smoother « From the Workshop

December 24, 2011

Window to my workshop 59

Filed under: No 10 smoother/mitre, Window to my workshop — Tags: dovetail, Hand tools, Holtey, smoother, traditional — admin @ 4:00 pm

Mistakes – what is a mistake?
There are those that will always deny making mistakes and there are those that can keep smiling when they have made one as they have thought of someone to blame it on. So many projects can go off course along their journey, or find that the goalposts have been moved. Those with the creative thinking processes, for good or bad, can always find a solution; then only count its merits.
In the case of the No 10 plane, and its simplicity, there seemed nowhere to go wrong, but to be 100% sound in my mind I need to alter some of its dimensions. Having slept on it I have decided it is folly to rescue anything I am not completely happy with. This doesn’t sound much – just need to remake the sides and procure some new infill material. I have come too far now to take any risks. Reputations can’t be compromised. Luckily I haven’t had to use the reject bin too much over the years – it is due to put on weight.
Apologies to those waiting for their planes but as you can see from the blog below there is still steady progress.
—————–
In the making of my planes I rely quite a lot on a manual mill. So far throughout the making of these planes the machine has been in constant use.

There is a lot to be said for a good quality manual mill with a DRO. The skill is in setting up and operating these machines and along with essential hand working I am able to achieve standards that are impossible to achieve with hand work alone. In my cabinet making and joinery days there was always a division between machinists and hand workers. Why? I have always wanted to be involved in every aspect of the project from initial thought to the finished item. This is why I never outsource any of my work.

For some reason I have never looked forward to doing this stage of the work in stainless steel in spite of all the experience I gained with the No 98. With a good plan of attack stainless steel will lend itself to quite a lot of cutting and manipulation. There are some that shake at the knees at the mention of stainless steel. This picture shows the first stage of roughing out for the dovetails and in the following picture it shows the milling in the final stage with a forming tool. Note that the bottoms having the compound dovetail so they are made in mirrored pairs to simplify things.

Dovetails finished with all the mess cleaned away.

This is another element that I have introduced to dovetailing in metal. As you can see is rebating the top sides of the dovetails, which lends more support to the plane sides. This makes a considerable structural upgrade.

Putting the bottoms aside for the moment I now need to work on the lever caps.
Picture shows the lever caps being prepared again in a similar way as you would with wood by planing faces and edges. Here the manual mill comes into its own.

You will have noticed that I produce most of the form whilst it is in a bar section. When finished each bar cuts into several items. As there is a considerable amount of setting up with this kind of work it is prudent to make a bit of stock.
Here I am radiusing the front edge of the lever cap after routing the step.

The captive recess completed with a bull nose cutter.

How nice it would be to have a shelf filled with bars like this.

Before I start cutting this bar up into individual lever caps I like to face the end up before each cut. A nice piece of cocobolo makes a good protective clamp on the front edge.

After each visit to the milling machine to end face I go to my pre-set saw (with an improvised stop and protective packing) to cut the lever caps off to the appropriate size. By pre-facing the end before each cut I am able to keep the cutting wastage down to very fine limits. This means that I can get that extra one out of the bar.

Now these items are looking like lever caps and both sides are trued up, I can set up for the boring of the thumb screw hole with the manual mill. This picture shows the spindle speed at around 1700 rpm.

Just taking the picture with a flash it does a good job of freezing this operation which wouldn’t normally be seen as the swarf flies round too fast.

With all the boring complete and out the way I make a tool change. With the same stops and work holding and only a change of spindle speed the lever caps are now tapped.

On to the CNC milling machine (and more setting up and programming) I start applying an interesting form on the top end of the lever cap around the thumb screw area. One of the nice things of working with brass (naval brass CZ112) is not having to run coolant.

Showing the first cut after the swarf is blown away.

Here showing different stages of the work. Also showing a simple work holding fixture.

Comments (0)

November 1, 2011

Window to my workshop 58

Filed under: No 10 smoother/mitre, Window to my workshop — Tags: dovetail, Holtey, planes, smoother, traditional — admin @ 12:27 pm

The work has started on the stainless steel bottoms of these No 10 smoother/mitres. This will probably be the only batch of infill planes I will make using stainless steel. This particular batch is 304 which was cropped from a sheet. The problem with this is the bruised edges have work hardened to the point that nothing will break through the hard skin which has been generated from the use of a break press. Never the less I am committed to progress now.

I do plan to use stainless steel on my non-infill planes in future for the obvious advantages. However with infill planes some of the metal has to be worked dry after the infill is fitted as I cannot use coolant. I am not happy working stainless without the use of coolant. Stainless steel is a complex alloy, any cutting needs to be done with the correct surface speed and it also benefits from some cooling and lubrication.

A little anecdote:

Many years ago I spent a short amount of time gliding. The club that I was flying with were using some fairly old gliders that had a wooden skid which was more suitable for landing on grass. Most of the landings at this airfield were done on concrete. This meant that they were fixing steel strips to the undersides of the skids to take up some of the wear. Unfortunately these didn’t wear too well and it was constant work fitting new strips. Upon my suggestion we replaced these strips with a stainless steel plate, preformed to the curvature of the skid, expecting to achieve a longer life. This was certainly fulfilled.

Unfortunately there was a slight side effect. Because of the problems from abrasions on landing and a high surface speed it created a considerable amount of hardening. Causing the stainless to repel anything when there is a high surface speed.

Those who have ever flown this type of glider knows that it was useful to press down on the front of the gilder using the skid as a brake, as the brakes never worked well but to use the skid as a brake is bad form and bad for the skid. With the stainless steel on the skid the effect was like landing on ice! The club’s no 1 instructor, who was forever moaning about using the skids as brakes, overshot on his first landing with the new skids and got into an argument with some barb wire and a hedge. The club rapidly decided to do something about their poor brakes.

Face milling the bottom blank.

Showing the extremely rigid clamping fixture to ensure repeatability and regular thickness of this plane bottom. This is a lot more complicated than surface grinding.

With all the bottoms now regularised at a uniform thickness, I clamp them in batches of 6, for milling the edges.

It may seem strange that these edges are milled to precision only to be peined down and then machined away again later. However, every surface has to be referenced.

Here are the clamps used to hold the batch together so it can be rotated with ease for planing on the opposite side.

Routing the curved ends to the bottoms.

A batch of 6 bottoms, sized and true, along with the raw material. This could all seem very boring and it is a lot of work to achieve the blanks to this standard before the real work starts. More to follow on these bottoms.

Comments (2)

October 24, 2011

Window to my workshop 57

Filed under: No 10 smoother/mitre, Window to my workshop — Tags: dovetail, handplanes, Holtey, Norris type, precision hand plane, smoother, traditional — admin @ 12:53 pm

Showing the continuing work to this non-adjuster blade.

Work on the blades recommences now that they are back from hardening.

This picture shows one of the many grinding operations.

Even the snecks have to be ground on one surface before they are assembled.
(more…)

Comments (8)

October 17, 2011

Window to my workshop 55

Filed under: No 10 smoother/mitre, Window to my workshop — Tags: dovetail, dovetailed, handplanes, Holtey, infill, infill planes, Norris type, planes, precision, precision hand plane, smoother, smoothing, Spiers type, traditional — admin @ 3:26 pm

No 10 smoother/mitre

A very patient customer asked me to make a small mitre plane. He wanted a 1¹/₄” wide blade to be bedded at 25 deg and bevel up with a short body. No adjuster was required.

I would classify this plane as a smoother/mitre. The small mitre plane has always seemed to be surprisingly scarce for its usefulness. Having got my simple sketch approved the first batch is now well on the way (the sketch can be seen on the website here http://www.holteyplanes.com/).

It is a combined stainless steel bottom with naval brass dovetailed sides and brass lever cap and thumb screw. The blade is in my A2 original specification and has a top sneck. The length of the plane is 4³/₄“.

Despite its apparent austerity there will be no lacking in specification and quality. The designation will be No.10. Delivery will be end of November 2011.

What better place to start than the blades. Here are the A2 blanks being drilled and shaped. These are now away being heat treated (the only work to be done out of house).

Brass sides have been cut from sheet and trued up into rectangular blanks.
(more…)

Comments (8)

August 9, 2011

Window to my workshop 53

Filed under: A6 Norris Styled Smoother, Window to my workshop — Tags: adjuster, dovetail, dovetailed, handplanes, Holtey, infill, infill planes, Norris type, planes, precision, precision hand plane, smoother, smoothing, traditional — admin @ 6:18 pm

Adjuster components for A6

This item is most commonly known as the banjo and it is the most work intensive component in the whole plane. This picture shows that it comes out of a round bar.

There is a lot of preparation but this is not a step by step instruction manual, it is just a few snapshots. In these pictures, after lots of preparation I start to ball generate the round part of this component.
(more…)

Comments (6)

August 2, 2011

Window to my workshop 52

Filed under: A6 Norris Styled Smoother, Window to my workshop — Tags: adjuster, Classic, dovetail, dovetailed, Hand tools, handplanes, infill, infill planes, Norris type, planes, precision, precision hand plane, smoother, smoothing, traditional — admin @ 7:00 pm

A6 Part 2

*************

All of the woodworking has its edges squared up on the milling machine as I have a bit more confidence in this machine than I do a planer.

A pair of infill sides being drilled for riveting spacers. At this stage all edges are trued up

This is the infill side with the spacers pressed through the handle testing for fit. The two sides have yet to be separated.

(more…)

Comments (4)

July 31, 2011

Window to my workshop 51

Filed under: A6 Norris Styled Smoother, Window to my workshop — Tags: adjuster, dovetail, dovetailed, Hand tools, handplanes, Holtey, infill, infill planes, Norris type, planes, precision, precision hand plane, smoother, smoothing, traditional — admin @ 4:57 pm

The last batch of A6 planes part 1

After receiving a commission for an A6 smoother I decided to make a batch of six. The A6 is probably the most time consuming of the infill planes (well perhaps the A7 is worse!). When using the designation A6 one should realise that my A6 is not to be compared with the Norris or any other plane of this type – it is made to a higher precision and has some innovations not seen in the original. This standard is beyond the scope of those without a tool room; I am not aware of any comparison. I work from a reasonably equipped tool room; not a production line. All work is done in house with the exception of heat treatment for the blades.

Although this model has been blogged before I am running it through again as this A6 is just that little bit more special. I always try to make the current plane better than the preceding one. Also these will be the very last Holtey A6 planes. For all my innovations and upgrades my work is veiled by the Norris history and I feel it is time to move on.

************************

The first part of starting the plane is to get the timber chosen and prepared so giving the wood some time to settle whilst making a start on the metal work.

Here is a stunning piece of Cocobolo (Dalbergia Retusa) which was cut from a very nice log that I acquired from Timber Line a couple of years ago – thanks to a friend who spotted it on a visit there. This is the basic roughing out for the infill components.

With the wood put aside to rest, a good starting point is the blades as they need to be sent away for the heat treatment. This shows the milling of the faceted end and slot.
(more…)

Comments (4)

October 18, 2010

Window to my workshop 49

Filed under: No 982 Smoothing plane, Window to my workshop — Tags: adjuster, Hand tools, handplanes, Holtey, infill planes, No 982, Panel plane, planes, precision hand plane, smoother, smoothing, traditional — admin @ 3:49 pm

I have just found this blog entry for No 982 smoother that I forgot to finish. As it is very similar to the blog entry for the No 982 panel plane 14 1/2″ I have already done this week I thought I would just publish the pictures with no comments.