Taming Some Quarter Sawn Sycamore

     When I first started making the boxes for a show I ordered a couple of board feet of Quarter Sawn Sycamore.  Based on the pictures from Woodworker's Source I've linked to here.  Well, the pieces didn't quite live up to what I'd expected, which is rare from them, so I've kind of let them sit in the rack.  I've had a concept for a box floating around in my head so I thought this may be just the wood for it.  Well, here's what I found when I got the wood:

Not Flat!

      The board had a definite wind to it.  If you're a regular reader to my blog you'll know that I don't have a jointer but did make my own scrub plane just for boards such as this.  If you're interested in making your own scrub plane here's a LINK to the process.  Trying to run a board with a wind in it across the table saw is a safety hazard.  It could rock as you pass it through the blade, bind, and kick back on you.  I wanted to plane the board to about 7/16" and even though the board is surfaced, running it through the planer would give me a thin board with a wind in it and that wouldn't be any good either!  As I'm writing this it crossed my mind that non-woodworkers may not know the meaning of the word "wind" and think I'm talking about the wind that gives us a bad hair day!  It took a while to find this but here's a definition of it as it refers to wood:

intransitive verb

1

: bend, warp

2

a : to have a curving course or shape : extend in curves

Let me introduce you to Winding Sticks:

See the WIND?

     These are a pair of sticks that you place on a board to locate the high and low spots or corners of it.  In the first photo you see me checking the board by laying it on a perfectly flat surface and seeing that it rocks.  With winding sticks you place them on the board and locate the high/low areas by sighting over the sticks.  Can you see that they're not parallel? To flatten these boards I'll need to plane off the high spots which requires a Scrub Plane.

Scrub Plane

     This is the one I made and love to use!  Look at those shavings -- large and coarse; they remove the wood in a hurry.  Usually you'd plane across the grain to eliminate the high areas of the board.  The little hammer you see is used to adjust the depth of cut for this plane.  The blade has a radius to it and will leave a scalloped shaped cut.  To see if the surface is flat you can use the winding sticks or else lay it on the tablesaw to see if you've gotten rid of the rocking.  If you have, the next step it using a jointer plane to remove the scalloped cut you made with the scrub plane.

Jointer Plane, #7 Stanley

     Now that one surface is flat I can run safely run the board through the planer to bring it to its required thickness.  If you don't have a planer you would scribe the required thickness all around the board and use your hand planes to get to that scribed line.  I used to have my 7th. and 8th. graders do that in our Industrial Arts classes.  Too bad those have been replaced by technology and computer oriented classes.

The Proof is in the Shavings!

Trial Run

     Some of you may remember the old advertisement whose tag line was "the proof is in the pudding", hope I'm not showing my age but that's what came to mind when I took the now completed scrub plane for a test run.  Look at those shavings!  See the concave tracks made by the blade?  Beautiful, I couldn't ask for more.
   

Purpleheart Sole and Mouth View

     The blade from Ron Hock is fantastic, I honed it on a 1000 grit then 8000 grit waterstone which only took a couple of minutes to accomplish.  The throat on the plane is large enough to pass some pretty large pieces which is what you want from a scrub plane.  It's all about hogging off the warped or cupped section of a board.

Final Picture

     For the finish I used the same three part mix I use on my furniture.  It's equal parts of boiled linseed oil, pure gum turpentine, and polyurethane.  This was rubbed in with 320 grit, wet/dry paper then wiped dry.  I'll do a couple more coats and then we're done.
     Very enjoyable project, one of those that I'll be reminded of every time  I grab this plane!  If you are now inspired to possibly make your own plane, Ron Hock sells complete kits on his website that include everything you need, even the wood.  I have a link to his website on my blog.  They are of the classic James Krenov design and don't have the tote and handle I've added to mine.  If you want to make a scrub plane from the kit he'll substitute the straight blade for a radiused one like I used.

Shaping the Scrub Plane

Getting Into Shape

      Well, I just couldn't wait to take a picture and post it on the blog.   Who knows, some of you may be as excited as I am about the progress of the plane!  Since this is something I've never done before I wouldn't mind constructive criticism about the progress.  This plane is definitely based on the James Krenov design but I've modified it to better suit, what I think, a scrub plane should do.
      At this point I've been using spokeshaves, files, chisels, and rasps to form the handle and the knob.  It's far from being finished so I just wiped it down with turpentine to add some color to it.  In my research there was some mention that the Krenov style plane's design didn't give a real good grip and scrubbing requires a lot of grip and oomph!  Because of that I chose to use a saw type handle at the rear and a knob (of sorts) at the front.  If you remember back to the beginning stages these pieces were pretty blocky.  My strategy was to simply grip the plane as if I were using it and see how things feel.  My left hand would be at the front.  The knob is contoured so my hand can wrap around it with either all four fingers below the top of the knob and the thumb wrapped around it or else three fingers can wrap and the index finger and thumb go over the knob.  I just started to radius it until it felt good.  There is more radius on the left side then there is on the right.  The rear handle is pretty straight forward and I'm working on blending it into the sides.  Generally when I plane my habit is to wrap my hand around the rear handle but my index finger lays along the side.
      The wedge I came up with is from a scrap of Zebrawood and the sole of the plane is just under eleven  inches long.  Now's the time we woodworkers tend to rush things but I'm determined to work the wood with sandpaper until it's as smooth and silky as the proverbial babies' butt!

First Shavings & I'm EXCITED !!

First Scrub Plane Shavings

     There you have it -- the first shavings from the first plane I've ever attempted to make!  The cut is pretty nice and I haven't even honed the blade!  This blade from Ron Hock will be a joy to use.  I'm thinking that once I have the plane adjusted I'll just be able to leave it set up.  In my last blog I mentioned entering that realm of the unknown, something I always look forward to.  Kind of like your first race at a new distance and I've experienced that from a 10k to a 100 miler, you just have to take those first steps and even though there may lots of trepidation you push forward.  In the picture, the dowel that is used to wedge the blade tight is only pushed part way through one side.  This is my second wedge because the first one was too short.  Now that the dowel is glued in I can work on shaping the wedge so it's easier to grab on to.
     One area that was a little vague to me was to determine where to locate the 1/2" dowel in the body of the plane.  Krenov's book and Hock's plan showed it to be 1 1/4" from the bottom.  Here's how I solved this:

Dowel Lay-Out

     By using a small sliding bevel  I located the 45 degree ramp for the blade and also the other side of the mouth.  There is a line drawn on at 1 1/4" from the bottom.  Laying the blade and wedge on the side of the plane allowed me to locate the dowel.  Simply cut a small piece of it, laid in on the line, then after marking the center of it drilled the hole through the body on the drill press to ensure it being square.

     I also needed to complete the mouth opening through the sole.  At first, this is what it looked like inside the plane.  If you look closely you can see how I put a slight chamfer on it before I glued it on.  That really helped when I used chisels to extend that 45 degree angle completely through the plane.

     By first "nibbling" the Purple Heart sole with a smaller chisel it was easier to use the long paring chisel to set the angle.  This had to be as close to perfection as I could get so the blade would have a good, flat surface to bed on.

Clogged Mouth

     After drilling the dowel hole and then wedging the blade in for the first attempts I found that the throat was too small.  This was an area that I wasn't too sure about.  For a smooth plane you want the smallest possible throat so that the plane presses down on the wood and allows the thinnest of shavings to come through.  I thought I'd made it pretty large but, as you can see, the shavings wouldn't pass through and it became clogged.
     To remedy that the plane was clamped upside-down and then I carefully chiseled the front of the mouth larger.  Similar to chiseling out a mortise for a hinge but the Walnut block had end grain which I didn't want to split through.  As the first picture showed it all worked.  Looking forward to working the shape of the plane so that it will fit my hand when I use it.  That's the next step in this process.

The Realm of the Unknown

     The more I get into making this plane, the more I realize I really don't know!  I've handled very few wooden bodied planes so I'm kind of going by logic and pictures.  After Church, I started the day with this:

Sunday Morning

     At this point things are pretty blocky and I'm resisting the urge to smooth, round, chisel, sand, etc. to a shape that's pleasing to my hands.  The main thing missing is a sole.  The directions say to attach the sole, mark out the mouth, and then cut it out with either a router or coping saw.  I chose the latter:

Roughing out the Mouth

     What you see here is the piece of Purple Heart that will become the sole of the plane.  I'm a little bit stymied with how to treat the mouth.  The pencil line you see is the actual space for the mouth in between the front and rear blocks.  The rear block is cut at 45 degrees so the mouth in the sole will need to be formed to make a ramp that is perfectly flat and 45 degrees all the way to the opening.  Since this is what the blade rests on it seems that will be crucial.  Because this plane will be used to take large shavings, the mouth can and should, be pretty large so they will pass through.  I did cut a slight chamfer on the bottom of the mouth, it will eventually taper from the pencil line to the edge of the opening.  I'll use a paring chisel to accomplish that once the glue dries over-night.  By contrast, my bronze Smooth Plane has a very "tight" mouth to allow just the thinnest of shavings to pass through.  The two holes at the top of the sole are for the Ebony pegs that will align the sole to the body.

     Here's where I left off this afternoon, everything's glued together and I roughed out the wedge from a piece of Zebrawood.  It and the blade are at the lower corner of this picture:

There's a Plane in There Somewhere!

     Just a side note here, last night Diane and I went to a place called  Bottles & Burgers for some gourmet burgers on New Years Eve.  The tables had a rustic finish on them which could have easily been made by a curved bladed scrub plane such as this project will hopefully become.

Happy New Year to All of You

How Was Your Christmas?

     I sincerely hope that those of you that read my blogs that your Christmas was a wonderful occasion that you were able to spend with family and friends as we celebrate the birth of Christ.  Sometimes it's hard to keep sight of that as we open our presents to see what "Santa Claus" has brought us and I hope he too, was good to you.  Two years ago, I asked for and received the small spokeshave kit from Lee Valley.  Breanna got that for me and it was a good challenge to make it and I use that tool often.  This year I asked for a scrub plane blade from Hock Tools.  In case you're not familiar with what the heck a scrub plane is here's Wikipedia's definition:

The scrub plane is a type of plane used to remove large amounts of wood from the surface of lumber, such as when eliminating cup or twist in the first stages of preparing rough stock, or when reducing the thickness of a board significantly. Scrub planes generally have a short soles, a relatively narrow but thick blade, a very wide mouth, and a deeply curved edge (of about a 3 inch radius) to make a deep, gouging cut.

     For woodworkers that use lots of power tools, the power jointer has pretty much eliminated any use for this style of plane but since I don't use or have a jointer I can see the need for it.  After doing my internet research I decided to attempt to make my first plane.  It will be based on the Krenov style but modified/customized to suit what I think I need.  There were a few references on the construction of this plane and the fact that the traditional style plane patterned after James Krenov didn't necessarily lend itself to becoming a scrub plane.   The reason cited was the lack of a handle or tote which made it difficult to get enough power behind the tool.  Well, I found a design on a forum where there was more of a saw type of handle that I decided to use for my "plane to be".
     Here's the parts:

Starting Point

       What you're looking at is the two pieces of Walnut that will make up the plane.  I drilled a few 1 3/16" holes to begin to form the handle.  You can see the rough outline of the shape, very similar to a saw handle.  The dowel will be used to wedge the blade into the plane itself and it's pretty obvious that the blade has a radius, just like Wikipedia's definition.  This blade comes from Ron Hock who is well known for the quality of his blades, I gave you the link for his business in the opening paragraph. The long, yellowish piece of wood is Canarywood left over from my dining table and it will be used for the sides.  Last of all is the Purple Heart which will be laminated to the bottom for the sole.

Roughed out Handle

   
    Making the handle was interesting.  First of all, the ramp that the blade rests on is cut at 45 degrees.  Since there is a fairly large screw head that holds the blade and chip breaker together I needed to route a groove for that to fit in to.  I needed to bring it down a bit more than this to accommodate the thickness of the sole but that was fairly easy to to with a chisel.
   
   

     The width of this piece is 1 9/16" and when I gripped it, it's way too thick to be comfortable.  That's when things on the bandsaw became interesting!

Looking Like a Plane ??

     As you can see, I made the handle much thinner and that was a challenge.  There's a well known furniture maker, Sam Maloof, who had a very, unorthodox (unsafe?) method of using the bandsaw.  I've seen it in videos and he has most of the blade exposed and he makes these free hand cuts to form the arms, back slats, and other parts for his chairs.  I figured that if he could do it I'd give it a shot as well and it worked!  The next step is to laminate the Canarywood sides onto the rest of the plane, they will be pinned with Ebony dowels.  There's a slight quandary in that I don't want to spend tons of time yet with spokeshaves and files to shape the plane until I know it will function as it should.  In any case, I'm enjoying the process and that's really what it's all about.  The front of the plane will resemble an infill plane with the somewhat bulbous grip but I'm hoping for a lot of control. The primary function of this plane will be to level and smooth one side of any board that happens to be cupped or warped.  Once I have one side leveled the surface planer can be used to bring the board to a uniform thickness.