A few years ago I was offered a box of planes that had been stored in a crawl space. A few were restorable, but most were in rough shape. In the batch were a matched pair of planes for cutting a 1/4" tongue and groove. They must have been stored toe-first in the dirt because they had significant damage. As you can see the damage was beyond repair. I kept them only because I thought I might make a new set and use these as a pattern, and that's what I finally did.
I began by disassembling each so I could take measurements and study the design better. It was not possible to remove all the screws. Some broke and others refused to budge.
The basic outline of each is the same, though the tongue plane is 1-3/4" thick whereas the groove plane is only 1-1/2". This allows you to use the planes on lumber up to a thickness of about 1-1/8".
After drawing a paper template I glued a copy to each blank. The body is beech, first taken down to the starting thickness of each. The basic shape was roughed out using the drill press, bandsaw and finally a sabre saw to finish the handle.
Next step was to split off the excess thickness on each. This is different on each plane, but the general idea is to take the handle down to 1" thick in order to make it more comfortable. After that I used a rasp to round the handles. The cutoffs don't go to waste as these go into making the wedge for each.
The end profile shows how much material gets removed as you work. I started with a mortising gauge to mark the location of each step, then used the table saw to remove the bulk of the material, making sure to stay at least a 1/16" from the scribe line. The remaining material was removed using hand planes, mostly a Stanley rabbet plane.
Most of the metal work is pretty routine in that you are just adding a rectangular strip to protect the fence from wear. The skate on the groove plane was another story. This took a fair amount of fussing to finally satisfy myself that the groove in the back of the iron was seating properly in the matching peak of the back skate. The metal for these parts came from scrap that I had on hand (part of an old TV stand) -- lots of hacksawing, then filing, checking, rinse and repeat until it all fit. I left the ends long and cut them to length once everything else was done.
I've posted before about making tapered plane irons using O1 tool steel. These were relatively easy since everything is square with straight lines -- much easier to file and sharpen than curves. The tongue slot (left iron) is cut to precisely 1/4". By contrast the groove iron is about .005" wider than 1/4" to give it a snug, but not tight fit. The colors you see are from the final tempering. I heat slowly and quench as soon as the straw color reaches the edge.
I did not take as many photos as usual during the mortising and fitting steps. The irons need to pair such that the distance from fence to iron on the groove plane is exactly the same as the distance from fence to slot on the tongue plane (minus half of .005"
). Below are the finished planes. I apply two coats of oil finish, then paste wax and buffing. Thanks for reading!
I began by disassembling each so I could take measurements and study the design better. It was not possible to remove all the screws. Some broke and others refused to budge.
The basic outline of each is the same, though the tongue plane is 1-3/4" thick whereas the groove plane is only 1-1/2". This allows you to use the planes on lumber up to a thickness of about 1-1/8".
After drawing a paper template I glued a copy to each blank. The body is beech, first taken down to the starting thickness of each. The basic shape was roughed out using the drill press, bandsaw and finally a sabre saw to finish the handle.
Next step was to split off the excess thickness on each. This is different on each plane, but the general idea is to take the handle down to 1" thick in order to make it more comfortable. After that I used a rasp to round the handles. The cutoffs don't go to waste as these go into making the wedge for each.
The end profile shows how much material gets removed as you work. I started with a mortising gauge to mark the location of each step, then used the table saw to remove the bulk of the material, making sure to stay at least a 1/16" from the scribe line. The remaining material was removed using hand planes, mostly a Stanley rabbet plane.
Most of the metal work is pretty routine in that you are just adding a rectangular strip to protect the fence from wear. The skate on the groove plane was another story. This took a fair amount of fussing to finally satisfy myself that the groove in the back of the iron was seating properly in the matching peak of the back skate. The metal for these parts came from scrap that I had on hand (part of an old TV stand) -- lots of hacksawing, then filing, checking, rinse and repeat until it all fit. I left the ends long and cut them to length once everything else was done.
I've posted before about making tapered plane irons using O1 tool steel. These were relatively easy since everything is square with straight lines -- much easier to file and sharpen than curves. The tongue slot (left iron) is cut to precisely 1/4". By contrast the groove iron is about .005" wider than 1/4" to give it a snug, but not tight fit. The colors you see are from the final tempering. I heat slowly and quench as soon as the straw color reaches the edge.
I did not take as many photos as usual during the mortising and fitting steps. The irons need to pair such that the distance from fence to iron on the groove plane is exactly the same as the distance from fence to slot on the tongue plane (minus half of .005"
). Below are the finished planes. I apply two coats of oil finish, then paste wax and buffing. Thanks for reading!
