Towell Miter - front plate and bridge

This entry will cover the remaining steps that need to be accomplished prior to bending the sidewalls.  The front plate needs to be fabricated, and the dovetails cut for joining it to the sidewalls, and the bridge needs to be completed to the point of fitting the tenons to the sidewalls.  After that, its simply a matter of cleaning the interior surfaces, and then I'll make the bend.

Front plate

This is a pretty self-explanatory process - first I need to cut the plate to size, then cut the dovetail joints to fit it to the sidewalls. The sizing of the plate is fairly straightforward - it's the height of the sidewall pieces above the dovetails - in this case, the sidewall stock is 2" wide, minus 5/16" for the sole, and another 1/16" for peining material.  So the remainder is 1-5/8" tall (I measure the piece itself as a check).  In width, the plate needs 2-1/8" for the interior of the plane, with 2 x 3/16" for each sidewall, and an additional 1/8" for peining material on either side - this gives me a width of 2-5/8".

 

 Once the plate is cut, I need to clean up the cuts from the hacksaw.  I used to do this work with files, but I find I get results that are as good (and much quicker) with a good 12" disc sander:

 

With the plate square, it's a simple matter to mark of the 'tails' that will join the front plate to the sidewalls.  This joint is responsible for holding the bend in place, and experiences some fairly good lateral stress, so I feel that tails on the front piece are really the only sensible choice here.  At any rate, I'm going to include less and less 'cut' and 'file' pictures, but I'll still include them occasionally.  Here are the dovetails being cut:

and then they're filed.  Flip the plate and repeat.  Next, mark the 'pins' from this piece at either end of the sidewall stock... pay close attention to the orientation that will result after the bend - there is nothing more frustrating than cutting a perfect dovetail that is flared in the wrong direction, scrapping a sidewall piece you've already got a half-dozen or so hours into... or so I've been led to believe.

Here's the fit of one side.  Ideally, you want this fit tight enough that it requires some light hammer taps to seat or remove the piece - that makes for very easy peining later on.  In reality, you can get away with a good bit more slop than that, but it's a lot more work later...

 

 The only thing remaining is filing secondary dovetails.  These dovetails are done in 3/16" stock - not nearly as thick as the sole - so I'll use a 'conventional' full-depth taper for them.  Here they are marked out:

 

and filed:

 

At this point, all of the operations on the sidewall pieces are complete, except cleaning up the interior surface.  It is all but impossible to adequately clean up the inside of an already-assembled plane, so I want to put a final finish on the inside now.  I use PSA sandpaper on a large granite block for this - and for the interior I'll sand to 220 grit. You can go higher than this if you prefer bright and shiny, but I  I like a little texture to steel. The finer you abrade the steel, the more fingerprints and dirt will stand out and interfere with the surface aesthetics, so bear that in mind if you wish to use a higher grit for your surfaces... I will say that almost without exception, I have tended to back off on my surface treatments over time - I've rarely, if ever, felt I needed to shift my regimen to a higher degree of polish.  This is largely a matter of taste, though, so use the finish that suits your sensibilities.

Here is the sidewall, now with all the cutting and filing completed, and ready for the bending operation:

 

 But before I actually do the bend, there's just one more task I want to finish.

Bridge tenons
It is infinitely easier to fit the bridge tenons before bending the sidewalls, so I cut the bridge piece from 5/16" stock, and cut/file the tenons in place.  I will finish the actual shaping of the bridge a bit later, but for now I want to get the fit for the bridge correct before I bend the sidewalls up. The tenons themselves are really straightforward - cut, remove some metal, file a bit and - voilá!  The only tricky part of this exercise is filing the shoulder in place on the tenons.  Once I've got the tenons themselves cut I have to remove about 1/16" of material from the top face of each .  This gives a nice shoulder, and a substantially nicer aesthetic fit to the bridge when the plane is completed. Here's one side of the bridge, ready for the shoulder operation:

What I'll do is use the vise jaws as a guide to cut to depth with my hacksaw - this will make it much easier to get the filing depth correct in a minute. I'm careful not to cut deeper than my 1/16" depth, as cutting beyond that point will substantially reduce the strength of the tenons:

Once the cut is made, I use the jaws again as a guide, this time for a pillar file used horizontally to remove the face material from the tenons ( you can't actually see the tenons behind the file, but trust me - they're there.)

Once you've gotten to depth, flip the bridge and repeat on the other side.  A few test fits and refinements, and you're left with the bridge piece looking something like this:

Be certain you have a perfect test fit on either side of the sidewall piece (and pay very close attention to orientation).  You want a fit that is easily pressed in place without much resistance, but not too sloppy - you must be able to get the bridge in place after the bending operation without too much trouble.  Here is one side's test fit:

 

And now I'm finally ready for the nervewracking step of bending the sidewalls.  I find everything prior to the sidewalls is accompanied by a silent prayer that the bend goes off well - it's not unheard of for a bad bend to mean all of the work to this point is basically scrap metal, so there is a bit of apprehension in building up to it.  

I'll cover the actual bend in the next installment, as well as inserting the bridge and front plate.

Towell Miter - secondary dovetails and Bridge mortises

This entry will cover the layout and cutting/filing work for the bridge mortises and secondary dovetails on the sidewall stock.  First, the bridge work.

Bridge mortise layout

The layout of the mortises for the bridge are absolutely critical to the final outcome of the plane. Variations in layout from one side to the other will at best require some serious finagling to correct.  At worst, they will make the sidewall unusable and require starting over from scratch.

To ensure symmetry, I produce a simple template indexed precisely to both the top and the front edge markings on the sidewall stock.

This is a one-time-use template, so I'll make it out of graph paper.  To lay out the mortises, first I need to establish the angle the bridge will lie in with respect to the sole.  The blade will be bedded at 22.5 degrees, and the bridge needs to be at an angle a bit higher than that to accommodate the wedge.  I like to use a wedge angle of about 8 degrees, so I'll use 30.5 degrees as the bridge-to-sole angle. To get the vertical placement correct, I want to register the bridge of the bed, leaving enough room for both the blade and some wedge thickness.

The bed location is easily drawn in, referencing the working drawings for the plane.  From those, I establish a baseline for the wedge by marking out a 30.5-degree line directly from the rear of the mouth, where the bed meets the sole - from this line I'll establish the amount of offset I'll need to accomodate the blade and wedge.  You can see the baseline in the photo below - it's the dotted line between the bed and bridge.  I'm planning a 3/16" blade, so I am using 1/4" of offset from the 'baseline', which should allow for a reasonable wedge thickness as well.  Please note that the offset should be marked off perpendicular to the bridge baseline - not perpendicular to the sole.  

The bridge itself is 5/16" thick, so I lay out a second line 1/4" above the bridge line - this line is 1/16" shy of the top of the bridge to allow for a shoulder at the top of each tenon - then I place the mortises within the space I've defined.  I'm planning to use a bridge that is about 1-1/2" long, so I lay out my mortises 5/16" wide with 1/2" space between them. 

 Here is the paper layout:

Now, I cut this layout out for use as my template, paying special attention to the index lines, which are the front and top edges of the sidewalls.  These are what will ensure I'm laying the mortises exactly symmetrically.  First on the 'left' portion of the sidewall :

Then I flip the template front-for-back and mark the right side of the stock:

At this point, as a self-check I scribe a pair of 30.5-degree lines on the stock to coincide with the top and bottom of the mortises. These are a good double-check to ensure the template markings are set in the proper plane.

The mortise layout looks good, so it's on to the secondary dovetails.

Laying out and filing secondary dovetails

One of the interesting things about the Towell miter is the appearance of the dovetails on the sidewalls.

If you look closely, you'll see that each dovetail is actually only 'flared' in the lower 1/8" or so - the top 3/16" of each joint is perpendicular to the sole. This is the first time I've seen this on a plane - my best guess is that Towell used this technique because it greatly reduces the size of the gaps at the top of each joint, which must be peined shut later on.  With such a large sole, a full dovetail would be quite a chore to close up, and is really not necessary for strength purposes.  I think this is somewhat of an aesthetic compromise, but it is a very interesting feature and I'm going to emulate it here; since the plane is steel-on-steel, the dovetails are not particularly visible after lapping anyway, and it strikes me as an interesting technique to try out.

The layout for these is a bit more work than conventional full-depth secondary dovetails, but the basic premise is the same.  I scribe in a second 'baseline' 3/16" from the bottom of each tail (1/16" of this is my peining excess), and mark in the dovetailed portion to this line. Above the line, I mark vertical lines to the top of each tail.

The measurements for this feature are selected in part to fit the tooling I have - my smallest pillar file is about 3/16" wide, which will fit the 'flat' portion that needs to be filed perfectly. First, I file the flared portion of the joint:

Then I file each flat, trying to keep the two surfaces matched up properly:

And that's the process. Conventional dovetails are done the same way, but the flared portion continues all the way to the top of the joint - making the process a fair bit simpler and faster.

Cutting and filing bridge mortises

 

Next, I drill and file open the bridge mortises.  The trick here is to drill out as much as you can without going over the lines, then file to the lines. I will sometimes use a jeweler's saw to help remove some of the waste, but in this case I managed to get a lot of waste out with the drill.  If you don't own one, I highly recommend investing in a spotting drill - I have a 1/4" one that cost me $5 or so, and has lasted me two years without sharpening. Spotting drills are very short, with a solid round shank and a single flute, all of which makes them very stable, and nearly immune to 'walking' and distortion.  Ideally, you want one with a tip angle to match your standard drills, so you can start a hole and have solid registration of a twist drill when you switch over.  I center punch where I want my hole, start a shallow hole with the spotting drill and then finish the hole with a standard twist bit - with this technique, I find I have a remarkable degree of precision in drilling, which lets me remove as much waste as possible before I switch to files.

Once I've filed to the scribe marks, the last step is to file a taper on each edge of the outside to give some grip to the tenons when I pein them in place.

The last operation before bending is to cut the dovetails for the front wall - but for now I decide to do some cleanup and remove the layout fluid.  I deepen the scribe marks for the centerline and each end, as I'll need these when I do the bend and cut the front plate dovetails.

That strikes me as enough for one night, so I decide to break at this point. Here is the sidewall stock as it is now:

Next comes the front plate, dovetails, bending, and the start of work on the two-piece sole.  It may be a few days before I get everything done and written up for the next installment, but it shouldn't take too long. Stay tuned...

Hacksaws and files

A little discussion about specific tools for those people who are considering making a plane by hand - first and foremost, make sure you have a good high-tension hacksaw, and be prepared to use it a lot.  There are any number of sources for these - and my local home center even carries a fairly good one.   I use 18 tpi blades for almost all steel work; 24 and 32 tpi blades are nice to have around for work on copper alloys, and thinner work. I've had good success with Starrett and Lenox bimetal blades, but I think any good quality blade is probably fine. I lubricate my hacksaw blades with parrafin - the same chunks I use for plane soles - and have never felt it necessary to try anything else. I should also say that I am very quick to toss blades when they show signs of wear - I'm doing enough work with the hacksaw as it is without fighting my tools on top of it.  I will often go through as many as half a dozen blades in the course of making a smallish bench plane.

With respect to files, there are two types that I think are indispensable for planemaking, neither of which are typically found in the average wood shop.  The first is a barrette needle file - shown below left.  Barrette files have teeth in only a single face, with safe knife edges and a safe back;  these are key to getting crisp corners and filing any acute angle.

The second type are pillar files.  Pillar files are toothed on two faces, and have safe 'edges' that are precisely ground perpendicular to the faces.  At least one of your pillar files should be of a narrow type - I have a stash of 3/16" 00 cut narrow pillar files (shown at right in the photos above) - this is in my hand more often than any other single file I own. If you have the resources, it's nice to have a few larger, and also finer cut pillars as well, but they're not strictly necessary.

 You can also make very usable 'versions' of these files with a bench grinder and a few typical files from the local home center... grinding safe edges at an acute angle (30 degrees is a good place to start) on a 6' or 8" mill file will get you into most of the corners.  Add a few sizes of triangular saw-sharpening files for getting into small spaces, and you have a very capable file set that will let you do almost anything you'll need to in making planes.  Personally, I think the step-up to more dedicated - and higher quality (read: swiss pattern) files is well worth the cost, but for someone just dipping their toes into the planemaking waters, I see no need to take on any more expense than absolutely necessary.

Whatever you're using for files, please be sure to lubricate them properly and clean them from time to time.  The most convenient form of lubrication I have found for files is simple blackboard chalk. A couple of swipes against the teeth will do wonders for keeping the file sharp and free of metal dust, and will give you much cleaner results.

For cleaning, I use a small file card and the occasional dental pick to remove obstinate bits of metal.

About three or four times a year, I soak my most-used files overnight in a mild citric acid bath to freshen them up. Once a year or so, I send a batch of well-worn files to Boggs Tool in southern California, who do a magnificent job resharpening them.  

I have a pretty extensive cabinet of at least 40 or 50 files, all of which get used at least occasionally -- but these two files are capable of covering at least 75% of the work I do on planes.  Having a wider range of files available makes many things easier or faster, but it isn't a strict necessity by any means.

One final bit of information regarding safety: please don't even think about using any file without a handle on it.  You can buy a range of sizes, or there are plenty of good ways to make a handle for next to nothing. I don't use them myself, but I know many people who swear by wine corks as handles.  It doesn't matter what it is as long as it keeps the pointy tang out of your palms.

Towell Miter - design and layout

The Plane -

The plane for this project is going to be loosely based on a miter plane made by Robert Towell of London in the early to mid 19th century.  The original plane belongs to my friend Joel Moskowitz of Gramercy Tools and Tools for Working Wood, and I had a chance to take some measurements and photography of the plane last fall at his shop.  Joel, who is an avid historian of woodworking as well as a woodworker and tool collector, did a brief writeup on Towell and the plane on his blog; if you search his blog for 'mitre' (his preferred spelling - in the british tradition) you will also find quite a fair bit of other information regarding these planes, which are somewhat of a curiosity in that there isn't a firm consensus as to what they were originally used for.  I'm not going into that area here - at least not now - but Moskowitz has offered some ideas in his blog.

This is not a project I would recommend for a first attempt at making an infill plane - there are several features of its construction that are somewhat advanced, and add quite a bit to its difficulty. Firstly, the one-piece bent sidewalls are tricky to form and fit infills to; Secondly, this is a bevel-up plane design, which requires a two-piece sole construction -- one of the more challenging aspects of planemaking to get right in my experience.  Having said that, however, this plane does have a lot to interest people who are considering making a plane, as well as those who are perhaps already somewhat experienced planemakers.  It should also provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the basic processes necessary for all dovetailed infill construction.  For these reasons, I think it's a solid candidate for a project  writeup - and I'm hoping it will provide a fairly accurate idea of what infill making entails, and some of the choices and problems that can come up in planning and constructing a plane from scratch.

Design - sharpen those pencils and/or clean the lint from your mouse.

The first step in getting the design established is to make some dimensioned drawings, establishing at the very least the major angles and distances necessary to start laying out and cutting the sole and sidewall pieces.  I have some limited experience with Sketchup, but I still generally prefer graph paper and pencil for most of my construction drawings. This is largely a matter of comfort and preference, though - you should use whatever format you're most at home with. Here is the rough construction drawing set I am going to be working from:

The next step for me is making some test bends in my steel bending fixture, establishing the setup I'll be using and the radius of the curvature of the sidewalls at the rear of the plane.  This is necessary to ensure I have the proper layout of the sidewalls, which are all laid out, cut, and filed before the bending happens. While it's a simple task to calculate the radius of the curve mathematically, there are two problems with using this as the only measurement - one is that the final curves will rarely match up to a perfect semi-circle, such that the final radius will almost always be somewhat shorter than the theoretical one;  the second problem is that there is always some degree of stretching and compression of the steel when it's bent to a curve.  The bottom line is that you can get an approximate prediction of the length to allow for the radius, but in my experience it can be off by as much as 3/8" from the actual results. A test bend using the same thickness of steel is the only reliable means of establishing the necessary length. I use inexpensive cold-rolled steel for these checks, which generally give results within 1/16" of my final bend - quite close enough for my purposes.

I use a Grizzly compact bending tool, which I mentioned briefly in an earlier post.  This isn't really necessary, however - planemaker Bill Carter, who's made some of the most beautiful mitres ever produced, uses simple bending forms in a machinist's vise for all his work.  The compact bending tool just adds a degree of simplicity and repeatability that I find helpful if you plan to make more than a couple of planes.

Laying out sidewall dovetails - pins first

Once I have worked out the bend setup, it's time to generate a dovetail layout template.  I  do this on graph paper with simple black markings for each of the 'pins' on the sidewall.  Notice that you only lay out half the plane, in this case from the front edge to the rear centerline - you'll mark half of the sidewall, then flip the blank and mark the other side from the same template to ensure you have a nice, symmetrical dovetail arrangement. If you enlarge the next photo below, you can see the markings on the graph paper below the steel.

Now it's time to start preparing the steel flat stock.  I'm using 3/16" O1 steel of 2" width.  Allowing 1/16" of excess for peening dovetails to the sole, this should give me a final height of 1-15/16" for the plane.  I cover the 'outside' face and bottom edge of the steel with layout dye, then mark off the front edges (again, leaving at least 1/16" excess for peening the front wall on later) and the centerline.  Now I use the template to mark the dovetails off at the bottom of the face.  You can see the template and the already-marked blank below:

 

With straight-sided planes, I have some degree of choice as to whether the sidewall dovetails are the 'pins' or 'tails' -- if I use pins here, the sidewalls will drop in to the sole from above;  if I use tails, the sidewalls will slide in to the sole from the sides.  For a one-piece sidewall like that in this plane miter, however, the sidewalls can only drop in from above, so the decision is effectively made for me - pins it is.

On the face of the stock, I first scribe a line to mark the top of the dovetails - in this case, I have allowed for a 5/16" sole and 1/16" of excess, so this line is scribed at 3/8" from the bottom.

With the template markings transferred to the plane, I use a square to extend the marks up the face of the stock to the line scribed previously. On the bottom edge of the stock, I then mark off the 'flare' for the dovetails as they will be seen from the sole of the plane.  My habit is to draw my templates to represent the outside of the sidewall, so each pin expands to the inner face at an angle of about 12-15 degrees, which I find to be a nice balance between aesthetics and ease of peining closed.  The photo below shows the completed dovetail layout.

 

At this point, I cut and file the dovetails as laid out.  There will be additional layout for the secondary dovetails later on, as well as the mortises for the bridge - but there is no reason to add to the complexity at this point.

Cut and file... repeat.

A few quick words about cutting and filing these dovetails... In many ways, dovetails in metal are more forgiving than in wood, because you can close up minor gaps during the peining process later on.  Having said that, though, it's very much in your best interest to be as precise as you can at this point - particularly in keeping the pins perpendicular to the sole, and in keeping the baseline intact.  Every bit of precision at this point will pay off later on - and minor errors now have a way of magnifying into bigger problems later in the process.

I'll try to add a post later about the types of files and hacksaw blades I like best for this sort of work, but when starting out you can make do quite well with a set of small Nicholson files if you grind safe and acute edges on a couple of them. I use 18-tpi bimetal hacksaw blades for cutting steel. One of the reasons I prefer O1 to mild steel is that it is much easier to remove waste from harder steels.  In the photo below, I have started comb-cutting the waste for the dovetails:

In general, I try to leave somewhere in the range of 3/32 - 1/8" 'tines' between each cut.  This thickness of material is very easy to whack out with a cold chisel later on.  I actually use an old woodworking chisel with a flat bevel ground on it for this - it's just the most comfortable and controllable one I've found for it:

The simple idea is to tap each 'tine' first to one side, then to the other.  Generally, two sets of direction changes is all that is required before the material snaps cleanly off.  In softer material such as mild steel or bronze,this does not work anyhere near as easily or cleanly - and it's often much easier to just saw the waste out with a jeweler's saw if you are working in those metals.  O1, however, is remarkably conducive to this.

Once the material has been broken off, it's time for the file work.

 

Again - this can be very tedious work, but the more accurate you are at this stage, the more smoothly things will go later on.  A couple of hours work later, here's the sidewall stock with the first-stage pins all cut and filed:

 The next step will be to lay out and file the secondary dovetails, and the mortises for the bridge.  This entry has already gotten long enough, however, so I'll come back to that process in the next entry in a day or two. 

For those of you reading this, I would really appreciate feedback as to how helpful this is.  Questions are very much welcome, as are any comments on what is or is not helpful for understanding and following along with the progress.  My habit is to try to err on the side of too much information, rather than not enough - but if the entries are becoming too long and detailed please let me know.

Song for the sneckless

One of the previous commenters had asked about some details on snecking blades.  The sneck is a very nice addition to a blade, particularly on low angle miter planes, as it provides a very handy means for reducing blade projection without having to strike the plane body itself.

The method I use to sneck miter blades is simple:  just add a supplementary thickness of steel at the rear of the blade.  It's a very easy process, but it's a nice introduction to peining and rivets, which are critical to constructing dovetailed infill planes.

Here's the annealed O1 stock I'm going to use for the blade. 

This is 1" wide, 3/16" stock, and I'll cut another section of steel the same width, about an inch long, to use as the sneck - in this case I'm using 1/8" for the sneck, but you can use a thicker sneck if you prefer. The mating faces of both pieces of steel should be nice and flat to ensure you get a clean union between the two - the goal is for the blade to look like a single chunk of steel at the end.  I lap both pieces on a granite surface plate to about 220 grit.

Next, drill the holes for your rivets. I'm actually prepping four snecks here, as I want to make a few spare blades.  Two pins are more than adequate for a steel union of this size - I'm drilling to 3/16", and I'll pin with O1 drill rod of the same size.

 

Make sure you use the sneck itself to register the holes in the blade, and drill those as well.  On the top of the sneck and the bottom (face) of the blade, you want to taper the holes just slightly to give the peined rivets someplace to 'grab' and join the steel tightly.  I use a tapered hand reamer - they are readily available from most industrial supply houses.  Here's a shot of tapering the sneck:

 

Once all for tapers have been reamed, cut your pin stock - leave about 1/16" extra length for peining - and assemble the bits and pieces together for peining.  Here is the assembly before peining the rivets... note that my 'fitting' is hardly precise - but it's completely acceptable for my needs as I've left myself plenty of extra material for filing and grinding off during final shaping :

 

I forgot to shoot pics of the actual peining, but it consists of striking the pins numerous times (several dozen strikes on each side of each pin) forcing the excess material into the reamed tapers. Peining is far from difficult, but it does require a little finesse to strike hard enough to move the metal, but not hard enough to deform the parts you don't want to deform, or introduce unnecessary stresses.  My advice would be to always err on the side of 'too soft' as I've yet to see anyone who didn't start out striking much harder than necessary.  When it comes time to pein the shell of the next miter plane, I'll try to get into some more detail on the techniques you can use, but for simple rivets like these, it's mainly just a matter of aim.

Once completed, it should look something like this (I've done some rough shaping already in this photo):

 

Make sure you've completely filled the tapers filed into the rivet holes so you don't have gaps after cleaning up, and be careful not to dent the surrounding metal if you can help it - it will make the lapping much easier if you don't have to remove a few thou of surface to remove the dents.

Now it's a simple matter of grinding and lapping the assembly to its final form.  I do the majority of stock removal with files and a 12" disc sander, and then lap to the desired sheen -- in this case, only up to 180 grit, as I like to leave some texture on the blades. 

Here is the blade after shaping, ready for heat treating:

 

And that's all there is to it.  Start to finish, including cutting the blade stock, I'd say this took about two to three hours to do a batch of four blades to the point of having them ready to heat treat.  A single blade would probably be do-able in an hour or less once you get used to the process.

Please bear in mind that there is no reason you can't add a sneck to a blade after heat treating, but the hardened blade makes drilling and shaping much more difficult.  However, an annealed sneck on a hardened blade is not an issue at all in my experience.

Finally, here's a shot of the blade after heat treating, in place in a small miter plane.  Also pictured is the coffin smoother (with the older LC screw) I briefly showed in a previous post, which someone else asked to more photography of.

Hope that helps with the basics of snecking.  I'll be posting the first sequence of prepping the Towell miter plane later in the week.

Independence Day

First - A Personal Note

Happy New year all. Thanks to everyone who 'gently prodded' me about getting it back in gear.

Long time since last blog entry?  Yup.  What can I say - holidays at the best of times are busy, and if you have young children like we do, you'll know that it also brings a severe increase in activity of the local TLF  (Toddler Liberation Front) cells.  Our home has been a haven for this crafty and disarming organization for the past several years, and the new recruits (codename:  the twins) seem to have stepped up their mobility this year, as evidenced by a remarkable uptick in the organization's chatter, and a few very close calls.  One day I'll be able to tell the tale of the Christmas Eve Pasta Offensive, but this is not the time or place.

The long and short of it is that it was easily the most wonderful, and also the most hectic, Christmas season I can ever recall having.  Ever seen a 4-year old's face when she first sees the  hoof-strewn mess that Santa's reindeer made of the cupcakes she left them? Ever had that sense of wonder interrupted as an overactive pair of fifteen month olds exploit the moment of freedom to finally topple the 9-ft. Yuletide Tree crammed into the 8-ft tall family room?  Well, then you obviously understand.

New toy for Daddy

At any rate, the season also brought the addition of a new piece of machinery at the toolworks -- one that marks a rather nice personal milestone:

The Daedworks' own metal lathe - a WWII era Montgomery-Ward branded Logan with a 10" swing and 24" between centers. I know it's not specifically a woodworking tool, but it's significant as it allows me to bring the last outsourced bits of my planes in-house. Until now, I've had all the lever cap screws for my bench planes made by the extremely talented Johnny Kleso (known as rarebear to many).  You can see a couple of videos Johnny's posted on YouTube.  Well worth a view for anyone interested, especially the Acme threading videos. Johnny's lathe time is limited, though, and he's stopped taking outside work with the exception of a couple of his old friends. So I've been considering how to move forward for a few months now, and finally decided I should just learn to make 'em myself.

So two days before Christmas, I picked up this Logan and the past two weeks of shop time have been devoted to setting it up, calibrating and aligning everything, and learning the rudiments of turning metal, knurling, and single-point threading. As an added benefit, this acquisition also lets me finally shift to using Acme threading on the lever caps, something that is fairly labor- and time-intensive, and is frankly rather costly to have someone do for you. The learning curve has been pretty steep, but so far I'm happy with the results.  Here's the first screw I've finished in the Bronze I prefer to use:

 

And another shot of the screw, in place in a coffin smoother I finished around Thanksgiving:

I'm not completely satisfied with the knurling at this point, but I think the step to Acme threads makes up for it.  As I said, overall I'm quite pleased with the results.

Of course there are other things you can make on a good metal lathe as well...

I've freehand-turned a few plane hammers on my wood lathe in the past, but the results with a good metal lathe are really a notch up.  This one is also the first time I've been able to incorporate a design feature I picked up from Jameel Abraham -- a threaded post mount for the wooden head.

There are so many advantages to this, I don't know where to start. In addition to making it incredibly simple to replace a worn wooden head, I can also keep a couple of replaceable heads in different materials - soft wood, harder wood, and perhaps (if I can work out the details) rawhide, which is the preferred material for adjusting wedges in a miter plane. All in all, a nice secondary benefit;  this is easily my favorite of the plane hammers I've made over the years.

And now, this:

 

Next project, which I'm going to document all the way through, is a full-size miter plane based on a beautiful old Towell Miter from the collection of Joel Moskowitz, who is one of my best secret (or once-secret, I suppose) sources of information.

I am done with most of the basic layout for the plane, which is about 10-1/2" long with a 2-inch iron and a single-piece sidewall construction. This is going to be the first large-scale mitre plane I've done, and it should give me the chance to try out some new ideas.  It's a classic design, and Towell's cupid's bow bridges have been the model I use for a while now -- they're superb. Towell's original, top - the last bridge I did, below it.

More soon, as I get to the serious work of hacksawing and filing. I'll try to cover everything about the plane as I progress over the coming weeks.

Ranma III

OK - so here's the final installment of the diamond asa no ha pattern exercise. The asa no ha, or hemp leaf, is a traditional japanese pattern that appears in many, if not all, of the culture's traditional arts. In shoji work, the pattern can be fit to most of the kumiko structures.  For the diamond structure of this piece, the pattern consists of three legs, each of which have 60-degree spear beveled ends to fit into the corners of each triangular section.
In order to form these ends, I use a shooting jig with a 30-degree angle at the end:

 

The first piece in the pattern is a long section, with each end spear-pointed at a 60-degree included angle.  To form the ends, you simply shoot a 30-degree angle, then flip the piece and shoot 30-degrees on the opposite face; the result is a perfect 60-degree spear bevel.

This long piece is then split dead-center to form two of the pattern's legs - but a very small (under 1/32") bit of wood is left intact, forming a 'hinge' to keep the two sections connected.  To accomplish this, I attach a pair of depth stops to my dozuki - set with the saw resting on three sheets of drawing paper to leave just the right amount of depth below the cut.

Here is the resulting piece

The piece is then gently folded along its seam to fit in the kumiko structure; a small bit of water (saliva also works, I hear) on the rear of the hinge makes the fold a bit easier.

Now it's inserted into the structure.  The third leg is formed of a simple straight section, again with 60-degree spear bevels formed on each end.  This section keys into the hinged area, and locks the entire structure very securely in place.

Now, repeat the process for every section of the structure that you want the pattern in.  I've opted for an arrangement of hexagons, in two rows. Then I trimmed the entire structure, and mounted it in a double frame - the inner frame of matching eastern white pine, and the outer frame of mahogany joined with the mitered mortise and tenon joinery I showed at the beginning of the project.

And that's it - the piece is finally complete.  The kumiko in shoji is never finished - which would be very difficult, but which would also diminish the natural quality of the wood.  The framework is sometimes finished, especially in the west, but I like the muted colors of the mahogany and pine so much I've left both with a kanna finish - right off the plane.

Here is the final piece, which I'll probably hang on a wall of my home, or perhaps give as a christmas present (to someone who isn't reading this blog).

 

By the standards of professional door makers, there are some undesirable aspects to this piece.  Firstly, the eastern white pine I've used here isn't nearly consistent enough for fine work - the variations make the intersections show up as individual pieces, rather than blending into a single mass.  Also, by the extremely fine standards of craftsmanship of the shokunin, the joinery in my kumiko would be considered sloppy.  But my goal with this exercise was to set up and familiarize myself with the appliances and fixtures that are necessary for this work, and to get used to the process so that I can employ it in screen and furniture work in the future -- and from that standpoint, I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Like much of japanese woodworking, shoji can be a very painstaking and detailed process -- especially with some of the more complicated structures like this one -- but the end result is very beautiful, and it is an excellent exercise in close-tolerance handtool work.  Make ten of these, and I can guarantee that your skill with a saw will improve a pretty fair bit.

Next it's back to some plane work...

Kumiko - I just can't quit you!

Before I get back to the planes I'm trying to finish up, I want to go on to a bit more of the Ranma project I've been working on this week in between coats of french polish.  The traditional square network of kumiko in shoji are relatively straightforward, with lap joints at each intersection.  The triangular, or diamond pattern, however, is a fair bit tricker as each node of the lattice involves three members to join.  I don't know of any written information in english on the techniques for this -- though there are some sketches in Nakashima's Soul of a Tree. I pestered a couple of expert shojimakers in the US while puzzling out the details, and I thought I'd put up a not-so-brief summary of the basic techniques and joinery.

I'm going to try to document this as well as I can without taking 2 hours of your time, but please be forewarned that it may be a bit confusing at first.  It may help to have a look at the final piece first, to get a sense of what we're working toward.  Here is a roughly 24" x 7" section of diamond-pattern kumiko that I'll be using in the final ranma:

In order to make the 'grid' work, there are three different members of the lap joint that have to be employed - one for the horizontal pieces, one for the 'left leaning' pieces, and one for the 'right leaning' pieces.  Here are my test sample pieces:

All of these joints are cut at 60-degree angles, and 2/3 of the depth of each piece is removed.  Exactly how to remove them for a good fit is the tricky part.  In order to make these cuts (I'm cutting at least 60 of each for this piece) I use a purpose-built small miter box with a kerf exactly sized to my dozuki.  I also use small guides clamped to the sawplate to precisely gauge depth of each cut.

 

For the first piece, you cut a left 60-degree lap (all laps are 3mm in width to accomodate the 3mm kumiko) a full 2/3 of the depth of the kumiko. Then make a right 60-degree lap that exactly overlays the first, and to the same depth... gently remove the waste with your narrowest chisel. Here's what that joint should end up looking like:

The second joint, gets a left 60-deg lap, but to just 1/3 depth.  Then you flip the piece top-for-bottom and cut the same joint from the other side.  Again - these need to exactly overlap.  The dead center point of each joint will be the same.  Here is what it should look like at the end - notice that although you cut both laps in the same direction, the 'flip' means that they're actually opposed in the final piece.

The third cut is even more interesting.  Start as with the first, with a left 60-deg  lap to 2/3 depth.  Then make a right 60-degree lap, but this time go to only 1/3 depth.  When you remove the waste, you should have the following:

Now, it's time to gently fit these and see how accurate we've been. Start with joint 3 (the odd one) on the bottom, and insert the joint 2 gently in place as so:

If things are fairly clean, you should be rewarded with the following:

If so, you can feel pleased - things will almost certainly work out just dandy. Joint number 1 should fit ever so gently into that slot, and leave you with a perfect, or close enough, three-way lap joint.

Now - if you got this far on your first try - start a blog.  You're a woodworking hero.  Most of us need to make a few stabs at it before we get everything reasonably 'right' for this.  Don't fret - it will all make sense after the first couple of attempts.  After that, you just cut row upon row of each type, at exact intervals (I'm using 2" on center for each joint) and you should hopefully end up with something like the 'sheet' at the beginning of the entry.

A couple of things to note:  first - you can gang-cut the pieces, but you have to pay attention to the offset of each piece in the stack.  Once you've made a couple of successful test joints, you'll undoubtedly have no problems figuring that out if you remember to compensate for it.

Second - these joints are really made to be assembled ONCE and once only.  Assembling them compresses the fibers at each joint, giving you a fairly nice fit, but they will never go together that cleanly again if you take them apart.  If you look at that final test joint photo, you can see what I mean.  That piece was put together and taken apart twice before this picture, and you can see on the left and right edges of the joint where the piece has been somewhat crushed, making it feel 'not so fresh'.

OK - so that's it for the basic diamond pattern.  The 'infill' patterns to make the hemp leaf (as no ha) design will have to wait a few days at least. The french polish on my planes is just about ready, which means I';m going to be peining and making a lever cap in the next few days. 


NOTE:
 I want to pause briefly here to let both of the readers of this blog know that no matter how poor the title of this entry was, you have no idea how much worse it almost was. Now normally I'm a lover of the finer things in wordplay as well as tools, but there are some times that even the most pathetic specimens of wordplay can worm their way into  even the most refined bloggibitionists' prose. Especially in the title...

Let's be honest, here -- it just ain't in a man's nature to gracefully decline the savage temptation of titling a shoji blog entry "Lattice Begin" -- to say nothing of its flashier, drunker sister "Lattice pray." Sure it's easy to toss "Kumiko Chameleon" onto the scrap heap of really really bad ideas - but who among us wouldn't be drawn to the trailer trash siren song that is "Kumiko - you get there faster if you take it slow"?  (And to think - Mike Love was the SANE one).  Even strong men must at times swoon 'neath such strains...

But fortunately, I didn't foist any of those monstrous succubi onto you, gentle reader.  You may now breathe a sigh of relief.

Tooling for Shoji

I'm waiting for the finish to be ready on a couple of planes I'm working on, so I've been planning out a shoji exercise I've wanted to do for some time.  I'm going to do a Ranma (transom) piece with a diamond or hexagonal structure and asa no ha (hemp leaf) details.  You can see a fantastic example of the pattern in this screen by John Reed Fox, one of my favorite furniture makers.  This is extremely detailed work, and requires a very high degree of precision to execute well.  I've done a couple of basic shoji in the past, but this will be my first attempt at this complex pattern. There are a couple of critical handtool fixtures for this project that I wanted to show here.

  Kumiko Thicknessing board and Kanna

One of the more critical parts of shoji work is making certain that you have extremely consistent thickness on all of the kumiko (the softwood lattice pieces in the interior).  Any variations greater than a couple of thou are going to show up very clearly as a warp in the structure, or a very sloppy joint.  So for the final thicknessing and finish planing of the kumiko, I've made a special plane  known as a Hikouki Kanna, as well as a board to run it on.  Here is the kanna itself:

It's basically a typical kanna, but with a pair of 'runners' on either side, planed to an extremely precise depth that defines the final thickness of your kumiko.  For this project, I'm going to be using two different kumiko thicknesses, so I have two pairs of runners prepared - one for 3mm (~1/8"), and the other for 4.5mm (~3/16").  It's a fairly straightforward concept, and is remarkably effective.

There is one 'problem' though, which shows up when trying to plane such thin material:  the kumiko  bend rather easily, and can be tricky to keep flat on the board when you approach final thickness. The solution is to build in a gentle 'hold down' device to get them flat to the board before reaching the mouth and blade.  Here is the bottom of the kanna:

 

If you look just in front of the blade, you can see the mechanism - it's a springloaded half-cylinder captured into the sole. The number and strength of springs can be adjusted to ensure the right amount of pressure.

The other part of this design is a dedicated 'board' that works very similarly to a sticking board.  It consists of a lower ramp that the plane's runners ride on, with a raised portion in the center.  The kumiko are placed on the raised portion, which has screws at the end to serve as stops for the kumiko.

 

This ramp needs to be extremely flat, and I've used Quartersawn wood to help make sure it stays that way.  In my setup, the central platform is raised 9mm (~3/8"), and my two sets of runners are 12mm and 13.5 mm thick - giving me kumiko of exactly the thicknesses I need.

Here's the concept in action, which should make everything rather clear.

The Miter Jack

For the frame on the ranma, I'm going to use a mitered housed mortise and tenon joint that Toshio Odate describes in Making Shoji. It's a tricky joint, and the miter itself is particularly critical for a clean fit - I'm using my miter jack.

I think shooting boards are in pretty widespread use by handtool woodworkers, but I'm not sure the miter jack is nearly as common -- which I think is a shame.  This is a fantastically powerful tool for any sort of joint that involves a miter.  This is my second  jack - I needed to remake it to work with my new Benchcrafted tail vise.  There is a reprint from some fine plans for a jack at the most thoroughly informative website of Alice Frampton (ALF) in the UK:  Cornish Workshop.

The miter jack can be used with a plane for a variety of mitered joints, much like the 'donkey's ear' shooting board, which I think a fair number of folks are familiar with.  Where the jack surpasses the donkey's ear, however, is more complicated (and structurally sound) mitered joints - like this one, or the secret mitered dovetail. The two wedges of the jack are perfectly mated, and tuned to a dead-accurate 45-degree angle.  The workpiece is clamped between these jaws, and the ramp surfaces act as a jig for the miter work.  In this case, I'm using a paring chisel to define the miter:

The prepared  rail, ready to be mortised:

I'm reasonably adept with a saw, but I'm not capable of getting anywhere near this sort of surface any other way.  Here's the joint, ready for assembly:

and the end result:

 

In short, it's my opinion that the miter jack is a nearly indispensible tool for a handtool woodworker.  There are other ways to accomplish the tasks it's useful for, but none of them do the job as efficiently, or easily, as the jack does.  if you don't one, I highly recommend it as a shop project in the near future. 

UPDATE - here's a shot of the bottom of my miter jack, showing the modifications I've made to the traditional mounting block.  Typically, these were made to work best in the opening of a traditional tail vise, where the jack can be pivoted up and down for access.  This design wouldn't work with the wagon vise style, which has no open clamping section. 

For this one, I sized the mounting block to fit in the benchcrafted tailvise, and mounted it on a stationary platform that raises the jack off the benchtop about an inch.  This was necessary to provide clearance for the screw handle, and it also allows me to mount the block in the center of the jack rather than the front or back rail. 

The one sacrifice with this design is that it's not really possible to pivot the jack front to back as you can with the 'traditional' tailvise design.  To be honest, this is the one concern I had to switching to a wagon vise style - it's about the only time I really used the open jaws on my old tail vise.  For the most part, though, this will serve just fine, and in the cases where I really want to rotate the jack, I will mount it in my patternmaker's vise, which gives it more positioning flexibility than any other system I can think of.

Infills, Kanna, and slouching toward Chimera

I suppose it goes without saying that I'm fond of handplanes. My wife would respond to that statement with the same shoulder-shrug and eyebrow pulse she gives when I wonder how it is our toddler twins still prefer used toilet paper rolls to actual toys.

"What do you expect," she's saying. "They're barely one. They also eat lint.

Now I've tried to include her in the fun. I bring the occasional nifty wood shaving device to the dinner table to show her how cool it is. I invite her to come down and turn perfectly good bits of wood into fluff with me. She is ever-so-kind when she declines. "Mmm… I think I'm going to clean the bathroom" she says. Without a hint of irony. (I married very very well.)

Not only that, but she refuses to refer to my sanctuary as I have asked. I call it 'the lab'. She calls it 'the shop' or, even more horrifying, 'the garage'. Ugh. It's not a garage. It hasn't had a car in it in most of a decade. And a shop is where little old ladies fawn over doilies in clouds of musty perfume. A Lab is where serious men create awesomeness, and wear cool monocles and develop bone-chilling laughs.

"Lab, garage, whatever. Have fun'.

sigh.

I assume, though, that if you're reading this blog you know better. We know that making furniture and tools and changing stuff into other, slightly more organized 'stuff' is how we get to keep playing with our legos and erector sets long after we're supposed to be adults. Right?

So you'll understand why I find it sad when someone ONLY uses western planes, or ONLY uses Japanese planes (kanna). That's like those annoying lego purists, who think erector sets are too clunky. Or the erector commandos who think legos are kids' stuff. A good lab needs BOTH! And here's why:

For softwoods, kanna are capable of a surface that is unlike anything I think western planes are capable of… kanna users often refer to it as 'kanna finish'. In my view, Cherry is sort of the borderline wood. I think both infill planes and kanna do a spectacular job on cherry. Anything 'softer' - I tend to use kanna. Harder woods? I generally use western planes.

I'll do some more talking about the differences between the eastern and western approach to planes in future entries, but for now I just want to share a little bit of the 'why' I like both. All these pictures are the same piece of not-very-straight-grained cherry. This is a castoff chunk. I wouldn't use it in furniture.

First, a small kanna. (For those interested in details: it's a 36mm Rakuzan 'super blue steel' blade by Yokosaka in a dai I made from Macadamia. Technically it's more of a block plane, but I've set it up as a final smoother.)

Here's the surface it leaves…

it's really hard to photograph, but there is a glow to the surface that I can't quite match with any western plane. Why not? Well, there are a few things, but one definite difference is that in a kanna the blade is the last thing to touch the wood. There is no burnishing of the surface as with the heel of a western plane.

Now - here's an infill smoother on the same piece:

Nice shavings. Here's the result:

Nice smooth surface, but it doesn't quite have the same surface quality as the kanna. As soon as I place a finish on it, the surfaces look identical, but nonetheless I just want to show that there is more going on here than just push vs. pull.

So where is the infill advantage, you may ask? Well, woulde it help if I mentioned that the shaving above was taken against the grain? With a 47.5-degree bedded blade. A well-made infill isn't immune to grain direction, but it might as well be in most woods - Cherry included.

Now for my fellow mad scientists out there, who may be thinking 'wonder if you could make a hybrid of some sort' I can tell you that I am not completely sure. But hasty preliminary research indicates some cause for optimism.

New toys, new plane

I've been playing at single parenting this week while Jenn is out of town on business... I don't think the PTSD is too severe, but it's pretty much wiped out shop time. I did manage to steal some time over the weekend to get my new auxiliary bench up, and install a couple of new tools:














First up is a new patternmaker's vise. This one is the new clone that a number of places sell. I'm hoping to acquire an old Yost version of the Emmert in the near future, which will replace this, but I got a really good deal on this one. I have to say that so far I'm very impressed with the vise. The castings certainly aren't pretty, but functionally it's really fantastic. It's going to make shaping totes a much faster and easier process.

The second addition is a Grizzly compact bender, which you can see mounted behind the vise. I bought this to simplify the bends such as the one at the rear of the small miter planes. It's a really simple contraption, but it's a very welcome addition, and makes it MUCH easier to get precise bends without having to do much tweaking after the fact. It's a tool I basically use for about two minutes every few weeks or so, so it lives under the bench, and mounts in under a minute.

I also made a start on the rear infill for the steel miter I'm working on. I put the recently-completed bronze miter to use tuning up the bed and shooting the end. The miter board in this picture, by the way, is Evenfall Studios' deluxe shooter -- a fantastic design, perfectly executed. It's a much better board than I would ever have bothered to make for myself - and there's something to be said for that.





























Rough tuning the bed is done with a panel plane, which gives me a good head-start at flat along the bed's length. I have a camber on my panel, though, so I followed it up with the miter plane to eliminate any hollow lingering from the panel.

























Now I can start fitting the plane and hopefully get to the peining this weekend.

Getting wedged

I finished forming the wedge for the bronze miter plane tonight.


I want to sit on the design for a day or so, as I'm still not sure about the proportions - the strike bulb at the top feels a bit large, but it helps make it easy to remove the wedge. And because the infills on these planes aew completely internal, the wedge is the only wood feature that extends beyond the lip of the plane; so a somewhat inflated bulb can be a nice design feature.

In the end, though, I'm leaning toward reducing the profile a bit. It just feels little top-heavy to me. I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.
















I am really pleased with the repeat cupid's bow treatment on the bridge and wedge, though. That's staying as it is...

Shaping wood

After all the metalwork on the shell of a plane, it's always a real treat to get to the point of shaping the wood for the infill. After all, love of woodworking is how I found myself doing this to begin with...

Here's a sampling of the tools I use to shape the stuffing for infills. From left to right, there is an Auriou cabinet rasp, a pair of Gramercy tools rasps, a Heller vixen pattern file, a Bill Carter style chisel which has been hardened and blunted, the Benchcrafted Skraper (the coolest tool I never knew I needed til I got it), and a Lie Nielsen bed float.

The rasps are self-explanatory, other than to point out the Gramercy sawmaker's rasp. It's curved, and the concave side has teeth, while the convex side is safe - which makes it very easy to shape inside the cutout on a tote without accidentally gouging anything with the oustide of the rasp. This is the only tool of this pattern I know of.

The Vixen pattern file (they're also called Mill tooth files sometimes) is a fantastic tool for hard exotics. It's essentially a float-like tool, which is to say it's row upon row of scrapers. While a good hand-stitched rasp is unparalleled in sculpting wood free-form, and can hog off stock very quickly - they leave a lot of witness marks on the wood. A vixen, or float, however, is capable of leaving nearly a nearly finish-ready surface.

In this photo, the proud section of the infills was left with a rasped surface. If you look closely (you may have to click the picture) you can see the witnesses of the rasp, most especially at the endgrain edges. The undercut portions on each piece were finished with the vixen file. These are not show surfaces, but the controlled removal of the vixen is very handy for the tricky fitting process of these planes.

These are the front and rear totes for a coffin smoother - the fitting of which is one of the most challenging things I've found in planemaking. You can do some roughing in of the shape before the shell is assembled, but the final fitting is an extremely tedious process, not least of which because there is no foolproof way of marking the overstuff ledges to the blanks. Essentially, you have to remove some stock, test fit, remove stock, test fit - over and over. I'd say I probably do at least 30 or 40 test fits on one of these to get it right.

I do have one secret weapon, though: dry erase markers. You can see above where I have colored the front bun section with green dry-erase. When I roughed in the bun initially, I left it about 1/8" wider than it will end up. So when I insert it and press it into place, the dry erase gives me a great way to check the high spots. Remove the green parts, and repeat until you have the final fit you're looking for.

Once the fitting is solid, I'll french polish the bed and the ramp on the front bun because they're much easier to do before the infills are pinned in place. Then I'll drill for rivets and pein the infills in place. But first there's more to be done on the miter plane...

The moment of truth...

Welcome to the Daedworks blog. It seems somehow fitting to launch this new blog with a new plane. Today was grinding and lapping day on the first of two new miter planes I've been working on the past couple of weeks. Grinding off the excess metal from peining the shell together, and then lapping the sole and sides of the plane down are a very cool stage in making an infill, but it also brings up some anxiety; it's the point when you get to find out if all the hard work cutting, fitting, filing, and peening all came out OK, or if there is a problem.

And unfortunately, there are any number of things that can show up at this point that are all but impossible to fix properly. It's also the first point in the construction when the plane starts to look reasonably good - until now it's been a bunch of metal pieces with coarse surfaces, hammer marks, and rough filing. I wish I could say I've never experienced disapointment at this point in the process, but it wouldn't be true.

Fortunately, though, today's went rather well.


Now it's time to start making a wedge - one of my favorite shaping chores. After that is done, I can do the final sole lapping, and finish up the mouth. The plane's steel-sided twin is just a few steps behind, so hopefully it'll come off as well as this one did when I get to that point - probably sometime next week.