Making a 073

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devonwoody

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As anyone here made a wooden version of the Record 073 shoulder plane, or have pictures of early wooden hand planes of this nature?
 
Can't say I have, as most of my wooden rebate planes are wedged and without mechanical blade adjustment, but it's not unusual to find metal soled/partially clad planes, with facility to adjust mouth opening. Other than that you'd be looking at infill planes with either straight or skewed mouths and with or without mouth adjustment.

There's bound to be something out there. :?: :?: :?:

Producing such a plane isn't too difficult a task if you've the necessary skill sets, but a very high degree of accuracy is necessary.
 
There's an important distinction to be made here.

There are plenty of common wooden rebate planes around - this sort of thing:

Fig-60-Rebate-plane-1-6.jpg


with the blade bedded at 45 degrees. Better examples have the blade skewed.

But these are primarily for planing long rebates with the grain. A shoulder plane such as the 073 has the blade bedded lower and the bevel up, optimal for light cuts in end grain, such as truing the shoulders of tenons.

Record-No-073-Improved-Shoulder-Rabbet-Plane.jpg


I've seen very few examples of wooden bodied planes with very low angles - a few mitre planes maybe, but those are rare. I think that is because of the practical problems of making the body strong enough to wedge the blade.
You can use either plane for either purpose, and sometimes all that really matters is having a blade which is the full width of the body.

Just to make it all more complicated, you could look at HNT Gordon who offer "rebate planes" like this:

g34skewrebweb.jpg


and "shoulder planes" like this:

g1sh.jpg
 
Skew bladed rebate planes with between 45 and 50deg blade pitch handle cross grain shoulder planing very nicely as well as the long grain work they're typically associated with. Sometimes better than their low angled counterparts in cross and end grain work, but depending on set up.

Low angle wooden shoulder planes are even better, but you're often best off using a right or left handed badger plane with a lower blade angle. You sometimes find such planes set up with lower blade pitch in something resembling the Razee pattern/format, while retaining plenty of meat around the plane's cheaks they handle extremely well. :wink:
 
A few clicks away from the ECE plane that Pete linked to is this interesting example of a low angle wooden plane with a full width blade:

702964_01_P_WE_8.jpg


which perhaps shows that exotic hardwoods can be used for designs where English beech would have failed.

As for how to make one, there are two approaches - cut a through mortise into a block, or build up the plane in three slices. The best on-line resource I know of is a little book by Charles Hayward on making your own tools, where he describes both techniques for a wide range of planes. You can find it at the wonderful Toolemera website, here:

http://www.toolemera.com/bkpdf/haywardhowtobk.pdf
 
On wider planes, the way we were taught involves cutting the blank into two down it's length, remove waste, re-assemble and tune the fit of the blade and wedge.

Use of the T-section blade format serves up something similar to a #10 and can be skewed or straight depending on preference, but rather than going with exotic timbers, brass and mild steel plate would be used for the outer skin and sole.
 
AndyT":14nolnbl said:
A few clicks away from the ECE plane that Pete linked to is this interesting example of a low angle wooden plane with a full width blade:

702964_01_P_WE_8.jpg

I'm no fan of wooden planes, thing of the past and not in a good way, but that's gorgeous! First find a blade...

Aidan
 
AndyT":3h51h4jr said:
which perhaps shows that exotic hardwoods can be used for designs where English beech would have failed.

Since (according to LV, LN and DC *) even the sole of a metal plane moves in such a design, I think even exotic hardwoods might struggle.

BugBear

(*) if you understand this, you've been spending too much on this forum.
 

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