When I started on Vers2 of my LV kit plane, one of my aims was to see how a handle would fit on a short (slightly less than 200mm) sole. It seems to have gone well, time will tell.
But I've come to really like the little rear-bun smoother I made a while ago:
& now the adjuster from the original kit was spare, so the idea of doing a Vers3, with a rear bun instrad of a handle, took hold.
Ideally, I would have liked to use a 1 1/2 inch blade, but the Veritas blade is 1 5/8", so I went with that & drew up templates for sides & sole. However, fate had other ideas. I was working on my new plane in fits & starts between doing other jobs, so perhaps it was inevitable that sooner or later there'd be a blunder:
You'd think after 50 years of cutting dovetails I could avoid such a fundamental mistake! At first I thought there was no option but to start over, but with so much work already put into that sole, that was a rather bleak prospect. I decided it was fate taking a hand - a quick check of my dimensions indicated I could cut off all of the 'pins' on that side of the sole & still have enough room for a 1 1/2" blade, which is what I'd wanted in the first place. The blade I'm intending to use is O1, so I reckoned it would be a good deal less work to shave a bit off each side & bring it to the required width, than making a whole new sole.
So I pressed on, and the only other drama was the first attempt at fitting a front bun went very pear-shaped (which doesn't match the toe end of a coffin-shaped plane at all! :roll: ).
Eventually, the stuffing was in & riveted in place:
My initial concept for the woodwork included a small 'camel-hump' at the top of the blade bed, similar to the profile of Pete's plane above:
But during the clean-up stage, I decided it didn't look right. I also discovered it interfered with full travel of the adjuster screw. So it was unceremoniously sawn off.
Cutting a bit off the blade turned out to be the easy bit. I clamped it between two bits of 3/16 steel bar, whacked off the slivers with a 1mm cutoff wheel in my angle-grinder. The blade itself didn't even get warm. A gentle touch on the side of my CBN wheel smoothed the cuts and it looked like a bought one - the whole operation took less than 10 minutes. I was very happy I'd made the decision to go that way.
With the sole partly lapped, I couldn't resist popping the blade in and making a few shavings:
Two thou shavings right off - very promising! Another hour of sanding & polishing & it was ready for its portrait to b taken:
So there you go - who would've thought a single kit could spin into 3 separate planes??
But that's definitely it - my curiosity has been thoroughly satisfied, & all the kit parts are now gainfully employed, apart from the original thumb screw.
Hmmmm :wink:
Ian
