First "roll your own plane" -- LH skew rebate
Dave Mount
>Hi all -- what follows is way-too-long rumination about my first plane project. If you don�t want to suffer through that (and I wouldn�t blame you), the pic�s at the bottom, just skip on down.
For those still reading, I finally took the plunge and made my first planes (the first planes I made that is -- I have quit a stable of others that have followed me home). The goal in this project was to make a left handed skew rebate that could be used for trimming tenon cheeks. I have a couple vintage rebate planes, but they are right handed (I think I'm using the handedness term correctly; the leading edge of the skew is on the right, the escapement on the left) and so am I. I don�t own an iron rabbeting block, bench, or shoulder plane. What I wanted was a rebate with the leading edge of the skew on the left, so I could use it with my right hand with the workpiece held in my left hand against a bench hook, and the skew would pull the plane tight against the tenon shoulder.
My "training" consisted of the viewing the Todd Herhli (sp?) video on making hollows and rounds, and reading Whelan's book on making hand planes. I should also give some credit to looking at Scott Post�s old site, though that seems to have disappeared. Neither cover this exact plane (though Whelan has a right-handed skew dado, which is close), but they give enough of the basics to figure it out. Whelan actually tells you not to start with a skew plane, probably for good reason, but that's what I wanted so that's what I made. My major cheat was to split the blank and cut the wedge mortise as an open mortise � the alignment dowels give that sin against tradition away. I don�t have planemaker�s floats, much less and skewed floats, and didn�t want to commit the time initially to making some (though I did buy the O1 to do so). In retrospect, I think that was the right choice; I was facing enough challenges as it was.
I made two planes figuring I'd screw up at least one, but I didn't screw up either. . .well, maybe what I should say is that neither is any more screwed up than the other! They are made of birch, just because that's the only close grained hardwood that I had in at least semi QS thick stock of sufficient width. The grain is not perfectly QS nor is it perfectly straight, but that�s what I had. The wedges are cherry. They are standard molding plane dimensions, 9 x 3.5 inches and slightly less than 1.375" wide. The width was largely determined by the width of the iron stock I had (1.5"), which makes for a slightly narrower plane because of the skew. I thought I wanted it wide to get the most registration on the workpiece and to maximize the length of tenon I could shave in one pass. I�m now thinking that may not have been a wise decision (see below).
According to Whelan, the volute, or whatever the escapement shape should be called, was traditionally cut with a special reamer, which I don�t have (I have a LV reamer, but the taper isn�t nearly as sharp as you find in these planes). My solution was to cut a series of holes of increasing depths with Forstner bits, using the same tangent point on the bed angle instead of the same center. I cleaned up the residual �steps� with a gouge. That gives you a �skewed cone�.
The irons were made from 1/8" by 1.5" O1 I bought off the net. After shaping, I oil hardened using two propane torches and tempered in the kitchen oven. According to all my reading I should have gotten a light straw color at between 325 and 350F, but I had to go for about an hour at a maximum of 375 F to get a light straw (started lower and raised the temp after a half hour). Both the oven dial and a separate oven thermometer agreed that the temp was at 375, but maybe both were equally off. The irons might be the most successful part of the process, they take and seem to hold a pretty good edge. Fitting a skewed iron is a bit of a pain, particularly because I made the tang a pretty close fit to the wedge mortise, so there isn�t a lot of lateral adjustment.
I made the planes originally with a fairly tight mouth. However, cutting across the grain as you are on a tenon cheek, I found the narrow throat choked almost immediately � this operation doesn�t make nice curlies the way a long-grain cut does. I had to recut the breast line to address this, but it did seem to fix it. I seem to remember a while back someone posting something about mouth size not mattering much for skewed planes (Derek Cohen, was that you?), I hope that�s true.
Having tested the planes a little, I�d give myself an A for the irons, a B for appearance, and a C for function. Although the irons are very solidly bedded, fully supported and well aligned with the wedge mortise, the iron tends to chatter if I take anything but a super, super light cut. My guess is that this is because of the combo of a relatively wide iron (about 1.44") and a relatively narrow tang � about 5/16. I think the lateral pressure created by having a skewed iron causes a small lateral deflection of the iron, which then springs back creating chatter. The narrow tang likely exacerbates this problem. The narrow tang (the vintage examples I have have a tang about 1/3 of the flag width) was the result of wheedling two irons out of a 9" piece of stock. In retrospect, I think this may have been penny wise and pound foolish. I�m tempted to take one of the two planes and try cutting it down to less than an inch wide and see if the performance improves. I�d be interested to hear anyone�s suggestions on fine tuning the plane�s performance re: chatter. I shouldn�t make too much of this � if the planes are very finely set, they do pretty well, and most tenon fitting would be done with a fine set.
The other disappointment was that the plane�s geometry/ergonomics don�t lend it to the one-handed use I had planned on. If you place your hand on the heel, it is too far back and it�s very hard to register the toe of the plane in the same plane as the tenon cheek and maintain that orientation through the stroke. If you clamp the workpiece and use it two handed it is easy to maintain registration � but one of the things I was hoping for was the quick test-trim-retest cycle that just using a bench hook would give. One rather non-traditional approach I�m thinking about is to drill a hole through the body behind the wedge mortise that I�d put my middle finger through, like the LV shoulder plane. I think this more secure grip would give me much better control over the plane. I need to take a couple chunks of 2x4 and experiment with this idea. Anyone else done this?
How long did it take? A couple full days counting all the steps, including all the metalwork, and a bunch of testing and fine tuning. I�m sure it would go a fair amount faster once you started to get a feel for what the fussy parts are and where you can just cruise worry free. Also, making a skew plane increases the mental gymnastics substantially. But just the same, I�d say that if you buy a wooden plane from Steve Knight, Clark and Williams, or whoever, they�re probably not getting rich off you.
Bottom line, it was fun building them and I expect I�ll be building more in the future. If you�ve been thinking about it, hope this gives you a shove.
Best,
Dave
