Strike Block Plane

[Nigel Burden]

I decided to build myself a Strike Block Plane for use on my shooting board.

I had some Cherry that I'd bought at The Oak Fair three years ago which was just wide enough for use with a Sorby 2 1/4" double iron. The bed angle is 38 degrees which is low enough for a wooden plane.

After planing the billet square I marked out the bed angle, iron position, abutments, throat, mouth, and wear.

I started by making a knife line across the centre of the mouth and chiselling in a short distance, gradually opening the mouth a little.

Then I started chiselling out the throat, staying shy of the pencil marks.

Once I had reached the wear line I chiselled through from the mouth.

Next I sawed down the abutment lines with an old pad? saw and then chiselled out the abutments.

The next stage was to open up the throat a little and chisel out the slot to take the cap iron screw, check the fit of the iron, and smooth out the bed, throat opening, and wear. Then I shaped the sides of the throat.

At this stage there was a lot of work with a blunt chisel, (ground flat across the cutting edge), scraping everything smooth, making sure that the iron didn't rock and that I had sufficient clearance in the throat and wear.

Next came making the wedge. I used Beech for this as I had no available Cherry left.

Marking out the wedge template above.

I will post more photos in another post, as I've reached my limit.

Nigel.

 

[Orraloon]

I will be watching this with interest as I have yet to try doing a chopped out throat plane. I did make a big shooting plane but with glued up construction. Blade I had was a 2&1/2'' Kenyon so built the plane around that. The extra heft helps with shooting.
Regards
John

 

[Nigel Burden]

I will be watching this with interest as I have yet to try doing a chopped out throat plane. I did make a big shooting plane but with glued up construction. Blade I had was a 2&1/2'' Kenyon so built the plane around that. The extra heft helps with shooting.
Regards
John

I'm afraid I built this with the available wood which would take nothing wider than 2 1/4". I even had to take a 1/16" off the side of the iron and cap iron.

Nigel.

 

[Nigel Burden]

So back to marking out the wedge.

I offered a piece of picture mounting card up to the abutments and wedged it in place so that I could mark out the abutment line, then cut out the card and marked around it on the wedge.

I then cut out the wedge which I'd already planed down roughly to size.

From here on there was a lot of fettling, scraping with one of my blunt, ground off chisels. These work very well as scrapers where you want to creep up on the line. A plane makers float would probably have made life easier, but I don't possess any. Another thing I use for removing, smoothing is a piece of wood about 1/2" wide and 4-5" long tapered to almost a point to which I glue various grit sand paper.

When I was satisfied that the wedge was fitting reasonably well I decided to test the plane before the final work finishing off the plane.

The above photo shows the shavings taken on some pieces of scrap wood.

I then rounded off the rear of the plane using a chisel and a no 4 plane followed by sanding and scraping. I then chamfered the edges with a chisel. I decided to ad a strike button at this point.

More fettling followed to make sure that the wedge fitted tightly. Although the plane takes good shavings I think I might need to play around with sharpening to get it to take better end grain shavings. The iron is sharpened to about 22 degrees with a small secondary bevel of about 26 degrees. I decided to go shallower than normal due to the lower bed angle.

Nigel.

 

[Nigel Burden]

More fettling today removing some of the bulk from the mouth end of the abutments as end grain shavings tended to block a little. For some reason it doesn't plain end grain particularly well, but with the grain it planes well and leaves a good smooth surface, which is not what I expected. So I guess there's more fettling to be done.

Nigel.