane is now a little over 7 1/2 pounds.
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I made one mistake soaking it, which was that I gave it an all over coat of blo before deciding I'd give it a soak, and that probably created a vapor lock.

7 1/2 is a good weight, so it doesn't make much of a difference.

[Stewie Simpson]

Nice work David. I'm with George on this one. I doubt the screw to secure the tote seat is original. More likely the original glue joint failed at some stage and a quick fix was required. I see you were using oil to highlight any high spots on the blade bed. I found stick chalk works very well as a marking agent. If the chalk wont hold properly to the bare metal surface of the plane iron, a layer of masking tape over the metal surface before chalking will do the trick.

I am currently making a batch of 4 traditional box chamfer planes, and used the chalking technique to flatten the 4 sides of the depth stop mortise.





Stewie;

[David Weaver]

Yep, oil is my favorite. I've tried a lot of different things, but oil is always nearby, you can put a very thin coat on and be really precise, and if it gets on the plane, the whole thing is going to get oil later, so it doesn't cause problems that way.

(welcome back to the board, btw).

[Pat Barry]

One last update-after a 2 day soak with linseed oil in the mortise of the plane, the weight increased 8 ounces and the plane is now a little over 7 1/2 pounds.
P
I made one mistake soaking it, which was that I gave it an all over coat of blo before deciding I'd give it a soak, and that probably created a vapor lock.

7 1/2 is a good weight, so it doesn't make much of a difference.

Hi David, might have missed the point here. Why just impregnate the mouth of the plane with oil? WHy not just put the entire thing into a bath for a day or two and then pull it out, wipe it dry, and let it sit for a couple days?

[David Weaver]

You can, but if you plug the mortise, the oil will literally go from end to end on the plane, and I just glued in my handle, so I didn't want to soak the whole thing. I kept the oil in the bottom half of the plane for the most part, but in this plane's case, it's sap on the lower part and heart above. The sap is a bit more dry and really absorbs the oil, so keeping it on the lower half of the plane after the first dose was probably good policy. It was that way on the ends, too - the oil wicked right into the sap, literally disappeared as you wiped it onto the wood, but the heart didn't take much in.

Plus, I guess, I don't have enough raw linseed oil to give it a bath either (and I can't get it locally). If I did, sitting it in oil about an inch deep would've been a good way to go.

If I'd have been smart enough to not seal it with blo and then decide to oil it, I think I could've gotten the raw linseed oil to go from end to end on the bare wood (george has described really old dried out planes where that's occurred - the oil goes in through the mortise and literally gets to the end of the plane and appears there). Even as it is, it goes in pretty far through the wood to take on that much oil.

[David Weaver]

This detour is nearing its end.

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[Kees Heiden]

Is that yet another one?

[David Weaver]

Yes, I just have to mortise the handle and that'll be it. Jack, jointer, try plane and the Cocobolo coffin smoother from before.

I might have a line on some more beech, and if I do will probably make a few to sell at cost of materials.

They're fun to make.

I experimented with a tall wear on this planet, about half of the plane height because the other plane in the picture is made that way I kind of wish I'd have made all three that way.

[george wilson]

Is that a Kenyon iron? Many of the saws we reproduced were 18th. C. Kenyons,though the top of that iron is not hemispherical enough to be that early,unless it has been ground to a flatter curve to eliminate hammer damage.

I don't know how long Kenyon was in business.

[Kees Heiden]

The name Kenyon has been used for a very long time. I have a saw and a plane iron with the Kenyon name and they are defenitely 20 th century.

[David Weaver]

Yes, it's Kenyon, but not very old. It's not laminated, and feels like o1. They are still for sale sometimes on eBay for cheap, but you have to track down a cap iron.

[David Weaver]

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Almost done. The wet on the handle is just that, water, after gluing, and then wiping off excess.

The picture of the mouth with the iron is a bit misleading, it's not really that large - the iron is retracted a fair amount.

I need to flush the tenon on the front of the handle with the plane body, but the fit of the handle is tight enough that I didn't want to drive it all the way down to mark it and then take it back out. (and, of course, I need to put the brass screw through the tenon in the front, even It's not necessarily "correct")

You can make out the bits and pieces around the mouth where I need to get in there with paring chisels and clean up the corners and such just a little, but that's just cosmetic on an iron profile like this is. (and it looks like I have a little bit of float work to do on the front of the escapement - at least the picture would suggest so).

The one problem with a flash picture is it just washes all of the detail out of the pictures - the lines on the handle (these aren't quite that handsome, but they'll be functional (and I see I need to scrape some plane lines off of the face of the handle)). I took the picture close up because pictures not close up almost suggest there are no lines at the junction of the curves and flats.

And the last picture is the four double iron planes I've made. I'll use the three beech planes. As far as the coffin smoother goes, it's nice for a coffin smoother, but I like stanley 4s better.