By now I presume that you are quite familiar with the fact that I have to improvise from time to time, (more often than not) in order to acquire tools that most other people buy at their corner cafe. In this particular case my improvisation included the shameless liberation of a Veritas catalogue idea. They sell a so called Flush Plane, which I thought could be very handy as they explained for:
“flush trimming projections such as glue lines, laminate edges, plugs, etc. It can also be used for cleaning out inside corners (e.g., hinge gains, tenons, half-laps)” As copied from the catalogue of September 2012.
So I set about to make my own version of this elusive (only to mortals from Africa) tool. As usual I used scrap pieces of Assegaai. I promise to use another species of wood once I start making furniture. Despite all the hassle to get hold of tools I did find Stanley plane blades which would fit the 1/2 numbers, not the others only the 1/2s!! Therefore this rip-off was tailored around the mentioned blade.
In the pictures below you can peruse the first phase of sculpting the laminated Assegaai blank. At least the actual contours of the rip-off are entirely my own ingenuity.
Enter Phase two.
Phase three was done with hand tools exclusively. I created an area at the front of the handle where one can get a grip with your leading finger/s. On the sides (less visible in the pictures below) I hollowed out an area where one’s wrap-around fingers can nestle into for improved grip. You can also see how the blade was marked for drilling holes to accept the screws that would ultimately fix it to the bottom for the grip.
Once the shank holes were drilled I first transferred it to the grip before countersinking the holes in the steel.
The reason for this was that I had to countersink the holes in the steel to the point were it increased the diameter of the shank holes. It was necessary to ensure that the steel screws seat below the level of the blade.
After seating the blade the sole of this knockoff was lapped flat with sandpaper on a piece of glass.
The final product lacked je ne sais quoi, so I decided to play around with some craving options. I will add it to this post once it is done.
