small plane

[harry strasil]

brain teaser.

[Mark Stutz]

Jr, your'e killin' me! I've looked at this for several minutes. I assume the two work together. Looks like a V groove in the larger piece, but also looks like a stop of some kind. This will probably be one of those ..."duh"(slap yor forehead at the same time) moments, but I can't figure it out.

[harry strasil]

Hint (dowels)

[Roy Wall]

so you make some passes till the plane "bottoms out".....rotate the wood a touch and repeat till you get a dowel.......????

[harry strasil]

Its called a Dowel Box, for planing dowels, trunnells, pegs and pins to size, first 8 sided then round up. It works with all sizes, the other side has a much smaller V groove.

The little plane is a fluting plane I made with a V cutter to cut flutes in the dowels when needed. its about as wide as a nickel.

[Alan Turner]

Harry,
If it is what I think it is, I made one of these recently, although not so elegant and old world. Is this a jig for starting the shaping of a dowel so that you can drive it through a dowel plate without trashing it, or the plate?

Don't have a pix, and it is at the other shop, but I used a sharpened flat head screw as the stop, and set the width with a rebate for a Stanley 60 1/2 block plane. Sure does wear the blade in one spot only.

[harry strasil]

Alan, I don't plane before driving thru the dowel plate, I use a small froe and a small club to rive the blank.



Then just drive thru consectitively smaller holes till I get the size I need.

[harry strasil]

In the days of yesterday when a barn raising was going on, even the kids were put to work, they were given the job of riving out trunnel (tree nail) blanks, then using a shaving horse and draw knife to knock the edges off so it only took one drive thru the plate.


The trunnels would drop thru the plate into the bottom of the barrel which would usually have some linseed oil in the bottom to lubricate the trunnels.

By the way, dowels as we call them, in the old days up to 1/2 inch were called pins, 1/2 up to 1 inch were called pegs, and 1 inch and over were trunnels, (tree nails).

[Larry Reimer]

Jr, in your first picture I still don't understand the dowel box. Is that a stop mounted in the end away from the cutter? Thank you.

[harry strasil]

yes, Larry