Like the ocean under the moon

[Dr.Al]

This morning I've been making the hardware to go with the lever cap, but first I decided I wanted a larger thread for the clamping screw. I put an M8 screw in the mill's collet chuck and screwed the lever cap onto it and that allowed me to put it in the vice in such a way that the hole was aligned with the spindle:

After drilling it out 8.8 mm, I took it over to the bench vice and tapped M10 × 1.25.

I probably would have gone with M12 × 1.25 if I had the tap, but my collection "only" included M12 × 1, M12 × 1.5 and M12 × 1.75! I'm sure either of the finer pitch ones would have been okay, but the 1.25 mm pitch just seemed about right for this application.

Next up was a very simple knurled nut for the pivot screw:

That can be quite small as it is never properly tightened, just snugged lightly up against the lever cap before tightening the clamping screw.

I wanted a clamping arrangement a bit like the one on my Veritas low-angle smoothing plane. That has a large foot that presses down on the blade (there's no cap iron on the Veritas), spreading the force. I started by making the foot out of a bit of 32 mm brass, turning it down to 26 mm and then putting a 45° taper on it. It got drilled through 6 mm and counterbored 12 mm:

After parting off, it went in the home-made soft jaws for facing to length:

The clamping screw itself was made out of the same bar of brass. I used a tool with a big radius on it to reduce the diameter:

It didn't need a radius like that, I just did it because I felt like it.

The bigger section got knurled, the smaller section threaded M10 × 1.25 and the tip reduced and lightly spot drilled:

All of the above gave me this kit of parts:

On the Veritas lever cap, the foot is held in place with a circlip:

That is a very sensible option for a mass-produced part, but I'm only making one and I didn't have any circlips small enough. Instead, I assembled it all and used a punch to mangle the brass tip a bit so it couldn't go back through the hole:

Unfortunately, I was a bit too aggressive with the mangling and it ended up a bit tighter than I would have liked: it would rotate but not very easily. There was a bit of excess screw thread so I decided to just have another go. To that end, I put the assembly in a collet block in the mill vice and milled out the end of the screw:

It could then go in the soft jaws on the lathe for a new tip:

This time I was a bit more cautious and hit it just enough that it wouldn't come back out:

With that done (and the custom dual-thread threaded bar I made a few posts ago shortened slightly), I could do a trial assembly:

I'm really pleased with how that came out: it assembles easily and holds rigidly.

I mentioned early on that I was drilling the holes through the lever cap at an angle to account for its tilt. I think this photo shows what I was aiming for quite well:

 

[Dr.Al]

This afternoon I've made the rest of the metal hardware. I started with an extremely simple bit of brass turning, to make this little cylinder:

That goes in this hole and gives a smooth rotating surface for part of the adjuster mechanism to spin in:

Next up were three steel pieces. I didn't take any photos of the process, but you can imagine it if you read some earlier posts and look at the photos of stuff being turned in the metal lathe!

The bottom two are 20 mm diameter 303 stainless steel, the top one is 24 mm diameter (at its widest point) mild steel (EN1A). I would have made the screw out of stainless steel as well but I didn't have any big enough and I wasn't confident I'd got the lengths right anyway. I might make a new one out of stainless at some point if I can be bothered (or if that one rusts!).

This is how they fit together and in the plane:

The upper thread is M8 × 1.25 mm. The lower thread is M6 × 1 mm left-hand. The two together work as a differential thread: when you rotate the screw through 360°, the screw moves down through the upper fixed part by 1.25 mm. At the same time, the lower moving part moves up along the screw by 1 mm. The net result is that one turn of the screw moves the lower piece by 0.25 mm. The head of the screw that holds the blade to the cap iron sits in the pocket in the lower moving part and hence gets moved with the movement of the lower piece.

Shoving the knob side-to-side rotates it around the upper fixed part and hence causes the lower moving part to shove the blade side-to-side.

The last job for today was to fit everything and see how it looks:

The adjuster seems to work well (better than I expected if I'm honest). I found it quite straightforward to adjust the angle of the blade to get an even protrusion and it could be moved smoothly back and forth by turning the knob, before tightening the lever cap to hold everything firmly in place.

The next big job is to make a rear handle and a front knob for it, but that'll have to wait until next weekend now.

 

[Dr.Al]

Over the course of the week I've been mulling on the rather shabby job I'd done of hiding the screws from sight. For example, this was the photo I took of the front two screws:

It's not great and I think I'll forever be wishing I'd done a better job of it if I don't do something about it now. To that end, I assembled some tiny little things:

The brass pins (of which I have a pack) have a very slight taper to them, with 1.4 mm at the narrow end and (if memory serves me correctly) 1.7 mm at the wider end. The steel tool is a tapered broach.

This shows a rather extreme close-up of one of the screw areas at the front of the plane after I'd drilled a 1.4 mm hole where there was one of the blemishes:

I drilled quite a lot of holes (and I later went back and drilled a couple more):

After drilling 1.4 mm, the taper broach got held in an ER20 collet chuck and turned by hand until it went fairly deep:

The next photo shows three of the following stages:

First, a tapered pin is tapped firmly into the hole in the brass. Then the side cutters are used to trim it shorter. A few more taps from the hammer rounds over the top and then a file takes most of the waste away.

The plane then went back to the bandsaw table for more sanding (with the blade and lever cap in so that I was sanding it flat with any lever cap induced tension that would be present when planing):

That process took most of the morning. The actual drilling, broaching, pinning, cutting and filing of the brass pins was less than an hour; the rest was sanding (partly to get rid of the ends of the pins but also to get it flat now that the lever cap's installed).

This shows that same first hole (albeit at a slightly less extreme zoom level) that I showed earlier in this post:

As a reminder, this is what the whole of the bottom looked like before today's efforts:

This is what it looks like now:

I'm much happier with it now. There are still some imperfections if you look really closely, but you really have to be looking for them to spot them.

 

[Dr.Al]

With the metalwork all done, it was time to get back to the difficult stuff: woodwork.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a package from a very generous member of a woodworking forum on which I'm posting these updates. In the parcel were these two bits of bog oak (home-made plane for scale )

All being well, these pieces will become the handle and front knob of the plane. I've never tried making anything even remotely like a plane handle before, so I thought I'd make sure I stood the best chance of having two goes at it by cutting the bog oak piece in half like this...

... and like this:

A coping saw would have been much better than a fret saw for the job, but my coping saw needs a new blade (and it's not a very good coping saw anyway, being a cheap modern one from a DIY store).

It will probably surprise no-one that I'd 3D-printed a couple of things:

On the right is a test handle of approximately the shape I'm aiming for. I printed that so that I could hold it in my hand and see how it felt. On the left is a template for marking the shape onto the bog oak piece (with a couple of panel pins holding it in place and also marking the centres for the inside curves). The template also has a dog-leg on the top that's used to mark the location of a through hole for a screw:

That through hole got drilled on the pillar drill, starting with an 8 mm spur bit...

... and finishing with a long-series metalworking bit:

It came out of the bottom very slightly off-centre, but given the depth of the hole I was quite happy with it. The top got opened up with a counterbore (which may have to be deepened later but it's easier to at least get it started while the block has some flat edges):

Two Forstner bits (30 mm and 32 mm) were used for the inside curves:

The bandsaw got rid of the bulk of the rest of the waste:

The base of the handle got planed flat (you can see the slight offset in the drilled hole here):

Incidentally, I haven't actually figured out how the handle is going to be secured in place. It'll go into a mortice in the plane body and be glued and there will be a screw of some form (probably an M8 low-head machine screw) going down through the handle. However it doesn't really have anything to "bite" into in the plane body and if I just drill a hole (e.g. for a threaded insert) into the plane body, the hole (or the threaded insert) is very likely to pop out the back of the plane.

I've got a few ideas for how to deal with that, but I think it'll be easiest to worry about it when I get there.

Next up, I used a Shinto rasp to bring the overall shape down to the pencil line (while keeping the edge square for now):

The rasp then did most of the rounding over:

I then switched to a half-round file as it could get into the inside curves and round them over:

There was a crack that I hadn't managed to completely cut off when chopping up the bog oak piece:

Hopefully some thin superglue will sort that out:

Next up was lots of card scraping to refine the shape and clean up the round-overs a bit:

I haven't finished refining and smoothing by any means, but I think it's close enough now (it feels comfortable in the hand) to start working on the mortice in the plane body. That's something I'm feeling a bit daunted by (as there's a lot of work that's gone into the plane body and I don't want to mess it up) so I decided to leave that until tomorrow.

 

[Maker]

What do you think about that Knew Concepts saw? I've been umming and arring over one for a while now.

 

[Dr.Al]

What do you think about that Knew Concepts saw? I've been umming and arring over one for a while now.

They're expensive but they're in a different league to any other fretsaw (or coping saw) I've ever used. I slightly regret getting the 5" frame one; the 3" one would have been fine for anything I use it for (the ability to index the blade round in 45° steps means you don't need depth for the width of the board).

I'm glad I got the one with the cam tensioner: it makes it easy to get it nice and tight for cutting & then release the tension for storage.

I go through blades very quickly, but I think that's inevitable with any fret saw (especially with someone as clumsy as I am). I think it's partly that it's easy to undertighten the blade clamps and if the blade slips it'll get bent very quickly. A coping saw would be better there as the blades are pinned.

I'd love to get the Knew Concepts coping saw, but I just can't justify the price at the mo.

 

[Blobber]

especially with someone as clumsy as I am

That really doesn't compute, your work is superb

 

[Dr.Al]

That really doesn't compute, your work is superb

and yet there are lots of plasters on my hands & I need to replace my phone screen protector again!

 

[Dr.Al]

This morning I cut the mortice for the handle. I started by marking out the pocket with a knife:

The 10 mm mortice chisel did the bulk of the work...

... and a bench chisel (actually two as I already had the 16 mm and 18 mm ones on the bench so kept picking up a different one each time) tidied things up:

That gave me this basic shape:

The handle was a good fit in the pocket but (as expected) it needs to go deeper (at the moment, the screw would pop out the back of the plane!)

At this point, I started moving the opening along gradually with angled cuts to match the angle on the front of the handle:

Once it had gone far enough in, I dropped a transfer punch down through the handle and it was (just) long enough to be used to mark the centre of the hole.

I also fitted the adjuster to make sure there was still clearance for my fingers:

I then spent quite a while thinking about options for the screw. In the end I settled on a plain brass cylinder, which I machined to 20 mm diameter and 11 mm long and then mounted in a collet chuck in the mill at 63° (to match the angle of the hole through the handle).

An 8 mm end mill gave a starting platform and then a 6.8 mm drill went through. I started the tap on the milling machine but stopped when it was only a short way in...

... and then finished it off by hand in the vice:

I think this shows why I finished it by hand - if I'd carried on tapping on the milling machine the tap would have run into the side of the collet:

A quick check with a bit of M8 threaded rod to make sure that the brass disc seated flat on the bottom of the handle:

The screw down through the handle serves two purposes. The main one isn't actually to fix the handle to the body. If that were the priority then I could simply glue the handle in and I think it would be fine. However, the screw also reinforces the handle to reduce the risk of it snapping across the grain lines.

I'd spent quite a while trying to figure out a good way to fix a threaded insert into the plane body but in the end I concluded that the second purpose (reinforcing the grain) was much more important than the first one (holding it in place). The handle is a very snug fit in the mortice and the front of it is held rigidly in place by the angled front engaging with the undercut at the front of the mortice. With that in mind I decided to just glue the brass disc into the body.

Using the mark made by the transfer punch as a guide, I used a 20 mm Forstner bit to make the hole:

I used some 120 grit sandpaper to roughen up the outside diameter and bottom face of the brass disc a little and then used Araldite to fix it in place (using a long piece of threaded rod to check the thread was at the right angle):

Before the glue had time to set, I did a test fit with the threaded rod (and a pen mark to show the expected depth) to make sure everything lined up nicely:

 

[Dr.Al]

The next thing to think about is the screw itself. I'd hoped to use another low-head M8 cap screw (like the one I'm using to hold the blade to the cap iron and the one I intend to use to hold the front knob in place). However, the longest one I could find isn't anywhere near long enough:

I've got a few options here. I could drill the hole a bit bigger from the underside and insert an intermediate 12 mm (say) diameter piece with a male M8 thread on the bottom end and a female M8 thread on the top. The cap screw would then screw into the extension piece and the extension piece into the brass piece. The downside of that is that it might become impossible to remove (if the upper screw comes undone before the lower one).

Another option is to make a completely custom screw. This would probably be the easiest option but I think it would be quite nice for the three screws to look the same. I've got a rotary broach so I could make a hex hole in the top of a home-made screw, but it would still look rather different to the other two. I could, of course, make all three screws.

Plan A, however, is to extend the screw I've got. I cut the threaded bit off and turned a 45° point on the end. I got a much larger (12.7 mm / 1/2") piece of 303 stainless steel and turned that to 45° but with a spot drilled centre mark (for the point turned on the end of the screw to go into). One got mounted in the lathe chuck; the other got mounted in the wood lathe chuck on a live chuck mount (i.e. one with bearings in so it can spin freely):

A bit of TIG welding later (with the lathe turning really slowly) and it looked like this:

The reason I used a much bigger diameter bar here (12.7 mm rather than 8 mm) is that I was fairly sure that it would distort a bit while welding. The idea was that the 12.7 mm section would be a bit wonky and would be non-concentric at the end farthest from the head. As long as it wasn't too bad, a bigger diameter allows that non-concentricity to be turned away.

This is what it looked like once it had cooled down:

I noticed that little blemish after taking the photo so did an extra quick weld to fill in the hole in case it went deep. Next up, I held it in the soft jaws on the original shank section and spot drilled and then centre drilled a pip in the end. As you can see from this photo, it was close to the centre but (as expected) not quite central:

I could then support the end with a tailstock centre and start bringing the diameter down, roughing it out with a carbide tool:

Surprisingly, the first pass (taking the diameter down 1 mm) was enough to get it running concentric, suggesting it hadn't distorted as much as I'd expected and I could have got away with 10 mm bar for the extension. After getting it down to about 8.5 mm, I swapped to a high-speed steel tool for the final passes:

Done:

Here it is next to an unmodified one:

It's much too long at the moment. I knew I needed the tailstock support (and hence the centre drilled hole in the end) and so I erred on the side of much too long so I could shorten it later.

This is where I did something I slightly regret: I went with the lazy option and just ran a die onto the end of the shaft with a die stock:

It worked and was quick, but the thread went a bit wonky. It would have been better to use my tailstock die holder (to keep the die concentric) or just thread it with the lathe directly but I was being lazy. Nevertheless, it did the job...

... and it does the job:

I may make a replacement at some point, but it'll do for now.

Next up is to make the front knob and then there will be loads and loads of card scraping and/or sanding to do to sort out all the wooden bits.

 

[Dr.Al]

I decided I couldn't live with the wonky thread on the screw so I made a new one with the thread single-point turned on the lathe. Here it is underneath the old one:

 

[Bouledogue]

Each time I read an installment of this build, I get the overwhelming and comforting feeling that "all is right with the world".

Please don't rush to finish the plane!