Home Made Planes

It's amazing how many talented woodworkers have made their own planes. Here is a selection of pictures  recently sent to me by Adrian Black (everyone calls him Black) for you to enjoy.

If anyone else would like to send me their plane making efforts I would be happy to post them on my blog for all to see.

ECE Wooden Planes

Here is an ECE Emerich wooden smoother from Germany. These planes are more popular than metal planes over there and if you get a chance to try one you will understand why. They are very comfortable to hold and have the perfect adjustment system which is held under tension and has no backlash whatsoever. This was a bargain from E Bay at £50, they cost upwards of £150 new.

The sole is Lignum Vitae which is extremely hard wearing and very slippery. It has an adjustable mouth which is very useful for the finest smoothing tasks. The iron is bedded at 49 degrees.

The method of attaching the sole is very complicated but makes sure it never separates. Complete overkill but it looks pretty!

They also make a very comfortable little block plane which is a little cracker to use. It's made in the same way but doesn't have an adjustable mouth, the large knob acts as the blade adjuster and handle.
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For those who were wondering what the Spiers plane looked like finished here are a few shots.

Spiers Plane, Repair Refurbishment

Yesterday I was finishing and packing a batch of dovetail guides when I decided to throw in this little project to add some interest to the day. It is a 13 1/2" panel plane by Spiers with a 2 1/2" wide original Ward iron. This is a common size but is a very useful plane capable of the finest smoothing as well as flattening smaller boards. It is comfortable and heavy with a very fine mouth.

Of course the only drawback was this badly damaged spur but at £135 it was a good buy (I hope!).
This brings me to the time involved in making these repairs, if you are doing it for fun then take your time and enjoy the process. If you're looking to make a good return on the time spent, then you need to keep an eye on the clock and learn which planes to buy and which to leave alone.

As the spur had quite bad damage on both sides then I decided it would be quicker and better to take it straight off. I did this on the table saw with base running against the fence, remembering to remove the blade and lever cap screw!
Using the table saw has the advantage of quickly giving you a clean flat surface to glue to but also one which is dead parallel to the sole making clamping much easier.

Shaping the elegant spur is made a lot easier if you have another plane to copy. The one in the background is a Spiers plane from around 1890-1910, whereas the one I'm working on is slightly later around 1910-1920, although the profiles are remarkably similar.
The wood in the foreground is some old Rio (Brazilian) rosewood which should give a nice match to the original handle.

My glue of choice is this resin glue which dries rock hard and avoids the tiny creep which seems to occur over time with yellow glue. This creep can turn a near invisible repair into an obvious one and spoil your hard work. Epoxy will also work well.

Here is the clamp up, easy and solid. I applied good pressure but didn't go too far just in case I ended up with another repair as well! Getting to this stage had taken just 15 minutes, all going well so far.

Here is the glued on block after 5 hours left in a warm place (not my workshop!). I've marked out the profile of the new spur ready for cutting on my smaller band saw.

With the top and bottom cuts done on the band saw I marked out the profile of the rounded part. The rough shaping was done with rasps, I found the round Micro Plane rasp the most useful and finished off with a fine Auriou hand stitched rasp.

A combination of machine sanding (I don't know what I would do without my Kirjes pneumatic drum sander) and hand sanding to 320 grit and the whole rear section was ready for finishing. The time taken getting to this stage was 75 minutes. The match of the bare wood was good and there was a barely visible glue line which should disappear with the finish. The profile of the curve was slightly flatter than the earlier plane but pretty close.

Another view.

I applied a first coat of finish (melamine lacquer) to get a good look at the finished colour and all was well.
This left the front bun to be re finished so that everything matched and three more thin coats of Osmo Hard Wax Oil to be applied. By the time I have touched up the metal work, cleaned and sharpened the blade it will have taken three hours work and should be a reasonable investment as well as a  fine looking and very useful plane.

Winter is Here!

Winter has definitely arrived, freezing during the day as well as the night. Earlier this year we had a wood burning stove fitted, I've never had one before. I thought I could keep it going with offcuts from the work shop, think again! This thing eats wood for fun but it keeps the whole house really warm.

 
Another small batch of dovetail guides awaiting fitting of the low friction pads.

Packing the guides in these cute little boxes with full instructions.

I had a delivery of magnets for the guides today, this picture shows a box of 600 beautifully and efficiently packed, I love dealing with the Germans. They included a nice thank you card, some sweets and a couple of fridge magnets, a very nice touch. I could learn a lot from their customer care.

Below is a 3" thick board of figured bubinga bought yesterday from Yandles wood yard. This is more difficult to work than standard stock but will produce some lovely planes.

To Guide or Not To Guide?

The current issue of British Woodworking has an article by teacher John Lloyd discussing the merits or not of using magnetic guides, mine included. In Johns ambling manor I'm not sure exactly where he stands on the subject but I think he advocates learning the hard way, 10,000 hours practice was mentioned!
I remember when David Charlesworth first saw me demonstrating my dovetail guide at The West Dean College Show he bought five of them on the spot! Now that's a more enlightened attitude.
Any guide which helps make a process easier and more accurate without completely taking over has got to be a good thing, it also helps open the mind to other ways of working.

When I got to the end of the magazine I was surprised to see that the next issue features an article by John Lloyd on making a jig for planing mitres, Mmmm!

Wide Belt Sander

This morning my new wide belt sander arrived. My last one was a Senior drum sander which I couldn't get on with, it burned the wood on all but the coarsest grit which wasn't much help. I'm sure this is to do with the friction of the rotating drum, hopefully the much longer belt will be a lot better.
The capacity is 18" but with an open end this can be doubled, in theory!
It weighs 215kg and is top heavy so I was glad we had the builders in to give a hand. My workshop is down  a sloping gravel drive so I'm limited as to the size of machinery I can man handle in. My heaviest machine is a Felder table saw at 400 kg and that's about the limit.

Here it is in it's final resting place butting up against my island sited work bench. The infeed section is across the bench and the outfeed space is shared with the planer thicknesser. When you have a cosy workshop every inch is valuable! The sander comes with extendible supports for the width as well as the length which is useful. Once I have set it all up I will report on performance.

Norris Bull Nose Refurbishment

Here was my most expensive purchase at the David Stanley auction (£225 all in), a steel soled gunmetal bull nose plane by Norris. This is a rare plane but from the look of you may think I've gone mad!!

The steel sole was heavily pitted and it was in a sorry state all-round. The iron looked original but everything had seized together.

First job was to deal with the sole. I have an old cast iron linnisher which is dead flat and works really well for such jobs. The danger it removing too much metal or from the wrong place. The toe didn't line up with the sole so it needed a good wack with a hammer to bring it in line and then everything came up well, with all the pitting removed. The other danger was creating a wide mouth so I kept checking this every few seconds. It widened a little but the mouth was so tight to start with I knew I had some leeway.

The next job was to clean up the gunmetal sides which was done with 320 wet and dry lubricated with white spirit (mineral oil) and Duraglit brass cleaner.

Once I had cleaned up the rusty blade I could see that all parts were original and all stamped 5.

To tone down the gunmetal I used a brass and copper patinating fluid which I adjusted with the Duraglit until I achieved the finish I required.

the wedge was in good condition and just required a light sanding back with 400 grit and refinishing with Lacquer. I was pleased and relieved with the final result and the whole thing took just 1 1/2 hours.

I used gun blue to tone down the steel sole and the job was done.