Tools from Japan blog.

Your hypothetical panel that is.

The final finish you choose for any woodworking should not be a decision taken lightly, and a few truths might help (or hinder) that decision making process. Some basic, unavoidable facts might also change your perspective on what maketh a good finish for your work and how you finish what you need to do and what you can let slide.

Firstly, the contenders. Not a complete list, and in no particular order.

The oils. This is reserved strictly for true oils, not modified or altered oils. Also included here are waxes.

Varnishes and oil/varnish blends.

Lacquer and shellac, the evaporative finishes.

Other finishes, few (if any) of which are doable outside the professional workshop.

The true oils include boiled linseed oil (aka:BLO), tung oil and other oils that polymerise upon contact with oxygen. They are very simple to use because you simply apply it, and remove any excess. They also help to make any interesting wood look better by making the grain ‘pop’ which simply means it highlights the figure present in the grain of the wood. They also give a very natural ‘in the wood’ appearance. The downsides are that they take a long time to dry, the time varies depending on which oil you choose and this time is measured in days, not hours. They offer minimal mechanical protection against abrasion and bumps and they do not resist moisture or solvents.

Having said all that, they are very popular and so have the runs on the board historically.

I use BLO for things that are not too important like my own tools and things I wish to keep protected from grime from my hands and dust. When it is a little more important, I use Perilla oil. This is a very fast drying oil derived from a flower and it is one of the most durable oils available. It is also very uncommon outside of Asia and is more expensive than BLO or tung oil. I like it because it dries within 24 hours no matter the weather, it does not excessively darken the wood and it smells much nicer than the strong odour of BLO.

Waxes include beeswax and carnauba wax. They are very similar to the oils in application, offer even less protection against mechanical injury but can resist moisture more than the oils do. As a finish they are popular enough, but they need more maintenance than any other finish. I only use wax on tools and jigs that need something on them to allow my workpieces to slide easily. I don’t use wax as a finish alone, I usually use it as something over a finish to make the final product look and feel a little bit better.

Varnishes are basically oils that have been altered so that they polymerise faster and the molecules form longer chains than occur in true oils. In simpler terms, they dry much faster and are much tougher than true oils.Varnishes are available with an oil or water base, but the final end finish is mostly the same protection wise but the water based varnishes are typically clear and the oil based with a yellow/orange hue to them.

Because they are made from oil, you can mix the oil based varnishes with oil and get a finish that lies somewhere in between the toughness of varnish but with the easy application and natural appearance of true oils. Finishes like Danish oil and ‘Tung oil finish’ are typically oil/varnish blends. The ratio of oil to varnish alters it’s working properties and protective qualities toward the higher percentage constituent.

Varnishes can offer protection against moisture, heat and solvents once they have cured. Polyurethanes are some of the more common varnishes in use today and with good reason. They are extremely durable once they are fully cured (at week or two at least), resist mechanical, heat and solvent damage to a high degree and are fairly easy to use.

The downsides are few, but significant. Because they are closely related to oils, their drying time is still quite long. Touch dry is typically within a few hours, but full cure takes quite a long time just as it does with the true oils. Because of the slower drying time, the finishing area needs to be free of dust and the work needs to be thoroughy cleaned of dust and contaminants. Because varnishes tend to be quick viscous (thick, like cream rather than milk) they can be difficult to get a good, smooth finish from a brush or other hand applications and to compound this, the long curing time means that smoothing out the lumps and bumps is usually done on a semi cured and quite soft finish which makes sandpaper clog quite quickly.

I do like varnish, even with it’s troubles. There are some tricks to using varnish successfully, and I will explain mine later.

The current panel is getting and oil based varnish finish, chosen more for it’s durability than any other reason.

The evaporative finishes are lacquer and shellac. These are resin based rather than oil based, and are dissolved in solvent to make them liquid. Once the solvent evaporates, you are left with the resin as your finish. Shellac uses alcohol as it’s solvent, and lacquer uses a petrochemical solvent, most commonly tagged as ‘lacquer thinner’. How original…

Because the solvents used evaporate quickly, these finishes dry very, very fast. The drying time is measured in minutes, not hours or days. Once dry, they are done. They is no further action in the finish unlike the curing of oils or varnishes. For these reasons, both shellac and varnish are very popular but from two very different angles.

Shellac is, quite possibly ‘the perfect finish’. It can be applied by brushing, wiping, spraying or dipping. The solvent is environmentally and person friendly (being alcohol, hiccup). It is safe to eat (often found on medicines to seal them) and can be obtained in shades from water clear to a deep amber. It is easy to repair and can take an extremely high polish.

Wonderful stuff, but as usual there are caveats…

Because it is simply resin in solvent, it can and will always be damaged by that solvent, in this case, alcohol. Something quite low in alcohol can harm it, like beer (although American beers might be ok). It has little resistance to heat and moisture. A cup of coffee set upon it is almost guaranteed to harm a shellacked surface.

Perfect, it aint. Not by a long way.

Lacquer is very similar to shellac. Again it can be applied by brushing, wiping, dipping or spraying. It has high clarity and does not obscure the grain of the wood. It is easily repaired and can also be polished to a very high level with ease. It also dries exceptionally fast, even faster than shellac. This can cause problems when brushing or wiping, which makes lacquer more likely to be sprayed.

The solvent, lacquer thinner, is far less friendly but also less likely to be encountered by furniture. It has greater resistance to moisture and heat, although excessive heat can still damage a lacquer finish. As a result, lacquer is much more durable than shellac, but is less easy to work with and not as safe to use.

Japanese and Chinese lacquer is not the same as the ‘usual’ lacquer used in woodworking. It comes from a tree, and fits in somewhere between normal lacquer and varnish. It is one of the more difficult finishes to use, but is highly resistant to damage and extremely beautiful. It is also hideously expensive and best left to sado-masochistic types and experts in it’s use.

Finally, the specialist coatings. Usually these are two part finishes and require special equipment to use them. If they are available to you, then there is little point in my explaining them, and if you can’t use them then don’t look here for answers because I don’t have any.

If I need to use these, I will send my stuff out to be finished. Fewer headaches that way, figuratively and literally…

So, that’s what we got to choose from when it comes to finishing our panel. It is time for me to get out of here, so I let that simmer for a little while before we get back.

I am using oil based urethane varnish on the big panel, and I will be explaining how I went about it and some trick I have found along the way.

Thanks for reading,

Stu.

Well I would, but other things demand my attention at the present moment in time, and I suspect you folks are a little more understanding than a bunch of kids aged 6-12.

I have to prepare lessons at the moment, and the kids won’t take it too well if I tell them I didn’t prepare them something to learn/do/play because I was busy writing up something for some folks I have never met.

Yes, you all get the rough end of the pineapple.

I just get the rough, dust infected panel. That’s what happens when someone sees a bunch of sawdust while you are applying a coat of varnish, and asks about it. Then he comes back with a guy who has a cow and wants to take it all away, right now.

It was great to get rid of it, and have someone take it who can genuinely use it, but it was really bad timing.

The story of my life more often than not…

Back at it soon enough though.

Stu.

Still on the subject of smoothing out wood with a hand plane.

In my email inbox, I got the ‘daily’ (maybe not, but it seems like it!) Popular Woodworking email, and the third article down is “Taming hand plane tearout“.

The thing that made me go ‘hmm…’ was that the most recent post I stuck up here ‘Some thoughts about smoothing wood’ has some interesting similarities.

I wish I had read Mr. Schwarz’s article first, mine might have been more eloquent.

Read them both (if anyone is actually reading this any more, besides the spammers), tell me I am not just seeing things.

Stu.

P.S. Next instalment, finishing your panel should be at least started tomorrow, if not up for reading. The final coats go on my big one tomorrow, so at least we can see what things should look like.

I am not sure why I am posting this now, as I should be in bed asleep.

Anyway.

When it comes to using a smoothing plane, there are a few things that I do.

1. Take the plane you have, and tune it for the very best performance it can deliver, without modification. What this means is that if you have a common Bailey #4, then just make sure it is working as well as it can before you start adding things to it or making irreversible modifications. Every iron plane I own has the original blade in it, and they work just fine. Only my Record #4 has wood handles to replace the plastic ones it came with. All of them work well.
2. If at all possible, have a few options for smoothing planes. A single #3 or #4 is fine, but an extra plane of some kind in a different configuration is useful to have.
3. If you decide to make changes, do them one at a time. Adjust the frog, check it. Adjust the chip breaker, check it.Put a back bevel on the blade, check it. Etc, etc. No point making a bunch of changes to end up back where you started.
4. You don’t need the most expensive equipment available to do good work. Sure, a nice infill would be a blessing, but a modern Bailey isn’t necessarily a curse.
5. Know when to give up. Some woods cannot be planed. Your skill level depicts how many can’t be planed. I find I can smooth nearly every bit of wood I have come across, but there a few that just won’t co-operate.
6. Know how to sharpen a scraper. See #5.
7. Have a good power sander. Sometimes scraping doesn’t even work.

I know a lot of folks will replace the blade on their planes as soon as they get them, or they will build a plane with a massive chunk of steel for a blade. I honestly cannot see the point myself, unless it’s a game of one-upmanship.

The thickest plane blade I have is only 1/8″ thick (Japanese planes excluded), and the OEM Stanley blades are much thinner than that. None of my planes, not a one, chatters even the slightest bit unless I do something silly and try to take too much off at once. Some of them won’t chatter, like my scrub jointer. That thing can hog off toothpick sized shavings, and it still just gets on with the job, no chatter (that I can detect). The shavings are nothing of the sort, but the surface left is quite clean with the grain, amazingly torn out against it.

I wish I had a #3 or something so I could go through the steps on tuning a common plane, but I don’t and I won’t fiddle with my planes because “if it aint broke, don’t fix it”.

I am in the process of hacking out a coffin smoother from a chunk of off cut beech, no lamination. I’ll take pics along the way.

Options in planes are essential. It’s why I went from my # 4 1/2 to the Japanese smoother this time. The Stanley just wasn’t playing nicely, and I needed to try another option. Most opinion is to go with a steeper bed angle on difficult grain, but I went with a lower angle and it worked out great.

If you don’t have the option of another plane, then do make changes to the one you have. I find that above all else, a sharp blade and very fine cut work better than anything, and that a fine mouth isn’t a magic cure all. Chip breakers I can live without, but they do sometimes work. I prefer lighter planes, but occasionally a little weight is useful. More than anything it’s practise, and familiarity with what you got.

On the subject of practise, more is always better, but occasionally you need to step over to the shelf and grab a sander. It is not giving in, but it is knowing your own limitations. Finally getting that lovely board super smooth off the plane is a great reward for the effort, but it’s a wasted effort if you end up with beautifully smoothed veneer.

As much as I prefer planes for finishing wood, I do own and use a random orbital sander. It’s a Ryobi, but not the Ryobi you guys are used to. Over here, they have the cheapo line, a slightly better line and their upper range gear that competes with Makita and Hitachi. I rate most of it slightly below Makita, slightly above Hitachi. My sander has been thoroughly used over the years I have had it, and will be used again and again for as long as it lasts. When smooth is more important than looks, it is faster and less trouble and has no learning curve to speak of.

Sanding. It’s a thing that hand tool junkies despise, and power tool nuts think nothing of. For me, it’s just another weapon in the arsenal, and as such I have learned a few things.

Garnet paper should be banned. It just doesn’t do squat, especially on the harder woods. It’s cheap and nasty, and best avoided.

Aluminium oxide is a far better alternative, and buy quality. All of my paper is made in Japan, and it’s worth the asking price.

A hand sanding pad with velcro on it and sized to match your ROS is worth hunting down.I have one, and hope to get more.

The 3M foam pads are very, very nice. Look after them and they last a really long time.

Scotchbrite pads? Take them or leave them. I have them and use them, but they are not the first thing I try on anything.

Cloth backed paper is good stuff, and usually lasts long enough to justify it’s higher price.

Sandpaper wears out. Powered sanders need sharp paper to work best, but the stuff often has some life left for hand sanding. When it refuses to bite, bin it.

Know how to deal with defects too. A defect is not a blemish to be avoided, but a detail to be enhanced. I don’t use any filler, but I will drip epoxy into knots. Cracks are to be avoided, they really are defects. If you can’t avoid them, make sure they are structurally sound.

Shellac resin sticks are your friend. Learn how to make them, use them and love them. Nothing faster, not much prettier for correcting ‘details’.

Lastly, learn all the ‘dirty tricks’ available. Things like wetting down the wood to let it be planed. Steaming hollows to bring them up. All manner of things they don’t teach you in school. None of them are really tricks, but mere tools to be exploited when required. I don’t know them all, and rarely use any of them. But when the time comes, they all come out to play. You might cringe, you might get called foul, but in the end the wood doesn’t care so long as you get to where you need to be.

And that’s about it really. If you take a piece of wood, make it smooth and pretty, that’s all you can really ask for. It doesn’t really matter how you get there, just as long as you do. Sure, the journey might be the whole reason for you cutting wood, but adventure is full of twists, turns and tricks.

I prefer adventures to simple journeys, but a simple drive is better than an exciting ride in a jet plane.

Stu.

Well, I could state the obvious here, but based on first hand knowledge (and having an 8 month old daughter) a truly smooth wood surface feels different to the proverbial baby’s butt.

A truly smooth surface can be either reflective, semi-reflective or flat depending on how you got there.

Reflective is the result of a planed surface, and unless you can do it (or have seen it) then it’s nearly impossible to describe.

Semi-reflective is the result of a scraped surface. It will be very clean, very smooth but typically will not reflect light as well as a planed surface can. It was scraped, not cut!

Flat is what you get from sanding. No two ways about it, if you sand for smoothness, then the surface won’t be as clean and clear as planing or scraping.

It has been said that a well sanded surface is indistinguishable from a planed surface, and I will tell you right now the comment is bull excrement and, dare I say it, the comment of someone who has not seen the two side by side.

I have put on them, and there is no way in the world that ANY sanded surface compares to a planed surface. A sanded piece can look just fine, and will get solicitous comments forever. Well, until someone sticks a hand planed surface next to it at least. Even someone who prefers plastic wood can tell the difference instantly.

That is not to say that sanding doesn’t have it’s place. It is de rigueur when staining or using plywood, and in those cases where the crisp planed surface isn’t necessary and might even cause problems.

I have found that sanding is of benefit where the initial finish is oil based and will penetrate somewhat. Oil based finishes alter the colour of the wood, and a planed surface will, as is obvious, have cleanly cut wood fibres. Those fibres will, depending on how they meet the surface, be cut in different ways. Some will be sliced long ways, others at an angle and some might even be cut off square. As such, they will all absorb oil at different rates and can make for a slightly splotchy finish. In these cases, sanding tends to plug up all open pores with dust, resulting in a much more uniform result.

Of course, with figured wood, the whole idea of paying the extra and dealing with the troubles of the stuff is to get the different colours and reflections from those fibres, and this is where a planed surface will win the day, every day.

The problem is that if you do decide to go with a planed surface, you had better know what the heck you are doing, and have a plan in advance for when it goes awry.

Scraping is the middle ground. With the grain, the fibres will be cut in a less than super smooth way. Against the grain, the ends of the fibres will be mashed about somewhat, reducing how much effect they can have on the finished surface.

In short, all methods have their place and none of them are inherently bad ways of smoothing things out. But if you can manage it, planing rewards the effort you put in.

For this big panel, I decided to initially plane it fairly smooth, then sand to even out things so it wouldn’t do anything silly on me later on when it came time to finish. I thought it was the best option, and it has proven me right.

Lucky…

So, smoothing by hand plane.

You will need one plane capable of taking a fine shaving. You will want 2 of these planes, plus another that can take a slightly more rank shaving for those lower spots.

I used these.

On the left, a cheap Japanese smoothing plane. In the middle, a cheap Japanese block sized plane and on the right an English Stanley #4 1/2.

The #4 1/2 and the smoothing plane were set for a very fine shaving. I would have stuck with the Stanley, but it was becoming a little recalcitrant and decided to give the Japanese plane a try, a big ask because I had never really made the thing sing before, but this time it delivered like no tool ever has for me before.

To a point, it was a philosophy changing event. Prior to this, I would usually use a Western style plane to do most things, reaching for a Japanese plane when I felt like it. Now, when it comes time to smooth things out, the first stop will be the Japanese plane.

I am contemplating trying to find a nicer smoother to use, because it just isn’t fitting to use a $10 smoothing plane where other folks drop 4 figure sums on theirs.

Or maybe it is?The block sized plane was set to take a slightly thicker shaving, with it’s chip breaker set very close to the cutting edge. The reason being that because this one was taking more wood per pass, that part would be at the limit of how much wood  could plane off and I did not want any tear out occurring there. The other two, a little tear out could be fixed with little trouble.

When it comes to using a smoothing plane, there is little that I can explain, you really need to jump in and have a shot at it. Once you do, you will learn very quickly what works best for you, how to read grain and when to chase that little bit and when to stop.

I will say that it is much harder and easier than the uninitiated might think. Harder because there is little room for error, easier because it can be much faster than sanding and a lot cleaner (dust wise) too.

But once you work it out for yourself, you will be rewarded with this…

A nice, polished surface that needs no further attention before you lay down whatever you choose to finish it with.

But in this case, because this is a piece of flooring (albeit a very visible bit) I sanded it to #240 until it was smooth to touch, not just by eye. It levelled out all the little spots where the plane left it’s mark (not many) and the small bits where I had to resort to the scraper. It basically evened everything out.

The finish will be flat, not gloss, so obscuring the grain isn’t a big concern here.

(I will go into details about smoothing some day with any luck, but not right now. Too busy trying to get this big thing and all it’s little brothers and sisters out the door.)

Till next time, goodnight!

Stu.

By now the glue should have done it’s trick (or you should be buying fresher glue) and you will have some boards well and truly stuck together.

Remove the clamps and have a quick look at the thing.

All that effort getting things just right has paid off, hasn’t it? Of course it has!

First thing to do is to get all the excess glue off the faces of your panel. A scraper is about the only tool that works without fail or fumble here. A chisel can take it off, but you risk gouging the surface. A plane can shave it off, but the glue is hard on blades. You could sand it off, but don’t even try. The heat of sanding will make the glue into something more akin to nose goblins, and will eat up sandapaper faster than you can throw it at the panel.

For smaller areas, a simple card scraper will work just fine. I use a pair of cheap gardening gloves with leather palms and fingers and a cloth back when I use a scraper. It lets me get a little more work done before burning my fingerprints off.

For larger areas, then a cabinet scraper or ‘box’ scraper is the ticket.

A cabinet scraper is basically just a holder for the scraper of some kind and a little bit of a sole to help out. They work well, but I don’t have one.

A box scraper is a more rugged device, being a holder for the scraper with a ‘broomhandle’ on it to get some force into it. Originally these were used to scrape painted labels from wooden boxes so they could be re-used, hence the name.

I do have a box scraper I threw together that works quite nicely.

This thing is little more than a couple pieces of beech bolted together, a wedge in the top and a turned handle stuck into the shebang. It’s not perfect, but it does work quite nicely and you can really get some muscle behind the thing.

The scraper’s only job is to get the excess glue off, nothing more. You can see on my panel there that there are still lots of spots where the epoxy is, and for now I am going to leave it. The next step should take care of all those little problem areas.

That next step is, of course, flattening.

You can go about this in many ways, depending on what is available to you and what you are capable of with what you have.

If you are a power tool disciple, then a belt sander and random orbital sander will be your weapons of choice. A hand tool junkie will be leaning toward a few hand planes and scrapers. Someone with an eye toward stationary equipment will naturally slip the thing through a drum sander and call it a day.

It doesn’t really matter which way you choose, they can all accomplish the same thing, that being a smooth, flat panel.

If you have a drum sander, I envy you and go right ahead an use it. You don’t need to read the rest of this unless you want to taunt us lesser beings.

If you have a belt sander to get your panel flat, pay attention, you may learn something. Actually, you might not but keep reading, the method is pretty much the same.

What I use is a #6 hand plane, a smoothing plane and that’s about it.

Because we put in the effort earlier, our panel should be quite flat and won’t really need much, if any actual flattening work. It will need smoothing out however, because there will always be slight ridges between boards no matter how careful you are.

To start, I take the #6 (Actually a #606C) and plane on a diagonal and in the direction of the grain. In this case, the grain was running toward the outside door in the picture.

Note how the plane is perpendicular to the boards, but the planing marks show that the cuts are diagonal. This helps to keep the panel flat across the width. Normally this technique is shown with the plane running on the diagonal and pointing in the same direction, but I find the way I do it to be a little less likely to get out of kilter.

When the plane stops taking the coarse, cross grain shavings in this direction, change our direction of attack by 90 degrees, but still running in the direction of the grain.

Looking at the picture, we would start from the bottom right and move to the top left. The next direction would be from the bottom left to the top right.

Once all the ridges between boards are gone, the panel should be quite flat, and only need smoothing out.

I have found that simply slapping boards together usually needs a lot of time and effort to get the panel flat and true. Taking the time to get it right (sounding like a broken record yet?) reduces the time spent here by a huge amount.

Case in point: I had to flatten a panel for a table top, and it was maybe half the size of this one. After using a scrub plane, then a jack plane and then a jointer and then a smoothing plane, after nearly a full 10 hour day it was in pretty good shape on one side, and the non-show face was flat, but not smooth.

This panel, being 1 metre wide and 2.3 metres long needed only 4 hours to be flattened and smooth planed on both sides.

Kinda puts the whole idea of good preparation into perspective, doesn’t it?

Back to you plugged in folks, the process of using a belt sander is almost exactly the same as using a plane. The only difference is that you should take many small bites, which means you will need to make many passes in both diagonal directions before the panel is flat. You will also need to take great care to not gouge the surface if the sander rocks or gets away from you.

This is why I prefer hand planes for this step, minimises doing irreparable damage to a large, time invested panel.

That’s about it for now. I am only keeping my eyes open through sheer willpower, it has been a long and busy but productive day.

Good night,

Stu.

And our regularly scheduled programming will continue tomorrow.

Stu.

Well, not quite as simple as a plane can be, but simple enough.

When I need a tool, more often than not it is something simple which also means that I usually end up making it.

In this case, I needed something to remove the saw marks when I cut off the ends of small panels. I have about 20 more to do after the monster, and I was not happy with simply sanding them because it took too long and the chance of error is high. I’d prefer to plane off the marks, then sand it all smooth.

Being endgrain, the lowest possible angle of attack is the best policy. A skewed blade is even better, but that adds complexity I don’t have the time or inclination to go into right now. So a low angle plane of some sort. I needed to use what I had on hand, which of course means beech for the wood, a little brass and some O1 tool steel. 2″ x 1/8″ Starrett is the flavour of my steel, and I wouldn’t use it again…

But I digress.

Since we are talking about steel (not yet a blade) I guess I should mention that I don’t usually buy blades. I have bought them for planes in the past, and I used two of the five I bought. One ended up in a shoulder plane, another found it’s way in a beautiful but fatally flawed pocket smoother. Other than those two, every other plane I have made has used a blade that entered my workshop as a chunk of soft steel.

In order to make the soft steel nice and hard, we need heat. Lots and lots of heat. Even though the steel I used here was only 1/8″ thick, it was also 6″ long and 2″ wide. Not a small blade by any measure, and yes 1/8″ is more than thick enough for a plane blade. We need to get that steel to at least orange hot, not quite red hot, but still plenty hot. A propane gas torch alone won’t do it, and an open fire won’t do it either. To get enough heat energy into the steel, you need to keep the heat in a space where it can concentrate on heating up your metal without being wasted into the open air.

I use this.

Looks kinda goofy huh?

It’s an old wastepaper can (don’t let my wife see it!) and an old biscuit tin for a lid. What you can’t see is the 1/2″ thick alumina castable refractory cement lining and 1″ of perlite insulation. The castable refractory is good for 1,500 degrees celcius (2,700F) and will deal with all manner of things at all temperatures. It is resistant to thermal shock, and will not decompose with heat. It costs nearly 10 times more than regular cement, but the only similarity it bears to regular cement is that you mix it with water, shape it and let it dry. The perlite was used because it is cheap (gardening store, $5 for a big bag) and works well enough in this application. Even with the inside glowing bright orange, the outside was too hot to hold, but touching it with bare hands didn’t burn.

The thing on the right top of the picture is a cheap gas burner that uses butane cans for fuel. These things are very popular as the same can will run a table top stove. The cans are also cheap, costing $1 each. With the amount of heat energy in the cans, they are very economical, but they don’t pack enough punch for this.

In the bottom of the furnace is some hardwood charcoal, and on the bottom left you can just see my pink hairdryer/blower. The charcoal with a gentle breeze blown in gets the steel up to heat treat temperature in about 10 minutes. I dont blow in too much air as this could burn the steel and de-carburize it with the excess oxygen.

Once the steel is up to temperature, a dunk in some old cooking oil, a wash with dishwashing soap and a quick polish and it’s back to the now cooling furnace to draw the temper. I usually only just draw the temper (straw yellow oxide colour) but on this blade I went with the slightest brown tinge to the colour. A little softer, but a little tougher. End grain needs a good edge, but as my blade will be honed at 25 degrees, I needed to help it out by being slightly softer but tougher.

Next step is to nail together the body. And I do mean nail together…

I used scrap from the big panel for the main body section, and some thinner off cuts for the sides. I cut the bed by hand, then tidied up on the table saw, hence the burning. When clamping this one up, none of the parts would stay put, so I resorted to getting them in the right place, and sticking in a few nails to hold it while the clamps went on. Worked just fine, and less trouble than dowelling the thing together.

Once the glue dried, it was time to tidy up the body. A little planing, a bit of time with the jointer and all was straight and square.

Next step was some work on the bed to get it all smoothed out and the mouth to open it up enough to let me see where the blade was and help get the bed square to the sole.

On a normal plane, having the bed on a slight skew doesn’t really affect things too much. A little tweak of the lateral alignment, a little fiddle with the mouth and the plane will still work just fine.

A mitre plane, because it is also used to trim mitres and end grain needs to be as precise as possible in it’s bed, sole and the side it will run along on a shooting board. In this plane, I left the mouth opening very tight, so I needed to open it up a little so I could get an idea of how far out the bed was.

Easy enough to do a rough opening up of the mouth. Scribe a line with a square and chisel away. In case you are wondering, that is a Marples Blue chip chisel. Good old ones too.

I didn’t want to go too far though. This chiselling job was to only let me see where the blade would be relative to the sole, but not actually poke out of the mouth.

Perfect! With the blade on the bed, you can see that the blade is sticking down a little more on the left than the right. Not very much, which is good because it means I don’t have to do much work on the bed.

First step was to get the blade to sit flat on the bed without rocking. As luck would have it, simply scraping off the slight burning that we saw earlier was enough to get me there. Next step was to get the bed in line with the sole. A little work with a simple plane float gets the bed right. The float I use is one I made from a piece of O1, teeth filed into it and heat treated. I then added a simple handle with brass rivets and called it good. I don’t have a pic, or I would have saved those few precious words there.

After getting the bed right, I needed to work out how to get the blade to stay in place. I considered a few options for this including gluing or screwing in some abutments for a wedge, a small cross pin a steel wedge, a large cross pin and steel or wood wedge, a small or large cross pin with a floating abutment and a cross pin with a knob to apply leverage to the wedge.

I chose to use a small brass cross pin, and a small brass floating abutment. I don’t know that this is the correct terminology, but it is what I am calling it. I think that Mr. Krenov might be responsible for this idea originally.

I started out with the cross pin in hand, and a piece of brass tube to slide over the pin. The tube didn’t fit the pin. So it was a choice of take the pin down or make the tube’s I.D a little bigger. If I took the pin down, I might not be able to drill the correct size for it, so I enlarged the tube’s inside diameter.Not an easy task, in fact impossible without a critical piece of equipment called a reamer…

I have a small selection of reamers for metal working, and they work great in wood too. If you ever see them going cheap and in good condition, grab them. You will find or make uses for them pretty quickly if they are on hand.

So I reamed out the tube, so it was a sliding fit on the rod. I then inserted the tube into a small piece of beech to act as the floating abutment. I then made a wedge to suit, and go them all into shape.

I then drilled the hole for the cross pin, and checked out how everything fit.

Not very well…

It would seem that I drilled the hole 1/8″ too close to the sole. By simple deduction Watson, it would appear that one may have left the blade out of the equation, thus solving the mystery!

Short version? Ooops, I fouled up…

I needed to lose 1/8″ of an inch between the wedge, the abutment and the bed. The bed was the most difficult, so I left it alone. The abutment was the easiest, but it had the least meat to give while still remaining strong enough for the job. So I lost the beech abutment, and soldered on a small piece of brass in place of the beech. A little cleaning up, some work on the wedge to reduce it’s thickness (a little too far though…) and we get this.

Notice that the wedge has a shiny spot on the right there, that is from whacking the wedge in to see where it tight. Obviously it was tighter on the right, and needed some judicious adjustment to make it give even pressure over the full blade width. The shiny spot is less pronounced on the right, but it is just visible.

The cross pin does not go all the way through. The hole on the right side of the plane is blind, ie: not through the side. This is so I can adjust that side with a plane to get it flat and square to the sole. If the pin was through, well planes don’t shave metal very well.

Once the wedge and abutment device were sorted out, it was time to get the mouth opened up a little and make sure that the plane actually worked.

A little filing was required with care taken to make sure the mouth was even all the way across relative to the blade, nothing else.

The mouth is a little wider than you might expect, but that’s because end grain doesn’t need such a tight mouth. That, and with this plane having a bed angle of 30 degrees (low enough that this is the first time I have mentioned it for fear of scaring some of you away), then a small adjustment in the depth of cut means a large adjustment for the size of the mouth. In short, the mouth size is the way it is because it isn’t important and there isn’t another viable option.

Last things to do were to fit a strike button to the heel for adjusting the iron, shape it a little and give it a lick of oil.

Here is the small ebony button. Simple and easy to do, but I think it will be replaced with a chunk of steel soon to add some much needed weight to the plane.

After a little fine tuning, it works quite well. A little light in weight, and I think it might be temperamental, but it does shave end grain nicely enough, as can be seen by the lengthy end grain shavings.

On the left is Hinoki, aka: Japanese cypress. On the right, beech.

It is amazing to take a microscope to the shaving and see big, gaping pores in the beech, and nothing much in the hinoki shaving.

So that’s about it. Nothing really over the top or amazing about it, save the frighteningly low bedding angle (this plane is bevel down) and the not so common cross pin arrangement. It just works.

I think the next plane will be chopped out of a single hunk of beech, just to see if I can do it.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions just yell.

Stu.

I started to write up everything about my little plane.

But I am having trouble typing now, not to mention keeping my eyes open so I am calling it a day.

At least you get to see what it looks like.

Stu.

If everything is ready to go and you are ready, it is time to do the glue up of your panel.

There are a few little tricks and tips I use to make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible.

Firstly, make sure that the surface you are assembling your panel on is straight and ‘flat’. I use saw horses because they are strong, stable and can be made ‘flat’ very easily.

Flat really isn’t the correct term to use here, in plane is a  much better description of it. If your floor is nice and flat, and your saw horses have all their legs an identical length, then they should be in plane with each other and you need read no further.

If you really believe your floor is flat and your horses are identical in every way, then may I interest you in a slightly used but well maintaned bridge I happen to have for sale?

I have a bunch of wedges from a planer sled I made a while ago, and the wedges from it have been used extensively for many things. In the case of the saw horses, I used them to get them level, stable and in plane with each other.

As you might be able to see here, the winding sticks (you need winding sticks!) show that both horses are in the same plane as each other. What you can’t see is that the tops of these horses were jointed so that the surface I am assembling my panel on is all in plane with each other at every point.

No matter how well you prepare your stock, if you assemble it on a bad surface it will come back to bite you.

Another small trick I use is to take a thin piece of waste from my boards and nail it to the outermost edges of the panel.

It allows me to get away with the inevitable bumps and knocks that these edges will see getting clamps on without damaging them. Cheaper than anything and being nailed on, they won’t fall off.

(Please excuse my poor nailing. As you can see the nails are rusty which doesn’t help when driving them in. You will see more ugly nailing soon enough…)

Also note the end of the board. Those numbers tell me which board is next and which side is up. This one is actually board #2, the one behind is actually #3 and #1 was put on later.

When clamping things up, do not overtighten the clamps and make sure that they are not touching the surface of the panel. If you are using water based glue, you will probably stain the wood. If you are using epoxy, you will end up gluing the clamp to the panel.

When clamping, put one below the panel, the next above, the next below, etc. There are two good reasons for this.

1:You can apply more even pressure without excessive bowingof the panel. If all clamps were on top, the tendancy would be to make the panel cup toward the clamps.

2: If you find that your panel has a cup in it anyway, you can adjust it by loosening or tightening clamps to get it flat across it’s width. This is where the straight edge you can clean or lose is used.

One of the last things you can do is take care of some of the glue squeeze out before the glue has set hard. Either scrape or cut the glue off, do not wipe. Wiping will smear glue into the wood and may affect how the finish goes on later.

And you should be done, and can kick back with a drink before walking away until the glue dries. Give it plenty of time to dry/cure. If the bottle says 2 hours, give it 10 hours. There is nothing worse than taking off the clamps and hearing the joints letting go as soon as they come off. The glue will affect the wood somewhat, and may bow the wood enough to place the joints under tension. If you leave it all clamped up for long enough, the panel should be nice and stable and you should have any trouble.

Tomorrow we have an intermission. A quick and dirty mitre plane for smoothing out the ends of a panel. Not quite off subject I guess, but it is a little different.

Stu.