Show and Tell *PICS*
WoodburnBob
>Instead of watching the RNC in NYC on NBC with this Norris in my lap, I went down with it to the basement again. This is how I got it from Inchmartine for about $230 a year or two ago. It has a new, unsigned, thick parallel iron. I'd guess the metal has been worked on and the sole is extremely flat (suggesting a surface grinder). But the plane does NOT work at all well. Maddeningly worthless, it digs and chatters and stalls.
The diving and chattering usually mean the iron isn't bedded solid. This is confirmed on this plane by passing paper up from the mouth between the iron and bed on the right side (looking down the throat from above and behind). A familiar problem.
Peering down the throat from above and below I spotted a burr of metal on the right side where the sole plate and rosewood meet. I filed it down. No improvement.
Other clues to imperfect bedding were present: 1) the iron rocks on the bed before tightening down the screw, 2) on tightening the lever screw down the iron seems to flex and too much of a sponging turn is needed to finally seat things firm, 3) you can look closely at the abuttment of iron and bed along the side of the plane and see movement while tightening down the screw. The bed and iron are a bad fit. Which is it bed or iron?
Oh, by the way, here's the level cap. No, that's not my work. You might think someone thought to decorate the brass with post-modern art work. I think some person took a small round face hammer to the lever cap thinking this was the way to fix the problems I'm describing in this post. Presumably this is the reason for the price of this otherwise fine looking plane. I have my doubts about whether it's ever been actually used successfully.
So here is where I deviate a little from an earlier post on the bed-iron fix. I'm not going to yank the cap! Instead, I sqeezed out 1/4" of Titatium White Oil Paint (from the art store) and added 2 drops of 3 in 1 oil. I rolled it out (woodcut roller from art store) on the surface plane and pressed down the bed side of the iron. I was in Woodcraft last week and saw that they have surface plates from China for $28 touting 0.0001" flatness. That's about what shipping would be. No excuses now.
For my purposes here, this photo, I hope, shows you that unlike many, many irons, this one is flat...Actually flat enough to use as a reference flat down in that inaccessible plane throat.
So I've now scrapped and filed crud and gunk off the bed, cleaned the debris out and carefully inserted my iron/reference (seating it first at the sole/sole plate and then gently letting in drop to the bed. Trying not to rock the inked iron, I jiggle it just a little to deposit the white ink/paint. You can see why I used white instead of the usual bluing. The yellow arrow points at the problem underlying this poor crippple's malady.
The nice thing about using this process is that you can read the mirror image of the problem on the white surface of the iron/reference when you take it out. The only problem...or delicate part...is avoiding a rock of the iron on entry or exit of the mouth. It would be very easy to lay down false marks if either the iron or bed have convexity.
So now the only question is how to set things right without screwing it up worse. And that's always the hard part for me. Between the last photo and the next I spent a couple hours filing and spotting in endless iterations. I didn't really get anywhere until I used a #49 rasp. It's ticklish avoiding the steel bed plate.
This next photo is where I stopped filing and spotting.
I then inserted the blade, repeated the earlier checks (paper, feel of screw, inspect iron/bed margin) and put it to wood. All these indicated that I hadn't fixed much!
Highly frustrated, I ripped off a piece of adhesive sand paper and attached in to the bed surface of the iron. I used this as if it were a file or lap using light pressure and being careful not to "dub" the mouth or high shoulder of the infill. I did this 5 or 10 minutes and then reset the plane.
Here then is the nearly miraculous result. Note that I've left the sand paper on the blade. My thinking is that as it goes in and out it will continue to level (the truth is laziness). The problem is solved. I don't want to take the paper off and learn that it is unsolved yet.
I'm working on a big piece of rough cut walnut and now have a fire hazard on on the floor.
Another proud shot.
Putting the sandpaper in tightened the mouth, which I didn't really need.
I was hoping to show the figure in the wood after putting a little oil on it, but no luck here.
Hope you either learned something to avoid or enjoyed the show and tell
Bob
