| Here are the casting I bought from Bristol Design-the thumb plane, a coffin smoother and a mitre plane along with some lever caps. |
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| The casting needs a LOT of work. I began by making the sole flat enough so it would sit without rocking on my surface plate. |
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| I used a file to remove any high spots. The sole is nowhere near flat but is concave. |
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| Clamp the casting onto the table of the mill and start by levelling the upper surface of the sole... |
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| reposition the clamps to allow all the surface to be worked.... |
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| and then work the inner and outer faces of the sides. Square the casting to the axis of the table and clean up the sides, |
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| Clamp the plane on its side and mill one side to thickness. Turn it over and mill the other to the same thickness. This ensures the sides are parallel. |
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| To machine the sole I made up two blocks to sit inside the casting of the same thickness. |
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| Clamp the whole thing into a milling vice
and machine the sole flat. (note-my vertical mill is only a small hobby machine. I didn't expect it to be able to machine my plane to super-fine tolerances and will lap the sole by hand later) |
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| The final task on the mill is to machine the bed. I tilted the head to 15 degrees and milled until I cut through the sole slightly. |
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| We now have the casting machined into a usable condition. |
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| Now for some woodwork. Cut a piece of rosewood for the front bun... |
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| rough the part to shape on the disc sander..... |
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| and then use a "power-file" to do a little more. Incidentally, the power-file is a great laugh to use! A little scraping and sanding gets us in the ball park. |
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| I made the iron next. Hacksaw a piece from some 3mm O2 gauge plate. File it to size and file the bevel roughly to shape. Do as much shaping as you can before heat treating-it is so much easier!! |
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| Make the wedge/handle and bed infill and
the plane is taking shape. Next-sweating on a steel sole. |
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| I cut a piece of 1.5mm steel slightly
oversize for the sole. This is to be soldered onto the bottom of the
casting as a sole, steel being much harder wearing than bronze. This was
my first attempt at his so here are my experiences..... The only soldering I have done is of guitar electrics using a soldering iron and rosin cored solder. This requires a somewhat different approach. I first tinned the steel plate... |
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| and the casting. To do this first clean the piece thoroughly and then apply flux. The piece is then heated with a gas torch and solder (from a plumbers merchants) is fed onto the piece until it is covered with a coating. |
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| The parts are then brought together and
heated until the solder melts, joining the two together. In theory ;) I found the pieces need to be pressed firmly together otherwise the running solder keeps them apart. So-attempt two. |
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| The casting holds a lot of heat-I used this to my advantage! Heat the casting to just below the melting point of the solder. Wipe another coat of flux on and pop the steel plate on top. Clamp them to a piece of timber with two metal f-clamps. Add a little heat to get the solder melting and then tighten the clamps a little more. Once the two parts are touching pretty intimately I applied more heat, and the excess solder ran out. I added a little extra solder around the seam to ensure it was saturated. The casting holds a lot of heat and this keeps it above the melting point of the solder quite easily, making the work straightforward. Set aside to cool for a few hours. |
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| When the plane has cooled (and your nerves have calmed down!) file off the excess steel and solder. |
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| It should look something like this-a nice tight join, almost invisible. |
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| The sole look pretty bad but it cleaned up quickly with a little file work. I then lapped the sole on 80 grit paper on my surface plate. |
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| I opened up the mouth using a 3mm slot drill in the mill. |
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| This was then enlarged with a file, checking with the iron to give a nice, tight mouth. |
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| The cap iron casting from Bristol Design was useless-way too narrow. I ended up making a new one from brass. Some simple hacksaw and file work quickly makes the piece. I drilled for the cross rod to hold it in place.. |
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| Marked out the plane.... |
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| and drilled through. I drilled each side one at a time-the drill bit isn't accurate enough to drill both sides in one go. |
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| Many hours were then spent cleaning up the
parts, tapping the lever cap for the tensioning screw and sanding and
finishing the wood parts. I epoxied the infill's into place. A felt wheel in the drill press and some rouge buffs the plane into a high sheen in no time! |
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| I've
probably missed out a fair few construction steps (sorry-email me if you
are interested) but this pretty much covers the construction of the
plane. It took quite a few hours to make but was pretty enjoyable to do.
If the casting was in better condition it would of made a lot of
difference but I enjoyed learning new skills. As you may of noticed from
the first photo, I have two other casting left. Maybe next I'll make the
smoother? Cheers Philly |
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