jimi43
Established Member
Those luthiers amongst us will probably be familiar with the little series of planes by IBEX.....
These tiny little masterpieces are made of silicon bronze and command high prices for such little beasties.
Most plane fanatics out there know how to tune the standard No.4 and other normal size planes but these engineering midgets need greater care to perform correctly.
Some time back when I made guitars I bought a few of these....this one...
....the with a little 36mm body and 12mm iron proved to be the most useful and was the one that I kept.
Today, I thought I would see if I could tune it up with the experience gained since then from other plane tuning.
The flat soled model has, like all other flat soled planes...to be reasonably flat so the first job was to sort that out...
...it doesn't need to be polished to a mirror...just flattened on a synthetic stone.
Next comes the lever cap...which must meet the iron with no gap whatever. The IBEXs that I have had are pretty rough in this area...so a bit of careful filing sorted that out...
Next, the front of the lever cap is polished to allow the shavings to slide over the cap and exit out of the top of the plane...
I have done this to some extent but later will polish with 3M Micromesh to ensure the smoothest surface.
Next...the bed needs lapping in. The easiest way to do this is to use the iron itself...some double-sided tape and some 1500M Micromesh...
...this laps the bed with the iron precisely...you can see shallows which still need a little more work...
The iron was ground by hand on the Tormek to ensure a straight bevel with slight curved ends....and we are done:
So after this careful little tuning tweak...how does it perform...well...exactly the way it was designed to....with coarse cuts being a dream...on the flat....
...and when creating bevels and round-overs.....
These planes are a joy to use and well worth the money but often they don't work straight out of the box so if you have any jobs that need that miniature touch....
....this little baby might just be worth consideration....
Cheers
Jimi
These tiny little masterpieces are made of silicon bronze and command high prices for such little beasties.
Most plane fanatics out there know how to tune the standard No.4 and other normal size planes but these engineering midgets need greater care to perform correctly.
Some time back when I made guitars I bought a few of these....this one...
....the with a little 36mm body and 12mm iron proved to be the most useful and was the one that I kept.
Today, I thought I would see if I could tune it up with the experience gained since then from other plane tuning.
The flat soled model has, like all other flat soled planes...to be reasonably flat so the first job was to sort that out...
...it doesn't need to be polished to a mirror...just flattened on a synthetic stone.
Next comes the lever cap...which must meet the iron with no gap whatever. The IBEXs that I have had are pretty rough in this area...so a bit of careful filing sorted that out...
Next, the front of the lever cap is polished to allow the shavings to slide over the cap and exit out of the top of the plane...
I have done this to some extent but later will polish with 3M Micromesh to ensure the smoothest surface.
Next...the bed needs lapping in. The easiest way to do this is to use the iron itself...some double-sided tape and some 1500M Micromesh...
...this laps the bed with the iron precisely...you can see shallows which still need a little more work...
The iron was ground by hand on the Tormek to ensure a straight bevel with slight curved ends....and we are done:
So after this careful little tuning tweak...how does it perform...well...exactly the way it was designed to....with coarse cuts being a dream...on the flat....
...and when creating bevels and round-overs.....
These planes are a joy to use and well worth the money but often they don't work straight out of the box so if you have any jobs that need that miniature touch....
....this little baby might just be worth consideration....
Cheers
Jimi
