Plane making success!... Longish.
Steve Kubien
>Over the course of this weekend, I managed to squirrel away a couple of hours of shop time. I used my time wisely and made my first wooden plane! I chose to make a scrub because of the lack of precision needed and because many have said a scrub makes a good first plane (and until now now I didn't own one).
I went with a laminated body (ala Krenov). It is all cherry (including the sole) with a dogwood wedge. It doesn't have the beauty of a Knight or Clark & Williams but is very functional. I just got finished reducing a 2ft long piece of pine from 3/4" to 1/2" thick in about 5 minutes, including smoothing with my Knight coffin smoother. I am really pleased. People will say that cherry isn't durable enough for a sole but I figure, hey, it's a scrub! If the sole gets too beat up, I'll either add a sole or make a whole new plane. It took about 2-1/2 hours so it's no big investment of time. The cherry came from a pallet at work and the iron is a ECE from Lee Valley.
Two things I realized while I was clearing shavings...#1, I should have made the front of the opening larger to make it easier to get shavings out. I'll fix that eventually. #2, the iron sticks out the sole much further than my smoother or jointer. How do I know this? Well, it's a scrub so it should be obvious. I have never been intimidated by the obvious, ignored it, and sliced my finger on the protruding blade. That makes the first time I've spilled blood on a finished project! I really feel like part of the group now. Sniff. Sniff. I need a hug.
I'll try to post a picture or two later when I get my hands on a digital camera.
I hope everybody else had a good weekend. More importantly, I hope we have found/heard from everybody with the misfortune to be in Charley's path.
Thanks for letting me share,
Steve Kubien
Ajax, Ontario