Buck brothers experiment

Failed experiment

David Weaver

First, the good - the iron is usable (that's about it).

The casting was absolutely perfectly flat down the center to a starrett straight edge (probably well inside of a thousandth - no visible light at all, whereas the subject LN plane that was right at 1.5 thou a few months ago had a lot of visible light....

....however, the whole plane was hollow from left to right several thousandths and the casting was incredibly hard. It's not steel, but just really really hard cast and would've taken a solid hour to lap - so I filed it and the finished lapped it....which turned out to be a mistake due to the following non-starters:

* the adjuster pawl is too short to actually touch the cap iron. This is a really interesting error in manufacturning something. It wasn't machined or just cast, you can tell it was cut off in something as it has a sprue or whatever you'd call the evidence of something being pinched off. Unfortunately, it was pinched off about 1/8th inch too much. The plan cannot operate without an adjuster (if you take the wheel off and lay the pawl flat into the frog, which is possible) because of the lever cap (separate comment, though I don't recall any luck with a bailey type plane ever without the pawl engaging to keep the iron from losing depth)

* The cap iron would have to be set about 1/4" from the edge, and is stamped significantly out of square, anyway (how does that happen....). The out of square part can be worked with, there's plenty of adjustment room. The thing that keeps the cap iron from advancing near the mouth of the plane isn't the adjuster (that's already out of the equation, it's that *the cap iron screw actually runs into the casting where the lever cap screw/post is affixed into the frog!! In order for advancement to the mouth, the cap iron screw would actually have to occupy the same place as the screw in the frog that retains the lever cap. This is quite a *unique* situation!!

* the lever cap itself is aluminum. It's thin and cannot maintain enough tension for an even cut to occur even if everything is held in place tightly. What develops is an intermittent cut (which I faffed through advancing the cap iron - if the cap iron is set back a quarter of an inch, the adjuster pawl can just barely engage it, but adjustment forward and that's lost). dropping a stanley lever cap onto the plane alleviates this entirely. That seems a bad plan since a good clean stanley lever cap is almost the cost of this plane.

As far as I can tell, the whole plane is discontinued. I can't imagine getting a plane like this as a beginner. It's really amazing how bad it is as it would be perfectly usable with some minor corrections and a lever cap that's made of something with some strength.

On the bright side, the iron took about 2 minutes to prepare and had a mild hollow in the back. I'll keep the iron, but wouldn't spend another $23 or whatever it was on one of these!

Re: Failed experiment - re: Buck Bros...

John Aniano in central NJ

David,

Your experiment made for interesting reading!

It is a real shame that the "Buck Bros" brand, or whatever it is called now and who (whatever) owns it, represents such poor quality! When I'm at a flea market or tool swap, finding an older tool, especially carving tools or firmer gouges with the Buck Bros imprint is a firm indicator of quality, as long as they haven't been abused. But no longer! Too bad...

I own a 1" Buck Bros socket firmer chisel that was my maternal grandfather's. He abused the hell out of it. He was a mason, not a woodworker, so you can imagine what tasks this tool was forced to accomplish. The handle was AWOL, the socket was badly mushroomed, etc. I was maybe fifteen when I found it in the basement of my grandmother's house and rescued it. Once rehabilitated and had a nice white oak (a la Derek) handle fitted, the firmer could work as intended.

In this context, Buck Bros was and still is a sign of quality, at least until very recent times. Again, it's a shame...

John

The older buck bros mark...

David Weaver

....one of the few types of chisels made in the states that had really nice proportions long after things like the older witherby chisels had apparently been made by others.

Buck bros (older ones - I'm sure you're aware of this 10 times over) had a slightly softer temper than most other brands, but a very very fine steel quality. I've passed many of them on but kept others for proportions. The buffer makes their slightly softer temper completely indifferent to hardwoods - they're a treat.

I think all of the recent tools are made by great neck or some company under that umbrella. The $2.99 blades were interesting mostly because you can prepare one in about 2 minutes and they're soft but hold an edge fine after the buffer. But a whole plane, not so much.

Mexico Stanley - a Surprise

David Weaver

Works almost as well as any smoother, aside from having a big mouth. Even the plastic handles don't really feel that bad.

I Planed about 150 feet of silica-laden cocobolo on a - to-be-uploaded video showing the prep of this particular plane straight out of the wrapper, using the uni-1 plane sharpening method. No visible lines on the wood. This is my worst piece of wood (I haven't tried planing katalox yet, but I have none of that totally dry, and don't see the silica in it that this cocobolo has).

The only thing that may be a bit of a hill to climb for a beginner will be flattening the sole (it was very hollow - I didn't measure it, but very hollow).

Total prep time from the box to probably a thousandth flatness tolerance and prepared everything is somewhere around half an hour or a little less.

The same piece of wood being planed will destroy any iron sharpened to a crisp apex - everything I have ever put to it. Remove the apex and the cheapest foreign irons handle it with ease. For anyone working with khaya, limba, etc, that's laden with silica, this eliminates edge failure on those, too, so you can plane them to a bright finish even with pieces of silica literally loose in the pores.