Shop Made Moving Fillister Plane

[Mike Allen1010]

I’m interested in learning how to “shoot” moldings using hollows and round molding planes. One of my biggest struggles has been getting straight, square rabbits to guide the H&R’s.
I find rabbit planes to be some of the most difficult for me to set up correctly. I struggle aligning the knicker, edge of the blade and sole so I get clean corners. When trying to make moldings It seems I spend more time making the rabbits then I do actually making the curved molding profiles.

In an effort to improve my efficiency I made this 14”rabbit plane out of cherry using a replacement iron from the similar Lee Valley plane. The 14” sole is longer than my other rabbit plane and I hoped that would help give me more consistent results.




I’m not much of a plane maker, I’d much rather get one from a professional like Steve Voigt who actually knows what he’s doing. The few planes I’ve built previously were laminated construction. This time I took the plunge and made this one from a single billet. Chopping the bed mortice took forever and it’s not really very flat/straight. By the time I got done the cheeks were too thin to use abutments to hold the wedge, so I used a brass rod with a wooden cross piece attached to add a little more surface area. The brass wear plate is left over from a saw back.


Initially I added the knickers directly to the body of the plane. However that didn’t work very well when I tried to start a rabbit using a marking gauge line – the nicker followed the grain and made it tough to get a straight edge.





I added an adjustable knicker and a cocobolo wear strip in the corner, which worked better.






Eventually I decided to just add an adjustable, removable fence so I could do away with the marking gauge line as a first step.

[Mike Allen1010]

Here are the pieces disassembled the fence bolts to the body using threaded inserts so I can remove it and use both sides of the plane for reversing grain. In reality, I don’t have much luck pushing a plane with my left hand, but at least it’s an option.









The mouth isn’t very tight which lets me take fairly thick, aggressive shavings.







I was shocked to discover the plane actually works pretty well!






I guess even the blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn.

All the best, Mike

[Christopher Charles]

Well done, Mike! Will look forward to seeing it in action on your next project.

Best,
Chris

[Phil Mueller]

I guess we're all our own worst critics, but wow, I'd say you did well. It looks great to me, and it works, so you have the right to be proud! I'll bet it becomes one of your favorite tools.

[Don Emmerling]

I am envious, to say the least.

[Jim Koepke]

Great job.

It has taken me a lot of practice to get a good rabbet. Often some of my other planes come in and clean up the mess.

Making moldings can be fun.

jtk

[mike holden]

I like that! Well done!

[James Waldron]

Very nice - and very effective.

Do you plan to add a depth stop? Not essential, of course, but a common addition to moving filister planes.

[Don Slaughter]

You never cease to AMAZE, Mike. What an inspiration you are. Very nicely done.

[Robert Engel]

Has anyone built a dovetail plane? I tried to make one out of a wood skew rabbet plane didn't work out too well.

[Blake M Williams]

That plane looks awesome! Was this the first try or did you have some trial and error? I bought a DVD recently on making laminated planes, and have been itching to make my first plane. Great job! Looking forward to your next one.

[Mike Allen1010]

Very nice - and very effective.

Do you plan to add a depth stop? Not essential, of course, but a common addition to moving filister planes.

Thanks James for the suggestion, that's a great idea.I'll consider how I might be able to add some kind of depth stop that is a little longer than typical so I can get a more consistent depth along the entire length of the plane's sole.

Best, Mike

[Mike Allen1010]

That plane looks awesome! Was this the first try or did you have some trial and error? I bought a DVD recently on making laminated planes, and have been itching to make my first plane. Great job! Looking forward to your next one.

Thanks Blake. This isn't my first plane, I've built several others using laminated construction. This was my first plane with a solid body from a single billet. I appreciate purists/experts tend to favor the solid body planes, but for me these are much more difficult to execute well as compared to laminated construction.

As I mentioned, I'm not much of a plane maker and my first couple attempts consumed a lot of time/effort and didn't work very well. Personally, Based on the return on investment of time/effort, I would rather spend the money to buy a plane built by someone who really knows what they're doing. I'm really more interested in woodworking, rather than tool making.

When I have built my own planes, I've had my best results with laminated construction, particularly for finishing smoothers where my experience is tolerances for mouth opening and rock solid iron beds seem to make a real difference. With laminated construction it's a lot easier for me to get the bed perfectly flat and also get a consistent fit for the wedge with the abutments, which is my preferred method for getting a solid wedge/iron/bed fit, as compared to the brass rod I used in this plane.

All that said, I would really encourage you to build your own plane. At the very least, it will give you an appreciation of what professionally built planes offer in terms of performance, and at the best,You'll end up with something that works well for you.

When I started building my own tools, I used to obsess over achieving a high level of precision. Over time my experiences is your hands and eyes can provide a level of precision more than sufficient to build a usable tool. Don't sweat the details and give it a shot!

Cheers, Mike

[James Waldron]

Thanks James for the suggestion, that's a great idea.I'll consider how I might be able to add some kind of depth stop that is a little longer than typical so I can get a more consistent depth along the entire length of the plane's sole.

Best, Mike

Pics when you do, pretty please. I'm very interested in the idea of longer depth stops. My Record 778 drives me nuts because of the short depth stop - and that too far forward of the blade to be easy.