One down ...

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

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 ...

Back ...

Sole and blade ...

I tried it across pine grain ...

It was hard to stop

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

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

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 ...

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

The jig to cold bend the blade ...

In compression ...

This is how much springback there was ...

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 ...

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.

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

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.

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).

The brass mouth was made in the same manner.

This is resulting hollow grind ...

.. and angle ...

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 ...

After rasps, files and scraping ...

Now with bolts ...

... into inserts ...

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

Chisel it away ...

Clean up with rasps and scrapers ..

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 ..

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 ...

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

And that's where we came in ..

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[ED65]

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