The Woodie Slope Steepens!

[jimi43]

ALF's gentle persuasion over the last few years on the merits of wooden planes...her excellent website and other scoundrels like AndyT....have done for me this time!

As if it isn't enough to be ankle-deep in infill planes...how on earth did I ever get hooked on woodies!??

Why couldn't I just have remained ignorant of their abilities...unable to tune and fettle to get anything other than frustrated and huge chunks of shattered wood?

Ok...this rambling is the precursor to my open public admission that I am now officially well and truly hooked and on the gentle downward slope of the wooden plane world!

It being constantly wet throughout April...the bootfairs have been non-existent and I have had to resort to scouring FleaBay for my gems...

Well today...a little parcel arrived...for just a tad over a tenner incl. p&p...and inside were these little babies....

Andy and Phil...it's all your fault that I wanted...no yearned for an adjustable chamfer plane...and this little orphan...missing the little brass adjuster....

...was a prime candidate for repair...crying out for it...buy me...buy me it said.

So I plonked on a snipe and forgot about it. How surprised was I to win both for £6 odd.!!!

Now this is a really cool piece of engineering....

...with the standard...and apparently difficult to adjust box insert....

Now I have to figure out what bits are missing and what they would traditionally look like and how they would work....

My guess is the box insert had a threaded brass plate in the recess...a bolt then passed through a washer plate on the side and tightened into the plate?

Anyone got one or have a picture of one similar?

I am trolling Google for a suitable facsimile at the moment...no luck yet...although Phil...your sliding fence is gorgeous mate and a darn good video too!

While I leave this thread to collect suggestions and comments....I will also be sorting out the T rebate...which has no maker's name on the woodwork but has this comforting mark on the iron...

:wink:

I feel a "wooden top family photo" coming on..... 8)

Jim

 

[No skills]

Thats the trouble with getting planes off ebay, you never know who from here is bidding against you glad the wooden ones are off my radar.

Good find there Jim, you must be needing some wooden plane storage by now.

 

[Pete W]

Thats the trouble with getting planes off ebay, you never know who from here is bidding against you

Not just planes... I often wonder which of the galoots around here are beating me to the ebay tools. Just lately, there's a lot of people been stealing "my" tenon saws on the bay #-o .

As for Jimi, he's not on the slope any more; he's in freefall.

 

[AndyT]

Well done that man! Those are really nice. I have a T-rabbet and a couple of chamfer planes, but they are the sort with adjustable fences rather than the sliding box, so I am jealous as well as impressed. (I hadn't spotted them, or I might have put in a bid of 50p more than yours!)

John Whelan in his book "Making Traditional Wooden Planes" just shows a woodscrew as adjuster with a brass plate with a slot in it.
My 1912 copy of Cassell's Woodworking shows a similar one and calls it "Nurse's Chamfer Plane" (presumably Nurse of Maidstone and London) - and that too has a screw head in a slot.

Google Books link to the same picture here.

This is a similar one for sale at Oldtools.com

Those look as if they work very simply, by drawing the sliding box against the main body. But yours is different - not much of a slot for a start. I suppose if you cut a thick square piece of brass which fits closesly into the cutout, with a threaded hole in it, a bolt could draw the brass part towards the plane body, and that would work. But it seems a difficult way of going about it.

Btw, one advantage of the T-rabbet is that it can be turned on its side and used as a side-rabbet plane, provided that the groove is broad enough.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Thats the trouble with getting planes off ebay, you never know who from here is bidding against you

Not just planes... I often wonder which of the galoots around here are beating me to the ebay tools. Just lately, there's a lot of people been stealing "my" tenon saws on the bay #-o .

As for Jimi, he's not on the slope any more; he's in freefall.

Not me wiv the tenon saws, guv! I've got enough to be going on with.... I did buy a panel saw a while back, but I was the only bidder.

As for Jimi, he really, really needs a decent half-set of hollows and rounds, some good side beads, maybe a couple of snipe bills, a screw-arm plough and sash fillester. And if he gets the sash fillester, some sash ovolos to keep it company. Oh, and a set of dado planes.... not to mention a 30" jointer, a 22" trying plane, a couple of jacks and smoothers, a toothing plane....

 

[jimi43]

.......... a toothing plane....

Ah.....

I forgot to mention this one.....

....this might have been the one that started the sub-concious rot some two years back....

...it has a scrub iron in it at present...oh...did I mention the scrub....?

Oh dear...oh very dear me.....

Yes Andy...I saw that one and rejected it because of the difference in the mechanism as you quite rightly point out....

Well done that man! Those are really nice. I have a T-rabbet and a couple of chamfer planes, but they are the sort with adjustable fences rather than the sliding box, so I am jealous as well as impressed. (I hadn't spotted them, or I might have put in a bid of 50p more than yours!)

Yes...that's just the sort of encouragement I need to stop this slide into oblivion!!!! #-o

Jim

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Nearly there, Jimi!

 

[jimi43]

Ha! Yes CC...I'm not showing the jack plane...nope...not showing it...

Let's just say I'm "still working" on it....

Oh dear...I feel like one of those career petty criminals who wishes to have 50 previous cases taken into consideration...

I'd better go out and check in my cupboards...I have a feeling there might be a few further "incidents" in my past I should also declare....mmmm....

Surely...these don't count....do they...

...and I haven't even photographed the wooden router...I think..in fact I probably can't even find it now...



Oh CRUMBS...DM..... #-o

Jim

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Can't find the woodie router?

I'm afraid there's only one possible course of action, Jimi - you'll have to build a proper tool-chest, with a place for everything and everything in it's place. There's a very fine example on which to base your design quite close to you, in Rochester museum; as AndyT has very conveniently highlighted earlier - so there's no excuse!

By the way, I'm rather impressed with that neat little adjusting mallet lying nonchalantly by the toothing plane....might have to pinch that idea....

 

[No skills]

We find the defendant guilty as charged.

And, as above (CC) tool chest build of some sort will be required to avoid hard time

 

[jimi43]

Can't find the woodie router?

I'm afraid there's only one possible course of action, Jimi - you'll have to build a proper tool-chest, with a place for everything and everything in it's place. There's a very fine example on which to base your design quite close to you, in Rochester museum; as AndyT has very conveniently highlighted earlier - so there's no excuse!

By the way, I'm rather impressed with that neat little adjusting mallet lying nonchalantly by the toothing plane....might have to pinch that idea....

Ok ok...I found it...it's a tad bigger than I remember...

And that's as close as I'm getting to a "tool-box" picture this Bank Holiday!!! :mrgreen:

Jim

P.S. Oh....that's what happened to my no.8 woodie plough iron....(ooops...)...it's not mine...I'm only minding it for a bloke in the pub...honest guv....

 

[jimi43]

Well it certainly works ok anyway!

Not the iron that came with it though...but one borrowed from Little Isaac...razor sharp so I would expect it to perform well...even on English oak.

You have to use it rather like a plough plane...start at the far end...otherwise the box bashes into the end!

Now...all I need to work out is how the maker did the locking mechanism...this is still foxing me at the moment...the loose plate idea seems that it would work but there must be a more elegant way of doing it...I'm sure the lightbulb will come on as I study it!

Jim

 

[Tony Spear]

Jim

Amazing!

Malloch of Perth was one of the famous manufacturers of fishing reels!

 

[ac445ab]

The woodie slope steepens........and extends, from UK to Italy. You are not alone, Jim :wink:

This is my chamfer plane

Almost an old new stock
I cannot find any info about the maker, J. Gomm. Someone heard this name before?

Ciao
Giuliano

 

[jimi43]

Actually Tony...that Malloch plane deserves to be tuned up...I got it in the days before woodies fascinated me just simply because of the maker's stamp..I kind of knew that it was something special. Do you know any more about the company and why a maker of reels would make planes...?

Giuliano...that is one beautiful plane! Any chance of some pictures of the mechanism and with it dismantled?

I actually found one exactly the same as mine on P11 of the most excellent book...."Christie's Collectors Guide of Woodworking Tools"....which teasingly shows the same side of the mechanism in this photo....

...but alas...not the inside.

My guess is a brass washer on the outside...you can see the extremes of the movement which isn't really that much...and the inside had a plate with a tube behind it which was tapped to the bolt that went through from the outside. Tightening the bolt pulls the cylinder up against the plate and therefore locks the whole box assembly against the side of the plane at the depth of chamfer required.

I am going to play with this tomorrow and make a few bits to try. After all...according to Christie's...the one they show is a user-made plane and I think that mine is too...there is no maker's mark...so I will just be adding to a user..to make it work.

Jim

 

[AndyT]

A quick check shows that the 'history' section of PD Malloch of Perth, maker of shooting and fishing gear, says that they have been around since the late C19th, but makes no mention of toolmaking or planes.
The planes were made by D Malloch or D Malloch and Son, with dates shown in Goodman as 1850-1912, so it seems entirely likely that old man Malloch had at least two sons of a practical nature, one following on in plane making and the other one branching out into fishing. (My unsubstantiated guess only.)

 

[AndyT]

My guess is a brass washer on the outside...you can see the extremes of the movement which isn't really that much...and the inside had a plate with a tube behind it which was tapped to the bolt that went through from the outside. Tightening the bolt pulls the cylinder up against the plate and therefore locks the whole box assembly against the side of the plane at the depth of chamfer required.

I am going to play with this tomorrow and make a few bits to try. After all...according to Christie's...the one they show is a user-made plane and I think that mine is too...there is no maker's mark...so I will just be adding to a user..to make it work.

Jim

The puzzling thing here is that as far as I can see you must need a slot somewhere to get the adjustment, and yours has only the length of that little keyhole, where the others have an inch or so of movement. Maybe the maker decided that he wanted all his chamfers to be just about the same size, and wanted to keep it simple.
But then he made it complicated by putting in an unnecessary square cut out, which would have to be filled in with something (could just be wood) to stop anything breaking when you tighten up the adjuster!

These do seem to have been commonly user made though. Maybe the online reprint of 'Work' will tell us how to make one!

 

[jimi43]

Thanks for the excellent research as usual Andy...what would we do without our resident librarian! 8)

I thought about the rather bashed "keyhole" which is as bad as the routing of the recess in the box...but if one looks down into the hole in the box and lines that up...the top position is just "no bevel" mode and moving the centre of the box hole down to the extreme of the keyhole gives a bevel which represents the maximum width of the iron.

So...it is min to max and the length of the slot is all that is really needed for the extremes of the tool.

I was a little confused at first as it only seems from the indentation left by the outer washer, the plane was only used at just over minimum bevel. In use however, a normal "attractive" bevel is created in this position so I agree...he probably only left it set like that. The Christie's one is very similar...

(Photo from Woodworking Tools: Christie's Collector's Guide Phaidon.Christie's
First Edition edition (23 Aug 1984) to buy this fantastic book CLICK HEREhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Woodworking-Tools-Christies-Collectors-Guide/dp/0714880051)

I also think that you are therefore correct in your guess that these were made from plans of the time. This maple one is clearly very similar in almost every respect....and for a user-made plane, there can be no coincidence.

An interesting note here is the "washer". It would appear that it could be a contemporary coin. My guess would be a penny from the USA...or maybe Canada?

Your further findings would be very valuable.

Jim

 

[AndyT]

Jim - I agree with you about that book - I bought my copy in Oxfam last summer - I suggest you carry on until you have one of each tool illustrated in it! (Especially chapter 2.)

 

[ac445ab]

Giuliano...that is one beautiful plane! Any chance of some pictures of the mechanism and with it dismantled?

Unfortunately mine has not a mechanism, although I think that's a desirable feature as it's a little bit cumbersome to set iron and sole in the right position.
Moreover, today I noticed that the name J.Gomm is present on the toe as well as on the heel, so may be is an owner name and not the planemaker? On "British Planemakers from 1700", Gomm isn't in the listed names. :roll: