Tag Archives: Lie-Nielsen

Building a wooden Shoulder Plane

13/8/2013

The third plane I prioritised to build was a shoulder plane. As per usual I decided to use a Lie-Nielsen blade in the form of their Large Shoulder Plane replacement blade. As you can see in the pictures below it is a blade that is designed to be used bevel up, given the bevels on the sides of the top of the bit end. I did not really grasp this until it was pointed out to me by Deneb Puchalski from Lie-Nielsen. I actually planed to bed the blade at 50-55º and use it bevel down. He advised me to consider a much lower bedding angle while using the blade bevel up.

I then started thinking of a way to change the design quite radically from the examples I found in my research. You will have to wait and see how it turns out as I myself still does not know exactly what the final design will look like. I will again (similar to what I did with the Scrub Plane) write this post as I progress with the project.

In the pictures below you can see the beech I used for the project and the Lie-Nielsen blade.

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As with the other planes I have built so far I had to laminate in order to get the size stock required. I laminated it in this particular orientation to ensure that I have the grain running in the direction recommended by the guys from Old Street Tools. I can really recommend their articles (which is available for free download from their site) on plane building. You will find the the link to their site on the library page of this site.

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The lamination process. You will notice the use of my glue roller. I wrote a separate post on how I made this tool, which you will find under the category “Hand tools”

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The beech blank.

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I used the actual blade to mark out the next step of cutting away the sides …

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… as so. In the last of the three pictures you can see the strips I ripped off the sides, which were then glued back on the centre piece.

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Before glueing the strips back I first fed the inside to the thicknesser to get it down to about 2 mm wider than the tang of the blade.

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The strips were then hand planed to improve the contact during glueing.

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Dry-fit and glue.

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Here you can see how I removed the hardened glue with my shop-made flush plane before hand planing the sole in preparation for the glueing on of the ysterhout sole.

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Glueing on the ysterhout sole.

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I then used my bandsaw Mitre-sled to cut a 20 º bedding angle for the blade and 12º space for the wedge.

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Up until this stage the design I was aiming for looked like the one below …

Shoulder plane design

… but I realised that the small triangular area on the “bedding piece” available as a glueing surface for the kershout sides (still to be made), would not be adequate. I therefore dropped the project and continued with the four other planes (Jack, Fore, Smoothing planes and a jointer) I started working on.

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1/10/2013

During a trip to Cape Town recently to go and what the Springboks butcher the Ozzies, I had some time to think on the plane (that is thinking on the airplane about the shoulder plane) and came up with an idea of how to hopefully make this plane work. As I am writing this I still have no idea if it would work as it entails quite a few tasks that I have never attempted before.

Anyway, I got back on the horse and took some beautiful kershout from this massive board. A Kershout tree of this size would have been between 700 – 1000 years old if my friend who studied these things knows anything.

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I re-sawed the piece on the bandsaw and tidied it up with the thicknesser and hand planes.

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Here you can see my delightful petite smoothing plane in action. I wrote an entire post on how I built it a few months ago (http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/petite-wooden-smoothing-plane/)

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The plane was then glued together. In the first picture below you can see an unpolished piece of stainless steel, which is integral to the success (hopefully at this stage) of my new idea.

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7/10/2013 – I released the plane from the clamps on Friday afternoon and spent an hour playing around with various shapes and designs based on an idea I had. Finally I came up with the design as drawn on the blank before heading down to our Barbie area to light a fire and drink a few cold beverages.

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On Saturday morning I started to shape the plane in order to be able to epoxy these strips of stainless steel in place so that it could set well overnight.

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You can see how I made a few test cuts in a scrap piece of plywood to ensure the absolute correct depth of cut for the dado meant to accept the stainless steel. I used my removable pipe-clamp-end-vise to keep the plane in position for cutting the dado.

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The two dados meant to accept the two stales steel bars is clearly visible in the first two pictures. I then proceeded to shape the rest of the plane by drilling out certain areas an using the bandsaw for the rest.

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The next step was to epoxy the stainless steel into place.

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The next day I drilled out six holes through the stainless steel from side to side. These holes were 6 mm in diameter with the entrance chamfered slightly, as you can see. I made six pins out of 6 mm brass rod that was about 5 mm longer than the width of the plane and whacked it through the holes with equal amounts protruding at each end.

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I used the setup below to rest one of the protruding ends on while whacking the other with a hammer until the brass moved into the chamfered area and fixing the stainless steel into this position for ever.

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As you can see in the pictures below, I then removed the untidy excess metal and polished it as best as I can given my lack of metal working tools and skills.

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Then came the long hard slog of shaping the edges of the plane using a block plane, a spokeshave, and several files.

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Sides were tidied up with my shop made proletarian sanding contrivances.

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At present the plane looks like this. Next I have to make the wedge and am considering to try some decorative coloured epoxy inlays, but let’s see what happens.

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13/10/13 – On Friday afternoon I quickly fashioned this wedge out of beech.

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On Saturday I changed the shape ever so slightly as you can see here. The blade will be set by a special plane hammer with a delicate neck, which I still have to build.

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The next step was to ensure that the sole of the plane is 100% square with the left cheek. As a right-hander I would use the plane predominantly with the left cheek as reference surface. I used the setup as shown to sand the sole square.

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As discussed in one of the “My journey” posts, I am using this tool building phase to try out and practice techniques that might come in handy when I start building furniture. Here I thought of trying-out coloured epoxy inlaying to add some je ne sais quoi to the shoulder plane. I used the drill bit pictured to create the grooves and tidied it up with a carving tool.

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As you can see, I mixed some epoxy with acrylic paint …

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… and used small scrap bits of wood as spatulas to work the mixture into the grooves. After a few hours I used my shop made flush plane to cut most of the excess away before the epoxy became too hard. It is a shlep to sand it away once it becomes rocklike.

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I then used my proletarian sanding contrivances to sand away the last little bit of epoxy and started the finishing process as shown.

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Here are a few pictures of the finished shoulder plane. Now I only have to sharpen the blade and Bob’s your uncle. The blade is bedded at 20º with a 25º primary bevel. I am planning to hone and polish a small secondary bevel at 28º, producing a 48º effective angle of attack.

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Building a Wooden Jack Plane

19/8/2013 – I am in the process of building 4 different wooden planes as you might have seen under the post entitled “Shooting Plane Pregnancy”. They are a Jack Plane (aiming at 17″), a Fore Plane (probably 22″), a Shooting Plane and a Jointer (aiming for 30″).

This post will document the process of how I build the Jack Plane. The plan is to add new photos and text as I progress over the next few weeks.

The stock for all of these planes were cut from the two beech boards pictured.

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The Jack Plane is the furthest from the camera accompanied by it’s ysterhout sole prior to gluing.

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Another photo of the Jack Plane’s stock together with that of the Shooting Plane.

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A closeup of the beech and ysterhout prior to gluing.

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The gluing process.

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I found this closed tote pattern as a free pdf download at http://www.oocities.org/plybench/handle.html. I am still considering whether I will use an open or closed tote for the Jack Plane but am pretty sure I will use this closed version for the Fore Plane and the Jointer.

 

Old street 16th century closed tote patern

 

29/8/2013 – With regards to the above conundrum, I decided to rather use an open tote on the Jack Plane, which I will discuss a bit later.

I used the array of planes pictured below to establish one flat surface on the side of each of the plane blanks, as I do not have a Jointer. In the last two pictures you can see the difference between a jointed side and an untouched side.

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The blanks were then fed to the thicknesser to created another flat surface parallel to the planed one.

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After that I first squared the future top of the plane with regards to these flat and parallel sides. That enabled me to slice the strips off the sides on the bandsaw with the ysterhout sole facing upwards in order to prevent blowout.

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I removed the saw marks from the sides with the thicknesser.

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The next step was to mill the centre down to the exact width, which was 3 mm wider than the 2″ Lie-Nielsen blades I am planning to use.

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At this point I was able to utilise my bandsaw mitre-sled to cut the ramp and curved toe section. I wrote an entire post on how I built the bandsaw mitre-sled, which you will find under the category “jigs” on this site. It is important to keep the wedge created by these two cuts. It comes in handy later on as I will illustrate. I decided on a 50° degree bedding angle (also known as York Pitch) for all of these planes. It is the best all-round angle for my purposes working predominantly with very hard woods.

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The curved cut on the toe section was tidied up by means of the Green Monster.

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The first place where the wedge-offcut comes in handy is when you need to square up and flatten the ramp on the heel section. In order to prevent blowout of the ysterhout sole one can clamp the wedge together with the heel section as shown. Then you can go ahead and plane the ramp with confidence.

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After planing the three ramps I scribbled on them with a 2B pencil and did the last of the flattening on glass with 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on it. It seems to me that one should not overdo this step as it is easy to round off the edges if not very careful. As soon as all the pencil marks disappear you have done enough.

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I chose 2″ wide Lie-Nielsen blades with their accompanying chip breakers for each of these three planes. Lie-Nielsen produce blades of absolutely tantalising quality. In the pictures below you can see how I measured the the screw that clamps the business end of the plane together, in order to set the router up to cut a custom slot for it in the ramp.

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Here you can appreciate the second reason why it is useful to retain the wedge produced by the two cuts made earlier in the centre section. It help to created enough of a flat section as a reference surface for your router in order to cut the mentioned slot in the ramp.

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I thought I should quickly show you these delightful Kershout beams I made many moons ago. They are kept quite handy in the location as shown below my bench. You will notice that their have their length indicated to help me find the exact contrivance needed in a particular situation. In this case I used the Godfather of the beams (at around 1.7 meters in length) as a fence to align the plane parts as shown. This process entails the marking out of the centre-heel piece relative to the centre-toe piece and pinpointing the location of where to drill the first hole for the cross-pin.

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This unfortunately represented the first major blunder in my hitherto Utopian-plane-building-activities. I somehow marked out the location of the cross-pin without taking into account the thickness of the Iron-chipbreaker-combo as is clearly indicated in my extensive notes on the topic. Please see my post entitled “Wooden plane building tip” for information on the measurements I use. If you follow them correctly (as a posed to me in this instance) it works like a charm. We will discuss my fix for the my blunder a little bit later on as at this point in time I still did not realise that I made a mistake.

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In order to drill the opposing hole for the cross-pin, I assembled the plane using small Bessey f-style clamps to keep the various pieces in place, while fixing it with very small panel pins as shown. I first drill a 1 mm hole and then tap the panel pin home, in order to be able to take the plane apart easily afterwards. These same panel pins stay in the side strips to enable me to reassemble the plane in this exact way during the final dry-fit and ultimate glue-up. I you will notice that the panel pins go in the area at each end of the plane that will be cut away after gluing.

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Here you can see how the initial cross-pin whole acts as a guide for locating the opposing hole on the drill press.

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Next step was to prepare a ½” square length of Assegaai for the cross-pins. I tend to make them 3 mm longer than needed each side and only trim them down after the plane is glued up. The inside is only about 1 mm shorter than the width of the centre pieces (toe and heel sections). I used a Lie-Nielsen carcass saw and a bench hook I made that keeps the saw at precisely 90° to cut the cross-pins to length.

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In order to create the rounded ends of the pins I use, a Veritas centre-finder (by lack of a better term), a Tamboti marking knife, a compass, a chisel and a selection of files.

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After a final dry-fit I usually go ahead and glue the plane together, but not in this case as it was at this point where I luckily (although it did not feel that way at the time) realised my mistake in measuring out the location of the cross-pin holes. There were no space for a wedge and a blade as I did not include the thickness of the blade in my measurements!!!!! This is one of those horrible feelings in woodwork when it hits you like a ton of bricks that you made a stuff-up that might mean all the effort so far was in vain. I usually start sweating and develop acute palpitations, as I did in this case as well.

After I managed to calm down I realised that I could simply move the heel section back by the thickness of the blade-chipbreaker combo to fix the problem. The only real side-effect of my indiscretion after the fix was that I now had a much wider mouth/throat opening than initially intended. On these planes I was not too concerned about that so it worked out fine in the end. You can see the glue-up process in the pictures below.

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The Jack Plane after it was liberated from the clamps.

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Then I went searching for a nice orange piece of Assegaai for the totes. In the first picture you can see the rough boards and in the second how it looked after some attention for the thicknesser. In the end I decided to use an open tote for the Jack Plane and again used the tote of my Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jack Plane as a template as you can see. I did however modify it slightly for this particular job giving it a significant base section (by lack of a better term). You will also see the template for the closed tote I used for the other two planes but we will discuss that in the posts on the Jointer and Fore Plane respectively. On the Lee Valley website one can find free pdf documents with tote templates of various old Stanley planes. The accompanying text and pictures is very helpful when trying to make your own totes for the first time. I used them when I made my “Proletarian Sanding Contrivances” and therefore I now feel very comfortable doing it without help. You will be able to find an entire post dedicated to these sanding planes under the category “Hand tools” on this site.

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After drilling out the tight corners with appropriately sized Forstner bits on the Drill Press I used the bandsaw to do the rest.

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I then did the initial shaping with the Green Monster (pictured), after which I used the setup as shown to do the final more delicate work with files.

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1/9/2013 – I am very pleased to add the following pictures of my progress over the past week. My family took advantage of the school holidays and disappeared off to Henties Baai during the latter stages of last week, which gave me some time in the shop after work during the week. Unfortunately I spent all of my Saturday at the Medical Council examining, which left only Sunday to push ahead with this project, but here are the results of my efforts.

I use this handy flush saw from Veritas to remove those extra millimeters at each end of the cross-pin.

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Then I did the first stage of flattening the sole using of the two planes pictured. A Lie-Nielsen no. 4½ Smoother (with a York pitch frog) and a Stanley Bailey pattern no. 5 Jack Plane. After that I did the final flattening using 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on glass.

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In the pictures below you can see how I marked out the guiding lines for the final shaping of the nose of the plane. I first used this design on the scrub plane I built. You will find an entire post on this project under the category “Hand tools” on this site. I find it an absolute gem of a design and certainly attains my goal of building objects that is functional and beautiful at the same time. Otherwise known as a certain je ne sais quoi. I would therefore like to call this … wait for it …  “The Marx Nose”.

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Yes I know …

In the pictures below you can see how I shaped “The Marx Nose” using a Forstner bit and the bandsaw. Please feel free to use it, as long as you also call it “The Marx Nose”. Feel free to contact me and I will give you an idea of the proportions I used. It really feels extremely comfortable and natural while using the plane. Your left palm (if you are right-handed) rests on the top of the toe section, enabling easy and controlled downward pressure and your fingers curl into the rounded slot of the nose to improve the ability to pick the plane up for the back-stroke. It really feels so much better than a cast-iron and normal square-nosed 18th century wooden plane.

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I usually mark the pencil lines for the chamfers by hand, using a finger as a fence.

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The chamfers on the side were done with this Lie-Nielsen low angle block plane. The top edge of this chamfer runs along the glue line where the sides were glued to the centre sections, in order to hide it. This works very well. I will notice that it is not a 45° chamfer as it extends further down the plane than across the top. I find that this add a certain je ne sais quoi.

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Where the chamfer extends across the front of the nose I used files as this is a curved surface with end grain.

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For the stopped chamfers at the heel end, I follow the procedure as illustrated stepwise in the pictures below. I first use a round file to do the end of the chamfer …

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… and then clamp a bit of scrap wood over the end that will stay to protect it. Next I used a selection of flat files to remove the rest of the wood.

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For the the tote of this Jack Plane I decided on an open tote in the end. In the pictures below you can see how it was attached to the plane body utilising three different strategies to ensure strength: mortise, glue and two screws.

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4/9/2013 – I am currently busy applying various layers of oil etc to this plane and aim to create the Tamboti wedge on the weekend. Then I only need to shape and sharpen the blade and Bob’s your Uncle.

In these pictures the two planes are kicking it in the Finishing Spa.

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I took this picture tonight after it received it’s final treatment with liquid wax. By early next week I should be able to add pictures of the completed plane if all goes well.

 

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9/9/2013 – In these pictures you can see the the piece of Tamboti I used for the wedges. They were initially cut with the bandsaw and tidied up with my very special spindle sander known as the “Green Monster”.

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The blades were then shaped and sharpened using the setup as shown. I like writing the angles used on the blades for future reference. Both of these blades were honed with a slight camber, but the Jack Plane with the more pronounced curve. You will notice that I use the terms Honing Angle (HA) and Polishing Angle (PA). These blades come with a primary bevel of 25º and I added secondary bevels with a HA of 33º and PA of 35°. You will find and entire post on how I built this sharpening jig under the category “Jigs” on this site. You will notice the small ruler on the water stone indicating that I use David Charlesworth’s “ruler trick” to created a mirror polish on the back of the blades.

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Next step was to set the blades under normal tension, but retracted in order to do the final flattening of the soles.

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You will notice that I have a new piece of glass that takes three different grids of sandpaper.

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The most rewarding part of this process is the first few shavings taken with your new plane. Here you can see the beautiful assegaai shavings taken from a scrap piece.

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I moved some stuff to create this space right next to my usual planing area as a home for the three planes.

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Now I can move on to finishing the Jointer and then the Shooting Plane.

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Petite Wooden Smoothing Plane

 

I have been reading about and planing to make my own wooden planes for about a year now. I first thought of the idea when I realised how expensive it is to order good quality planes from the USA. For every two Lie-Nielsen planes I pay for an extra one in shipment fees. Make no mistake, the people at Lie-Nielsen have the best customer service I have ever come across and as everyone knows their planes are superb. Yet, sending it half way around the globe costs money.

The more I read about the wooden versions, the more it sounded like they might almost be better than their heftier cousins. Being a bit of a traditionalist, the idea of building my own wooden planes started to gain some momentum. I then had discussions with Deneb Puchalski of Lie-Nielsen around which blades might be best for the types of planes I wanted to build. He was very helpful and in the end I decided on:

1) Three x 2″ wide standard blades with chipbreakers (25 degree primary bevel)

 

2) One 1¾” wide standard blade with chipbreakers (25 degree primary bevel)

 

3) One Scrub plane replacement blade 1½” x 3/16 (thick)

 

4) One large shoulder plane replacement blade 1¼” x 8¼” x 0.140″ (thick)
The blades arrived on the 11th of June 2013 at which time I started to hunt down beech. Surprisingly, I found some in the Land of the Brave. I decided to first build a smoother and a scrub plane to warmup.
In the pictures below you can see the first chunk of beech after it received attention from the planer.

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At this point in time I still did not rehabilitate my bandsaw (thus not able to re-saw at all and definitely not ysterhout in any dimension approaching what was needed), so I had to plane a fairly small piece of ysterhout down to about 8 mm thickness (from about 24 mm). I wanted to use this incredibly hard wood for the soles of my planes. In the pictures below you can see how I used the bandsaw to cut the sole of the smoother.

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After studying the grain of the beech I decided to laminate it as you can see in the pictures below. It is impossible to find beech in bigger dimensions (around these parts) so lamination was my only option. Speeaking of which, I can really recommend the documents on building wooden planes written by Larry Williams and his partner at Old Street Tools. You will find the link on the library page of this site. There are articles on grain orientation, best woods to use etc etc.

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Here you can see how I laminated the parts.

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For some or other reason I decided to stick it in the face vise, which is not the best as the two jaws are not completely parallel, and I have made this mistake before. Anyway, it came out OK, but I really need to stop doing this.

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Next step was to hand plane the sides dead flat and square to the sole. You can appreciate the beautiful soft shavings generated by my newly rehabilitated Stanley no.5 Jack Plane. I wrote a complete post on this project which you can find in the category by the name of “Rehabilitation of old tools”.

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In order to make the next cut I was forced to spend most of the next week trying to fix and tuneup my old crappy bandsaw. The results however made it well worth my while. After the tune-up it sliced such perfect strips off the side that it only took a few strokes with the plane to get them as smooth as a baby’s bottom …

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… as you can see here.

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I then used the planer/thicknesser to get the inside close to the correct width. Maybe a bit less than 3 mm wider than the width of the blade. For this Petite Smoother I chose the 1¾” blade.

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Here you can see how I marked out the bedding angle at 51º (just to be different of course).

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In order to make this next cut I had to build a jig for my bandsaw. I call it a “Bandsaw Mitre-sled”. You can find and read an entire post on this project under the above name …

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… here you can see the actual cut.

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In the first picture you can see the toe and heel section after the first cut. In the next pictures you can appreciate the curve that was cut in the toe section.

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I used the Green Monster to smooth the curved surface of the toe section.

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In order to prevent blowout of the Ysterhout sole while planing the so called ramp, I used the wedge (off-cut) that was created by the two cuts made earlier. You can see how I clamped it in the legvise to support the fibers on the delicate edge of the sole.

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After getting rid of the saw marks left by the bandsaw by means of the old Stanley Jack Plane I used the 3M Adhesive-backed sandpaper on a sheet of float glass to get it 100% flat. You will note the technique I use frequently in scribbling on the area with a 2B pencil before sanding to identify the areas that needs more attention. Once all the pencil marks disappear you know the job is done.

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The next step is to start marking out the position of the toe and heel sections relative to each other. I started by marking out the position of the toe piece and clamping it into this position.

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For the next step it is useful to have the blade in it’s position on the heel section, also known as the ramp. In the second picture you might just be able to see the line I marked at 1.5 mm parallel to the sole on the toe section. The idea is to line the cutting edge of the blade up with this line as demonstrated in the second picture. This tells you were the heel section should be relative to the toe section. You then remove the blade and mark the position with a pencil.

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In the first two pictures below you can see where I marked out the perimeters of the cap-screw slot. The off-cut wedge is again priceless to create a big enough surface in order to cut the slot with a router as shown. Please note the makeshift stop I’ve setup on the left hand side.

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Just a quick test to see whether the slot functions as planed.

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In order to drill the second of the cross-pin holes you need to clamp the whole shebang together after drilling the one side in the correct spot. You will find a host of different ways to identify this point on the internet. I used the measurements provided in an article titled “Wood Planes made easy” by David Finck in Fine Woodworking Magazine. Once I clamped it all into position I tapped some minute panel pins into each corner to ensure that I could put it all back together exactly in the same way during the glueing phase.

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The idea is then to stick the drill bit through the existing hole to drill the opposing hole exactly in the correct place using a perfectly square drill press setup as shown.

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The cross-pin was created by milling a scrap piece of Assegaai down to a ½” square strip that was much longer than needed. In the pictures you can see how I removed some stock by means of the table saw to start shaping the pins on either side. In future I would rather do this with my Lie-Nielsen carcass saw. In the next few picture you can see how I shaped the pins with a file.

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To make sure that everything fitted perfectly I did a dry fit as shown.

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Then I shaped the cross-pin further by using this setup.

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The glue-up is fairly straightforward due to the panel pins that ensures that it all comes together precisely how it was previously decided. Please note the caul clamped to the sole area to ensure that it ends up perfectly aligned.

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The cross-pins were then trimmed flush.

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Next step was to shape the plane and I started by cutting the ends containing the panel pins away.

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Then I marked out this funky curvy configuration on the ysterhout sole. The reason for doing this on the sole was that I wanted to have the sole at the top while cutting the curves on the bandsaw to prevent blowout of the rocklike yet brittle ysterhout. In the second picture you can see the result of the bandsaw’s caress.

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The bandsaw marks were removed by a series of steps including the use of a float, a smoothing plane and finally various grids of sandpaper on float glass. The result was staggeringly beautiful to say the least.

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The piece of Tamboti you see in the pictures below is the only one I have left and a board I know as long as I can remember. I thought that this was the ideal place to use such a priceless piece of timber. I decided to produce the wedge of this sexy petite plane using Tamboti.

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Here you can see the wedge in it’s early stages.

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The next step was to decorate the plane further with some sexy stopped chamfers. I marked it out by hand using a pencil and my finger as a fence. You can probably see that I deliberately did not do a 45º chamfer, but rather one that further complements the elegant elongated shape of the plane.

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Using the pencil lines as guides I used a small Lie-Nielsen block plane, a file and my Proletarian Sanding Contrivance to create the chamfers.

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Then I moved on to flattening the sole. It is important to tap the wedge into position at about the same tension as it would be while being used, before attempting to flatten the sole. The pressure from the wedge deforms the sole ever so slightly so the idea is to flatten it in the shape it will assume while the wedge is tapped into place. You can see that I once again scribbled on the sole prior to flattening in order to identify when it is completely flat.

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In order to custom-fit the wedge I dialed in the width by planing down the sides with my rehabilitated old Stanley no.4 Smoother. Apparently one should be careful not to make the wedge too tight-fitting as far as the wedge goes as it can damage the plane if it expands during humid months. I therefore made it about 3 mm narrower than the ramp. In the last of these three pictures you can see the plane hammer I built to set the plane. You will find an entire post devoted to this project under the category “Handtools”.

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I sharpened the Lie-Nielsen blade to have a cambered edge.

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I took to a small piece of swarthout to test the little beauty and the results were incredible. It gave the best finish I have ever seen and the shavings were extremely thin and soft. There were not even a hint of chatter. What also surprised me was how easy it is to set the blade with the small plane hammer. It almost felt easier than setting a cast iron plane.

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Here are two photos to show off the beautiful Lie-Nielsen iron-chipbreaker set.

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Part of the success of this little plane must be the tight mouth. In these pictures you can also appreciate the je ne sais quoi of the ysterhout sole.

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Finally a few pictures of the plane in the late afternoon sun after a light coat of Ballistol. I plan to treat the sole with wax once I find a suitable product.

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4/9/2013 – I finally got round to treating this little beauty after using it for a few weeks. You can see how it joined it’s bigger cousin at the Finishing Spa.

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Here are a few final photos of a little plane that has already become a go-to tool in my shop within the space a month.

 

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Legvise with a twist (Chapter three)

In the final chapter of this series of posts we will look at how I finished this unique legvise. It could be a useful idea to other woodworkers who does not have a proper dedicated workbench.

In these first pictures you can see how I made the rollers for the parallel guide. Unfortunately I only saw the idea to use skateboard wheels after I built these, but I would recommend using them if you still have to build yours. I used an inexpensive plastic wheel used to guide automatic steel gates, which is very common in this part of the world where we all hide behind electric fences. It works fine but does not have a smooth low friction ball-bearing system like the skateboard wheels.

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Next I used my newly purchased Festool router to cut a dado that would accept the Kershout strips meant to clamp the edges of the leather that would ultimately grace the faces of the jaws.

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I then assembled the legvise temporarily in order to drill the hole for the large single screw vise.

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Due to the length of the “nut” (pictured below) that accepts the screw, I had to add some wood to the inside jaws, as seen in the pictures above.

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Below you can see how I used handtools to custom fit the “nut” into the inside jaw for a lifetime of abuse.

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I then fitted the screw to the chop.

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Below you can see how I glued leather from a Red Dear I shot while living in New Zealand to the inside of both jaws.

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The leather was then clamped into place tidily using custom sized (by using handplanes) Kershout strips screwed into a shallow dado on the sides of the jaws.

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Next I had to shape a scrap piece of steel that could slide into the T-channel on the side of my assembly table in order to fix the inside jaw to the table in a manner that would make it easy to move the legvise from one location to the next if needed. You can see how I welded nuts to the steel as at this point in time I still did not have thread cutting tools. You will also notice that the piece of steel was deliberately bent slightly so that once the bolts are tightened it would apply even pressure across the length of it.

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From this point on you should be able to see what I was aiming for. In the first picture you can see how the rollers and adjustable feet were attached. The next pictures show how the two jaws were assembled by means of the vise screw for the first time.

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The first time I attached the legvise to the assembly table to test out a few things. I realised that I had to do a few adjustments to the feet.

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Here I am shaping a piece of Witpeer in order to turn the ends of the handle.

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Here you can see how I modified the feet. I inserted two pins that was epoxied into place that would ultimately sit inside a small rubber disc. The area between the disc and the nut received a coat of grease to allow the adjustable feet to rotate easily while being firmly pressed against the floor.

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I am not sure what the correct term is for this instrument, but it is the one that gets jammed into the wholes in the parallel guide and you can see that I made mine from scratch.

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Finally the legvise was fitted to the table in the position I thought would be best for now. In the second picture you can see what I was on about regarding the modification of the adjustable feet. You will also note the nuts that was added to lock the threaded rod feet into place once it is adjusted to the correct height. The third picture show the nameless instrument in position in the parallel guide.

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The final product was well worth the effort displaying the beautiful orange and grayish-yellow colours of the Assegaai and Witpeer. I have to say that it works even better than anticipated and I would not change too much at all if I build another one.

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You can start looking out for some posts on the sliding deadman that I built to toil in tandem with this baby.

Old Stanley Bailey handplane rehabilitation

My father gave me most of his tools some years ago when he decided to downscale and pursue other interests. He was very much a powertool woodworker as apposed to a hybrid woodworker (someone who uses both hand tools and power tools) or a handtool woodworker. I never even knew that he was as his way was the only way I knew, until I started reading American woodworking magazines and listening to podcasts such as the one by the Modern Woodworkers Association (my favourite) and Wood Talk (highly recommended). Now I realise that there are other ways to approach woodworking conundrums.

It is not as if I am not grateful for everything I learnt from my Dad, as it certainly got me hooked to woodworking in a big way, but I am finding myself gravitating towards quality handtools with a vengeance. I guess that would make me a hybrid woodworker with fairly basic handtool skills at present.

This is really a roundabout way to get onto the primary purpose of this post, which is the rehabilitation of the two old Bailey handplanes my Dad handed down to me. It is a no. 4 Smoothing Plane and no.5 Jack Plane that really needed serious attention. I never even knew that one should sharpen the plane irons as my father and I never did. Probably, in hind sight, because we never used them. For this reason they never seem to work very well, which did not encourage any further scrutiny.

That was until I watched the DVD on Plane Sharpening by David Charlesworth and using a sharp Lie-Nielsen No.4½ Smoother. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that it was an epiphany. A sharp handplane is poetry in motion. It is psychotherapy for a shrink … literally in my case. David also explains very clearly in his DVD what comprises a functional and well tuned (apart from a sharp iron) handplane, which is all very useful to any woodworker, but especially to plane rehabilitators.

Armed with this new knowledge I set about to rehabilitate these family heirlooms. In the first few pictures you can get an idea of the state they were in. It used to be toilsome to slice Parmesan cheese with these planes, to be honest.

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First step was to flatten the soles of these planes and it turned out that they were in some serious need of this particular ministration. An added bonus of doing this is that it makes the shiny parts of the plane body smile with a rewarding gleam. I have to warn you that this is hard work that can take time and perseverance from a woodworker. You do not have to get it 100%, but the toe, the area behind the mouth and a reasonably large area towards or at the heel all needs to be in the same plane.

A Magic Marker is very useful to demonstrate the areas that needs attention. Drawing a grid (as shown) before taking a few swipes over wet-and-dry-sandpaper fixed to 10 mm thick float glass, would reveal the troublesome spots in no time. Please note that I left the plane irons clamped in their usual position, only making sure that they are retracted well into the plane body in order not to get damaged by the flattening activity. The reason behind this is that the clamping action of the lever cap deforms the sole ever so slightly which means that you want to flatten it while under tension.

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The remnants of gridlines clearly indicate the low lying areas as seen below.

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Then it becomes a question of elbow grease, burning some midnight oil or whatever it might be called. Here you can see how I used my sharpening jig to do the flattening. If you want to read the post on how I made this jig find the post called “My version of Deneb’s sharpening jig” under the category “Jigs”. This jig clamps wet-and-dry sandpaper on a piece of float glass by means of two cauls.

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The final product is well worth the effort I thought.

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Next I took the planes apart completely, including removing the plane irons with their chipbreakers, the frogs, the totes and knobs.

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Here you can see how I sharpened the new replacement blades I bought from Lie-Nielsen. If you are interested in purchasing replacement blades for old Stanleys, check out Lie-Nielsen’s website, they have the whole range. Their blades are definitely the business. Their blades are prepared at a primary bevel angle of 25º and ground flat as … oh no just remembered this is a family website … but you really do not have to do too much work on the back at all.

I honed a 33° honing angle on my 1000 grid Ohishi waterstone and polished a 35º final cutting angle on a 10 000 grid Ohishi stone. Both blades were sharpened with a cambered edge.

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In the picture below you can see the Nagura stone I use with the 10 000 grid stone.

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Here you can see how the totes and knobs looked like prior to rehabilitation. Clearly some type of varnish left that was starting to look seriously weathered. I removed the the varnish with a card scraper before tidying it up with sandpaper.

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A last picture before the frogs came off.

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The two screws that fix the frog to the body of the plane is evident in the first picture. In the third picture you can see the screw that helps you position the frog during reassembly depending on how tight you want the throat.

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Next step was to carefully remove the worst of the rust from the frog’s surface that supports the blade with a fine flat file.

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In the first picture below you can see how I then used a magic marker to blacken all the surfaces that is in contact with the back of the blade. In the next picture you can see the setup I used with 150 grid wet-and-dry sandpaper on a piece of float glass on the edge of the table in order to easily hone the most important front section of the frog. In the third picture you can see how the leftover magic marker indicates the areas that needs more attention after just a few strokes on the sandpaper. The last picture show how it is all cleaned up and flat as … yes you know what I mean.

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Here you can see how I cleaned up and flattened the areas of the frog that is in contact with the plane body.

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Speaking of plane bodies, here you can see how they look prior to a Ballistol treatment.

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One of the most important parts of this rehabilitation operation is the work done on the chipbreakers. You want to flatten the area in contact with the blade at an angle that will ensure that the absolute tip of the chipbreaker sits flat on the back of the blade. This is accomplished by the setup as shown. You can see how the angle created will ensure that only the tip ends up flat on the blade.

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Here you can see how I decreased the angle slightly for honing and polishing. In the last picture you might be able to appreciate the perfectly polished and flat area that will ultimately sit on the back of the blade.

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The lever cap being made of cast iron is much easier to flatten, but again remember to set it up so that you only flatten the area that matters at the very tip that will be in contact with the chipbreaker. These lever caps were not even close to flat in the mentioned area.

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Here you can see the totes and knobs before and after a Ballistol treatment.

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Both totes were very wobbly due to very slack tolerance around the two raised cast iron areas on the base. I decided to remedy this by inserting some Epoxy putty and squeeze the tote into position, in order to create a perfect fit.

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Finally all the parts were reassembled with the frogs set up to create a very tight throat on both planes. I can really recommend doing this for those of you who do not mind some elbow grease in return for a pleasing precision tool. There can be no comparison between how these planes cut post rehabilitation compared with prior to it. It is an absolute pleasure.

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As per usual, the proof is in the pudding. Here are some of the first shavings I took. It is poetry, I tell you!

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I think they are ready for another few hundred years of work.

22/4/2014

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Alternative workbench/assembly table (Chapter five)

Finally, we embark upon the last stage of this adventure in looking at the chop (of the quick-release-vise), how the top was finished and a few examples of how the table assists with work holding. You will remember that work holding ability was one of the primary objectives behind the design of this table. The chapter concludes with a bit of a postmortem.

In the pictures below you can see how I put the chop of the quick-release-vise together. Again I used Ysterhout and created 4 square dogholes. In hind sight I made a mistake by laminating the pieces of wood between the doghole cross-grain to the rest. Since I made this chop-face the wood has moved enough to create approximately 2 mm difference at the top as well as the bottom, after starting off flush. This should not have been a surprise, but served as a useful reminder why it is generally discouraged. It does however not cause any functional limitations, but will probably lead to an immature demise of the chop. Time will tell.

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Here you can see how I flattened the face of the chop with a belt sander. I did not have anything better for the job at the time. The wood is simply too hard for a normal handplane and I still did not have my Lie-Nielsen babies back then. Even the Lie-Nielsen’s at a bedding angle of 50° (York pitch) reject this wood as unpalatable.

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Here I added purely cosmetic parts to the chop.

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Initial shaping of the chop-face on the table saw.

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A quick dry fit before final shaping, with my son Didi acting as model together with our German Shorthaired Pointer called Nietzsche. Didi is doing his rendition of O-Ren Ishii (aka Cottonmouth) in Kill Bill.

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All the Ysterhout edges were fixed to the top standing proud by a millimeter or so. In the next pictures you can see how I brought everything into one plane by careful belt sanding. I know this is a kak idea, but I honestly did not have another option at the time. The second picture does at least show that I got it reasonably flat.

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The next step was to glue in the steel ruler on two sides of the table. Although the ruler stop inside the Ysterhout edge, I set it up (by carefully removing the correct amount) so that the ruler show the measurement as of from the edge. This way I can have a stop flush with the edge, push a piece of stock against it and very quickly read the length or mark a measurement on it without having to fiddle with a tape-measure. You will remember how we recessed this area of the bench to ensure that the ruler sits flush with the top.

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Then I started drawing lines corresponding to each 10 cm on the rulers. Every second line being green and the ones in between black. This makes it easy to count in 20 cm steps. The lines are square to the sides of the table and each other, which makes it easy to set up square guides for gluing panels.

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The plywood part of the top was then sealed with floor varnish in order to have a fairly hardwearing surface that is easy to clean when wood glue is spilled on it.

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All the Ysterhout edges were treated with something called Woodoc, which as a local product that probably contains a mixture of oils. I assume it must be something like dried Linseed and/or Tung oil because it dries to a film on top of the wood after a few layers, but is easy remove or touch up if necessary. It certainly liberates the shear beauty of the Ysterhout.

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… and voilà … the final product for your perusal!!!

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Here you can see where my benchdogs live. If you are interested to see how I made these, please please the post on Bench Bitches under the category Bench accessories.

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I though I should include a few pictures illustrating how the bench assists with work holding.

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In the next few pictures you can see how the T-channel (which can be accessed through any of the  round access points rather than only the ends, as seen in the second picture) and benchdogs work in tandem to hold the two wide plane-stops in place for hand planing.

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This was an immensely satisfying project, the result of which really improves the quality of my work and the amount of pleasure I get out of spending time in the shop. Having said that, I think it is important to always think about how one could improve your work. Therefore I thought it might be useful to consider what I have learnt while building and using this table.

The main problem I have found so far has to do with the table’s overhanging edges. I other words, not having legs in the same plane as the edge of the table. This combined with the fact that the table’s main frame is made out of steel rather than wood combines to create a less solid and noisy surface when using a chisel and mallet to chop mortises for example. Even at the top of the leg it does not feel or sound as good as on a proper wooden bench with massive wooden legs. I would not change the design of the table because of this, as the ultimate objective with this table is to have a dedicated assembly table and for such a table it is much better to have the legs out of the way to improve the ease of movement around it. It might actually help someone else building a similar table to consider different options depending on their needs. I have to bear with this shortfall until I build my dedicated bench.

The next thing I have noticed is that my table is a bit too high for hand planing. Again this would not necessarily change my design as I am currently bound by the height of my table saw as this assembly table doubles up as an out-feed table. It did however help me to understand what the people who knows are on about regarding this issue. When the table is too high you end up using your arms more than your legs, which means that your control deteriorates and you get tired much quicker. I can really recommend Christopher Schwarz’s discussion on this in his book “Workbenches: from design & theory to construction & use”.

The next issue would actually change how I do it if I had to do it again. Given that I am using it as a workbench in the interim, I think I should have used proper wood for the top rather than plywood. I would also increase the thickness of the top while doing so.

Finally, I think I should have borrowed a router (as I did not have one at the time) to do the dogholes with. That would have done a much better job in terms of getting the holes 100% square to the working surface.

I do hope that someone will be able to learn something from this or at least get a few ideas for their own table/bench.