Tool Chest Construction

Chamfer

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>Stopped chamfer is best done with Stanley #65 chamfer plane.

A 65?

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA

>That's what a 72 is all about.

I know Jim, your working on a box full of them right now...;^)

Perferbably with the bullnose attachment Eh!

Re: Tool Chest Construction

Ed Mulligan, Cape Cod

>Mark -

I've done short ( < 12" ) chamfers with a bench chisel working to lines. If the chamfer is wide enough you can first kerf the waste every half-inch or so and pop off most of it. Once it's roughed out you might be able to get a small block plane in there to clean up the middle, working on the skew. A bullnose will get you closer to the ends. If the grain cooperates go to a chisel plane for the ends or a scraper if it doesn't.

Ed

Re: Tool Chest Construction

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>I have a # 72 chamfer plane and I am starting to wonder if I will ever actually use it. Jim is right, the #65 or any block plane for that matter will make a nice chamfer, and then you just use a chisel to end the chamfer. On a few picture frames I have made I have used a spokeshave to make a stopped chamfer, and actually put more of a curved chamfer on it, where it is chamfered a lot more in the center than towards the ends. It is very obviously not done with a router.

Re: Tool Chest Construction

David Miller from Iowa

>The 72 works great, except on short stopped chamfers. I'd suggest a draw knife with some depth stops on it - practice a bit, watch the grain, and you can make the cut in 3 seconds - pull down from the "upgrain" side, make the chamfer then back out, then reverse and just make the other stop.

Chamfer shaves and planes, and *bleep*

Dave Thompson

>funny... I thought the same. After four years of owning a #72, I designed a full 1" chamfer element into 4 sides of a top piece I was making. This would take forever with just a plane, so I did a first pass on the table saw... that took about 45 seconds. I was hoping I might do some chamfer corner tune up still. Unfortunately, the table saw did so well, I didn't need to do any clean up with the #72. I still haven't used the plane for anything but playing around.

fwiw, the #72 has an optional bull nose attachment supposedly for doing a stop chamfer. Though because of the length of the plane, and grain direction planing limitations, I don't think it's well suited for this operation. Because of the priciness of a #72, a LV block with chamfer attachment may be a better value non-collectable user chamfer plane.

Generally, I think a Stanley #65 chamfer shave or slightly nicer Preston 1392 would be more useful than a chamfer plane. Though, frankly speaking, if the destination is more important than the ride, a chamfer bit in a router table would be best for a stopped chamfer, IMHO.

enjoy,

Dave

Actually

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>I do have a box of them (if you consider six or eight a box full). Most of them need the sliding wedges and adjuster screws. I need to figure out a way to make those pieces and get them all back into action.

But where's the fun in that?

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>Seems to me that this project *requires* a new tool or else a reason to *make* a custom tool. Shouldn't be too hard to make a chamfer bottom for an existing plane just to get this one done. The TS or router just takes all of the fun and romance out of the project.

making do....

Dave Thompson

>For a chamfer plane, I think one could just use a small c-clamp to hold a beveled block to the bottom of, say a #3 or #4, and use that as a guide. This would be fine for a full (non-stop) chamfer. It wouldn't work for a stop chamfer, because the toe would be blocked by the non-chamfer part of stock. Better might be a #130 bullnose and/or #97. Though a plane would still have a problem at the starting end as the heel would be lifted by the starting non-chamfered part of stock.

I think a chamfer shave is the way to go for do-it-by-hand stop chamfer.

Dave

Really making do....WARNING: rant content

Bill Houghton, retired fun in Sebastopol, CA

>This is a tool chest, right? Being made by hand? Seems like the ideal opportunity to practice getting a detail like that correct, done by hand. That is, gauge or even guess the edges of the chamfer and make it with basic tools - chisel, any kind of bench plane, drawknife, and/or spokeshave.

We had dinner with friends last night, and I was going to take the last remaining scrap of my hand-planed molding for my recent window project to show off, and then decided against it (great evening, by the way). But before I put it back in the shop, I was looking at it and noticed that the work's not perfect - the round isn't really round, some of the reveals aren't dead flat, etc. But put in place on the window, it looks just fine. In fact, I used a piece to replace a long-missing return on another window, and my hand-planed molding is a just-fine fit with the machine-made molding already there.

Adam Cherubini's article in Popular Woodworking some months back about using chisels for applications for which I would normally think of a plane reminded me of how much my grandfather could do (and fairly quickly - he made his living with his hands after he left his job in Mexico as superintendent of a silver mine) with how few tools. THAT's a lesson I can spend the rest of my life learning.

Bill, who suffers from the "let's buy another tool" syndrome too

Re: Really making do....WARNING: rant content

Dave Thompson

>Hi Bill, There are a couple of threads going on here. I'm not clear on which one the feelings are for.

If one wants to make a chamfer plane as Jim suggested, rather than building from scratch, one can make do with what one has by just clamping a 45 degree triangular block guide to the bottom of their bench plane. Though I do think this is moot to Mark's question, as a chamfer *plane* is a poor choice for a stopped chamfer.

I was concurring with Moses, regarding owning a chamfer plane for a while and still looking for a real project to do with it. In hind site, there would be a few other planes higher on my to-build list.

While not intended when I wrote it, another guess was that you might have been keying off of making do as applied to doing this by hand versus a powertool. The qualifier I put on that in the original sentence was, "if the desitination is more important than the ride", i.e. if having a stopped chamfer is more important than doing it by hand....

enjoy,

Dave

I was a little concerned that I'd come off

Bill Houghton, retired fun in Sebastopol, CA

>as criticizing you, Dave - and I guess I did. Not at all my intention. As I read back through your earlier post, I over-reacted, and I apologize.

I think my reaction was to your last sentence, in a post titled "making do." I don't own a chamfer shave and have done lots of chamfers, including some stopped ones. But as I read your post in whole, I realize your intention was the same as mine - to highlight that lots can be done with few tools, if the tool living between the ears is used first. Sorry that I didn't use my copy of that tool a little better before posting my rant.

You make a more useful point Bill

Dave Thompson

>FWIW, I don't own a chamfer shave either. I think you make a more useful point, i.e. making stopped chamfers without a chamfer shave or plane.

The only advantage I see that a dedicated chamfer plane or chamfer shave brings is that it gets you a right on, 45 degree chamfer, at an exact set depth without having to think about it much, or pay too much attention.

I think it's not too hard to wing it with a regular bench plane or regular shave and get 45 +/-5 degrees. When it is important to be right on 45 degree at the right depth, one can mark a stop depth with a pencil on either side of the stock and plane/shave the chamfer to the mark. I've often done this before, but didn't remember until now. ... perfect chamfer and no special hand tools.

Dave