Making a plough plane?

Trizza · 12 Dec 2009

Another thought I had was to make the skate ahead of the iron removable for things like this, kind of like the Veritas Side Rabbet Plane. I'm not sure how practical that would be, however.

devonwoody · 12 Dec 2009

They dig in. My bull nose plane with the nose removed does.

Alf · 12 Dec 2009

Trizza":14nd59ci said:
Another thought I had was to make the skate ahead of the iron removable for things like this, kind of like the Veritas Side Rabbet Plane. I'm not sure how practical that would be, however.

Ah, I too have long wondered about the practicality of the bullnose plough - unfortunately there seems to be a scarcity of #141/143s around these parts with which to find out. (Blood & Gore and Hans Brunner info on them) I did once come close to hacking off most of the nose of a #044 to find out, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Be interesting if you do go down that route.

Cheers, Alf

Mikey R · 12 Dec 2009

Trizza":3r7mi35h said:
I think the typical method for a stopped slot with a plough plane is to chisel a groove at one end first.

I was thinking the same thing - the groove would need to be long enough to accomodate the length of the sole either behind or before the blade. For a slot with a stop at both ends, I suppose you could plane up to either end with the bullnose.

So, if a bullnose plane digs in, then the plane will need enough sole ahead of the blade to pervent this. You would only need a short sole behind the blade, maybe even none like a Japanese plane. The flatness of the bottom of the slot would be registered from the face of the board and the depth stop rather than the sole. Certainly an interesting idea!

Trizza · 12 Dec 2009

If the plane was dedicated to a single depth truss rod slot then it might be ok, by making the body of the plane act as one big depth stop like you say Mikey. I guess you'd then dig in with the initial passes but the final pass at least would be at an accurate depth.

I seem to recall seeing pictures of an interesting looking British plane from the 1930s that had no skate at all, instead it had a flat sole and an impressive depth adjustment. I can't remember the name (it might have started with an 'H'), but supposedly it was useful for all sorts of things aside from just ploughing grooves, including stopped grooves, dovetails, etc etc.