Beech Jointer Build

[David Weaver]

I thought I'd put this in a separate thread, I changed my mind. There will be less talk about the mortise, wear, etc, it's all covered in the cocobolo smoother thread here.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...oother-Build-2

This beech is courtesty of Prashun generously offering up some good stuff. It's pretty close to QS (close enough), it's 4" wide and almost 6" tall, and 29" long. And whatever Prashun does where this wood is stored, it smells wonderful (I smell essential oil of tobacco in the wood or something of that sort, which for the uninitiated is not remotely similar to burning tobacco...)

I don't have a power jointer, this stick has a little bit of twist, I have to be careful and sparing because the jointer will finish slightly under 3 3/8 inches wide. The twist is nothing unexpected, beech moves a little when it dries, even when it's QS.

On the top of this stick, which you can't see, you could trace grain in the middle of the stick straight to the back and be pretty much in the middle. That's preferable. Grain can be a little diagonal, too, but straight is best for strength around the cheeks.
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Check the winding sticks..You can just barely make out the silver of the one on the far end. The wind is gone.
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That's about all I have time for in a night. two young kids who sleep over the shop and they go to sleep late - woodworking was eaiser before kids.

Some pictures of considerations:

There will be a sacrifice. I don't have a spare 2 1/2" iron and cap iron set that is not in a plane. I do have planes that are not worth as much as it would cost me to go out to ebay and get one, though. This is a plane marked "FM" with a nice I&H sorby iron that's got about 3/4ths of its life left. I'll never use it to the notch. This plane has a repaired handle, a not so fancy mortise, a lot of cracks, and on the opposite side of the plane, it's got a mouth plug. Prashun, I'd send it to you (so you could have a look at the mortise, bed, wear to get some measurements) but I don't think it's worth having to copy. It does feed well, though, it's a decent working plane.

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And the iron/cap iron:
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Fortunately, I&H sorby bears no relation to what robert sorby calls steel these days. This is one of the vintage crisp and dry feeling irons that raises a wire edge easily, wears evenly and lets go of the wire edge without tearing itself up.

Here are two planes I'm going to take considerations from. The front is a JT Brown of baltimore jointer, a lovely jointer to use, but limited by the fact that it's 50 degrees, single iron and the iron is a fast wearing butcher - something that would matter a lot less if it was sporting a cap iron. It is so nicely made, though, that I will never get rid of it.

The back plane is one of two I got from an MJD auction. I paid a MINT for those two planes ($185 with shipping) to find that martin couldn't be bothered to take a picture of the mouths. This one has been let open a little bit by a user a long time ago (it's tolerable, and the maker may have made it a bit too tight out of pride), and the other one just had a very large mouth to start. Both jointers will hit the road when I'm done with this jointer process. In spite of the mouth being let out a bit, this plane is nice to use, but I don't know what was done to it - it's over 10 pounds.

I like the handle on the JT brown jointer, it is just a superbly made plane all the way around (and almost 200 years old), with a super choice piece of beech, and a very tasteful handle with flat sides - the maker had the good sense to leave the sides faceted instead of just rounding them all off. I may copy this handle design. George had also provided a nice one, though this one would be a little bit easier (the aesthetics of what george provided are better, though).

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i realize that there are some who aren't going to get as excited about making an heirloom quality plane as I am, but with a stick of wood like this, the time it takes to make any plane, and the desire to do something nice, well...it's not going to be a throw away plane, a marginal performer or something looking full of shortcuts. I've made tools in the past that I wasn't that happy with, it turns into a waste of time.

Well, I'm going to make two of them actually, but we'll get through the first one first. UPS has a nicer stick yet of beech than this one (on its way to me), and the second one will be made from it. I'll give one of them away when I'm done, unless there's a fatal flaw with one.

[David Weaver]

Only a little work tonight. Thank goodness for bandsaws (though plane no 2, I will saw to size by hand, I feel a bit cheated)

Brought the stick closer to spec. with the flatsawn top and bottom - keep those, they'll be good wedge material because they should move the same amount as the plane body (in terms of how much they move laterally). A finished wedge is only about 5/8" thick. We will be precise about how the wedge fits - especially at the bottom of the abutments, so the closer the amount of movement is to the body, the better.

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I want the finish dimensions to be 28 long, 3 5/16 wide, and just a hair over 3" high, or right around there.

At this point, I can go just a tiny amount over the height (I don't have much fear over blowing it with the eyes, which is the only reason I'd keep the height overthick a little - you can get two shots at the eyes), or if you think you might do sloppy work and chip something out at the top of the mortise, if you leave yourself an extra eighth, that'll give you some room to clean it up. It also means extra work later, though, that I don't want.

I'll leave the plane a little wide because I want to cut the mortise and do the eyes to a pencil mark on the sides, but have some left over in case they get a bit wide. If I make the sides narrow right away and overshoot the eyes, they'll look uneven.

The stick itself - it is a really nice piece of wood. It will make a nice plane. I have to choose what is the front and what is the back based on the grain being higher in the front than the back. There's not much difference on this one, but in this picture if the front is at the left and the back at the right end of the stick, that'll be the best orientation.

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Like the cocobolo plane, I am using only a washita stone to sharpen. I did use the jasper on that plane to pare, but that was into the grain on cocobolo, just a bit too much for the level of sharpness a washita provides.

[Brian Holcombe]

Awesome. There is a beautiful quality to clear, straight grained, heavy lumber that I find irresistible. I think it is under appreciated in a world that admires wild grain.

[Jim Matthews]

I think it is under appreciated in a world that admires wild grain.

You need only struggle with interlocking grain a first time to gain this insight.
Scraping an entire kitchen's worth of Birdseye maple made me appreciate good veneer.

[Brian Holcombe]

Very true! I've been planing interlocking white oak and rock maple this week, so the 12/4 straight grained walnut I bought is looking really appealing to me right now. Every once in a while I stop and plane some straight grained white ash just to remember what it's like.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Looking forward to it. Thank you for taking the time.

[Prashun Patel]

Looking forward to this.
I forgot to warn you about the aroma of any wood coming from me. I store it in my warehouse at work. We blend fragrance oils here. Any wood I take home tends to 'offgas' for a couple days a faint powder/musk odor. Fortunately, you didn't find it distasteful.

[David Weaver]

Fortunately, you didn't find it distasteful.

The blend that the beech took on has quite a nice smell, made my garage smell lovely It could be by chance that the combination smells like essential oil of tobacco, and I know not everyone likes that smell, either, but I think it's a great smell (the users of tabac shave soap think the same, even though our wives tell us we smell like old men).

That fragrant smell is fighting the good fight against the diaper genie, which is kept nearby. Yesterday, the diaper genie was winning, unfortunately.

[Prashun Patel]

Fortunately we don't use Skatol any more, otherwise both the beech and the Genie would be rowing in the same, unfortunate direction.

[Jim Matthews]

... even though our wives tell us we smell like old men.

Is this observation made, on days when you have not shaven?
I believe the "old man smell" is brought on by the presence of things like diaper pails, and Transformers lunchboxes.

[Brian Holcombe]

I'll have to put a diffuser's worth of green irish tweed in the workshop in case I have guests.

[David Weaver]

I'll have to put a diffuser's worth of green irish tweed in the workshop in case I have guests.

I had to look it up to find out what that even is. I thought it might be something that you'd put on the outside of a suitcase, or that you'd make a hat out of!

[Brian Holcombe]

I had to look it up to find out what that even is. I thought it might be something that you'd put on the outside of a suitcase, or that you'd make a hat out of!

Hah, that it does. My wife hates it, dubbed it 'old man smell'.

[george wilson]

I have mentioned that my wife likes the way I smell when I use linseed oil. Strange!! She said it reminded her of the smell of her grand mother's closet. When she was a little girl,she'd go in there and set it up to be her "office",and pretend she was in business.

I have never cared to smell of linseed oil !! Especially when it gets old smelling.

[David Weaver]

Laying out the blank. The first thing I did was examine the ends and decide what I wanted to remove. One end of the stick has the tiniest little check, so with the spare inch on this billet, most will come off of that end.

I'm going to provide all of the measurements, and if anyone else wants to make a 28" jointer and is satisfied with the appearance of this, you can just do it.

Make sure before you do any of this, that your blank is straight and square. If it's not, you might have a couple of marking problems. I mark in this order.

* draw the back of the mouth 9.75" from the front
* draw the 45 degree bed line from the mouth at the bottom of the plane to the top of the plane. If you're not sure that you want to learn the cap iron but you have a double iron, better make this 50 - it'll still work well with the cap iron if you do.
* using the iron you will use with your plane, lay the iron on the bed line to get the minimum mouth and mark the front of the mouth with your iron's thickness. (You can mark an extra 16th if you want. I think it's important to get the mouth marked right, you'll work to it with chisels or a float, and if you work outside of your marks, you're sort of in no man's land. )
* from the front of the mouth mark, draw your wear on the side of the plane. Mine is 78 degrees. You can go closer to 90 degrees if you want a little more room for error. I wouldn't go much tighter on a double iron plane. My wear is 1" high. It's about that on all of the single iron planes I have.
* connect a 60 degree line from the top of the plane to the wear. I don't know what's typical. I have some less steep than 60 and some more.
* draw a center line on the top and bottom of the plane
* transfer the escapement and bed lines to the top of the plane and draw a box to be mortised around the center line 1/2" less than the width of your iron at the bottom (that gives you quarter inch abutments, which will look nice. ( I'm going to talk about the vintage irons in a separate post - it's important to the measurements. )
* find the width of the iron where it will sit at the top of the mortise. Add a fat 16th for lateral movement (you can do more if you want, but less looks better - it should only be a problem if your iron is ground way out of square). In this case, my top width at the bed is going to be 2.5" + a 16th, but I'm going to work just inside those pencil lines to give me a fat 16th of lateral movement.
* The distance between the back of the bed and the abutment at the top of the mortise will be 1 and 3/16 ths of an inch. Mark it on the top. If you are not using a double iron or vintage irons, you will need a different mark. please don't go to the trouble to make a plane like this and then insert a stanley iron and cap iron in the plane.
* turn the plane over to the bottom and mark the mouth width - it should be exactly the iron width. You don't want it to be any wider than just letting the iron through when you're done. If it's wide, you'll have lateral adjustment problems. I wrote myself a note to make sure I don't remove my lines completely, or I'll have lateral slop.

Pictures of what everything looks like - the side.

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The top of the plane
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The bottom / mouth area
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