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.
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