Wooden plane making on new Woodworking @ Home DVD
Wendell @ Murphy, TX
>It appears the hand tool revolution is full swing. I received the lastest issue of Woodworking @ Home DVD magazine last week. On the cover is a fellow using a wooden molding plane and the index shows an article on making wooden planes. I pop the DVD into my computer and sure enough they have a video article on making a round plane. The article is broken into two parts. The current issue (#15 I think) covers the making of the plane body. The next issue will cover making the blade.
The host of the video is the fellow that usually does the carving articles, David Reilly. He starts with a brief intro and shows the books he used as references: Perth and Lee, Whelan, and Hack. Then he goes through the steps of laying out and shaping the sole, cutting the throat, and fitting the wedge. Mr. Reilly use a non-traditional approach to making molding planes. He cuts the throat into the plane body then covers the top of the throat with a strip of wood to create the mortice for the wedge. He used a combination of hand tools and power tools to make the plane. Overall, I thought it was a pretty good article. Mr. Reilly certainly made it look easy. I wish he would have explained why he did some things a little more like why he chose a 50 degree bedding angle for the blade. Also, the wedge fitting sequence seemed a bit contrived. He "lucked out" and the wedge basically fit perfectly the first time. I think it would have been better if they purposefully used a wedge that didn't fit so they could demostrate the fitting process more fully. There are also plans for the plane included on the DVD in pdf format.
Wendell