plane

Compass planes
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Compass planes

I’ve been testing curves for back slats recently. That’s meant a lot of time with my compass plane making bending forms. That plane is a chatterbox. It’s in its nature. There are so many light, movable parts only partially attached to each other that it’s a wonder the thing can stay quiet at all.

Roughing in the curve with spokeshaves

Most plane makers go to great lengths to make their tools out of heavy, solid lumps of stuff. It keeps the chatter to a minimum. Compass planes are not built the same way.

The handles on my straight spokeshave show a lot more wear than on the round-bottomed tool. You can get quite a lot of curve before you need the curved sole.
Cambered iron

But there are things you can do. Starting with low expectations helps!

I used to think of my Record 020 as a jack plane. I expected it to do a lot of work quite quickly and give me a decent result. These days I see it more like a jointer plane. I use it for the last few shavings to get the final shape. The curve comes from a bandsaw, jigsaw or bowsaw followed by spokeshaves. They are my jack planes for curves.

As with all edge tools start with the sharpest iron you can hone. It won’t solve everything but at least you’ll know that’s not one of the issues. Grind and hone it like a jointer plane iron – with a small camber. Rather than trying to take a full width shaving I work the high spots and check for square frequently. I don’t expect to get beautiful long ribbons from end to end. Given that we’re making a curve the grain direction will change at some point and these things don’t go up hill!

The mouth and bed aren’t flush. Not ideal but it works.

If you’ve got a sharp, cambered iron, lightly set, you’re cutting downhill and you’re still getting chatter there are a couple of things worth investigating. The mouth of the plane is a magnet for resin. It builds up and needs to be scraped out. There’s little you can do about the step between the mouth and the frog. The frog has no fore and aft adjustment. I’ve tried shimming it with mylar and sheets of tin foil. Not worth the effort. Make sure that the cap iron fits well and the lever cap is tight.

With the mouth clean have a look at the peened pins that hold the frog to the sole. With the sole set for a concave curve these can stick out and catch. You won’t notice it when planing but it can’t help the chatter. You can sand the sole much as you might lap a smoothing plane. I didn’t notice a lot of difference but it can’t hurt.

And finally, with the plane perfectly set up a squiggle of wax on that rather rough sole makes the world of difference.

Not the most satisfying shavings but it’s the curve we’re interested in
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Clamp front chest 3: movement

I was really hoping to get to some joinery done this weekend. But the best laid plans…

This design is definitely utilitarian but it won’t tolerate this much movement. So I’ve planed the offending pieces back into line and will give them another week to think about what they’ve done and decide whether they really want to be a part of this project…

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Medieval woodworking part 2

If I’m to demonstrate C13th woodwork I’ll need a bench. There’s no evidence, as far as I’m aware, that the waist-high joiners’ benches we know today existed in those time. Staked benches, both low and high, certainly did.

Once again Chris Schwarz’s Roman Workbenches and Vires’ Woodworking in Estonia provided some inspiration, measurements and guidance.

I’m not making any great claims to historical accuracy with this. It’s a fairly pragmatic step. People almost certainly sat on low benches and removed small bits of wood from bigger bits of wood. They still do. We’ll get to the interesting stuff (chests and chairs) soon but in the meantime here’s what I built:

 

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Rotary trimmer

A few years ago I picked up an oddity. I assumed it was for trimming mouldings. I was wrong.

This week Jonny Ditchburn, a furniture designer and maker from Boston (the old one, not the one with the hatred of tea) posted a picture of the, for want of a better word, thing he’d just found. He asked for any information anyone had. I proffered mine and Oli Sparks told us what it was. Oli knows a thing or two about planes so I’ll believe him. He was backed up by Alex Holden, who seemed to know a little more.

I have no use for a lead trimmer but it works well for mitring small trim so I’ll be hanging on to it.

 

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Scrubber

Planes and shavings
I’m flattening glued panels of Douglas fir for the garden box. The timber arrived rough sawn and though nominally an inch it was anywhere between 7/8″ and 1 1/4″. Plenty to do!
I usually start with a small Jack plane with a heavily cambered iron: a scrub plane in essence. Then a toothing plane and finally a jointer. Because the fir is tearing out so horribly I’m only using the scrub to take off the highest points, then I’m doing the bulk of the work with the toothed low angle jack.
It seems to do magic…