I'm new here, be gentle I've been lurking for a long time, however!
Apologies to those of you that are on the Sawmill Creek forums, I've already posted a thread about this on there. I felt like expanding my gloat to here, though, as I'm well chuffed
Bit of background: I'm an apartment woodworker, making do with what I can on my glassed-in balcony here in chilly Finland. That restricts things a bit for me, so I'm very nearly a full Neander. My only two weaknesses are my cordless drill and jigsaw.
Anyway, over a year ago I bought David Finck's book on making wooden planes. Ever since then I've been threatening to build a few. You see, I recently moved here from the UK so I'm low on tools. I've been making do with just a cheap far east number 5 clone until now. So finally last week I got the guts up to try building my first plane.
As a first attempt I decided to do it on the cheap, just to practice the techniques and see if I liked wood planes - so down to my local big box store I went, and came back with a 1m plank of 15m*70mm beech "hobby wood", some 8mm brass rod, and a new 45mm Stanley blade (no cap iron). I cut the beech up into correctly shaped laminations for the front and back blocks and the cheeks with a miter saw, and laminated those up. I trued the blocks and the sole with sandpaper. The brass rod became the cross pin.
The result? Fantastic! First shavings showed potential, and with some further wedge tuning it is now a great user. I've taken cottony shavings so far from pine, alder and aspen, and got a nice glassy finish on all three. I had a quick swipe on some oak this evening and it performed brilliantly, too It excels at heavier cuts though, so I might open the mouth a bit and use it as a scrub plane.
Heres a picture:
Its only roughly shaped so far, but now that its been tuned up a bit I'll have to make it a bit more shapely I guess!
I really like how these planes handle. And I love being able to use all sorts of different grips on them.
So now I'm going to have to stock up on blades and wood and build myself a whole kit of planes
Apologies to those of you that are on the Sawmill Creek forums, I've already posted a thread about this on there. I felt like expanding my gloat to here, though, as I'm well chuffed
Bit of background: I'm an apartment woodworker, making do with what I can on my glassed-in balcony here in chilly Finland. That restricts things a bit for me, so I'm very nearly a full Neander. My only two weaknesses are my cordless drill and jigsaw.
Anyway, over a year ago I bought David Finck's book on making wooden planes. Ever since then I've been threatening to build a few. You see, I recently moved here from the UK so I'm low on tools. I've been making do with just a cheap far east number 5 clone until now. So finally last week I got the guts up to try building my first plane.
As a first attempt I decided to do it on the cheap, just to practice the techniques and see if I liked wood planes - so down to my local big box store I went, and came back with a 1m plank of 15m*70mm beech "hobby wood", some 8mm brass rod, and a new 45mm Stanley blade (no cap iron). I cut the beech up into correctly shaped laminations for the front and back blocks and the cheeks with a miter saw, and laminated those up. I trued the blocks and the sole with sandpaper. The brass rod became the cross pin.
The result? Fantastic! First shavings showed potential, and with some further wedge tuning it is now a great user. I've taken cottony shavings so far from pine, alder and aspen, and got a nice glassy finish on all three. I had a quick swipe on some oak this evening and it performed brilliantly, too It excels at heavier cuts though, so I might open the mouth a bit and use it as a scrub plane.
Heres a picture:
Its only roughly shaped so far, but now that its been tuned up a bit I'll have to make it a bit more shapely I guess!
I really like how these planes handle. And I love being able to use all sorts of different grips on them.
So now I'm going to have to stock up on blades and wood and build myself a whole kit of planes