Hello all,
I've made a couple of metal infill planes in the last year. One was a small smoother and another a shoulder plane. On both I used rivets to join the sides and sole because I didn't think I would do a very good job with dovetails.
Now I am wanting to try my hand at a larger smoother with dovetails. I have been practicing using scraps of Hot Rolled A36 I have laying around and found it isn't so bad making those dovetails after all.
Hot rolled A36 is all I have worked with but now that I am going to order some steel for my next plane, and I have been debating on what to use. I would like to use O1, but on my first larger plane I don't really want to buy that much O1 and mess it up, so I was thinking about just sticking with A36 or cold rolled 1018.
From what I understand the 1018 can be more troublesome because of stresses produced during the cold roll processing, but that it can also be a little easier to work and has a better finish to start with.
The rough dimensions of my plane will be ~2.5" wide x ~8" long x 2.5" tall. I know this has all probably been discussed before, but can someone give some personal experience on just how troublesome the stresses in 1018 can be? Is the surface finish that much better than A36 that It would save me much lapping?
Thanks,
Jeff Wittrock