Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
A formation of rabbet planes
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>I spent the afternoon working on the box of #289 rabbet planes. The pitiful bodies straggled into their box over the past year. I have added parts over time and now everything is coming together. Everyone has a depth stop and a bottom guide now. Today I made four lever caps and four blades. Next project is to make four pairs of nickers. At least I have the screws. Here are the planes in formation
Lever cap and blade
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>Here is a picture of the lever cap and one of the blades I made. A genuine #289 lever cap is also pictured. The lever caps are cut down #78 lever caps. They work great and look great, revealing their secret only upon close inspection. The original Stanley blades are usually 1/16, but I like to make mine 3/32. The closest thing I found in the steel closet was 5/64 so it worked great. Total talley was four blades and four lever caps. Blades go out to heat treater in a few weeks. I am a whipped pup and have a black goatee from the dust mask. It is the perfect kind of tired.
How about a colony of planes ;-)
Dan Donaldson
>
Re: A formation of rabbet planes
Mick Foley
>Jim -
Those are nice looking planes. What is their eventual fate - are you keeping them as a set, refurbing them for sale, ???
Mick
Re: A formation of rabbet planes
John Horobin
>If only someone would make a copy of the #289!
John
Their fate
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>is to be sold to a happy woodworker. I think the replacement parts enhance the value to a true woodworker but really do not attract collectors. Because these fixed up planes are hybrid items, their sales at auction are spotty. Sometimes they go high and sometimes they go low. I am working on a marketing plan now so that everything will be in place by the time the nickers are done.
Shouldn't that be "a warren of rabbet planes?"
Bill Houghton, retired fun in Sebastopol, CA
>One of the online references I consulted also suggest:
Colony
Bury
Trace
Trip
or, since these are domesticated, herd
Nice tools.
How about making 5 sets of nickers?
Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA
>I could use a new pair for mine...
Let me know what you think Jim.
My day in the shop
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>So I found the last production batch of nickers that I was working on. They were right hand and I needed to make some left hand ones. It took twenty minutes to locate the 3/64 steel stock. Then I went to cut and drill it. When I moved last year, the drill press fell over and broke the cross slide crank. It is very inconvenient to move by hand, so I decreed today the last day. After cutting and chopping a 3/8 mortise in a plywood round, I took to the lathe to turn a walnut knob. Lathe pieces were misplaced and that all took a while. At long last I mounted the crank, finished the nicker drilling, and cut the nickers out. Sooo...all afternoon in the shop yielded ten right hand (found) and ten (newly made) nicker blanks in addition to the repaired cross slide table. A few weekends of finger numbing filing should reduce the tiny niblets of steel to both decorative and useful items.