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Hi I recently acquired a three-quarter inch wood threading kit from Axminster. I’ve not had a gigantic amount of luck with it so far. I’ve watched loads of YouTube videos on woodthreading, soaked the dowel in BLO, but still, I seem to get some kind “crumbly” tear out. It certainly isn’t a...

Thanks for the suggestions. I quite fancy the Brennenstuhl. there is also a Bosch that Axminster sell which looks good. Intrigued by the Beko freezer!

Morning Can anyone recommend a moisture tester? purpose - to check seasoning of wood for plane making. There are loads of really cheap ones on eBay and it would be good to know they work before parting with £7.99 or whatever. thanks Steve

No idea if you know what you are doing, and apologies if you do. But lathes are not straightforward to build. First let’s presume you are talking about a wood turning lathe. If it’s a metalwork lathe, forget it. Wood lathes still need a decent amount of rigidity and concentricity. This is not...

That’s broadly correct, it does trap oil, and thats part of the point of it. Smooth is all down to your definition of smooth. The difference between the high spots (blue) and the low spots is probably about 0.0005” at most. This is imperceptibly smooth to the touch. It is however enough for...

I think that as long as you use a flat-ish piece of plywood or mdf, you’ll be fine. That’s how it’s been done forever and very few woodworkers or even machinists have much experience in scraping. It’s an extremely laborious process. To apply it to hand planes you’d need a lot of time on your...

For general woodworking I totally agree, which is what my post said but for some types E.g. luthiery, you are making a precision device and so they are necessary. Also, flattening plane soles is (often) metalwork, not woodwork and they are extremely useful for that. I’d definitely recommend...

The wavelength of visible light is considerably smaller than any gap you are likely to achieve via hand planing, so if the angle is right you’ll definitely be able to see a glint. Unless your straight edge is an engineering one it’s unlikely to be very straight anyway. The best way to test is...

Hi Any thoughts on a good finish for wooden planes? I’m making a batch and I want to get it right. Conventional wisdom is simply BLO. But I find my hands get dirty from sharpening and metalwork, and the planes get filthy in no time, which is a shame having just made them. Old Street Tools use...

I bet he didn’t really believe that people would be analysing his work in 2023 to work out how he did it. Fascinating that the butt chisel is his go to chisel, he uses it for paring the entire bed in one go. here are a couple of chamfers I cut with the butt chisel/mallet …. not bad, but it...

I think also that the Marples planes of that era did not have the same “boutique” fine detailing that Matt Bickford puts on his planes. I have many old planes and the chamfering is practical, for comfort in use rather than to look snazzy. I’m not totally sure why I got obsessed with making...

Hi I am struggling to consistently cut accurate cross-grain chamfers for my moulding planes. The complication is that they are terminated cuts, so pretty much have to be done with a chisel of some sort. Larry Williams does them by chiselling the edge to a line. There’s a video on YouTube of the...

Well, I can’t justify or afford fancy new planes, so I refurb car boot sale Stanleys and Records and they seem fine to me. I was always sceptical about Charlesworth’s methods, partly because Paul Sellers and Rob Cosman both seem to be advocates of not being keen on a close chip breaker, and...

There we go, a new #16 hollow and 3 new floats. The plane is not quite finished, needs the cove detail on top of the shoulder but that requires a plane I haven’t made yet so it will have to wait. Well, not perfect but better than the last one. 2 down, 34 to go.

I didn’t realise I’d got replies to this, not been online for a few days.… I came to the conclusion, after watching some YouTube reviews of the Vevor type forges, that they weren’t much good. I realised that I need to harden 2 types of things at present - moulding plane blades, for which the...

For anyone interested, I solved it. The bed wasn’t out of square at all. There was a tiny ding on the tang of the iron. Once I’d reground that, it was within normal bedding tolerances. Quite a bit of soot and scraping later, it was bedded nicely. Quite a bit of fettling and messing about to go...

Does anyone have any experience with (for example) those little VEVOR forges? I need to harden plane irons/floats etc. I once made a home-made one with some fire bricks and a blow torch, but it wasn’t big enough and didnt really get hot enough. I also have a home made foundry that runs on waste...

I have a sash filister and plough by Griffiths, very nice they are too, and considerably older than the thread.

I bought a Pro-Edge for sharpening plane irons. In particular, it’s good for mortise chisels and plough plane irons which have a very long bevel, which you really don’t want a hollow grind for. Also it is good for putting a bevel on round plane irons - you can sweep the tip of the iron on the...

Here’s the problem…. My fault entirely of course. See feeler gauge behind the iron. The bed is at an angle sweeping back from the mortise. The only way to fix this is to sink the whole rear surface of the mortise, right down to the mouth, back by say 1/32”. Then the iron can be bedded. My...