A simple box...(a slow and lightly updated thread)

[Racers]

Thanks chaps.

I have 2 if the second one on the go at the moment they are 200mm by 18mm.
The last one was made as a test piece to make sure I could rivet through the corian.

Pete

 

[patrickjchase]

It's just annealed hot roll (1018 or something, anything malleable works fine). If it's not annealed, don't purchase it. The cheaper stuff like this can be out of flat a little bit, so you mallet anything that's too far out of flat so that it's close.

Have you found work-hardening to be an issue when you do this?

IIRC 1018 can gain >50% yield strength from cold working (for example hot-rolled 1018 is nominally ~32 kpsi, while cold-rolled is ~54 kpsi), but I have no sense of how much work it would take to cause that. Most likely what you describe would have an insignificant effect.

 

[D_W]

Never had any problems with work hardening, but I have had O1 crack (first two planes I made, I used O1 for the sides and bottom per the recommendation of a professional builder. The cracking was minor, though, and I still have and use the plane.

No trouble with brass or mild steel so far, but I haven't tried 360 brass yet. The cross strap for this plane will probably be 360 brass, so I'll see.

 

[D_W]

This weekends updates:

* opened the mouth and filed the rough start of it. It should've been left shorter of the sides so that the pins had extra support, but I forgot that. If it's a real concern (I think it is in this case), I'll cut and fit a steel blank to support the sides in peining).
https://s13.postimg.org/pdy9qr4fr/02112018_169.jpg

(oh, and the sole plate was peined into place). The final infill will be installed about half mm back or so to file out the bit of unfiled area. Or maybe not. I haven't yet decided - it's probably just cosmetic, but I can make a quick wood mock cross section of iron with a 30 degree bevel to see - that'll probably determine whether or not I fix it).

I need the mock infill to lay out the iron and wedge ,and locate where the cross strap will be, as well as what all of the angles will be so that the strap fits mostly flush inside the infill. It's a lot easier to mock this up and create patterns out of wood to measure from. Anything else is dangerous because a big layout mistake is terminal.

I also cut and tapered the iron. My stock is oversize O1, .26" thick, and I tapered it along its length to 0.22 halfway through its length and 0.20" at the far end (a hollow shape rather than a straight taper - for various reasons). Since this is all being done freehand, the iron will also be full width of the plane body at the mouth end and a little more than a 16th narrow where it exits the plane.

Forgot to take pictures of the iron, except this view of the side as I was beveling it to fit flush with the sides of the plane.
(this was before tapering). I never thought I'd have a use for a vixen on ferrous metal, but it rips, and has held up really well. I anticipate using it to flatten and square the final peined plane.

https://s13.postimg.org/vsxanjdrb/02112018_170.jpg

This kind of building (patterning and fitting without much measuring) is pure bliss.

 

[D_W]

A picture of the secondary notch for ttrees. notice the small open notch next to the pin. It's filed there so that the pein pulls the parts tight and holds them together. There is no part of these joints that doesn't hold in both directions, as both the pins and tails have this notch. I just filed these in fast since this is steel on steel and I don't want to see any evidence of a joint at all (so it doesn't matter if all of the tails don't have any specific angle).

https://s13.postimg.org/yoadubpg7/02112018_172.jpg

 

[Ttrees]

Thanks David
That clears up a few things, apart from how many/what tools you need, and how long it takes to
pein that.
I have since started watching Bill Carters videos again, remembering on it that he was hoping to be able to pein the cupids bow details he does.
If he didn't pein that, how is is possible to be able to spread that mild steel out ?

It clearly works for you guys, I just dont know how its done, and how long it takes

Cheers
Tom

 

[iNewbie]

I've noticed the same thing with my beech planes. No matter what time of the year I build them, they get tight on the irons after a little while. They're kiln dried and over a year additional air dry in my basement. Same with the old ones - they were probably dry when they were made, but if they're left without use, they tighten up on the iron and wedge and can blow out their cheeks.

.

I wonder if using thermo-treated wood would make a difference. Its becoming a fad in the guitar building world.

 

[D_W]

It's not really a problem in wooden planes as long as they're being used. If it's like anything else with guitars, it's probably like something done elsewhere, but for five times the price. I'll have to see what it actually is (before I was a woodworker, I played a fair amount of guitar and bought a lot of them).

 

[D_W]

Thanks David
That clears up a few things, apart from how many/what tools you need, and how long it takes to
pein that.
I have since started watching Bill Carters videos again, remembering on it that he was hoping to be able to pein the cupids bow details he does.
If he didn't pein that, how is is possible to be able to spread that mild steel out ?

It clearly works for you guys, I just dont know how its done, and how long it takes

Cheers
Tom

You literally just hammer it. A bigger plane like this will probably take an hour to pein. The only concerns are to do it evenly and to not strike the metal that you're not peining.

As far as tools, you need a metal scribe, a hack saw and a few extra files. I'd recommend a post drill, too, but you don't really even need that. It helps a lot for accurate drilling, though. (edit to add, layout fluid like dykem is really helpful).

You also need something to act as an anvil, but it doesn't need to be a full blown anvil.

 

[patrickjchase]

It's not really a problem in wooden planes as long as they're being used. If it's like anything else with guitars, it's probably like something done elsewhere, but for five times the price. I'll have to see what it actually is (before I was a woodworker, I played a fair amount of guitar and bought a lot of them).

In this instance "it" is torrefaction, the same thing that LV does to their chisel handles. It does indeed stabilize the wood against moisture changes, though there are tradeoffs, most notably embrittlement and loss of mechanical strength if you take it too far. After all there is a specific name for the residue that remains after torrefaction runs to completion: "charcoal".

As you say it's been played up (and priced up) quite a bit more in the lutherie world than elsewhere.

 

[D_W]

I wouldn't buy it in a guitar then. I've never had a guitar that's had neck stability issues. At one point, Heritage was trying to make guitar necks out of curly maple, and they had some neck stability issues, but eliminated them by laminating the necks instead of using a single piece of curly maple (IIRC, it was a guitar that they called the 555 or something, which you'd call a copy of the Gibson ES-355, except the guys at Heritage building the guitars were the ones who built the ES-355s - they just stayed behind when Gibson moved out...anyway).

I wouldn't pay extra for it, but the instrument manufacture world is always starving for a gimmick, be it a strange intonation gimmick, extremely high upcharges for figured tops (figure about $750 of upcharge for $100-$150 of lumber cost, etc). If I knew what I know now, I would've ordered the plainest hand finished and hand fitted guitar from a reasonable custom maker. That'd be about 2gs, but the gotta-haves (binding, inlays, figured top) double the price of the guitar while adding relatively little extra work for a maker - probably 30% more work and cost for double the price. I don't really have faith that I could get a custom maker to make the same effort on a no-option guitar, though.

Plus, I don't play guitar much anymore, and double plus, I want to make some guitars, and perhaps something more difficult once I get done with the planemaking gimmick.

(edit: and to be fair, I don't think the really small builders would be able to continue making guitars without knocking over the buyers who are willing to purchase the options. Ford doesn't make their profit on a 2wd F150 with standard cab, either).

 

[patrickjchase]

I wouldn't buy it in a guitar then. I've never had a guitar that's had neck stability issues.

To be clear, the guitar makers use it to alter the tonality of the wood, not to address neck stability issues. It's the same basic technique that Veritas uses but for a different reason (and probably carried to a different point in the process).

Torrefaction drives volatiles out of the wood without burning, by heating it in an Oxygen-free atmosphere. Those volatiles are basically the same ones that make their way out over the course of decades of seasoning in a dry environment, so the claim is that the guitar has a more "free" tone like a much older instrument.

I'm not a guitarist, but I am a cellist and we definitely see tonal changes with aging. I have no idea whether or to what degree torrefaction accelerates or emulates those changes.

 

[D_W]

Neck wood doesn't really do much on guitars. It's nice to say that it alters tonal quality, but that's generally determined by the back and top wood on a guitar, the bracing pattern, and especially, the weight of the bridge on a guitar that doesn't have the bridge fixed right into the top.

If it's used on tops and sides on otherwise little used woods (not rosewoods - there's no good reason to alter their tonality) that aren't that stiff, maybe it could improve them. That could become a use given that Cites now covers all rosewoods (what a pain) and a lot of people won't want to pay what they paid for rosewood without a gimmick attached.

Just my guesses - last guitar I bought was a Bourgeois slope D almost 12 years ago. Great guitar - no gimmick would improve it (and I see that Dana Bourgeois is a fan of the torrefied woods due to their ability to sound old when new. He was a good enough builder to thickness tops for consistency with "regular" red spruce, though).

If it can make lower cost guitars sound like higher cost guitars without making them more expensive, though, more power to them. I'll go look at prices. Thanks to the toolbuilding bug, I'm finally immune to buying more guitars.

 

[D_W]

Martin charges several thousand dollars for it. Yuck. when I got a "real job(TM)" earlier in life and had the money, I bought the D-28 that I slobbered over as a kid. By then, it was still only about $1750 or so here - probably $3K now. I "lucked out" and got a real cowpat of a D-28, and that solved me of ever paying the Martin premium again. Tidily made little guitar that had no life in it, no boom.

On the other end of the cost spectrum, Recording King makes a drednought for $425 with it (Adirondack spruce, even) ...(/kip voice) that's what I'm talkin about.

Dana Bourgeois's folks charged me an extra $200 or $300 for adirondack instead of sitka. But the guitar is good enough that I don't care what they charged. Better made than anything I'll ever be able to make, and as loud as two martins (and much more lively).

 

[patrickjchase]

Martin charges several thousand dollars for it. Yuck. when I got a "real job(TM)" earlier in life and had the money, I bought the D-28 that I slobbered over as a kid. By then, it was still only about $1750 or so here - probably $3K now. I "lucked out" and got a real cowpat of a D-28, and that solved me of ever paying the Martin premium again. Tidily made little guitar that had no life in it, no boom.

Yeah, $10K for a brand new "aged" D-28 seems... extravagant.

As you say Bourgeois is a big user of torrefaction, and from a technical perspective his remarks seem to reflect a solid understanding of the process and its tradeoffs. I'm not a guitarist, but he strikes me as straightforward and well-informed.

 

[D_W]

Bourgeois was probably one of the first manufacturers to say that you can't tell the difference between a bolted neck and a dovetailed neck. The former is a lot easier to repair and adjust (acoustic guitars are time bombs more or less, they'll need repair if they live long enough to see it). He was also one of the better top voicers in that he worked for stiffness rather than thickness.

It sounds like he likes it, but I couldn't hear much difference in online videos. I'm not in the market for anything, though, but would like to build unconventional guitars at some point in the future to see what they sound like.

 

[D_W]

Separate and aside, I finally opened the lv shooting plane that I got last week and sharpened and tested it. It's fantastic to say the least. If I'd have gotten it first, I might have built a infill panel plane instead of a shooting plane.

Trying to match it is going to be a real challenge.

 

[Ttrees]

Since were back on topic I was going to ask
I should have been more specific on what tools I needed.
Do you use a punch for piening atall?
What size of hammer is this you are using... Is it a ball pien hammer ?
Guessing you might need one when you get close, or do you just use a block of metal as a punch?

Is there things not to do, like a scenario which could work harden the mild steel?

Thanks again
Tom

 

[D_W]

I use ball pein hammers. They're cheap, and since I'm cutting all of this stuff by hand for the most part (and certainly finish filing the pins and tails by hand), there's usually some metal to move - so no punches, it becomes too tedious and you get in a rush trying to move a lot of metal with large punch strikes.

This is only the 6th plane that I've peined, so I have a different strategy than I have previously (where I just bashed them to get them closed), but I intend to use a hammer.

I think softer metal and accurate work from machine tools (if you've ever seen karl holtey's blog) makes punch peining more sensible, because you're only moving little bits of metal very precise amounts. I've got a couple of gaps that I need to close that are probably a thirty second to a sixteenth in size. Not sure what happened.

I've only ever had work hardening with O1, so no plans for that here - it shouldn't be a problem.

In the event that a pinhole appears while you're flattening a side, etc, you can usually pein it lightly and then remove the peining marks and have a closed joint. These are the kinds of things you just figure out. I'll take a picture of the tails and pins area on my last infill. There were a couple of those during the process, but they're long gone now.

 

[Racers]

I usually use a ball pein hammer a couple of different sizes including a very small one, and a X10 loupe to see it things are closing up.

Pete