Revisited, Da Plane, Da Plane!

[TonyinNYC]

Pretty cool. I have thought about making my own brace carving plane, but I am either too lazy, or get too excited about building to stop and make a plane. Besides, the ones I have work fine. However, they are not nearly as cool as yours. It also gives you a use for some of the wood scraps we create when we make guitars. I have a bunch of fret board cut offs that would work for a small plane. Nice wood too like ziricote, ebony, EIR, etc. Although, I am almost out of etc. wood. ;)

[Kevin in California]

here is one set of plans I used in combination with another from a magazine I'll have to scan later.
You can use a seperate piece for the the bottom sole if you want. I didn't do that. Use a chisel for the iron, no chip breaker needed.
Make them any size you want.

Kevin

[Dave Bagwill]

Thanks Kevin!

[TonyinNYC]

One really excellent aspect of a wooden soled plane is that lapping the sole is SOOOOOOOO much easier than lapping a steel soled plane. I bought a used Ace Hardware jointer plane on eBay a couple of years ago and it needed to be lapped badly. I started out lapping with 120 grit, when that took too long, I went to 80 grit. That was still taking too long, so I went to 36 grit. That did the trick. Still took me several hours, working for about 15-20 minutes at a time, to get it almost all the way flat with the 36 grit. I lapped the sole all the way up to 320 grit at which point, it was nice and smooth, but not polished obviously. Now it is my go-to plane for just about every job from joining plates, to thinning brace stock. It was only $9.00 because the threads to screw on the back handle were stripped. I simply epoxied on the handle, and it has held firm for 2 years so far. If it ever lets go, I might make one of these wood planes as a new jointer plane.

[Dave Bagwill]

Good info Tony, we really lap up this kind of stuff..

[Kevin in California]

There is no comparison to the feel of a smoothly sanded, hand rubbed oiled finished wood hand plane, shaped to fit your hand.
I sit in my chair at night and hold it, caress it, smell it (yeah I have it bad). My wife looks over at me funny, but I just keep holding it.
She doesn't understand! I wonder how she's going to react when she opens her Christmas present this year!!!!!!!!!

Kevin

[Dave Bagwill]

Brave brave man!! :-)