Shoulder plane selection

Well...

Rob Lee

>Isn't that almost a contradiction in terms??? :)

Cheers -

Rob

Actually I was teasing

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>but fake mother of pearl tote and knob might look really good on my fake-gold-plated No. 62. Right up there with a flame job woodie.

MDF

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>I may have mentioned before: My brother is a commercial cabinetmaker (and boatbuilder). Guys like Steve can pretty much pick and choose where they work. Shops bait him with their fine work, then give him 300 countertops to make out of mdf and formica. After years of breathing that fine mdf dust, he's fed up with it and refuses to work in any shop that uses it. He says he can smell it walking in the door. He's currently building mahogany runabouts by a lake in Wisconsin.

Adam

What about Legos�

Eric Hedberg

>I don't think you're crazy Adam. What about a Veritas piece plane kit, you could put together your own plane out of plastic pieces! It might put that whole angle choice problem to bed, plus you could make it in colors. Given the way that the pieces tend to disappear it would create a great spares market! But seriously, plastic is too unstable (moisture absorbtion and ultraviolet breakdown) for a plane. Now granite, there is a good stable material to make a plane out of. Doesn't rust either. Oh there's the bell time for my meds (caffeine). Eric (Who has come to respect the virtues of MDF)

Re: plastic planes

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>Adam, if it is such a good idea, why not just put the money down and do it? Simple inexpensive molds and materials, a small garage shop with a cnc, and a simple marketing plan.

Re: Adam is Not Mad!

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>This one is Garolite (which somehow managed to become a four letter word on Badger Pond). It is phenolic resin impregnated layered fiberglass cloth.

What's wrong with this picture?

Rob sells stackable, shimmable dado blades for tablesaws, and other companies sell dialable thickness dado blades for the same. With Lee Valley's design and manufacturing skills, they should even be able to figure out how to make us a functional plastic-bodied dialable-width dado plane.

Re: What about the knicker?

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>The nicker is nice for raising panels, but probably not really necessary for tenon cheeks, unless your shoulder kerf isn't deep enough.

BTW, knickers are something totally different, along the same lines as vices being totally different than vises. :^)

Re: Adam is Not Mad!

Ernie Miller *Topeka

>I have one of the planes Steve used that stuff fore soles. I think he made two maybe three. It dosent hold up well. I have used it voe planing champhers and it will wear a gtove in it from the white oak. But bact to Adams idea I think it is practical. I can also see Rob's point but there could be a compramise some where. Sure you might not want to put a LV name on it of even sell it in that store but he does have the ability and expertise to design and bring it to manufacture. Maybe sell them to woodcraft or some one like that. Maybe a new division to keep the LV name in tact.

Is it Nicker or knicker?

HC Sakman

>Now... that is the question!

Sheakspear's bones are rolling over! ;-)

Thanks for filling in Bill.

Chico...

I have all four;-)

Dan Donaldson

>nickers, knickers, vises, vices ;-)

Re: I have all four;-)

Alan Bierbaum

>You do realize that 50% of your post was OT and not suitable for very young children; don't you?

Alan, grinning, ducking and running near Denver

Re: What about the nicker?

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>If you are buying the plane, go with the nicker. You're spending some money anyway, you might as well spend a little bit more and you won't regret it later on. The nicker can be moved out of the way when not in use. You can always make more money tomorrow. So far as the 60-1/2R versus the 140, I would go with the 140. The skewed iron is a much better plane than a straight iron. I'm going to have to buy the 140 this year, so I will have both.

Iron is upside down.

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>

Re: What about the knicker?

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>I have been told that one can get nickers on the Lie-Nielsen 60�R Rabbet Plane, also.

Re: What about the nicker?

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>Don't forget to get both types of 140, and you can return your 60�R to get it nickerized!

Re: plastic planes

Adam Cherubini

>Moses,

I don't know if you're being facetious or not. Have you ever seen LV's shop? Do have any idea of the sort of machinery and craftsmanship is required to make a LV block plane?

This isn't the sort of operation you set up to sell even 1000 planes.

It is a good idea, and I suspect its only a matter of time before some european manufacturer does exactly this. When I lose my day job, if Rob still isn't interested, I may pursue tool making. The right thing to do here is fined machine shops and plastics manufacturers with this sort of expertise. No reason for a woodworker like m eto get involved with bridgeports and the like. I know a very friendly supplier of PAI in Texas that would likely be happy to help.

But Moses, I'm not the best business man. It might be worth doing as you say, setting up a garage business. If you look at wooden planes (of all sorts) you see many many commonalities. These commonalities (difficult to machine throat geometries for example) could easily be built into the injection molds (though I'm no expert). The plastics I mention would be excellent substitutes for wood- perfectly stable, wear resistant, with a nice heft and slipperiness.

If any of you Bill Tindall's out there are interested in following up on this with a little experiment, I'd like to suggest temporarily attaching UMHW to the sole of an old plane. Gluing UHMW is a real problem. May be better to screw it onto a woody. I have woody smoothers with steel or iron soles attached in just this manner.

The only concern I have with the whole idea is how a wedge would work with materials this slippery. That could be solved with mechanical adjusters or surface finishes.

Adam

Re: plastic planes

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>If you get a sufficiently precise fit, wedges aren't needed, as per Japanese planes.

Pam

Re: What about the knicker?

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>It might be a little difficult to use them both at the same time, since their separation is indexed to the width of the plane body, not the width of the blade, which is usually a little wider than the body on these. Of course, you could just go whole hog and get the L-N carriage maker's rabbet plane. Note that the nickers on this one, unlike the #140's, do not have to be completely removed to be extended or retracted. The #10 nickers move up and down in a sliding slot, while the #140 nicker is spur shaped, like the #45. I don't know anything about the design of the rabbet block plane's nickers.

60�R Nickers, and 10� Usage

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>I do not know what the Rabbet Block Plane nickers look like, but I suspect they might be the ones on the 140, don't you think? If someone here has a pic, a posting would be appreciated.

Do you have a 10�, and if you do, what do you find yourself using it for?

Re: 601/2R Nickers, and 101/2 Usage

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I don't have one. It's hard to justify the additional cost, since when L-N introduced it, I already had their #140 and #073 and a 19th Century Stanley #10. I was just suggesting it might be a useful option, depending on the planes one might already own. Mostly, I trim cheeks with my L-N 073, since it is wider than the length of most of my tenons, and since it's already on the bench, for fitting the shoulders.

Slight correction, Don

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA, the rain's here

>What LN sells is billed as a 10-1/4, not a 10-1/2, and rightly so, as it's more closely related to Stanley's 10-1/4 (jack length, tilting handles, nickers) than to the 10-1/2 (No. 4 length, staunchly vertical handles, no nickers).

Right you are!

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>I just went back to the Blood & Gore and the LN sites to get it all straightened out in my head. For now.

Re: 601/2R Nickers, and 101/2 Usage

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>OK, I thought that I recalled that you had one of the #10 series - I guessed wrongly about which one.

Do you get much usage out of the #10? I have heard that they are popular with the timber framing crowd.

Re: On a scale of one to�

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>No, I don't use it a lot, because I prefer to use one of my bevel up planes when possible, because they will usually do two tricks at the same time (cheeks and shoulders). Also, my #10 is a valuable, collectible antique type 7 :^)

The carriagemakers rabbet planes are useful for wooden ship joinery as well as for timberframing barns.

Addressing your discussion with Bill H: Walter notes that the type 1 #10 1/2 was equipped with an adjustable mouth! Also, I once saw a Stanley prototype #164R, but it didn't come with nickers, either. The tilting handle on the #10 1/4 can be quite an advantage when working with very large joints in timbers, but since the planed surfaces of joints are usually short, I see no great advantage of a jack sized plane over a smoother sized plane. If I could wish for the perfect plane, I'd ask for a #164 R with a tilting tote, tilting knob, nickers and a Norris adjuster, in bronze or stainless. However, I don't think even Rob's Skonkworks in Ottawa could manage to engineer a practical tilting throat adjuster or get both the Norris adjuster and the tote tilter crammed under the low angle blade.

Re: plastic planes

Roger Nixon

>I just had to chuckle since this is so far from the Adam we're used to.

I still remember the brutal beating Steve Knight took for making a plane with a garolyte sole.