Toothed Foreplane.

[swagman]

Hi all. It been well over 2 years since I made my last traditional wooden bodied hand plane, and I saw a need to build one for my own personal use that was at 22 inches in length and fitted with a 2 inch wide toothing blade.

The wood chosen to use is Merbau. IMO its a very good choice of timber for making traditional hand planes. Its much heavier and denser than European Beech, rates quite high on the yanka hardness scale, is high in natural oils, and exhibits very little change in wood movement.

At this stage I have the cut block to size, all sides & both ends have been dressed flat, and the area to be mortised out has been marked. Its a project that will take some time to complete as it will need to work around my primary interest at the moment which is backsaw making.

Stewie;

 

[Billy Flitch]

Interesting its only when you start to make these tools that you start to relies just why they are made the way they are, in your third picture where you are looking down in plan view on where you will chop out for where the wedge will hold the iron in place do you not see the plan view of a frog.
I mean this as a serious question over the last couple of days this has started to bug me.

 

[ac445ab]

Good project and beautiful wood.
For what you will use it?

Ciao
Giuliano

 

[swagman]

Good project and beautiful wood.
For what you will use it?

Ciao
Giuliano

Hi Guiliano. Some of the timber I work with have a curly & non directional grain. Using a hand plane with a standard blade fitted carries a high risk of tear-out. A toothing blade eliminates most of that risk due with its different cutting action.

I have made a couple of late changes to the final specs on this hand plane build. It will now be 12 inches in length and not 22. The blade bed will be increased from 50 to 55 degree's. Both these changes should make the plane much more easier to use.

Stewie;

 

[ac445ab]

Good project and beautiful wood.
For what you will use it?

Ciao
Giuliano

Hi Guiliano. Some of the timber I work with have a curly & non directional grain. Using a hand plane with a standard blade fitted carries a high risk of tear-out. A toothing blade eliminates most of that risk due with its different cutting action.

I have made a couple of late changes to the final specs on this hand plane build. It will now be 12 inches in length and not 22. The blade bed will be increased from 50 to 55 degree's. Both these changes should make the plane much more easier to use.

Stewie;

I would have suggested this. I agree for a shorter plane :wink:

Ciao
Giuliano

 

[swagman]

Good project and beautiful wood.
For what you will use it?

Ciao
Giuliano

Hi Guiliano. Some of the timber I work with have a curly & non directional grain. Using a hand plane with a standard blade fitted carries a high risk of tear-out. A toothing blade eliminates most of that risk due with its different cutting action.

I have made a couple of late changes to the final specs on this hand plane build. It will now be 12 inches in length and not 22. The blade bed will be increased from 50 to 55 degree's. Both these changes should make the plane much more easier to use.

Stewie;

I would have suggested this. I agree for a shorter plane :wink:

Ciao
Giuliano

Good to hear.

Stewie;

 

[Plumberpete]

Good project and beautiful wood.
For what you will use it?

Ciao
Giuliano

Hi Guiliano. Some of the timber I work with have a curly & non directional grain. Using a hand plane with a standard blade fitted carries a high risk of tear-out. A toothing blade eliminates most of that risk due with its different cutting action.

This was, in fact, what toothing planes were originally for, rather than to allow veneer to be glued more easily to a smooth surface. I have a quote here, from a book that I've long since forgotten the name of, or who the author was, but I can probably find out if anyone is really interested! #-o If my memory serves me right, it's from the first half of the 19th century;

"Though the double iron is an excellent invention, and the use of it is, in fact, the best general remedy known against the curling or cross-grained stuff of ordinary quality; yet, without some other assistance, the planing of many of the finest specimens of mahogany, and many other woods, among which fustic may be particularly mentioned, would be to the last degree a difficult and perplexing operation to the workman. Hence a plane, the stock of which is usually made of the shape and size of the smoothing-plane, is fitted up so as to act by scratching or scraping. The blade, or iron, on the steel side of it, is covered with rakes or small grooves close to each other, and all of them in the direction of its length; when therefore it is ground, and the basil formed, its edge presents a series of teeth like those of a fine saw; the bed of the stock intended to receive it is inclined only about six degrees, and consequently when the iron is fixed it is almost perpendicular. On account of these teeth in the iron, the plane obtains the name of the tooth-plane. With this kind of plane, however hard the stuff may be, or however cross and twisted its grain, the surface may be made every-where alike, and will not be rougher than if it had been rubbed with a piece of new fish-skin. This roughness may be effectually removed with the scraper, which is a thin piece of steel, like part of a common case-knife, the back of it being let into a piece of wood, as a handle."

My apologies if this has already been discussed elsewhere and is already common knowledge!

 

[MIGNAL]

That blade appears to have a pretty fine TPI, more like the type used for veneering work. I've always found a coarser toothed blade much better for dealing with figured wood. The fine blades seem to clog readily and remove little material. The most effective blade I had was an old Stanley blade that I cut grooves into. I made that sometime in the early '80's. Unfortunately In a workshop move I lost it and subsequently bought the Kunz toothed blade. The homemade Stanley was more effective though.
And yes, there's not much point in having a toothed Plane 22" long as it's really meant to tackle tear out rather than making wood flat.

 

[Corneel]

Pete, if you can remember the author, I'd be very interested. Wasn't it Holtzappfel?

I have a toothing plane like that with the very steep iron. It's not very usable as a foreplane to flatten stock. The teeth are too fine and it tends to clog. I wonder if I am doing something wrong.

The double iron plane has a great feature: when you can't set it fine enough to eliminate all tearout, it still helps to reduce the depth of tearout. This limits the amount of damage, so you can also clean it up with a card scraper. But I haven't tried each and every kind of mahogany or fustic of course.

 

[swagman]

That blade appears to have a pretty fine TPI, more like the type used for veneering work. I've always found a coarser toothed blade much better for dealing with figured wood. The fine blades seem to clog readily and remove little material. The most effective blade I had was an old Stanley blade that I cut grooves into. I made that sometime in the early '80's. Unfortunately In a workshop move I lost it and subsequently bought the Kunz toothed blade. The homemade Stanley was more effective though.
And yes, there's not much point in having a toothed Plane 22" long as it's really meant to tackle tear out rather than making wood flat.

Hi Mignal. Appreciate your thoughts. I have made a few traditional 1 piece hand planes in the past with toothing blades exactly the same type as the one seen in the photo with very pleasing results on curly grained timbers. I have my doubts that a traditional high tpi toothing blade would function very well at a bed of 45 degree's. I tend to think that's why most of the modern toothed blades that are
destined to be fitted to beds of 45 degree's as well as those mounted at lower beds bevel up, have a much lower tpi and are much more aggressive in their nature. I would also add that if a much more aggressive cutting action was required on the finer tpi toothing blades, a slightly deeper gullet could be filed using a 3 square needle file. As yet I haven't seen the need, but it would be interesting to experiment further with the idea.

Here's photo's of 2 toothing planes I made about 3 years ago. Same blades but the blade beds are 55 & 60 degree's.

Stewie;

 

[swagman]

Pete, if you can remember the author, I'd be very interested. Wasn't it Holtzappfel?

I have a toothing plane like that with the very steep iron. It's not very usable as a foreplane to flatten stock. The teeth are too fine and it tends to clog. I wonder if I am doing something wrong.

The double iron plane has a great feature: when you can't set it fine enough to eliminate all tearout, it still helps to reduce the depth of tearout. This limits the amount of damage, so you can also clean it up with a card scraper. But I haven't tried each and every kind of mahogany or fustic of course.

Hi Pete. I would also be interested to find out more on the author as well as the book that this info was mentioned.

Stewie;

 

[AndyT]

For Pete's interesting quotation, click here

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=..._esc=y#v=onepage&q=fustic tooth-plane&f=false

The Panorama of Science and Art: Volume 1
By Sir James Edward Smith
1825.

Pete probably found it on Chris Schwarz's blog here

http://blog.lostartpress.com/2013/09/09/another-way-to-tame-tear-out/

 

[Plumberpete]

For Pete's interesting quotation, click here

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=..._esc=y#v=onepage&q=fustic tooth-plane&f=false

The Panorama of Science and Art: Volume 1
By Sir James Edward Smith
1825.

Thanks for that Andy!

I'd completely forgotten where I had got that quote from, I had it written down somewhere but didn't keep it with the quote itself. I actually found it at Bristol Reference Library.

 

[swagman]

For Pete's interesting quotation, click here

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=..._esc=y#v=onepage&q=fustic tooth-plane&f=false

The Panorama of Science and Art: Volume 1
By Sir James Edward Smith
1825.

Pete probably found it on Chris Schwarz's blog here

http://blog.lostartpress.com/2013/09/09/another-way-to-tame-tear-out/

Hi Andy. Thank you for your assistance. Much appreciated.

 

[Corneel]

Yes thanks Andy. Interesting read.

 

[Corneel]

Well, funny read indeed. He writes that smoothing planes were never used with a double iron, still they were available everywhere with said double irons. But the part about the toothing plane is interesting indeed.

Stewie, I am looking forward to read about the build of your plane, and also how it works in practice.

 

[swagman]

Well, funny read indeed. He writes that smoothing planes were never used with a double iron, still they were available everywhere with said double irons. But the part about the toothing plane is interesting indeed.

Stewie, I am looking forward to read about the build of your plane, and also how it works in practice.

You and me both Corneel. After a near 3 year lapse of mortising these out in the traditional manner I had forgotten how tedious and difficult they can be. After a days work on it there is still much more than needs to be done. Kudos to philly for the time and attention to detail he has to commit too in dealing with these on a regular basis. (hammer)

Stewie;

 

[swagman]

Apart from Philly. Out of curiosity is their any other forum members that have made a wooden bodied bench plane using the traditional technique of mortising out a single block of wood.

Stewie;

 

[Corneel]

Yes once. A short 55 degree single iron plane. I had all kinds of ideas for a line of single iron planes. But then I learned how to use the capiron and all my ideas went out of the window. I can buy double iron wooden planes all day long for so little money, that it doesn't make much sence to make my own. But I'd still like to make something, some day. An 18th century pattern or so.

The plane I made isn't a huge succes. It likes to chatter and it clogs easilly. More attention to the wedge is in order, but that project is on the backburner for now.

 

[swagman]

As you will see from the following photo's I am making steady progress with the build. The blade and wedge have been installed. I have set the mouth opening in front of the blade at about 1/8 inch. Much wider than you would require with a conventional blade.

One of the benefits of choosing Merbau for the plane block is its high level of natural tannins. It turns a dark black colour after about 3 coats when treated with an iron oxide stain. (so far the main body has only received its 1st coat.)

I still need to add a bevelled edge across the top and down both ends of the plane block.

I am still undecided on whether a rear tote is needed. Feedback welcome on the need to do so.


Stewie;











This photo shows most of the hand tools I have used so far to build the toothing plane.