Fighting with boxing

[steve355]

I knocked out another plane today, partly because I wanted to practice making skinny planes, before having a go at some low number hollows and rounds, and partly cos I wanted to have another go at boxing (although I used a scrap of oak for it, not boxwood,). I thought I might try to make it into a little snipes bill. But anyway, the boxing went wrong, as it always seems to. I end up with gaps.

I used a plough to sink the mortise for the boxing, shaped the boxing with a rabbet (sorry) plane. I swear the gaps weren’t there when I glued it into the billet last night.

Any genius suggestions? (Apart from trying again obviously)

The pic makes the gaps look worse than they actually are, but it isn’t good enough.

 

[Orraloon]

Looks like the oak shrank. Perhaps it was not properly dry. Stavros Gakos has quite a few plane making videos.
052 Grooving plane - Planes for planemaking / Woodworking - YouTube
Regards
John

 

[TRITON]

How often were the old moulding planes made of oak ?. I would have thought they'd stick to a close grained and stable timber like beech.

 

[Trafalgar]

Oak was a bad choice.

 

[kinverkid]

It looks like the Beech body is probably seasoned but the Oak insert may not be. If that's not the case, then was it cut from a much larger piece? If so, it could be that it needed to be left for a day after being cut to release the tension. Just a thought.

 

[steve355]

it was a scrap I had lying around. Old planes never had oak boxing - almost always boxwood. Hence the name. Also, the old planes had the boxing “slipped in” at a 45 deg angle, so the grain was facing down and forward. So in fact what I was doing was completely wrong. I was just doing it to practice the joint really, which is pretty tricky to do - a 10 inch by 1 inch mortise and tenon at a 20 deg angle on the corner of a board Isn’t something you get taught on your average woodworking intro course.

But perhaps it was partly a little shrinkage that caused the gaps. Also probably some things I could do with the shaping of the wood, and technique.

I guess, when we all learn dovetails and M&T, we learn tricks like cutting on the waste side of the line, how to avoid bruising edges etc. I think there are probably some similar lessons with a joint like this.

 

[BentonTool]

Aesthetics aside, I suspect it will work just fine. I would happily live with it as is! Or, perhaps a nice gap-fill job with shellac sticks? Just don't tell anyone! It looks like most of the joint is sound. I doubt it will fail. I wish I had your skills...