This Week in Wood » Hand Planes

Sharpening – Hand Planes

glennth — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:54:02 +0000

I try to sharpen frequently so that I don’t have a big couple of days getting everything sharp but sometimes it’s just time to clean house. I decided after 2 shop projects and a bunch of guitar building that it was time to do that house cleaning.

First, I started with my hand planes. I have a 3 step process though not all steps are necessary every time.

First step, lapping the sole of the plane and the back of the plane blade. This step is not needed very often and sometimes it’s just an abbreviated step because I’m just cleaning off some surface stain or surface rust (I am in the Pacific Northwest so it’s wet here all the time so rust just happens).

My lapping process includes a flat surface (I use a slap of machinist grade granite) and sandpaper. I start with 60 grit and work up to 1500 or 2000 grit. If I’m just cleaning up a stain or rust, I may just start with 800 or 1000 grit which only takes a few minutes. I fight the stains and rust but using a lot of oil on the bare metal. It works some.

The results of lapping through the 1500 or 2000 grit should give a pretty good mirror finish which is nothing more than a sign that the sole or back is flat and smooth.

You can see the reflection of the paint brushes hanging above my work bench in the back of this nicely lapped hand plane blade.

My second step is to grind the primary bevel on the plane blade. I use a Tormek which has a lot of jigs for a lot of blades. For square blades, there is a square jig and for cambered blades, there is a jig from Jet Tools that works well.

In this shot, you can see the Jet cambering jig. Before I set up the blade in the jig though, I have to determine the camber and I have some templates for that.

I came up with these 6 templates based on my normal hand plane usage and a bunch of research from the internet (wow, there is a lot of info on exactly what the camber or radius should be based on bed angle, desired shaving thickness and blade width). In the case of the smoothing planes that I showed in the first picture, I use a 120″ or 150″ radius camber which is nearly flat but just a little tapered at the edges.

Kathy happened to come in at the grinding step and took a couple of action shots.

The final step of the 3 step process is one I do anytime that I’m sharpening and that is refreshing (or if I have grinded, creating) the micro bevel. For a square blade it is an easy task. The grinding gives the primary bevel a hallow which allows you to get a well defined flat. Once you determine this flat, you lift off of that flat so that you can sharpen the smallest micro bevel. I target 1/32″ or there a bouts for mine. For a cambered blade, you need to do the same but then rock as you pull the blade across the stone from one corner to the other. I use a magnifying lens to check my progress OFTEN.

I use Norton water stones. I’m happy with them though I may try Shaptons when these are exhausted.

When all this is done (or the steps that I need to do), I then reassemble the hand plane and test it out. I spray oil on the hand planes after each use again to fight staining and rust. As of this writing, I’ve got a nice arsenal of well tuned hand planes.

P.S. I’m still struggling with specialty blades (skews, funny shaped rabbit blades, and such). As of this point, I don’t grind these blades but just use the water stones. It’s a little more hand work but the set up on the grinder would probably take a bunch of time too.

Next I am moving to sharpening some chisels. After that, I always offer Kathy to sharpen some knives and she sometimes volunteers me to sharpen her mom’s knives too. In another day or two, we will have only sharp tools in our house.

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Sharpening – Hand Planes

Doors almost done

glennth — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:45:10 +0000

Yesterday was a good day. I got to make lots of shavings. I always tell my wife when I’ve had a good day that “I got to cut wood”. Of course it sounds a bit juvenile but the fun I’m having doing woodworking lately is very kid like so I’m ok with that.

I started by making rabbits in the panels so they would fit into the grooves for the rails and stiles. The groove was 3/8″ and I wanted a snug but free sliding fit. Some edges I got that exactly but others were a bit looser. I sometimes get too excited in making shavings and forget to check the fit. When I was learning how to solder electrical items, I always had the same issue because I thought it was amazing to melt solder and so I would have big gobs of solder on my joints. I’ve gotten better at soldering so I hope I can get better at fitting.

The results at least looked nice.

I spent so much time the day before ensuring very square panels that the dry fit was hardly any effort at all.

With my skewed rabbit plane, I have a bit of a problem once in a while where the depth stop or the fence slide from it’s position. I know exactly why. I’m too strong for my own good and apply too much pressure and force the fence/stop to slide. This happened on the back of the first door. It’s not visible and I fixed the plane and my technique for the second door.

Now we are in the home stretch. Next step is to begin attaching the doors to the cabinet.

Panel for doors

glennth — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:09:53 +0000

After my last post, I had a nice fail and didn’t correctly determine the length of the rails for the doors. The old adage of measure twice and mark once only works if you have decided the length of a particular item correctly. For this project, I’m not using a plan so my determination was flat out wrong.

It took me a few days to get the rails fixed up and ready for the panel.

Next I needed to size the panels from my glue ups. Sizing was simply but keeping everything square was more challenging and requires a great deal of patience.

My next step will be to size the outer edges of the panels for the groove inside the rail and stiles. I’m going to keep it simple and not do any details on the panel or rail and stiles since this is a shop cabinet. Also, I don’t have any moulding planes so I’ll leave details for the next set of doors I need to make.

As an aside, i got some new shoes today and my wife wondered if I took a picture of them.

This picture is for Kathy!

Tongue and Groove for Doors

glennth — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:02:49 +0000

School is well under way for my 2 boys (Xander -12 and Mitchell -10). The beginning of the school year plays havoc with the entire families schedules and that of course means my shop time. I have gotten minutes in my shop since it began about 2 weeks ago. Today, I was able to resume a bit of work on the doors.

I’ve decided to go with a tongue and groove joint between the stiles and rails. You may have read a few posts ago when I was cutting the groove for the door panel and the tongues of the rails. In beginning this process I thought the most obvious tool would be my skewed rabbit plane and yes this is probably the main tool for the job but the thing that surprised me was that I would need a few others. I also used a rabbit block plane, a chisel and a side rabbit plane.

Working across the grain didn’t give the best cut but I was able to clean it up nicely with these other tools.

The result was a nice tight fit that I’m very happy with.

Now I have to cut the remaining rails and get the same fit. This job is much more satisfying than the groove.

New Old Tool

glennth — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:33:48 +0000

I’ve been married to my wonderful wife for 28 years. There are many wonderful things she does but one of the things she does that I get most excited about is her hair dressing appointments. Over the last few months, her hair dresser (Henry Clark) has been cleaning out old things and when he runs into an old tool, he immediately thinks of Kathy because she has mentioned my hobby of woodworking.

My first item from Henry was an old brace. I’m not really a tool collector so my excitement isn’t really that it’s an old tool but more about it’s a brace I can use. It needed to be cleaned up a bit but was in great shape and works great.

In the picture you can see my new brace which has plastic handles while the older brace has a nice patina and some nice wood handles (no splits or cracks).

Kathy had another appointment with Henry and when she came home she had a nice surprise for me.

Henry’s dad apparently did some boat building and Henry thinks this is a hand plane used during boat building. In looking at the tool, I’m a bit suspicious and think it’s actually a wooden circle plane that has been repurposed. The bottom of the plane has a nice flat base with a square blade. The bottom looks fresher than the rest of the plane which makes me suspicious about the repurposing. In reading about older wooden planes, I was encouraged by the fact the wedge (the small wooden wedge which “wedges” the plane blade to a particular depth) was in great shape and didn’t need to be re-made.

In this shot across it’s width, you can see that the plane base may have had a radius to it but may have since been flattened.

Now here is a shot of the profile and you can see a similar story where it appears that this plane may have been radiused like a circle plane and later flattened.

Of course, I could be totally wrong because I am in no way a tool detective. At this point, it is now a functional but unusual rabbit plane.

Next is to clean up and sharpen the blade and flatten the base. I’m hopeful this will become a functional plane for my tool chest.

Groovin’

glennth — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:06:46 +0000

I’ve been gone for a bit. My oldest son, Xander, just started at a new school and part of the first week is a 3 day sleepover camp which I volunteered as a chaperone. It was a lot of fun and all the kids had a blast (of course, I got bit by so many bugs that my legs look like I have the measles).

Now it’s time to get movin’ on the doors on my Wall Hanging Tool Chest.

I’ve already rough sized the rail and stiles for the door and glued up the panels. The next step is to place a groove in the rail and stiles.

You can see that I’m using a groove plane (Lee Valley/Veritas). The groove is roughly centered on the 3/4″ board though it’s a smidge closer to the front face of each board.

The depth of the groove is 3/8″ which is also the width.

This was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be but now it’s done. Next step is to size the boards to final dimensions and make the matching tongues on the rails and the panels.

Rail and Stiles

glennth — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:46:37 +0000

The panel glue up went well. Now it’s on to the Rails and Stiles for the door.

As you can see, this is a very common door construction. Some details you can’t tell from that image include a groove on the interior of both the Stiles and the Rails. I have seen 2 common options for joining the rail to the stile. One way, the simplest, is to simply create a small tenon that matches the groove in the edge of the stile. Another way is to create a longer tenon which is matches a deeper mortise that is actually inside the groove on the stile. I haven’t decided which will be the way to go for me. The first is probably not as strong but if the door isn’t large or holding up items (common to a wall hanging tool chest), then strength isn’t the issue. I plan to have the door not holding any tools so the only strength needed is for the door to hold together while hanging. The size is 30″ H x 18″ W.

I’ve cut the Rail and Stiles from 1×3 pine stock. I’ve squared one of the edges so that I can dial in the precise lengths of each board.

After I dial in the precise lengths, I will create the grooves and decided on a shallow or deeper tenon on the Rails.

Basic Glue up

glennth — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 23:46:35 +0000

A basic glue up is a skill every woodworker needs to master.

The first step is to get the rough material to the rough size. For hand tool users, this means hand crosscuts and hand ripping. For power tool users, this means table saw work.

The next step is to joint the edges to be joined. For power tool users, they will often need to do all the thicknessing work before jointing using a power planer followed by jointing with a jointer. For hand tool users, I’ve found that thicknessing can be done after the jointing (though note: you will have to flatten the board so you really aren’t avoiding any work).

For me, jointing takes 3 different planes. Using hand tools, I’ve gone with the jointing method where you place the 2 boards to be joined together and when they are jointed, you open the two boards like a book and glue them together. The first plane (above), is a #5 Jack which is tuned for roughing. I have a scrub but have found that the wider base on the jack gives batter coverage on 2 boards being jointed together. The purpose is to quickly clean up the edges and get them flush. The second plane is a #7 Jointer which is tuned for a medium cut. The purpose for this plane is to straighten the length of the 2 boards. The last is a #4 Smoother. The main purpose of this plane is to create a small spring joint (making the middle of the board a smidge, technical term, lower than straight allowing lighter clamping pressure on the edges and the main clamping pressure in the middle).

I’ve also found that biscuits, dowels, splines and other edge jointing methods are not needed for most applications. In fact they complicate the glue up process and at least for me, ensure a less than great joint.

I apply glue to the 2 edges and rub them together and then clamp. I do make sure not to over tighten the clamps and make sure I alternate the sides where I apply the clamps.

These will be panels floating inside a mortise and tenon frame for the doors on my Wall Hanging Tool Chest.

Now I have 2 panels ready for the next steps.

Wall Hanging Tool Chest – The Back

glennth — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:45:44 +0000

Yesterday, I started on the back.

First step was to rough size the pieces for the back (it wasn’t that rough). I cut to length and ripped to width the 4 pieces I was going to use for the back, all with hand saws. I followed this with squaring and straightening the edges and ends that I just cut. I must be getting pretty good with the hand saws cause this step is getting shorter and shorter every time I do it.

I decided to again do a half lap joint between each board so I began on the dado on the sides. I used a skew plow plane which has a depth stop and and edge guide. This makes quick work of the dado. My first time with this tool had me pressing down and against the piece and I found that my pressure was actually moving the fences which are just pressure clamped. I learned from this that light pressure to guide the plane works great and you get fabulous results every time.

The next step was to cut the dado’s on the end which will fit into the dado’s for the top and bottom back rails where the back gets attached.

For this cut, I needed to adjust the side fence for a wider cut. To fix the first board and adjust it, I used a rabbit plane. After a little fine tuning on the boards, they all fit well.

On the saw till, Iliked the v-groove in between the boards so I decided to do it again. I used a simple block plane to accomplish this.

I’ll finish the work tomorrow and show the results. Next step is the hanging cleats and the shelves.

Guitar 4′s Neck

glennth — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:43:37 +0000

I’ve been sick for a few days so haven’t been to the shop. No worries though, it was just a cold.

Today, I started working on Guitar 4′s neck. Starting a neck, you start with a simple blank and then trim off a small piece on one end at about a 15 degree angle. You then take that piece and smooth the surface where you cut it, ensuring flat, square surface with no round over. The piece is then glued on back to the blank except kind of backwards, creating and angled piece that sort of resembles a hockey stick.

I’ve found that the cutting and squaring is pretty simple though I tend to use more of the board that I ought to. The problem in making up the initial part of the neck for me, is the glue up of this angled back piece. The piece wants to slip and slide around and takes a lot of effort to keep it lined up.

Once this is glued up, you then cut off pieces from the other end and glue them to the bottom of the neck for the heel block. This heel block is where the tenon that attatches the neck to the guitar body will be created.

Over the next week, I will show more pictures including the shaping of the neck.

Miter Plane

glennth — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 21:53:27 +0000

I have a shooting board for shooting cross cuts. I still need to make a shooting board for shooting long grain rip cuts.

To this point, I have used either my jointer plane or my jack plane to do the shooting. This has worked find except for the fact that I have to adjust both to cut a finer cut that I generally leave them for their normal work load. I’ve been jonesing for a miter plane to solve this problem.

In addition, a miter plane also is designed specifically for the task of shooting a board so has a proper hand hold. I’ve done a bunch of shooting in one day and the awkward grip on a jointer or jack plane can give the weirdest blisters.

Here is a picture of my Lie-Nielsen miter plane. As you can see the design has a very box shape with exact 90 degree sides to bottom giving a very stable platform for running along the shooting board for precise cuts.

In the picture below you can see the nice grip for holding the miter plane against the edge of the shooting board. I really look forward to my next application of this and my shooting board.

New Year – Back to Work

glennth — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:35:40 +0000

After awhile off from all projects to enjoy Christmas time with my family, it’s time to get back to work.

First, I finished glueing up guitar 4′s back on. Now you can see all guitars in progress. On the right, is guitar body 2 which is a cutaway and has some great figure to the maple. The one in the middle is guitar body 3 and is a standard orchestra model guitar. The one on the left is guitar body 4 and is another cutaway.

Now the one issue I’ve had with all these guitars is keeping the center line on the back aligned with the center line on the sides. I believe that the binding will hide all the misallignment issues. On the bottom right, is guitar body 2 where the alignment is off the most and in fact I had to add some ebony to make it less obvious (though it does look cool. The bottom left is guitar body 3 and is just a smidge off while the top center is guitar body 3 is the closest of the 3. I’m clearly getting better but have a while to go where I will nail this element.

The above was easy to show an analyze since all I had to do was take guitar body 4 out of the go-bar deck. The real work was creating the braces for the 3 tops. I’ve used spruce for these braces (which is the same as I’ve used for the backs). I cut a block of spruce into the rough dimensions for each kind of brace and them I shape them using hand planes and sand paper. It’s a messy, messy process making lots of shavings and saw dust (yes, I was wearing my mask). I had to make a lot of them too which made it seem to drag on for quite a while. Anyway, I’m done now and have enough braces for the 3 tops.

Next time, I will start on one of the tops.

Sides are done

glennth — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:08:38 +0000

The sides are done for both body 3 and body 4 guitars.

You can see body 3 which is the orchestra sized body with no cut away and body 4 which is also an orchestra sized body but with a cutaway.

The kerfing installed nicely and I did have more glue squeeze out (meaning I used too much) so clean up took a bit longer but in the end the sides on both bodies are nice and clean. I still need to do some sanding before I can totally close up the bodies.

As a quick aside, I’ve talked about radiusing the sides so I wanted to show a picture of this process.

You can see on the bench a radius disk. I am using the clamps to hold the disk from spinning or moving. The disk is round but the radius part is where the center of the round disk is hollowed out enough to match a certain radius. Imagine a circle that is perpendicular to the disk with a radius of 15 feet (used for the back of the sides – where the back will attach) or 30 feet (used for the top of the sides – where the top will attach). I got these disks from LMII but you could make them using a router and a jig.

To make the angle of the heel and neck block along with the kerfing attached to the sides match the radius of the appropriate disk, I rough in the size using a spokeshave, hand plane, or chisel until the gaps between the side and the disk are minimal. Then I move the sides (while in the form so I don’t get much distortion) back and forth until I get no gaps. I also have to measure the sides from time to time so that the side on the left is about the same thickness to the equivalent point on the side on the right.

I hope that clears up that process.

Top and Back

glennth — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:08:44 +0000

In recovering from my issues with this guitar build, I ordered some additional wood. In my first attempt, I let LMII service the top and back which meant that they joined the back and side book matched pieces together and did thickness the pieces. This time around, I wanted to do that work myself.

It went well. The top is simple in that there is no center strip. You simply plane the edges to be joined flat and then glue the book matched pieces together. For the back, you still need to plane the edges flat but there is also a thin decorative strip that you must also plane flat on the edges where it will be glued to the book matched edges. I needed to make 2 backs. The first went great while the 2nd one didn’t and I had to cut it apart and do it again which went great. After the glue up, I needed to sand down to the proper thickness. This took longer than I expected but worked out great for the front and first back (the 2nd one is glueing up over night).

The next steps will be to cut the pieces to rough size (about 3/4″ to 1″ or so larger than the form). After that, it will be time to make the bracing and glue these in place.

The one on the left is the back and is european maple which has some nice grain patterns to it. The center strip on the back is bloodwood which has a nice bright reddish orange color to it. The one on the right is the top and is spruce – a very typical wood for the sound board in guitars. This one has very simple and even grain.

Top Glue Up and …

glennth — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:58:14 +0000

Today, I received some more wood for my guitar project. I think it has actually turned into 2 guitars. As you may remember, I had damaged the headstock on my first neck so I ordered another but also tried to fix the original neck and headstock. The new neck is great but the repair actually turned out pretty well. While I don’t think I would want to sell a guitar with some repair work showing, it still allows me to practice this skill set.

When I created the problem with my current body, I decided to get some back up wood for another body. This allows me to build 2 guitars and continue to try improving my skills. If guitar building is like woodworking, then half the skill and talent comes from knowing how to tack problems and still get a great result so I’m well on my way. The current body’s repair (removing the back and putting it back on with a form around the sides giving a true and square result) has turned out well though there is still one issue with it. Where I used the heat gun with too much enthusiasm, I burned the wood and I’m worried about sanding the sides too thin to get the burn marks to disappear. I’ll still work with it and see how it goes.

I did receive additional topand back woods. This time I decided I was ready to try to glue up and thickness my own top and bottom. The first step is to create a tight and flush joint between the book matched pair. I started with a top since I’m not going to put a center piece in the top but will on the back. I then place glue on the joint and place it in my plate joining jig. Tomorrow I’ll get to see the results.

I did also get new sides but there was some issues with it. I got the wood from LMII and am very impressed at how responisive and quick they are to help me. I suspect having a successful business is just like woodworking and the most important part of the business is how they deal with issues. LMII earns a grade of A+ from me.