Wooden hand planes suggestions?

[richarddownunder]

Hi...nice planes. I'd be interested in the detail of your iron and cap iron (unless you have already discussed that and I have missed it). I made a BU woodie a few years ago but it has just sat around as it doesn't work so well - can't remember what bed angles I used. I was thinking that a BD with a cap iron might be better as per the discussions here.

Do you recon the Lignum makes much difference over using purpleheart or similar for the whole thing (with a bit of wax on the sole)? I think you mention you would use purpleheart for the sole so just wondered why the 2-tone approach.

 

[M_Chavez]

Thanks!

The bigger one has a Ron Hock blade (Krenov 3.5" model) that comes with a chipbreaker. These blades are fantastic - just need a light hone to get them going and hold the edge very well. Very highly recommended!

For the smaller one, I had a spare blade from a cheapo Chinese plane that came with a slot for the chipbreaker (but without the chipbreaker itself). The thing cost me £3 including delivery from China a couple of years ago and lasted about 3 months of light use before the plane's side cracked. I kept the blade, as the quality of steel wasn't even half as bad as I'd expect for that price. I used a 1" wide silver steel plate to make an improvised breaker - introduced a slight bend into the steel, shaped the tip, drilled and tapped the hole for an M6 bolt. It works, but needs a little bit more fine-tuning to get the best results out of it.
To me, the big advantage of the short blade is that you can really put your hand over it when holding the plane - 3.5" would have been sticking out too much.
I have an old laminated cast steel blade that's 1" wide, but I don't know a good way to extend the slot into the hard cast steel section (dremel grinder & water to cool it down perhaps?) to sufficiently shorten the blade length. If I can extend the slot, I'll make another one of these breakers for it.

 

[M_Chavez]

In regard to the sole, I found out this is not actually lignum.

I found the wood reasonably easy to work and when my hands turned black, I suspected foul play. Dug up the invoice and it said "African Lignum", which is a fancy misleading name for Acacia nigrescens (acacia - I knew that black stain looked familiar!). Janka hardness is claimed to be ~2000, which is below bubinga and purpleheart. My highly scientific Janka tester (whacking a screwdriver into a blank) suggested my piece was on par with bubinga and softer than purpleheart.
I build guitars, so the plane will spend a fair amount of its life being dragged along sharp dense hardwood edges - "normal" woodworkers are probably less likely to abuse the sole to the same extent.

I like the idea of gluing up the sole and the sides - I hope that it will minimise the movement in the central block, so I'd glue up the sole even if I was making the whole thing out of one wood.
The colour contrast is very nice though. :roll:

There wasn't much thought that went into using purpleheart - I was just using whatever scraps I had and it is cheap and hard.

 

[thetyreman]

what about using laburnum for a plane sole? I don't think I've ever seen this and it's similar density to ebony apparently, I can get hold of some at tree station where I got the pear wood, they had absolutely loads of it and it's cheap.

 

[AndyT]

what about using laburnum for a plane sole? I don't think I've ever seen this and it's similar density to ebony apparently, I can get hold of some at tree station where I got the pear wood, they had absolutely loads of it and it's cheap.

I've got a lump of laburnum I bought from MAC Timbers a while back. It looks ideal for making a plane - which is sort of why I bought it - but I've lost my original sense of urgency on this one.

I think it's true to say that the woods generally chosen for planes are each country's compromise to get reasonable hard wear, be practical to mass produce and not be too expensive. So beech and birch are common, with box or hornbeam where extra hardness is needed.

But almost any wood will do and still take some wear. Richard Maguire made a nice smoother out of pine, as a demonstration of this.

 

[D_W]

Fair enoughski, your viewpoint is as valid as mine and I won't be discussing this topic any time soon; consider it closed - Rob

I'm sure advice like this will continue forever, but there is little in the world of fine mouths that can compete with a cap iron.

I went so far as an amateur maker to make a fairly pricey to build single iron 55 degree smoother (infill) with a 1/4" brese (made for him by hock) iron. I set the mouth between 3 and 4 thousandths.

There are very few planes with mouths that fine. It is not as good at controlling tearout as a stanley plane with the cap iron set properly, and far less productive if there is anything more to do than take 1-2 thousandth shavings.

You have not learned to use the cap iron properly, and that is OK. But it is bad advice to suggest that a tight mouth is as good as or better than a cap iron. Closing the discussion to not hear an opinion you don't like isn't something that changes the outcome.

I still have my infill plane that I made. It's amateur made, so I'm not sure what to do with it, but i haven't used it regularly in years. As it's heavy and has a huge iron, it's a sexy-working wood show type plane, and great for a beginner who doesn't know what a cap iron is.

But the cap iron is light years ahead of it in design evolution and capability and a step further than that, what it allows (a relatively common standard plane that will plane everything) is an economic marvel for the time.

Norris planes are not a good illustration of a fine mouth, as the wear has been filed away to allow use of the cap iron set close. It's essentially a plane that will work well for a new user or someone who isn't very good at using planes (as well as displaying their prowess for making fine planes), but it is very intentionally made to go to the next level for an experienced user. Filing the mouth away in the front is extra work - they wouldn't have done it for nothing.

As time went on and costs were cut, the fine mouth became less common but the cap iron stayed. One would assume that all competent trade workers were well versed in using it.

What is the shame of all of this? People tell beginners that they need all manners of faffing to control tearout. All they need is a stanley plane. One could do a lifetime of fine work in hard and soft woods, figured and plain with a single plane with a stock iron and cap iron.

if that wasn't the case, fine mouthed and high pitched planes would've dominated. They were pretty much eliminated from the market until users became beginners who would often never even master sharpening.

 

[D_W]

nice work, plane looks great, I'm wondering if pearwood is suitable for a nice smoother? got plans to make a 55 degree pitch one for figured and very difficult woods, not sure if it's hard enough or if it's worth attaching a sole from even harder wood?

Pear is hard enough. At a high pitch, sole hardness isn't going to be your limiter, rather weight of the plane will be.

If the plane is short, make it narrow. Only stray to wider irons if it will have some weight or it will batter you.

pearwood can be a lot of different things. There are african versions that are very dense and european versions that are sort of dense and more like apple. Either is fine. I would not install a separate sole on a plane when the maker is also the user. You can tune the bottom however you'd like, and I'd suggest if there is an area of significant wear, planning to insert a plug later is better than the notion that you'll create a sole of some type that never needs any maintenance.

 

[M_Chavez]

Tyreman - to be honest, I think any wood would do - these are so easy to make that you can always make a new body for the iron.
I already made 4 and chucked 2 into the bin - one was not comfortable in my hand and one (high-pitched) didn't feel right - I guess it has battered me, as D_W just said.

Laburnum Janka is 2000 - that seems good enough for me. Personally, I thought that in my case dragging a 1.5k Janka sole over 2.5-3k Janka wood edges was not going to cut it, but 2k sole seems to be doing just fine on ebony (3k) and grenadillo (2.7k) and rosewood (2.5k).
More importantly, does the colour look good when matched to the body? :twisted:

 

[M_Chavez]

Just noticed, Charnwood have Pinie plane kits on sale at only £17 each.
https://www.charnwood.net/products/planes

As I have now seen the light, I don't see much point in the screw adjusters, but the iron&chipbreaker alone are probably worth that money.

 

[M_Chavez]

Well, here's the final trio - all from the same 2 pieces of wood.

Thanks all for your advice.