Pocket Plane Shaping

Here I'm using a plug cutter to form the round tenons on the ends of the cross pin. The Flip Stop arrangement on my drill press is very useful in keeping things steady. I always make a few extra cross pins especially with such a small plane, the cross pin is 8mm square and the round pin is 6mm diameter which leaves very little margin for error.

Here are some blanks glued up, remembering to put put the cross pin in of course!

This is the first shaping cut on the band saw using a 6mm blade and with the blank laying on its side.

The front and rear then get three shaping cuts on each corner, freehand on the band saw.
Although this technique advocated by James Krenov and Sam Maloof is very useful, it is also potentially very dangerous, so no pictures!

Here I'm using the spindle sander for cleaning off the marks left by the band saw. I also use it for refining the curves on the front and rear, the disc sander tends to burn this dense wood.

The last stage is with the Kirjes pneumatic sander which is a wonderful little tool for finishing curved surfaces. I start with 80 grit and work through each of the grits up to fine finish with 400 grit. It doesn't take very long for each plane but with 21 to do its about 90 minutes of fairly boring work.