profchris
Established Member
I'm recycling a Victorian wardrobe into a pair of parlour guitars. After resawing back and sides, they are about 8mm thick. I need to get down to 2mm or so. That's a lot of hand planing!
But I've finally got my thicknessing toolkit together:
The dark wood plane does all the rough work, the light wood plane gets me to within 0.25 mm, and the Record no 4 gives me the final surface.
The difference is the camber on the blades - here are the two woodies:
As you can see, the rough work plane has a ludicrous camber on it. It removes wood amazingly fast, and its big mouth prevents clogging (mainly). Getting down from 8 mm to 3mm takes maybe 10 mins planing for a guitar back or front.
The second woodie has a fair camber still, but not too mad, and a moderately wide mouth. It takes a thick shaving without too much tearout, so 0.75 mm comes off in a couple of minutes. The Record has a standard smoothing profile, with a very slight camber and a close set cap iron, and that produces those wispy shavings which are rather Zen, so I need to remind myself to stop planing!
A normal jack plane is too big for ukuleles, which is what I normally make; their front and back plates are maybe 10 inches long. A guitar is twice the size, but even then a jack is unwieldy because I need to clamp the plate down so can only work on half of it at a time.
Woodies like these are £2-£5 in almost any car boot sale - pick one with a thick and fairly long iron and modify it to what you need. And opening up the mouth is easy - just plane the bottom of the plane with your Record equivalent to get a flat sole, and as you plane the mouth gets wider.
But I've finally got my thicknessing toolkit together:
The dark wood plane does all the rough work, the light wood plane gets me to within 0.25 mm, and the Record no 4 gives me the final surface.
The difference is the camber on the blades - here are the two woodies:
As you can see, the rough work plane has a ludicrous camber on it. It removes wood amazingly fast, and its big mouth prevents clogging (mainly). Getting down from 8 mm to 3mm takes maybe 10 mins planing for a guitar back or front.
The second woodie has a fair camber still, but not too mad, and a moderately wide mouth. It takes a thick shaving without too much tearout, so 0.75 mm comes off in a couple of minutes. The Record has a standard smoothing profile, with a very slight camber and a close set cap iron, and that produces those wispy shavings which are rather Zen, so I need to remind myself to stop planing!
A normal jack plane is too big for ukuleles, which is what I normally make; their front and back plates are maybe 10 inches long. A guitar is twice the size, but even then a jack is unwieldy because I need to clamp the plate down so can only work on half of it at a time.
Woodies like these are £2-£5 in almost any car boot sale - pick one with a thick and fairly long iron and modify it to what you need. And opening up the mouth is easy - just plane the bottom of the plane with your Record equivalent to get a flat sole, and as you plane the mouth gets wider.
