Beech Jointer Build

[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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[David Weaver]

About the vintage irons:

the vintage irons are tapered in their thickness and they're also tapered in their width. In my case, the iron is a 16th narrower where it comes out of the mortise than it is at the business end, where it's about exactly 2.5". When I insert the iron, it still has to pass through the top of the mortise, so the top has to be at least 2.5" plus a little. That's just about perfect for an attractive setup at the top of the plane, and it will give me enough for lateral adjustment.

Keep that taper on the irons in mind when you mark the top of your mortise (as in, don't mark with the cutting edge at the top of your mortise), or you'll end up with a lot of lateral slop which looks ugly. If your iron tapers like mine, then going just a tiny bit wider than the width of the iron at the business end should work well.

Most of us are pikers (I am), but we can at least try to get the proportions and the gaps, etc to be visually pleasing, and be mindful of how the irons, etc, were designed to be used in a plane.

[David Weaver]

This looks familar:

I do this on the bottom of the mouth so the drill bit doesn't wander when I come along to drill it. I hate that - you get long lines that look like those dynamite holes in rock if your drill bit goes off course. Careful with the drilling, do it slowly, keep it out of the wear and out of the abutments.

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I guess you could drill first if you like. I don't like to. Cutting the mortise for the plane is one of the best parts of all of this - it gives you a lot of time to watch the wood get worked and ponder how to speed up cutting mortises in general. It takes about a half hour to get this much of a mortise cut. I'd like to see a "real" planemaker back in the day cutting these mortises.

I used an iyoroi chisel this time (a bench chisel), sharpened only with the washita - I gave it a small rounded bevel and it handled this fine (iyoroi chisels are a bit soft among japanese chisels, some others won't sharpen on a washita very well).
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something interesting happens when you sharpen these on a washita. The jigane (soft part) sort of refreshes the stone a little bit. These are wrought instead of mild steel or harder non-wrought, which helps sharpenability on a washita. they get sharper on the washita than any western chisel I have.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I'm starting to think a laminated plane is just as much work... just more messing around and less woodworking

[Kees Heiden]

I've once seen a Japanese video from a guy bashing out dai mortices at high speed. If someone knows where to find that one?
The planemakers fom yesterday were expected to complete about 5 bench planes a day! A long day perhaps, buts still, that's fast.

[David Weaver]

Mark Hennebury put up a video if hisao working in context, and he was using a 6 pound hammer to cut mortises in planes. The speed that he cut macassar ebony was shocking, though it looked subtle when he was doing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kae...ature=youtu.be (right at 1 hour - after he goes through his knuckle cracking routine)

There's a familiarity with what you can do when you have experience that I've never been able to...well...experience in woodworking.

[David Weaver]

I'm starting to think a laminated plane is just as much work... just more messing around and less woodworking

I think that's probably true to make one with decent aesthetics, though a beginner could make one without having to chisel anything.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

It takes about a half hour to get this much of a mortise cut. I'd like to see a "real" planemaker back in the day cutting these mortises.

I remember seeing a video of French or Swiss plane makers, they just had a big honking chisel, and most of the force came from leaning into the thing with their shoulder…

[Matthew N. Masail]

I remember seeing a video of French or Swiss plane makers, they just had a big honking chisel, and most of the force came from leaning into the thing with their shoulder…

I remember that, but the shoulder thing was for paring not chopping. looked like a aweful idea health wise, but what do I know.

[David Weaver]

After about two more hours, I'm here. The top of the mortise got a little wider than I wanted it *again*, and though I said something about the mouth, I have a stray couple of strokes there, too, laterally (I hate that).

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(at the bottom here). The bevel on the iron doesn't show up well, but it fairly even, that bottom overstroke is ugly, though. I remember thinking last time I did this that I'd open that little bit very last, but I didn't remember it until afterward.

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When you're an amateur, you're just constantly reminded of it.

I know i'm not doing things the way I did last time, because I don't really have a routine.

I'm going to mark the cut to open up the mortise in preparation for cutting the eyes, and at the same time, I think the width of the abutments (taper them). They don't need to be a full quarter inch wide down at the bottom.

The wide end of the escapement at the top on my planes is about a quarter inch wider than the back of the mortise. It makes nice proportions, I think, because it makes the sides look thin where the eyes are. The fatter the cheeks are left below the top of this line, the wider the eyes will be. If the cheek is left a bit convex inside, it's easy to cut the eyes with a little curve at the bottom. If those facets inside on the cheeks are flat like a pane of glass, then the eyes tend to have straight lines along their length.

Anyway, I marked the width of the plane in general, as well as where I want the chamfer to terminate (which gives me a visual guide to work the eyes to evenly when I cut them later.

A "good" maker would probably chisel these, I floated them to be safe (with a cheek float). The thing about the cheek float is that you can sort of move it diagonally, semi draw filing and get each side cut out in five minutes. I didn't know this before and I really sweated cutting straight on with the cocobolo plane. What came out of the float this time was like little spirals. Really nice.

If you buy floats or make them, give them a pass with the file often. If they are even mildly dull, they cut poorly. If they are sharp, they cut great.

It doesn't look like it here, but the front of the mortise is a quarter wider than the back. The back is a fat 2.5" and the front is 2 3/4"

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It's nice to work with a plane that has flat sides, compared to the coffin smoothers.

[David Weaver]

A couple of more hours, and the plane is working as a plane. This wedge has a terminal problem, though, it's a short 16th too narrow, I got in a hurry and that creates a trap. The mouth where it was was a bit tighter than it needed to be, too, so I widened it to about a 16th. A tight mouth on a plane like this is sort of like alloy wheels on a chevette.

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The eyes and stuff will make more sense once I plane the sides to width (the overall width of the plane will be trimmed to the first line and the chamfer from that will be made to the second. Next time, I won't leave this step, there is no risk in cutting the eyes in beech like there was in cocobolo, so no risk in needing to have room to take a second try (cocobolo breaks out and splinters and breaks out at the edges of the cuts sometimes.

This is my choice of handles, maybe with a slight change to the design in the front.

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[Brian Holcombe]

Coming along nicely!

[Charles Bjorgen]

David -- what does the term "Eyes" refer to in a wooden plane? You used this term in your cocobolo plane project. I should have asked at that time but did not. I'm guessing it refers to the abutments that keep the wedge in place. But maybe not...

[David Weaver]

Thanks Brian.

Charles, the eyes are the parts that are semi oval shaped at the top of the mortise. I trouble about them because they are not done very well on a lot of later planes, and if they aren't done right, they take away a lot as far as looks go, just like a funny handle would.

[David Weaver]

Eyes after thicknessing the sides and adding the bevel (the front and back will be beveled , and the back rounded, later).

I forced myself to use a single old millers falls iron that already had some use on it with, with the cap iron set close, to run the 1/8" approximate off of each side of the plane. It's surprising how long the old irons will cut when you push them.

They won't match new irons, but the fact that they will do as well as they do is something I couldn't grasp even a couple of years ago. The fact that the plane will continue to cut without doing damage because of the cap iron itself is helpful. Unlike the cherry, there will be no 1 hundredth thick shavings coming off of the beech at full width.

(yes george, the lower line of these eyes will get a little bit of correction as part of the cleanup before the plane is done. )

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