Alf
Established Member
Now you may not have realised this, but I have one or two problems with the design of the rear tote on the Lee Valley Veritas planes. I know, I’ve hidden it well… 
It’s not like both L-V and I haven’t made efforts to come up with a solution, but no dice. So in between gazing at my hand in frustrated contemplation, I got to thinking of ways round the problem. Eventually the light dawned, the penny dropped, unto me was shown a vision and I realised the answer. Now I’m not suggesting this is something everyone should rush out and do, but I thought it might be of interest as most of it is applicable to making a tote for a Stanley, Record or whatever too.
First catch your wood. In this case Bubinga would have been the ideal, but I didn’t have any. But I did have an off-cut of Cherry skulling about, so I used that. The required thickness depends on the tote shape you want to some extent, but in this case I wanted to accommodate the shape of the casting at the base as neatly as possible, so it’s a little thicker than is perhaps usual - 27mm. Keeping it square to start with, I drilled and counterbored for the rearmost of the two bolts. Yes, that’s right; only one of them. :-$ Luckily I had a long bit that went right through, but theoretically you can drill from both sides and they should meet. Yeah, right… :roll:
Then I removed the existing tote, replaced the bolt and eyeballed the angle (danke, Mr Knight )
Seemed to be about 15°, so I cut off the bottom of the blank at 15°. Adjust to fit your own situation.
Voilà, one bolt hole at the required angle. Okay, so the tote shape requires a bit of work yet…
The next step was to relieve the base of the blank to accommodate the plane casting ; complicated by it being designed for a tote without a toe. A Stanley/Record/etc, and even the Veritas planes designed for the MkII tote, should be much easier. In order to make measuring as simple as possible, I took a mould with some Blue-tak. Taking care not to stretch it too much when I removed it…
Then using calipers I transferred the measurements to the base on the blank - more or less. It doesn’t have to be a perfect fit; in fact you need to allow a little space for the movement of the wood. Well that’s my excuse… 8-[
I removed the bulk using the Woodrat, simply ‘cos it was the easiest way. Boring out the bulk, then chisel and gouge would do just as good a job. In order to get the toe area to rest on the unmachined front area of the plane casting I had to do a little additional tweaking. I found rubbing the metal with a soft pencil, installing the blank and twiddling it a bit to transfer the pencil to the blank, effectively demonstrated where I needed to remove more wood with a gouge. Took quite a few twiddles to get it right though.
Next step was to draw a suitable tote shape. Easiest to draw round an existing tote quite honestly, but I’m not going to upset Rob any further than I am already by revealing the source of the donor tote in this case. :-#
That most useful of dodges to “cut” inside curves…
…and a little work with a bandsaw, and it’s starting to look much more tote-like.
I know people have had success using a router and roundover bit to break the back of tote shaping, but I prefer the less accident-prone approach of using rasps. That is to say, I’m less accident-prone that way. The Auriou’s slender shape was a boon on the inside curves.
The basic shape done and lookin pretty good to my traditionalist eye.
A good deal of sanding and shaping later.
Now as a rule I’d consider disembowelment too good for anyone staining Cherry, but I wanted to test this tote on its merits without being made unnecessarily conscious of it being different, so I figured hell and damnation was worth the risk to make it match the front knob a little better. Dark Oak and Mahogany stains, in different proportions, have proved equal to the task of replicating many a tool handle colour in the past, so if it ain’t broke…
Now the observant will have noticed I seem to be asking one single bolt to do the work of two. Not such a good idea on a plane the size and weight of the BUPP, as I think you’ll agree. But wait, what did Stanley et al do for all those years? Yep, a screw through the toe. Taking the opportunity of a pause between staining and polishing the new handle, I again used the ‘Rat to bore a hole for such a screw from underneath, fastened the tote to the plane, and scratched in the location for a corresponding threaded hole. Why from underneath? Simply because you can’t get to the toe from above because of the angle of the bulk of the handle.
So the scariest bit of all; drilling and tapping a hole in an otherwise perfectly good plane. I don’t recommend it for relaxation, but as long as you take care, it’s really not too bad. 8-[ I went for M6 size as being about right.
I started the tap off in the drill press, switched to using a tap wrench, and finally switched taps to a bottom tap in order to thread right to the bottom (more or less) of the blind hole. If you’ve not been exposed to the wonderful world of taps and dies, I recommend it. It’s very a handy thing to be able to do in all sorts of instances. Anyway, the result. C’est magnifique, n’est pa? Okay, so it’s just a hole. But it looked pretty darn fine to me by that stage, I can tell you. :roll:
Splashing out on a suitable brass set screw for the toe seemed justified, even at 72p a piece. :shock: I blame the fact they were packaged up for the Yacht-y market, which always puts the price up… :roll: Naturally it was too long, but a little hacksawing took care of that, utilising the dodge of threading a nut onto it to a point above the cut so the action of removing it cleans up the sawn threads a little.
You might need to relieve the toe a little to get the screw head to sit flush.
…and a few coats of shellac later:
Not too shabby, in my opinion. It’s certainly already proved to be worth doing as far as I’m concerned, although Rob assures me it’s a step backwards, design-wise. He’s probably absolutely right. But then I’ve always had a suspicion I’m a bit of a backwards design too…
Cheers, Alf
It’s not like both L-V and I haven’t made efforts to come up with a solution, but no dice. So in between gazing at my hand in frustrated contemplation, I got to thinking of ways round the problem. Eventually the light dawned, the penny dropped, unto me was shown a vision and I realised the answer. Now I’m not suggesting this is something everyone should rush out and do, but I thought it might be of interest as most of it is applicable to making a tote for a Stanley, Record or whatever too.First catch your wood. In this case Bubinga would have been the ideal, but I didn’t have any. But I did have an off-cut of Cherry skulling about, so I used that. The required thickness depends on the tote shape you want to some extent, but in this case I wanted to accommodate the shape of the casting at the base as neatly as possible, so it’s a little thicker than is perhaps usual - 27mm. Keeping it square to start with, I drilled and counterbored for the rearmost of the two bolts. Yes, that’s right; only one of them. :-$ Luckily I had a long bit that went right through, but theoretically you can drill from both sides and they should meet. Yeah, right… :roll:
Then I removed the existing tote, replaced the bolt and eyeballed the angle (danke, Mr Knight
) 
Seemed to be about 15°, so I cut off the bottom of the blank at 15°. Adjust to fit your own situation.
Voilà, one bolt hole at the required angle. Okay, so the tote shape requires a bit of work yet…
The next step was to relieve the base of the blank to accommodate the plane casting ; complicated by it being designed for a tote without a toe. A Stanley/Record/etc, and even the Veritas planes designed for the MkII tote, should be much easier. In order to make measuring as simple as possible, I took a mould with some Blue-tak. Taking care not to stretch it too much when I removed it…
Then using calipers I transferred the measurements to the base on the blank - more or less. It doesn’t have to be a perfect fit; in fact you need to allow a little space for the movement of the wood. Well that’s my excuse… 8-[
I removed the bulk using the Woodrat, simply ‘cos it was the easiest way. Boring out the bulk, then chisel and gouge would do just as good a job. In order to get the toe area to rest on the unmachined front area of the plane casting I had to do a little additional tweaking. I found rubbing the metal with a soft pencil, installing the blank and twiddling it a bit to transfer the pencil to the blank, effectively demonstrated where I needed to remove more wood with a gouge. Took quite a few twiddles to get it right though.
Next step was to draw a suitable tote shape. Easiest to draw round an existing tote quite honestly, but I’m not going to upset Rob any further than I am already by revealing the source of the donor tote in this case. :-#
That most useful of dodges to “cut” inside curves…
…and a little work with a bandsaw, and it’s starting to look much more tote-like.
I know people have had success using a router and roundover bit to break the back of tote shaping, but I prefer the less accident-prone approach of using rasps. That is to say, I’m less accident-prone that way.
The Auriou’s slender shape was a boon on the inside curves.
The basic shape done and lookin pretty good to my traditionalist eye.
A good deal of sanding and shaping later.
Now as a rule I’d consider disembowelment too good for anyone staining Cherry, but I wanted to test this tote on its merits without being made unnecessarily conscious of it being different, so I figured hell and damnation was worth the risk to make it match the front knob a little better. Dark Oak and Mahogany stains, in different proportions, have proved equal to the task of replicating many a tool handle colour in the past, so if it ain’t broke…
Now the observant will have noticed I seem to be asking one single bolt to do the work of two. Not such a good idea on a plane the size and weight of the BUPP, as I think you’ll agree. But wait, what did Stanley et al do for all those years? Yep, a screw through the toe. Taking the opportunity of a pause between staining and polishing the new handle, I again used the ‘Rat to bore a hole for such a screw from underneath, fastened the tote to the plane, and scratched in the location for a corresponding threaded hole. Why from underneath? Simply because you can’t get to the toe from above because of the angle of the bulk of the handle.
So the scariest bit of all; drilling and tapping a hole in an otherwise perfectly good plane. I don’t recommend it for relaxation, but as long as you take care, it’s really not too bad. 8-[ I went for M6 size as being about right.
I started the tap off in the drill press, switched to using a tap wrench, and finally switched taps to a bottom tap in order to thread right to the bottom (more or less) of the blind hole. If you’ve not been exposed to the wonderful world of taps and dies, I recommend it. It’s very a handy thing to be able to do in all sorts of instances. Anyway, the result. C’est magnifique, n’est pa? Okay, so it’s just a hole. But it looked pretty darn fine to me by that stage, I can tell you. :roll:
Splashing out on a suitable brass set screw for the toe seemed justified, even at 72p a piece. :shock: I blame the fact they were packaged up for the Yacht-y market, which always puts the price up… :roll: Naturally it was too long, but a little hacksawing took care of that, utilising the dodge of threading a nut onto it to a point above the cut so the action of removing it cleans up the sawn threads a little.
You might need to relieve the toe a little to get the screw head to sit flush.
…and a few coats of shellac later:
Not too shabby, in my opinion. It’s certainly already proved to be worth doing as far as I’m concerned, although Rob assures me it’s a step backwards, design-wise. He’s probably absolutely right. But then I’ve always had a suspicion I’m a bit of a backwards design too…
Cheers, Alf
