Spill Plane | Woodworking Plans Light Table

Spill Plane

 

When matches were not common, you could use a special plane to transform pieces of scrap wood into  supercoiled chips, suitable for using them to take fire from a brazier or a fireplace and transfer it to a candle or other. In a nineteenth century country house this tool should have been quite common. 


The model vary, but the concept is more or less the same: a cone-shaped mouth and a skewed blade that allows to side chip ejection in the strongly twisted form.
The plane I found is home-made (I newer saw  this plane in wooden plane-maker lists); the wood is mahogany. The sole was warped so I had to remove the side fence to straighten it properly. I put a patch to tighten a little bit the mouth. The wedge is extended almost to the cutting edge and its end is an integral part of the conical mouth.
The blade is bedded to 42 ° and the blade skewed at 45 degrees. The asymmetrical fence helps to angle the tool even more and produce spiral chips.


I tried to light one: it burns slowly and does not burn out easily. Perfect!
 

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New Life for a Centenarian Plane | Woodworking Plans Maker

New Life for a Centenarian Plane

Varvill  & Sons was one of the UK planemaker most active between the late 800 and early 900.

This  smoother plane was built likelihood in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. It has a metal sole and a rear handle, screwed into the back of the body. Hard to say if the metal parts are original or homemade, though some rough details lead more to the latter option. The plane conditions were quite good; this allowed the easy repair and tune up. The beech handle had a break at the top, which occurred where a knot was present. I  removed the broken part and replaced it with a new piece of same wood,  then colored like  to the old beech. The metal sole was slightly bowed in the length, probably due to the wood movement. I removed the screws and smoothed the wood with another plane. After installing the metallic sole, I corrected it on sandpaper attached to a flat surface. Another issue concerned the mouth width. Almost 2 mm, definitely too much for a smoother. I  therefore decided to reduce the opening by inserting a couple of veneer pieces on the seat.  I sharpened the blade with a 30° secondary bevel, flat edge profile, blunt on both sides.

The plane works fine but I have some general concerns regarding its hybrid structure.

The  metal sole is not as great in the smoothness as wood, but is certainly an advantage for two reasons:

1) It adds weight to the plane, useful for cutting with very little iron.

2) The sole resists to the wear and has not need of frequent maintenance.

 The  first point seems irrefutable. For the second one is necessary to say that the presence of the metal sole  prevents natural wood movements and can easily lead to cracks in the plane body, and it is not flexible enough to prevent any warping especially along its length.

If  planing the underlying wood is a solution to restore the flatness, the wooden mouth increases its amplitude and the opening for the chips will be larger. But even if this does not  happens, you have to deal with the tapered blade profile, so  that when it is sharpened it decreases its thickness still leads to a wider mouth. In a full wooden plane a larger mouth is repaired by placing a patch to restore the exact opening width. This is not easily possible with a metallic sole. The repair done with shims placed on the seat can slightly alter  a perfect wedge insertion. Even the handle has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is a comfortable grip, but at the same time it is an obstacle to beat with a mallet on the plane back when you have to remove the cutting unit.
One is inclined to beat on the handle and perhaps this was the cause of its break.

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Sharpening a Scrub Plane Blade | Woodworking Plans Magazine

Sharpening a Scrub Plane Blade

The  scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with  more or less  marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand.

Im not very good at this job, so I searched for sharpening guides available that could serve the purpose. The Record 161 is a guide which is easy to find on ebayUK for few  pounds. It has only one central contact point (a rolling ball in the middle) and this permits to incline to the right and left allowing to follow the cutting edge profile easily.

The  blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The  dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.

For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same  angle Ill use a simple self made jig.

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Repairing a damaged plane body | Woodworking Plans Lego Table

Repairing a damaged plane body

Old wood planes are tools often challenging the century, continuing today to give satisfaction to those who use them. When accidentally  a damage occurs, who causes it feels very guilty for having interrupted a century-old life . The only partial relief could be a good repair. The accidental fall of a cast iron  plane often results in a lesion at the point of greatest weakness: on the sides, near to the mouth. This happened to my Stanley # 3. After listening to other suggestions, I developed this system to repair this lesion type, which was particularly simple and effective. After appropriately clamping the  plane body to avoid unwanted movements we can drill 4 mm holes (slightly larger than electrodes that measure approximately 3.5 mm) along the lesion.

At this point,  cast iron is properly heated with a torch or any fire, and the arc welding is carried out. I used a small inverter welder with specific cast iron electrodes. In fact it is easier fill the holes than a concave groove, which instead requires some experience. ( In the pics I forgot to take a shot just after soldering) .

I then proceeded to flatten the sole and sides, which were however almost completely aligned. And here it  is returned to its former glory (or almost) and produce the usual thin shavings.

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Infill Plane | Woodworking Plans Martial Arts Belt Rack

Infill Plane

Yes, I waited a few years before getting such a kind of plane, believed to be among the best ones. The famous Norris, Spiers etc. have dangerous prices, so I contented myself with a probably auto-built plane.

This specimen is almost 8 inches long (20 cm); the plane body has the typical form (coffin) of smoothing British planes, with mahogany infill wood and a mahogany handle. Its weight is 1.8 kg, 400 grams more than a Stanley 3 wich has more or less a comparable length.
It has a brass lever  cap, as well as the clamping screw. A little brass plate is screwed on the front wood insert, probably for giving an aesthetic additional touch (debatable). The blade (2 1 / 8 "/ 54mm) is marked HEARNSHAW BROS (1881-1960).

The tools was in good condition, despite some age signs and some old repairs. In particular it seems the handle has been repaired or replaced. However it has been reinforced by screws, hidden by caps. It is very solid. That is why I decided to leave the plane in its original condition, worrying only of blade and sole that required the attention necessary to re-put the tool at work.

Unlike traditional metal planes (like Bailey), the sole lapping tends to open the mouth, so we must act only when absolutely necessary and with great caution.

In my case, the sole was almost perfectly flat and the work on 180 Grit abrasive paper  had virtually no impact on the mouth width (only 0.25 mm). The blade is bedded to 45 °. The blade bevel was about 30 degrees and  so I reground it, without microbevel. The chipbreaker took a little leveling job on the side in contact with the blade.

I rounded the cutting edge at both ends to avoid the plane can leave marks onto work pieces. Even the sole edges were rounded crawling the plane and keeping it inclined in respect to abrasive surface. The mouth  requested filing assistance to adapt the opening to the cutting edge.

About four hour job and........................

 

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Plow Plane Blade Sharpening | Woodworking Plans Lamps

Plow Plane Blade Sharpening

After years of hand woodworking and using hand tools I have become well aware that the variety of blades to have to be sharpened is so broad as to preclude the possession of only one guide for sharpening. Thus, there is no universal guide! I proceeded to own different devices that allow me to securely support most of the blades. For plow blades I prefer to use the Stanley guide. It has the advantage of having a rear support that compensates very well the narrow width of the cutting edge, preventing the device, leaning on one side, could affect to obtain a perfectly square edge, as is appropriate for this kind of  blade. The Stanley guide, however, was designed to sharpen chisels or wide blades. Metal  plow blades are thin and is difficult to tight them enough. To remedy this problem I put a small wedge between the blade and the lower floor of the guide, getting a firm grip, without risk to affect the stability of the system during sharpening action.

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