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Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)

Established Member
Joined
2 Mar 2005
Messages
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Location
Perth, Australia
So now i am interested in building Windsor chairs, starting with three bar stools for the kitchen bench. First I need the tools. I decided to make a few, starting with this travisher ...

Thanks to Pete Galbert (for the supporting emails) and Claire Minahan (for the video and emails). Claire has a video building Pete's design. She makes and sells these now. The video was made a few years ago, before the design was updated with a brass sole (rather, it used an ebony sole, which necessitated a slightly wider body). I chose to built it with the brass sole, which is where the extra emails came in.

The blade is O1, bent, heat-treated and tempered in my shop. The timber is Rock Oak.

Front ...

10a.jpg


Back ...

12a.jpg


Sole and blade ...

11a.jpg


I tried it across pine grain ...

14a.jpg


It was hard to stop :)

16a.jpg


It works the same on hard maple. Forward pressure = light shavings. Back pressure = heavy shavings.

Regards from Perth

Derek
 
A photo essay of blade making and fitting

I am being careful what I post here. Claire builds and sells these planes, and I would not wish to reproduce her methods or plans since they are her livelihood. I chose to modify the travisher in the video and update the design to match the latest one. To do so, I examined many photos on the 'web - almost all were by Claire, since it seems that few, if any, have built this version. I have suggested to Claire that she makes a new video ... although the current video is very worthwhile. What I will do, is post a few pictures of the processes that I needed to do that take her video a step further.

I started with 1" wide x 2.4mm thick O1 steel. You may make out my scratched marking ...

1_O1-steel-and-marked-out.jpg


The cut out blank(this is already quite different from the video) ...

2_Shaped-basic-blade.jpg


The jig to cold bend the blade ...

3_Curving-jig.jpg


In compression ...

4_Compressing-curve.jpg


This is how much springback there was ...

5_Springback.jpg


This was the second blade I made. The first was bent around a template of the final shape, and with the springback was far from the desired curve. The second time around I was ready for this and just bent it enough to fit ... got a little lucky ..

How it fits ...

6_Checking-curviture.jpg


For heat treating I made up a small oven with some scrap stainless steel and bricks. The MAPP gas was only just hot enough to get it to the desired red.

7-Heat-treating.jpg


... and then it went into the oven. Luckily my wife was busy baking Christmas cakes. I made sure she first sampled the brandy ... :D

8-Tempering.jpg


This is the completed blade. Interestingly, when the steel is bent, it becomes concave along its length, which is like adding a hollow grind. This makes it easier to hone the back of the blade.

9_Finished-blade.jpg


This is the jig for grinding the hollow. When the steel was flat I ground a shallow bevel - just enough that I could register the wheel on the centre of the bevel as I was after 30 degrees. (The eagle eye will note that the white Norton wheel is back - a rounded edge is needed to grind the inside curve).

10_Grinding_the_bevel.jpg


The brass mouth was made in the same manner.

This is resulting hollow grind ...

11_Grind-jig-and-bevel.jpg


.. and angle ...

12_Grind-angle.jpg


Fitting the blade and brass mouth: the basic shape o the travisher has been cut out on the bandsaw. The fit between sole and blade is a little off ...

13_Initial_fit.jpg


After rasps, files and scraping ...

14_Final_fit.jpg


Now with bolts ...

15_Screws1.jpg


... into inserts ...

16_Screws2.jpg


Mark off the area where the throat will be cut, and saw the waste for easy removal ..

17_sawing_the_waste.jpg


Chisel it away ...

18_Chopping_waste.jpg


Clean up with rasps and scrapers ..

19_Cleaning_up.jpg


Now to prepare the brass mouth: the toe needs to be tapered at 6 degrees. The reason for this is to allow for a varying blade angle - if you rock the travisher back, it will take a deeper cut. Rock it forward to take a fine cut.

The disk sander is set up at 6 degrees off vertical ..

20_grinding_the_brass1.jpg


I masked off the area not to grind (I did not want to grind over the bolt holes), and tapered the mouth up to the edge of the mouth ...

21_Grinding_the_brass2.jpg


Once done, all was screwed back together. Now we have a working travisher ... or should have ... so a test cut ...

22_Test_cut.jpg


And that's where we came in ..

10a.jpg


Regards from Perth

Derek
 
Gorgeous final result Derek, and obviously works a treat. Thanks for all the build details.
 

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