British Invasion....!

[essexalan]

What you really need DW is one of those Norris long panel planes, not sure if I could even lift one let alone use it effectively! Nice looking infill plane you have there, can't make out if it is dovetailed or whether the iron is tapered but that is a good looking plane. Something about the way an infill handles wood sort of a quiet authority but they can be hard work. I believe the old timers used oil wicks to lube the sole?

 

[G S Haydon]

I have a Stanley 08, quite an early one, and can't joint and edge with it thanks to a concave sole. Having said that for anything I do a Try plane always seems enough.
If it's during work time the edges of our powered jointer give perfect edges for glue up anyway.

 

[D_W]

What you really need DW is one of those Norris long panel planes, not sure if I could even lift one let alone use it effectively! Nice looking infill plane you have there, can't make out if it is dovetailed or whether the iron is tapered but that is a good looking plane. Something about the way an infill handles wood sort of a quiet authority but they can be hard work. I believe the old timers used oil wicks to lube the sole?

I intend to make one of those at some point. My spiers kit resulted in a plane a little less than 9 pounds, it needs the wax as you describe. The shorter plane i just got here in this thread is 7 1/2 pounds - pretty hefty for a plane 14 inches long (the spiers is 18, but 2 of those inches are just the sole plate metal extending past the infills).

I have materials to make a couple of more infills, but they take so long to make with no machine tools that I'm going to have to get some things done before I go back to them.

The spiers kit plane shown is murder without wax or oil on the sole. Cast iron has some grip, but mild steel and brass really take more of a polish on the metal and really get a stiff grip if they're not waxed. Not a good thing when you're already tired and starting to lean on the planes a little.

(can't remember if the infill plane's iron is tapered or not, if it is, it's not much - I think it is a little). An adherent to the double iron like me isn't going to be affected much by that, though.

When I made the spiers kit, I filed the mouth to almost exactly a hundredth because I didn't know how to set the cap iron. I thought if 4 thousandths on a smoother made for a plane that prevented most tearout - and it does with a high angle - that a hundredth on the try plane would make for a good mouth so that I could shove shavings through it a little thicker. I was wrong, even a hundredth mouth doesn't do much to prevent tearout. You won't get big huge tears, but the kind of tearout that makes planing miserable still occurs and I was really let down by the plane until 4 or 5 years ago when the whole cap iron craze started. I'd set that panel plane aside and really didn't know what to do with it until then, but with a little bit of wax and the cap iron set, it can really punch material off of a surface fast and still leave a good surface for final smoothing.

I'm liking the short panel plane without an adjuster better than I like the norris style adjuster, though. I bought some nicely made adjusters for future planes a while ago, but I can't think of a reason to install them at this point.

I think for me to build a long norris style jointer would be an investment of about 100-125 hours. My scratch built infill smoother was 75 and the spiers kit had so many problems that I had to correct that it took about 45 hours.

 

[D_W]

I daren't check it just encase its out as I would have to flatten it.

If it doesn't clip the ends off of joints that need to be glued together leaving them high in the middle and shy at the ends, then it's good. That's the only trouble I had with the LN jointer, on a 3 or 4 foot joint, it was very difficult to make a sprung board (I never did, in fact). I don't know if you could, in theory, lean on the plane to get it to cut evenly but that's a bad prospect at best.

I never knew it was hollow until it was causing me problems match planing, otherwise I never would've checked. I also think LN used the same adjuster at the time with the 8 as the 7, but the 8 has a thicker iron and the result was backlash. It's not a practical problem, but one that's dissatisfying on a $475 plane. Just kind of a dud, and the 7 that I had was flawless - felt like an infill, but heavy like one, too.

 

[D_W]

I have a Stanley 08, quite an early one, and can't joint and edge with it thanks to a concave sole. Having said that for anything I do a Try plane always seems enough.
If it's during work time the edges of our powered jointer give perfect edges for glue up anyway.

I can't get that through to some people, that a concave sole is trouble. Especially engineers for some reason. It's a nuisance.

As far as the try plane goes, I haven't used my wooden jointer since making a try plane. It's just not necessary, and when I match plane an edge with the try plane, if it's off a little, I refine the off areas with a smoother and they can be glued without clamps.

 

[D_W]

One last post about planes, this is an infill made by George Wilson. He calls it the elephant plane. I'm torn between copying his plane (which he has given me permission to do) in a longer panel plane or a jointer, or making something more norris-ish (but without the fat lines that can be seen on some norris planes) or spiers-ish. I particularly like the design of the spiers panel planes.

I don't know if I'm as bold design-wise as this plane. The elephant name comes from the cheeks of the steel parts that look like the top line of an elephant. George mentioned to me that he had made this plane entirely by hand, and probably somewhere around 30-40 years ago. The infills are cuban mahogany, and the surfaces were draw filed, then flaked and scraped. It is miles better finished than anything I've ever made, but there's no shame in that if you know who George is. It's probably flatter than any plane I've ever had by a long shot, too, at least when he made it.

 

[D_W]

Did get the sorby delivered yesterday. It needs some work on the back of the iron to be substantially sharp, and I'm going to flatten it even though it would be usable without, I have the means to do it in not much time.

What I noticed of it is that the sides of the casting are thick (that could be seen in the pictures on ebay), the handle is in great shape, and the the sole is very close to flat, about as good as I've seen on a vintage plane. Sheet of paper away from flat, more or less, with the mouth just concave - that seems to be the standard for vintage planes and in a heavier cut it doesn't matter. The interesting thing about it is that the lever cap is very hollow and much lighter than a comparable stanley lever cap. I wonder why they did that?

Weight of the plane is 8 pounds and 4 ounces. If correcting the iron makes it too thin, I'll just set it aside and make another one out of 3/32nd O1. Or track down a clean 2 3/8ths laminated record iron.

 

[Vann]

...If correcting the iron makes it too thin...

What do you define as too thin?

My Record irons are mostly 2.2-2.4mm thick (with none exceeding 2.4mm), whereas some USA Stanley irons are down to 1.95mm thick. If I felt an iron was on the thin side, I'd pair it with a good solid cap-iron (with 3 point contact, not the incorrectly bent bits of tin that came out of Stanley and Record from ~1930s on).

Cheers, Vann.

 

[D_W]

Too thin would be substantially thinner than stock. I have to look at the whole setup more closely over the weekend - it struck me as though the iron may have been a bit bent or not that flat, and the cap iron was pretty thin compared to the four records I've gotten recently. I have a pretty high tolerance for both thin and soft irons, though.

The thinnest irons that I have, are off of very old transitionals, and they work fine - they're laminated and very thin so I guess they should be the flimsiest of the lot. But they are accurately made and I've had little to do to them when preparing them.

 

[D_W]

Too thin would be substantially thinner than stock. I have to look at the whole setup more closely over the weekend - it struck me as though the iron may have been a bit bent or not that flat, and the cap iron was pretty thin compared to the four records I've gotten recently. I have a pretty high tolerance for both thin and soft irons, though.

The thinnest irons that I have, are off of very old transitionals, and they work fine - they're laminated and very thin so I guess they should be the flimsiest of the lot. But they are accurately made and I've had little to do to them when preparing them.

 

[D_W]

The iron was better off than it looked in the dim light when I got the plane out of the box. took a total of about 25 minutes to prepare this plane (to be fair, I have gotten better at doing that now that I know what makes them work well rather than just poring over everything on a plane for hours).

I use a 42 inch lap that I've checked to be flat to less than 1.5 thousandths over a 24 inch stretch (using a new starrett straight edge). It stays flat as long as it's supported. 80 grit psa roll on all planes, but anything bigger than a 5 I will put the plane on the lap and then put it upside down in a vise and work the high spots sectionally because they just aren't easy to lap quickly and too much lapping will make the toe and heel proud more than I want.

This plane, however, I did not have to work sectionally. It is the flattest vintage jointer I have ever come across, and it came into the condition shown within 10 minutes and not even the slightest glaze of sweat. I left a high spot to the right of the mouth, it'll never factor in anything, and I didn't try to brighten the sole all the way to the toe, it would just reduce the flatness to do that and waste time.

These rolls of paper are available on amazon here for $11 (They are porter cable brand) and I like mirka gold a little better, but it costs a lot more than that. It works out to the paper on the lap costing me a little over a dollar. With a 7, the paper has to be fresh even if you're just finishing up a job where you worked high spots off sectionally. The paper is close to the edge of the lap because I use it then to flatten the iron initially, and then after this, only about two more minutes of work on a 400 atoma and then a washita. There is no need to overdo the work on the back of an iron, it makes no difference in finish brightness unless the edge has bigger problems from something else - the bright finish board I showed in another post was worked the same way).

I worked the bevel side with a diamond hone to set a primary bevel, cleaned up the cap on this lap and then with the same progression of diamond hone and then washita, and then 6 strokes on a horse butt leather with a sparing amount of dursol on it on the bevel, and planed the ash shown (into the grain) thick and thin shavings. No problem at all.

I have had a lot of vintage jointers, probably 10 (good ones, not junkers). This one is as good as the best of the rest that I've had (the other best one was a WWII era stanley that just happened to be about perfect).

















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[D_W]

One last plane, before the record arrives. I think it's hearnshaw (I can't remember the maker, but most of the planes of this era from England are almost identically made).

You guys call this a 28 quid plane with postage included in that!! It was almost unused, easy to sand flat and has a 2 1/2" wide double iron made by ward that is full length.

It did cost an extra 28 to ship to the states, but even at that it is far better than what we find over here for an equivalent price. A simple setup of the iron and cap (ward's caps are the best because of their profile) and no clogging with the cap set close. The later marples stuff I have come across cannot do the same thing, but it's their cap iron design and not necessarily the plane.

At any rate, almost tearout free on the same piece as the sorby plane, but this is what I'd shoot for with a try plane since the smoother will pass over the same spot, anyway. Any closer to eliminate the tearout, and it's extra work on the try plane.

(I guess not many are dimensioning by hand over there, because these really are planes for a hand dimensioner more than anything else - I'm sure a power tool user would prefer to true joints with a metal plane with an adjuster - perfectly reasonable).








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[D_W]

Finally got the last of this whole overspend - the record 08. I have devised, over the years, a way to work on very out of flat large jointers without just brute lapping them for hours and hours, but this and the sorby plane have not needed anything special. This record jointer is the flattest jointer I've ever seen of the vintage jointers, and it's flatter than the lie nielsen 8 that I had bought new and had for a while. This level of uniformity on the bottom is within about 25 strokes on the lap. The spots that remain a little high don't matter at all, they are less than any of my feelers will fit in.

In keeping with the others, the iron had never been honed on the back side and the cap iron was fresh and had never been prepared. The whole session with this thing was only about 20 minutes.



Nothing special about those shavings other than the ongoing experiment to see what's actually necessary. I literally honed this iron on the 80 grit sandpaper lap (to grind the bevel and work the back of the iron) and the turkish oilstone I had in another thread on here (the light brown one).

Thinner shavings can be had, but these are thinner than i'd make in productive work.

 

[swagman]

DW; it sounds as though your no longer a strong follower of using progressive stone grits to weaken, rather than prematurely break off the wire edge. What ever happened to that progressive honing method you were recommending within 1 of your sharpening podcasts.

Stewie;

 

[D_W]

Still doing it, I suppose. I don't break the wire edge off. I work it off with something. In this case, I took the wire edge from the turkish stone off with a no-cutting jasper. I never really use more than two stones, but what I was getting at more with the comments above was that I didn't follow the 80 grit sandpaper with a whole bunch of stones to get to that point.

On dozens of planes, I worked to get the back of the iron flat and then went through several grits to get a brightly polished back. In this case, I just did what the turkish stone would reasonably do to a back that had deep 80 grit paper grooves in it. Successive use of the same turkish stone over time will completely remove those marks, but there's no great rush to do it all at once as long as you can reach the wire edge from both sides. The total time from an unused iron to the shavings above was minutes. This isn't a "premium" iron that was perfectly flat, but it's not that hard of an iron, either, so it didn't matter.

At any rate, there is more than one way to get the wire edge off. You can strop it off on a jasper, or with something like a washita, you can raise a fat wire edge and then work alternating to thin it and then strop it off on leather. I could alternate on the turkish stone here, too, but it is a little bit aggressive compared to a settled-in washita.

 

[D_W]

duplicate.

 

[D_W]

A little more side comment about the back and not wasting time trying to get it to look perfect (and not resorting to a ruler trick, either) - I have never gotten an old plane out that had a mirror shiny and sheet-of-glass flat back. There is an infill plane in the background here, the sale listing said that it was in recent use with a luthier, and it was in OK shape, but not prepared on the back like we think of, and the cap iron hadn't been worked. I don't know what the luthier did with it, but it may have been the closest I've seen to well-prepared in a while. I've stopped (a couple of years ago) going nuts preparing the backs of plane irons all at once, just instead getting them to the point that I can get the wire on a flat stone. If I use a plane enough, it doesn't take too many successive sharpenings on a washita before it's pretty uniform, anyway.

 

[ED65]

D_W, with that sort of minimal preparation of the back if the iron started quite rusty to begin with do you in effect have tiny notches left at the edge?

I had a revelation recently that it is wasting a ton of effort to remove all small pits on the flat of the iron of any plane, even though they intersect the edge. The duh is that they don't matter with any plane that won't be the last plane to touch the wood, but less obvious is that for a lot of people they can get away with this on a smoother as well because so few modern woodworkers finish straight from the plane of course.

 

[D_W]

I generally lap those out on the 80 grit unless they are too deep to get out. But you're right, a plane doesn't seem to work much differently with the pits at the edge except the shavings split.

No clue how many people are using planes to finish, but if not, or not doing something like edge jointing, those little splits wouldn't seem to make much difference.