Thread: Fallen off the wagon again - onto a box mitre plane

Originally Posted by taz01

.... May I ask, how many miniatures does it take to amount to a full size plane? ...

Er, um, hmmm - good question, Adam.

It must be at least one less than the number I've made so far, 'cos I still have one more planned. This one is a bit of a departure from the mini infills, it's a woodie, though it did need a bit of intricate metalwork. I started it more than a year ago already, but it got put aside because of more pressing commitments & I haven't got back to it yet. So this is just a teaser, I'll try & do a WIP when I do re-start.

Perhaps it has something to do with age & a few marbles going AWOL, but I can understand how Bill Carter got carried away with his mini mitre planes, it's a fun challenge to work at a small scale (& it does keep the materials cost down!). Not that I plan to follow in Bill's footsteps, some new silly idea will come along soon & I will stop long before the thousand-plus Bill has churned out. At least I had better - I'm getting some pointed questions from LOML, lately...

Cheers,

Just a quick comment on my new mitre planes now I've used them quite a bit for real work. I like the larger one a lot, hard to say exactly why, it's really nothing more than a block plane-sized low-angle job, but it just feels "right" when I'm using it two-handed for levelling bumps or inserts and the stainless steel sole gives it a good 'slipperiness'.
4 Shavings.jpg

It might end up pushing my lovely little "English thumb plane" out of favour a teeny bit, but I don't think anything could totally displace it for one-handed jobs:
Working.jpg

It confirms my belief that it's extremely difficult to say objectively what makes one plane "better" to use than any other, or advise others an what they should have - it's just personal preference & isn't even consistent for me. Both of these planes are similar in size & function:
Size cf.jpg Size.jpg

..but they each have their own 'feel' that noticeably suits some particular jobs better. It's not that great a difference that I couldn't manage with one of them & not the other, but I have the room for them in the cupboard, so I think I'll just continue to enjoy them both, however profligate that may be...

And I've fallen in love with the miniature - it's the bees' knees for little jobs with the long toe which makes it easier to register on small surfaces. It definitely keeps the little niche I found for it & I think it will become my favourite go-to plane for tiny stuff.

working b.jpg

Very happy...

I'll put this here for completeness, it's just an alternative way to make the 'box' for a box mitre plane.

This plane happened because I was sorting through my spare metal pile & came across a sole which I'd half-completed & abandoned during covid. It is some of the stainless steel Bushmiler gave me a few years ago, which is murder on saw teeth. I'd given up on it a the time for a few reasons, one of which being that I'd decided the bed angle I put on it (15*) was not going to work in the body I was making & I would have had to chop a lot out of the back to get the blade to fit.

As it happened, I picked up a length of 3.2mm x 50mm hard brass next & the idea flashed into my head that I could use these bits to make a small mitre plane with square ends rather than the traditional curved back. Early box mitres had square ends & one lesser-known maker made all of his square. In any case,I would not try making a traditional bent-side from hard (C385) brass because you have to fit the dovetails in a way that involves a lot of peening, which the hard brass won't tolerate. But if you fit separate sides, you can cut the D/Ts to a close fit that requires little peening of the brass.

As soon as I started, I was reminded how tough this SS is to cut! I have no idea what alloy it is, but it's much harder on saws & files than any other SS I've used. I much prefer sawing out the sockets close to the scribe-lines, but even a decent quality jewellers saw blade only goes about 8mm in this stuff, gradually slowing down until it stops cutting altogether. So I compromised by using the "filleting" technique which leaves a more ragged surface & more filing to level the socket (& destroyed a brand new hacksaw blade by the time I'd done both sides!): 1 cutting pins.jpg

After much filing, I had the sides fitting nicely (or so I thought): 3 both sides on.jpg

Despite its ability to destroy teeth, the SS peens ok, albeit very slowly, but it doesn't crack or flake, so that part went well enough, except the T&G joint in the sole opened up a bit on one side, for reasons I don't understand (I can only think I had a brain-fade & hammered the wrong sides of the pins to start with, so that the two halves of the sole were pushed apart a bit instead of forced harder together ). The gap is the most noticeable on any split-sole plane I've made so far, but the thing is solid & rigid so it is just a cosmetic flaw.

The front was closed by a cross-piece dovetailed to the sides, which is traditional. I could do this because I had a small piece of 4mm H62 Chinese brass, which is more like 'cartridge' brass & peens very nicely, so I could do most of the peening on that rather than the sides: 4 front piece.jpg

To fill the back in, I used a piece of 6mm hard brass, tacked it to the sides with solder, then pinned: 8 back pinned.jpg

The front bun is a nice scrap of figured gidgee, and the infill for the blade bed is some European beech salvaged from an old, broken plane body. I've been using beech for this job for the last few planes because it's a safer wood to have against steel than some of our high-tannin hardwoods. 9 woodwork.jpg

I would have liked to fit a traditional wooden wedge to this plane, but the low sides make that impossible, there is not enough height in the sides to fit a crossbar that would accept a wedge of a practical thickness. So I dug out the first lever cap I'd made from scratch. I'd already had a second go at it to make it look a bit more 'professional', but it was too short to do much with it so I'd removed it from the plane & dumped it in the "might come in handy sumday" box of bits & scraps (where the other bits for this build came from): 10 LC a.jpg

But this plane called for a short stubby LC, and with a bit more tidying up, my ugly-duckling has at last found a niche for itself: 11 LC b.jpg

The sole came out with a bit more of a dish than usual - there's always a bit of a dip around the join due to the peening, but this one is probably a thou or more, which may not sound like much, but requires an awful lot of lapping to remove. As you can see there was still a long ways to go at this point: 15 lapping sole.jpg

I still have some lapping to do, but ran out of enthusiasm, temporarily, and decided to sharpen the blade & give it a whirl. To my surprise, it made some respectable shavings: 16 shavings.jpg

So I'm encouraged to go on & finish the lapping.

This was a useful exercise for me & demonstrates another way to make a box mitre body without having the bother of bending sides and the more difficult dovetailing that brings....

Cheers,

Ian

Extremely satisfactory.



Luckily, I haven't got the time for the moment as I am encouraged to have a go!

Regards
Paul

Well Paul, when you do get the time, this style might be the one to start with, it's pretty straightforward, all square lines, only a simple front bun to fuss over (the infill is out of sight so if you don't get it perfect no-one is going to see it). The front & back cross-pieces can both be pinned, there is no compelling reason to dovetail either in place. In fact you probably don't need to close the front & back, Norris didn't with their A11, it was basically just a channel, with the sides pinned to front & back infill

The most difficult part is forming the split sole, I still haven't figured out how to set out the mouth when re-joining the toe & heel sections to get the mouth exactly as I want it. Filing the bed a degree above or below the angle you are ostensibly working to can lift or lower the tip of the blade enough to make an appreciable difference to the mouth gap. My cautious approach has been to make the mouth too fine & open it after the body is assembled, but the gap you have to work in is ridiculously small and only a sliver of a ground-down file will fit, so it's very slow going to remove even 0.1mm!

I'm getting closer, 2 out of the last 4 have turned out as close as I'm ever likely to get & neither needed any "adjustment" after lapping the sole. This one ended up just a bit wider than I wanted, but within the 'tolerable' range. I'm hopeful that when I get it fully lapped it'll be quite a good little plane...

Cheers

P.S. I'd make the sides a bit taller if I were doing another, both for aesthetics & so I could fit a bridge for a wooden wedge/cap instead of a lever cap. The lever cap is not too hard on the hands, but I did notice it during a long lapping session!

Hi Ian. More inspiration for us all. As mentioned somewhere previously, I am getting all my bits ready to do something similar. I have even bought a piece of New Guinea Rosewood for the infill. But your comment regarding tannins has me wondering if this will be a good choice. I also watched Bill Carter bending his sides around a form in his vise and thought that doesn't look too hard. I think your advice to Paul about boxed sides is good for me too .

Hi MA, my comments about choosing the wood for the blade bed come from an abundance of caution. I had no worries about using different woods on this one, apparently it's not uncommon to find different woods on old mitre planes, possibly through later replacements, but in some cases at least, it appears they were like that from the start. The blade bed isn't visible except when the blade is out, so it it makes sense to me to choose a wood that you know is relatively safe (I don't know what NG rosewood is like for potential corrosion, but it should be possible to find out?). Of course it's different if you are doing a handled infill where you obviously want front & back infill to match. I've made a few with she-oak infill & it's not a particularly kind wood to steel, but I sealed the beds & apply a bit of paste wax now & then & so far haven't had any serious issues. I was a bit hesitant to wax beds at first thinking it might promote slipping of the blade in use, but it doesn't seem to cause any problems. I'd still avoid most of our eucalypts or any wood you know does a number on plain nails.

Bending the sides to make a curved rear end is relatively easy (as long as you choose a sensible material thickness!). The tricky part is ensuring they end up perfectly symmetrical if you want to fit a bridge 'morticed' through the sides, 'cos you cut the mortises before bending. In his video series on building a mitre, Bill mentions this & mutters something about it being awfully hard to fix if they don't end up symmetrical. He doesn't actually show how you might do that, though he does show a segment beating the crap out of a monstrously thick set of sides to adjust the curve, so presumably that's what you'd do. Fitting a lever-cap on a nice, square body is easier, by comparison, & creates less angst, though I'm always a bit nervous because it's the very last step & you certainly don't want a stuff-up at this stage!

If you go the curved side route it's really important to use a brass alloy that is malleable, I can't stress that enough. Because you 'drop' the sides through the pin sockets of the sole from the top, you can't pre-form the dovetails to the same extent as when fitting separate sides, so it requires more peening on both pins & tails to create the dovetails. The dovetails don't have to have much slope, just a couple of degrees will hold more than adequately, so I don't aim for anything more than about 1:9. In fact some early mitres have straight pins & tails and are held by the metal being squashed together. They've lasted a couple of hundred years so must be reasonably sound.

Making a 'square' box with separate sides like the one above makes it much easier as far as fitting the sides goes, and as I said, you can get away with using a harder brass because if the fit is close, you do nearly all the peening on the more malleable sole material. Continuous, curved sides do look spiffy, and it was something I'd long wanted to try myself, but I reckon the square-backed version doesn't look too shabby.

The most challenging part of building one of these planes, imo, is making the mouth & blade-bed in the sole piece. It's more tedious & exacting than 'difficult', but get that right & you are reasonably assured of a good working plane, even if there's the odd gap or blemish in your dovetailing. While looks are important, of course, the most important this is to end up with a decent user, whatever it looks like. I haven't had a chance to get back to mine & finish the lapping yet, but it's shaping-up & I'm hopeful it's going to be a nice little plane when done.....

Ian

Nice little plane project Ian. It must be tiny in the hand ?

What do you do the lapping on ? A stone or diamond plate ?
I wonder if a ( edit . Big ) belt sander or linisher would work for that?

That's the trouble with cropped photos, you get no size reference. It's small, but not tiny Rob, about block-plane size:

Scale.jpg

Much more of a handful than the mini I made a while ago:

In hand.jpg mini in hand 2.jpg

Judging by its predecessors (which have about 10-15mm longer soles and the same blade-width), it should be quite comfy to use for the time such planes are typically used. The mini is surprisingly comfortable to use too, despite its size - the protruding blade makes a handy 'handle'. It is rapidly becoming my go-to for miniature work and even not-so-miniature work...

Cheers,
Ian

PS, forgot to answer your question re lapping. I start with a zircon sanding belt, opened & stretched tight across the tablesaw top, usually 120 grit, occasionally 80 if it's a really rough bit of steel. Once the sole is flat, I go through a few grades of ordinary stearated paper stretched across an offcut of melamine-coated benchtop. The paper doesn't last nearly as long as the zircon belts but it's enough to clean up the scratches quite easily (& costs far less!). I stop at 240, which leaves a good surface - the scratches from use are more noticeable than the paper leaves.

I know this will not get the sole flat to moon-rocket tolerances, but it gets them good enough they can take 1 thou shavings consistently & that's good enough for me..

You could certainly speed up the initial levelling if you had a good linisher, but I think I'd still do the last bit manually. Whatever you do, switch the plane end for end frequently so that any biases should cancel out.

Adding to my previous post:

One of my aims with making metal planes has been to see how well it can be done in a backyard shed with the simplest of hand-tools, so I have never properly investigated using power tools to speed things up (& possibly improve accuracy). I do use my little lathe to make thumbscrews, but even that isn't essential & I could make them without a metal lathe if I had to. But I confess there have been many, many times when filing down the peened pins & tails, or lapping soles flat that I've thought "This is the very last time I'm going to do this, if I ever make another plane I'm going to buy a milling machine & a good linisher first!" So I say, if you have suitable machinery & know how to use it, then by all means take as much of the grunt work out of it as you can. I'm only saying you don't have to have a machine-shop to build a good plane or two, but you'd be silly not to take advantage of machines if you have them.

With advancing decrepitude, I sometimes find sawing out the pieces gets my shoulders aching and I think a good metal-cutting scrollsaw would be nice too. But after a day or two, the shoulders feel ok, I've forgotten the pain, & am ready to be seduced by curiosity into considering another project that grabs my interest (though it would take a very big rush of blood to my head to make me think of tackling another panel plane!).

I would certainly invest in some suitable machinery if I wanted to make planes commercially (Karl Holtey used some heavy-duty milling machines for e.g.). But for us amateurs, the job doesn't have to be done in a day, it can be put aside any time, & done in short bursts because the more tedious parts take stamina rather than high expertise & in fact, if you are inexperienced, the peening & filing are probably best done in short bursts because as your arm muscles fatigue your accuracy declines and you'll make more mishits or file-marks where you least want them. My first plane took years (literally) to complete, due mostly to my work/life imbalance at the time, but aslo because I was feeling my way blindly. However, I don't recommend anyone following that example if they can avoid it, with months between bursts of work you lose track of where you are & are more likely to do something in the wrong order (damhik!).


Cheers

Originally Posted by IanW

Adding to my previous post:

One of my aims with making metal planes has been to see how well it can be done in a backyard shed with the simplest of hand-tools, so I have never properly investigated using power tools to speed things up (& possibly improve accuracy). I do use my little lathe to make thumbscrews, but even that isn't essential & I could make them without a metal lathe if I had to. But I confess there have been many, many times when filing down the peened pins & tails, or lapping soles flat that I've thought "This is the very last time I'm going to do this, if I ever make another plane I'm going to buy a milling machine & a good linisher first!" So I say, if you have suitable machinery & know how to use it, then by all means take as much of the grunt work out of it as you can. I'm only saying you don't have to have a machine-shop to build a good plane or two, but you'd be silly not to take advantage of machines if you have them.

With advancing decrepitude, I sometimes find sawing out the pieces gets my shoulders aching and I think a good metal-cutting scrollsaw would be nice too. But after a day or two, the shoulders feel ok, I've forgotten the pain, & am ready to be seduced by curiosity into considering another project that grabs my interest (though it would take a very big rush of blood to my head to make me think of tackling another panel plane!).

I would certainly invest in some suitable machinery if I wanted to make planes commercially (Karl Holtey used some heavy-duty milling machines for e.g.). But for us amateurs, the job doesn't have to be done in a day, it can be put aside any time, & done in short bursts because the more tedious parts take stamina rather than high expertise & in fact, if you are inexperienced, the peening & filing are probably best done in short bursts because as your arm muscles fatigue your accuracy declines and you'll make more mishits or file-marks where you least want them. My first plane took years (literally) to complete, due mostly to my work/life imbalance at the time, but aslo because I was feeling my way blindly. However, I don't recommend anyone following that example if they can avoid it, with months between bursts of work you lose track of where you are & are more likely to do something in the wrong order (damhik!).


Cheers

Ian,

This is in my buck list of tools I’ve followed a few hobby metal workers on line, an for ruffing out, an getting rid of the bulk, it seems too do a great job, ye sure its not a commercial big shop bandsaw, but at a retail price around the $500 mark, not too damaging to the hip pocket.

I see it, has you have pointed out a saving in ibuprofen.

Cheers Matt.

To say I'm annoyed with myself would be a gross understatement....

I finally got round to finishing the sole & fettling the new mitre plane yesterday and discovered a stuff up - the blade bed is crooked! It's only a tiny bit 'down' on the left side (looking from the top), but as I've so often warned, with low-angle beds, the slightest inaccuracy gets magnified compared with a 45* bed. From the sole side, you can see the mouth gap forms a 'V', it's about 0.5mm or a little more wider at the top than the bottom:

b mouth.jpg

When I discovered this, I vaguely remember that I wasn't satisfied with the bed when I'd put it aside (close to 2 years ago), but had forgotten when I revived the project, and didn't check it, which is inexcusable - I'm also always telling others to double-check everything! There is no good way to correct this, any 'fix' I can think of would be either too difficult to do now the plane is assembled, or would make the mouth gap even larger, so all I can do is live with it.

The plane can still make good shavings, but with the blade sharpened square, it has to be slewed over to one side almost as far as it can go to get the cutting edge level with the sole:

a clean shavings.jpg

I thought I had got mouth-making on split soles sorted, but there's nothing like over-confidence to bring me down to earth!

The plane looks ok externally, and has a very low profile, which gives it a nice action so it's not a complete dud:

d.jpg

.... but the thought of that crooked & over-large-on-one-side mouth is a real spoiler...

So please remember, do as I say, don't do as I do....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

To say I'm annoyed with myself would be a gross understatement....

I finally got round to finishing the sole & fettling the new mitre plane yesterday and discovered a stuff up - the blade bed is crooked! It's only a tiny bit 'down' on the left side (looking from the top), but as I've so often warned, with low-angle beds, the slightest inaccuracy gets magnified compared with a 45* bed. From the sole side, you can see the mouth gap forms a 'V', it's about 0.5mm or a little more wider at the top than the bottom:

b mouth.jpg

When I discovered this, I vaguely remember that I wasn't satisfied with the bed when I'd put it aside (close to 2 years ago), but had forgotten when I revived the project, and didn't check it, which is inexcusable - I'm also always telling others to double-check everything! There is no good way to correct this, any 'fix' I can think of would be either too difficult to do now the plane is assembled, or would make the mouth gap even larger, so all I can do is live with it.

The plane can still make good shavings, but with the blade sharpened square, it has to be slewed over to one side almost as far as it can go to get the cutting edge level with the sole:

a clean shavings.jpg

I thought I had got mouth-making on split soles sorted, but there's nothing like over-confidence to bring me down to earth!

The plane looks ok externally, and has a very low profile, which gives it a nice action so it's not a complete dud:

d.jpg

.... but the thought of that crooked & over-large-on-one-side mouth is a real spoiler...

So please remember, do as I say, don't do as I do....

Cheers,

Ian,
Yep that sucks, you get too see the finish line, then flander, I have a drink at the Bench tonight for you.


Cheers Matt.

As I've said numerous times, curiosity is my downfall...

Although I've done close to 20 low-angle split-sole planes to date, I felt I had yet to master that split-sole business. The obvious answer would be to buy a good milling machine, but that's out of my league & too easy for someone with mild masochistic tendencies.

To get a fine mouth, the only hand-tool method available is to split the sole, form the blade bed, then re-join the toe & heel parts. There are two challenges, the first is getting a really neat joint that will be invisible (or close to it) after the body is peened & cleaned up. Typically, the parts are re-joined with a tongue & groove joint that registers them very firmly while the side dovetails are scribed & fitted. It's not as hard as you might imagine, but it does take a lot of care & attention. I think I have that bit reasonably well sorted.

What has eluded me to date is getting the mouth fine & straight consistently. The mouth has to be made close to perfect before assembly because you can't get a file in to enlarge it if too small & you can't fix an over-large mouth with a BU configuration other than shimming the whole bed (meh!). Anyway, I think I have figured it out at last.

I glue a guide-block on the sole piece to file the bed & leave it in place until I have made the T&G. I can then clamp both sole pieces together & test-fit a blade, filing the toe section very carefully until the blade can be extruded by the teeniest amount.

So I've made one more small mitre plane to test myself. I also wanted to see how well some Chinese 4mm stainless steel I bought through ebay would work. Straight answer, not well! Like most of the SS I've used, the stuff just kills saw blades & files. I also had a devil of a time peening it - I don't think it hardened any more than the previous bits I've used, but I was trying to make the dovetail angles more obvious by filing a wider bevel on the brass, which meant more peening than I'd needed on any of the previous mitre planes. The result is very solid, but I've got several pin-holes on one side where I didn't bang the steel down enough to completely fill the corners...

The plane is 115mm long (sole length) with sides ~20mm high of 2.5mm brass. It's about 10mm shorter than the smallest mitre Norris offered:
1 Midi size.jpg

Anyway, the mouth is the best I've managed so far- just the tiniest slit:
2 Mouth.jpg

It allows quite a thick shaving, these would be >3 thou, but I know such a fine mouth will be a choker with some woods:
3 Shavings.jpg

Set for a finer shaving, it has a sweet action, the bed is close to perfectly square, unlike my last disaster, so apart from the couple of pin-holes, I rate it as one of my best-ever efforts:
5 Done b.jpg 4 Done a.jpg

And here is the 'family' with the new plane in between the 175mm plane at the top & my tiny 85mm mini at the bottom:
6 Sizes cf.jpg

Although SS looks great when polished up, I strongly advise anyone doing their first mitre plane to avoid SS.it & go with mild steel or gauge-plate. Some alloys are fine, but 3 of the 4 lots I've now used for soles nearly drove me nuts when peening - it just does not move the way mild steek does!

Cheers,