Peter McBride
Antique and Old Tools
Updated :- Tuesday, 21 October 2008
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Making a dovetailed bench rebate
infill plane. page
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Plenty of different Crafts and Trades will share the skills needed for planemaking. Some original and contemporary makers come to planemaking from an engineering / machinist background and some from woodworking (like Stewart Spiers). To some degree these different disciplines will flavour the look of the planes and also the techniques and tools used.
Making Fine Handcrafted Jewellery for 30 years has given me a feel for good balanced design, and a run-up start on some the skills needed for plane making. (I've filed metal almost 6 days a week for 30
years) It shouldn't be a surprise that I will use many of the tools from the jewellery bench when making the planes.
I like to think my planes will contain some of the history of my professional life as a gold and silversmith, and as keen amateur woodworker, and in the distant past as a student in mechanical engineering.
This plane is based on the Stanley #10 1/2, and will
be similar to a longer
plane I have in my collection. It will have a 54mm (2 1/8 inch)
wide blade, set at an angle of 50
degrees, bevel down with a back iron. A removable lever cap will be located with a pair of steel pins under hooks in the sides. The sides
are made from 5mm ( about 3/16 in) cartridge brass, thicker than the
usual 3mm (1/8 inch) I use. The need for more rigidity had me thinking
I might make an all steel plane, but now the sides are cut out, I'm
confident the brass will be plenty strong enough. I made a lever cap
for this plane last year whilst making the one for my smoother. seen
here. Although I have drawn a closed handle, I might use on open
handle on this plane also. The files, hack saw, vice and other tools I
use are just what I have on hand, and most good quality tools will do
the job.
After making a cardboard template, I traced around it onto the brass
with a "Sharpie Pen" and with a metal cutting blade in the jigsaw, roughly cut out the
sides. Both sides are then filed and cut with a hacksaw close to the
finished size. Note the height of the vice: set 30 years ago to give
me a horizontal right forearm at a comfortable height.
To remove the waste from the side openings, I made a couple of straight
cuts with the plate in the vice (soft brass jaws), then used my jeweller's saw with a
Vallorbe 2/0
blade to cut the curves. I use Bahco Sandflex 24tpi Bi-Metal blades
in a good rigid hacksaw saw ( Sandvik ) and the files I've used so far
are a mixture, Wiltshire flat "wundacut", half-round, a Dick
triangular file and an unknown really aggressive round file.
With both sides close to correct shape, they are put together into the vice
for matching and finalizing the curves. Layout blue ink ( from
RS-online) is painted on to
the sides and a small surface gauge used to mark the base line of the
dovetails. (Permanent marker pen will do the job instead of the ink) I was toying with the idea of a steel or brass front piece,
but decided against it because the sides, being 5mm thick, are quite
heavy and I don't want an overweight plane.
This plane will have the tails cut into the sides, and the pins in the
steel base, so the sides will be fitted in from the sides of the plane
onto the sole. The dovetail angle I like is 70 degrees, and the spacing is just set out
by eye. One side is marked, and then the two are placed together in the
vice and the marking transferred across with a small engineer's square.
With the two plates aligned carefully and clamped together in the
vice, I cut down to just above my horizontal layout line on the
waste side. This line is one of the most critical for the success of the
plane. It is what makes the base flat and straight. Once all these cuts
are done, I go back to my jeweller's bench and cut the waste out with
jeweller's saws. This work with a jeweller's saw is a bit time
consuming, to cut them all out took 45 minutes with a ten minute break
in the middle.
The time spent on the sides so far is about 2.5 hours. That isn't counting the time spent drawing and thinking, nor the time spent making the lever cap and screw.