Sunday, March 16, 2014

New Wood Stock Plane

MsOK only caught me once today, she needed help planting a tree. Other than tree planting duties, most of the day was in the shop or running back and forth to Woodcraft.

The morning was spent doing the finish work on the side table, afternoon on making a plane.

A couple of weeks ago I found some nice Beech, I've never really worked with Beech but it was clear and straight so I thought it was worth a try. My first impression while moving the board to the saw bench was "damn, this stuff is heavy". After cross cutting a 8/4 200mm wide board and thinking about resting about half way through was it is hard too. Then after cutting out the blank, came the chopping of the mortise for the chip breaker screw head, the Beech works really nice but it is hard and dense, my back may never forgive me, but I can see why it has been the wood of choice for traditional plane makers.

Anyway, cut to the chase: Beech makes a really nice plane. The one I made today has a 45mm Hock O1 iron and chip breaker. The stock is just under 70mm wide X 400mm long, and is about 45mm tall. After the build and before applying BLO I trued the edge of a Cherry board with it and it worked beautifully.

I think it will be a keeper.



BTW, one of the nice things about making your own planes is like this one can start out as a 400mm (about 16") plane but who know where it will end up.....anywhere from staying around 400mm to a Jack, or even a smoother, about the only thing I doubt I would do with it is make it into a block plane.




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