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 Fore Plane. The plan is to add new photos and text as I progress over the next few weeks. You will find that there will be a lot of overlap in terms of the text and pictures between these various posts. While this will be annoying to those who read all the posts, I am trying to keep each post fairly comprehensive for those who only read one.

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

The ysterhout sole of the plane came from this piece of ysterhout, which was re-sawn on the bandsaw and then tidied up by means of the thicknesser.

The Fore Plane is the one on the right with the green end grain accompanied by it’s ysterhout sole prior to gluing.

In the clamps and immediately after the liberation.

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 one.

The blanks were then fed to the thicknesser flat face down, to created another flat face parallel to the first.

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.

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

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.

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.

The curved cut on the toe section was tidied up by means of the Green Monster (shop made spindle sander built by my Dad many moons ago).

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.

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.

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.

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 helps to created enough of a flat section as a reference surface for your router in order to cut the mentioned slot in the ramp. 

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 they 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.

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.

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. You will notice that the panel pins go in the area at each end of the plane that will be cut away after gluing.

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

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.

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.

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.

Here you can see the two sets used for the initial flattening of the sole. I used a hand plane to do the lions share of the work and followed that up with 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on glass. This is the first of two flattening processes. The final flattening happens with the blade retracted and the wedge tapped in at about the tention used while the plane is operational. This distorts the area immediately behind the mouth/throat so the plane needs to be flattened in this state.

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 it certainly attains my goal of building objects that are 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”.

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.

I thought I should add these pictures of how my legvise and sliding deadman work in tandem to hold the Fore Plane while cutting the chamfers on the sides.

The chamfers on the sides were done with this Lie-Nielsen low angle block plane. I used my beautiful little smoother to do the final finishing. 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. You will notice that it is not a 45° chamfer as it extends further down the plane than across the top. I find that this adds a certain je ne sais quoi.

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

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

I found the template below for a closed tote at http://www.oocities.org/plybench/handle.html. As you can see I tweaked it slightly to suite my purpose and sense of je ne sais quoi.

The template I created from the original was then used with consideration of grain orientation to dram the outlines on a piece of Assegaai.

I first drilled out the tight corners on the drill press using Forstner bits of various sizes and then used the bandsaw to finish the job.

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.

In these pictures you can see how I fitted the closed tote that we modified and made a bit earlier.

15/08/2013

This will be the first of a new type of post I am planning to do. I will post updates on each project as I progress. In other words, writing the post while I build the object.

The plan is to start building a dedicated shooting plane and shooting board. Below you can see the rough sketches I made while on the airplane this past weekend. The wife and I flew down south to attend the 90th birthday celebrations of the best rugby school in the history of the game. Outeniqua of course.

The idea with this plane is to slope the sides of the plane in order to skew the cutting edge of the blade just enough to create a slight sheering cut. The plane will slope down to allow the angled cutting edge to jam the stock that is being cut down into the corner created by the floor and the rail of the shooting board, rather than potentially lifting it. I am also playing around with ideas to potentially have a way to use the plane on both sides of the shooting board while still ensuring a comfortable grip. You can join me as I design and build the plane over the few weeks/months.

19/8/2013 – I started off with the shooting plane this weekend. I prepared the stock of the Shooting Plane together with that of a 30″ Jointer, a 22″ Fore Plane and a 17″ Jack Plane from the two boards seen below. In these pictures they are fresh out of the Planer.

Here you can see the parts of the Jack Plane (left) and the Shooting Plane (right).

I used my bandsaw to re-saw some ysterhout for the sides of the Shooting Plane and the soles of the other planes. I then processed it further in the planer.

I made a few drawings on the stock to test the ideas I had as seen in the rough sketches in the first picture.

Here you can see the ysterhout sides of the Shooting Plane posing with the yet-to-be laminated beech stock.

The same ingredients with their cousins-to-be as mentioned.

I utilised most of my current arsenal of planes to prepare the beech stock for lamination.

As I already used up most of my clamps for the Jack Plane’s lamination, I employed my face vise in tandem with a few random C and F-style clamps to laminate the Shooting Plane on the same day.

3/9/2013 – Please be patient as I am currently working on the three planes that look similar apart from their length. I will get back to the shooting plane once these are finished.

14/10/2013 – Finally I managed to do some work on this project over the weekend. You can see how I sliced the beech blank creating a triangular centre piece, it’s two sides and the two triangular bits of waste. The plane has this odd shape to skew the cutting edge by about 7º creating a slight sheering cut.

The rough-sawn sides of the centre piece were flattened by alternating use of the Lie-Nielsen low angle Jack Plane with a toothed blade and my own shop made Jack Plane. The final touches were done with the longer Fore Plane (also pictured).

In order to cut the ramp in the centre piece, I had to come up with the setup below in addition to using my shop made bandsaw mitre-sled. I wrote an entire post on how the sled was built, which you will find under the category “Jigs”.

June/July 2013

The second plane I decided to build was a scrub plane. Actually I built it alongside the Petite Wooden Smoother as described in exhaustive detail in the post with the same name, but finished off it’s wee cousin first and then moved back to the pugnacious old-timer.

This was the only piece of beech I could find at the time.

I decided to use ysterhout for the sole of this plane. In future I plan to try to cut these 8 mm “veneer” on my band saw, but in this particular case I had to plane it down with the thicknesser and lost heaps of wood, electricity and time in the process. Since this wasteful experience I have managed to rehabilitate the mentioned bandsaw, so my wish should be possible in future. You can see how I am cutting the actual sole from the strip of ysterhout.

In the first picture you can see both of the initial planes prior to lamination. In the second picture you can appreciate the grain orientation of the scrub plane.

I did not take any pictures of the lamination process of the scrub plane but it looked similar to how I did the smoother in the picture below.

The clamps exerted some serious pressure, which is what one wants in this particular instance.

Then I used a handplane to square up the sides relative to the sole.

In the next picture you can appreciate the grain orientation. In the second picture the square that guides this process is evident.

Here you can see the beautiful shavings taken by my rehabilitated Stanley Jack Plane.

My newly rehabilitated Bandsaw did a stirling job of cutting the sides off this plane blank. Please note that I deliberately chose to have the ysterhout at the top to prevent blow-out.

The result an absolute joy.

I then removed the saw marks with a hand plane.

In order to reduce the centre section to the correct width I used the thicknesser. I aimed for 3 mm wider than the blade. This blade is a replacement blade for the Lie-Nielsen scrub plane at 1½” wide with a 3″ radius to take a mega chunk of timber with every pass.

Below You can see how I glued another piece on to the centre section in order to produce the handle. I decided to used my own adaptation of a saw handle for this plane.

I used one of the saw handle templates from the TGIAG (Two guys in a garage) website as a starting point to shape the handle of this plane. I can really recommend this website if you are looking for a saw handle templates. They have heaps which are downloadable for free in pdf format. I decided to tweak the S Biggins backsaw handle into a scrub plane handle. In the pictures below you can follow the process.

I then traced the outlines on to the plane blank and elaborated a few extra curves to get it to the top of the ramp. Next step was to take to it with the drill press after marking out the exact location and size of the holes that would form the curves that are too tight to navigate with the bandsaw.

The central hole was removed with a jigsaw …

… and the rest with the bandsaw. At this stage I took quite a bit of time to come up with a idea and method to shape the sides to fit in with the handle design.

In the end I came up with this idea. I traced the outlines of the centre piece on to one of the sides, drew a type of halo following the handle lines in some parts and taking it’s own route in others. I removed the waste with the bandsaw and then used it as a template to trace it onto the other side.

In the pictures below you can get an initial idea of what I was aiming for.

The arduous task of rounding and smoothing out the rough sawn curves were completed using hand tools predominantly.

I marked out guiding lines with a pencil using my fingers as a fence. The idea was to cut these before glueing the plane together as it would be difficult to access the area next to the handle once glued. I used a small Lie-Nielsen block plane to cut the chamfers.

The rest of the curves were smoothed out with a variety of files.

Once all of this was done I used my Bandsaw Mitre-sled to cut the ramp. You can find an entire post on how I have built the sled on this website.

The curve cut into the toe section was designed that way to allow more space for the accumulation of heavy shavings as this is a scrub plane that does not require a tight mouth.

I used the off-cut wedge to support the ysterhout fibers of the ramp in order to prevent blowout, as you can see below. I then planed it flat and square with a freshly sharpened Lie-Nielsen no. 4½ Smoother. The result is clear from the pictures.

To ensure it is absolutely perfect I used the setup with two different grids of 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on float glass. It is worth while to take a bit of time to get this surface perfect as it is the most important part of the whole project in terms of the functionality of the plane. If it is off by a few thousands of an inch, the blade is likely to chatter with a vengeance.

In these pictures you can see the setup I use to mark out the positions of the toe and heel sections relative to each other and the sides. As this is a scrub plane that will eventually have a fairly wide throat. I positioned the heel section, marked it’s position, clamped it in place, got the blade in position, slid it down all the way to the guide, slid the toe section to gently touch it and marked it in that position. The throat will be opened up further at a later stage.

As I explained in my post on the Petite Wooden Smoothing Plane, I use dimensions/measurements from an article entitled “Wood planes made easy” by David Finck in Fine Woodworking Magazine to mark out the location of the cross-pin. Once you have drilled one, you can get the other into the exact place by clamping the plane together and using the first hole as a guide to drill the second on a drill press. Also note the small panel pins I use to ensure that I can fit the plane back to exactly the same alignment after drilling the second cross-pin hole and the compulsory dry fit.

From this scrub plane I used my Lie-Nielsen carcass saw to cut the cross-pin made of Assegaai for it’s renowned elasticity, flexibility and stability. I rounded the ends with a file.

The compulsory dry fit.

The glue-up.

Fresh out of the clamps, with quite a bit of finishing left to do.

I used my Lie-Nielsen no. 4½ Smoother (not pictured) to flatten the sole initially. The final flattening would take place once the cap iron/chip-breaker combination is made and holding the blade tight against the ramp.

I found this piece of scrap angle iron with which I planed to make the cap iron/chip breaker combination. The stainless steel thumb screw was also a discovery amongst all my carefully hoarded jewels (which is frequently being referred to as junk by others).

To start with I epoxied a short piece of stainless steel threaded rod to the thumbscrew, because I do not know how to weld stainless steel.

I then attacked the steel with my grinder.

It took more than an hour of elbow grease to cut the 45° bevel using the grinder and various grids of wet-and-dry sandpaper on glass together with a honing guide.

The slight indentation you see is where the cross-pin would get into contact with the iron cap. In the pictures below you can see the hole for the thumbscrew being drilled and tapped.

The final touches were done on a 1000 grid Ohishi waterstone using the so called “ruler trick” made famous by David Charlesworth. This is to ensure that the back of the cap iron/chip breaker combination sits absolutely flat on the blade.

As this is a scrub plane I opened up the throat/mouth generously.

In these pictures you can see how once again I drew the guiding lines for shaping the nose of the plane on the sole to prevent blowout of the ysterhout fibers when chewing the waste away with the bandsaw.

Prior to cutting away the above curve I drilled out an area as shown using a Forstner bit. This is a unique (as far as I am aware as I have not see any other planes looking like this during my extensive internet research) design feature aimed at getting the best of both worlds in terms of having the big flat area at the front of the plane to press down and hold, yet have a nice grip to lift the plane during the back stroke. I find that with a longer and therefore heavier plane like this it is definitely a bonus to be able to curl your fingers into the nicely rounded slot. An added benefit as you will see later is that it adds some je ne sais quoi to the appearance of the plane.

Here you can see what I was aiming for.

I then extended the chamfer of the top edge of the sides to joint up round the actual nose of the plane using a file.

After some TLC it is starting to look quite sexy.

Here are heaps of photos from umpteen different angles with the cap iron/chip breaker and thumb screw in place.

Finally, (just to show off) a few photos posing on a beautiful Rhodesian Teak log.

4/9/2013 – In the picture below you can see it with it’s Fore Plane cousin at the Finishing Spa.

Another step closer to finished. Now it only needs a coat of liquid wax tomorrow night.

14/7/2014

I finally got round to cover the steel parts (lever and lever screw) with wood. I used a small piece of Kaapse Swarthout that fell off when I turned something else for the lever screw and Tamboti for the lever. Both bits of wood were epoxied to the steel.

I really think it adds some je ne sais quoi to my favourite shop made plane’s appearance.