Some photos of the finished plane. Big images are here.

For whatever reason (probably just to see if I could), I made a computer drawing of the plane. Boy, the complex curves were really difficult. Probably not, as they are just distorted circles and ellipses joined in funny ways. I do wish TurboCAD had ways to smooth arc & arc/line joins.

If you would like to check it out (and hopefully build one for yourself), you can download the TurboCAD drawing (30K) or a one page PDF (170K; it is the full size drawing over there -->).

Raney commented about my “squid” “concept”:

Maybe a wedged miter, with a grip for your back hand integrated into the wedge? Heck, maybe an enormous bulb and you could rechristen it 'the octopus'…
… [improved mitre planes are] totally uncomfortable to use.

I gotta say, he knows what he is talking about (I’ve never used one, I think Konrad Sauer coined the term “de-proved” mitre plane, my term would be “disproved”). Even though I made the cap screw domed, it really digs into my hand, it is hard to use one handed and the ergonomics just seem vile. What to do? I decided to add shroud to the cap screw, aka poop deck, aka fake wedge, aka palm rest. It seems pretty silly, and redundant, to be adding a wedge but it does work and is reasonably comfy. It is clamped to the iron by the cap screw. I faired it around the cap in an attempt to add a bit of pizzazz.

I was calling this plane “swayback” but I think I’ll change it to “humpty dumpty”.

Notice the paper shim under the iron; the infill dried out and the back shrank (about 0.012”) when using heat to cure the finish. Which doesn’t seem like much but it was enough to keep the end of iron from contacting the mouth block. Arg. After about a week, it has now regained about half that. Which makes me wonder what is going to happen this summer, even though my other wooden bedded mitre doesn’t have any seasonal problems. Not a plane to ship to AZ. I think a vertical rod (metal or long grain wood) in the thick part of the bed will be on future planes.
The final palm rest taking a test run and some prototypes carved from fir.

Here is [most of] my collection of small planes, two high angles bookending three low angles. The Vertas is probably the best designed and constructed but, for some reason, I don’t use it much (I’m guessing it too heavy for my tastes). So I’m making this plane as a general purpose block like plane. The Gordon palm smoother is a wonderful little plane, one handed or two, very useable, useful, and comfortable, my only gripe is I have a hard time adjusting it (I need a square hammer). It was interesting to me that the shapes are pretty similar, maybe there aren’t all that many shapes that work well.

With the plane set to take a not-very-thin shaving, the mouth is 0.006” (six thousandths of an inch, a sheet and a half of paper). Paradoxically, the deeper the cut, the smaller the mouth gets (since the bevel gets thicker as the blade is pushed into the mouth).

You can see that I’m not all that concerned with a polished sole. This was flattened on a medium India oil stone. I start out with PSA (sticky backed) sand paper on a flat surface but I’ve never gotten anything truly flat that way so I finish up with other methods (such as the oil stone, diamond plate or sand paper on a long stick (better control of material removal)).

Got all the pieces but it is in the “hurry up and wait” stage as I apply the finish and let it cure (lots of coats of oil/varnish). Then, finish lapping the sides and sole, open the mouth and do something with the cross pin (either leave it as a press fit or put screws at the ends).

I tried something new for tempering the blade: flux. Very hot steel and oxygen are a bad mix as the oxygen “robs” carbon from the steel and can leave the surfaces (like the cutting edge) weaker. This is why, sometimes, you need to sharpen a few times before the edge starts to hold up like it should. And, maybe, why the corners tend to crumble no matter many times you sharpen. The best cure is to use an inert gas filled furnace and quench so the steel never sees any oxygen. Way out of my price range however and I’m too cheap to send the blade(s) to a real heat treater. There is also a stainless steel “tool wrap” you can use (again, expensive). So I tried using brass brazing flux to cover the blade. As far as I can tell, it worked great – it didn’t interfere with the quench and the steel was clean (as in bright and shiny, no oxidization).

While waiting for the infill finish to dry, I decided to work on the cap screw. Steel, brass, turn as one piece … ? I thought I’d try something that should be quick and easy, just Loctite a cap screw into a brass cap. So I turned the head of a 5/16” cap screw to just over 7/16” (to get down to bare metal) and trimmed the head length to about 1/4”. Then I drilled a hole in the end of a brass rod and used a end mill (as a drill bit) to get a 7/16” flat bottomed hole. Then a test fit. Which didn’t want to come apart, I guess I don’t need Loctite. Pressed it home and called it good. It is good enough that I was able to machine the brass by holding the screw.

I think next time, I’ll just trim the head length and leave the diameter alone and bore the brass for an interference fit. The drill chuck isn’t all that rigid and the end mill wiggled a bit on entry.

I knurled around the corners (the knurl is rounded, not flat) by holding the knurling tool at various angles to the edges and to flatten out the ridges that created. A little work with a brass brush cleaned things up quite nicely. Lots easier than making a custom knurling tool.
The top is shaped so as not to dig into my palm, wish I could think of something more stylish.

Mondo wood shaping and some brass chamfering yielded this:As I sat back to admire my new master piece (and stretch my aching back), this thought occurred to me: “Boring!”. Hmmm, I might have a point, it is rather drab and plain (pardon the pun). As I pondered this over lunch, I decided “oh what the hell, it is just a prototype”, went out into the shop, scribbled on the sides, mounted it in the mill, removed some metal, then used files to remove still more metal, fixed up the chamfers and pondered once more. Then did the same thing to the back half. And voilà, the swaybacked mitre plane!
Well, it isn’t boring any more.

Time to start putting things together. The top of the sole is sanded, as are the insides of the sides (I really should have done the outsides too but got lazy and it kinda bit me). Then a light pein to lock things in position for soldering. Since the dovetails fit really well, I don’t have to move much metal at all, which means light hammer blows, which means I don’t need a buck, just an anvil and wood block to keep the plane on its side (I’m only going to pein the steel pins and I didn’t bother to do any of the “double dovetail” stuff you usually need to do to join infills, that’s why I “glue” with solder). As things fit so well, I suspect this peining would have worked fine in this case.

Here are two close-ups of the same area; on the left, I’ve peined the tips of the pins and you can sorta see how good the fit is. On the right, after soldering and clean up. You can see where the steel has moved the brass up. Scale: each pin and tail is about 3/8” and the sole is 1/8”.
Soldering keeps the front and rear edges of the side plates from flapping in the breeze, not likely a problem but good for peace of mind. My boo-boo: by not cleaning the outside of the sides, there was enough grunge that the solder didn’t flow as nicely as it should have, not a strength issue but you can’t see where the solder has flowed and you have to “help” it move to where it needs to go.

And finally, the shell has been assembled, cleaned up a little and is now ready for wood.

In case you are wondering why one side is pinker than than the other, it is because, when brass gets hot, some zinc boils off (bogus terminology there), leaving copper. In this case, it is a surface affect only.

Yeehaw! Progress. Made two buttons/gussets ends for the cap rod (only took two tries, oh well). Now have enough parts to do a test fit to see if things line up as expected. They do; the cap presses the iron against the mouth block.

Problem: How to cut the mouth for a bevel up plane with splitting the sole? For some reason, I have a mental block against splitting the sole, cutting the blade ramp, putting the sole back together and then cutting the dovetails (the traditional method). So, how to do it? The narrowest slot I can cut is 1/16” (how many ways can you say “watch that end mill break”?). There is not enough room to get tools in there after the sides are attached. A frog would be cantilevered a looong ways (ie a diving board). I can’t figure out how to make movable mouth (like block planes have) fit the aesthetic I’m going for. Arg!
Read more: Bill Carter on Cutting the Bevel for the Bottom of the Bed and The Tongue and Groove Joint (scroll down a ways).

Here is what I came up with. First, some math to see what kind of dimensions I’m dealing with. Well, I tried the math (several times) but it is a bit messy so I decided “proof by picture” would work better. What you see is a CAD drawing of the sole, blade and a slot. The leading edge of the slot is at the point where the blade is level with the bottom of the sole (ie a zero width mouth opening). Then I measured the perpendicular distance from the ramp to the top of the sole. This distance tells me how far into the sole to cut the ramp.

That looks sorta OK, even though I don’t like that much lip at the bottom [back] of the ramp. But how do you measure that distance? Ideally, I’d just stick it on my CNC mill and press the GO button. If I had a CNC mill. Got no DRO on the Z axis either and the depth reading is really crude (still not sure it would work anyway). I could index along the X axis if I had measured the mouth block (and had a DRO). Ouch my aching head! So I just used feeler gauges. Tedious (cut a tiny bit, move the end mill out of the way, measure, repeat) but worked pretty good. The photo shows the set up: the sole (with the mouth block brazed on) mounted in the mill vise at 25º, a 1/8” end mill and feeler gauges at the ready.

After the ramp was cut, I used a 1/16” (center cutting) end mill to cut the slot, aligned with the top front edge of the ramp cut. Surprisingly enough, the measurements were spot on and a blade (in this case, a chisel) on the ramp hits the front of the mouth just before it protrudes. Now I have to be careful and not remove too much when I flatten the sole. If I do manage to screw that up, my backup plan is to cut a “dado” across the sole and braze in a patch to close things up.

Thinking about another small mitre plane, this time high angle (55º). This one started with a vague idea of cross shaped lever cap, which, as I was drawing on a chunk of steel and cutting it, evolved into more of an anchor shape. That lead to a nautical influence to the plane body. I’d like to use this plane as a small smoother or as a block plane, I don’t know if the ergonomics will work. We’ll see how this one evolves.

Two miter planes, one bevel down and one bevel up. Both have a 35º cutting angle. Weight difference between the planes is a bit over half a pound (woodie is heavier). Blade widths are 1 3/4” and 1 1/2”. I don’t know how to compare them since I use them for different things, the metal one mostly as a low angle block plane and the woodie as a shooting board plane or with-the-grain smoother/jointer. And I don’t need to compare them, after all, you can’t have too many planes, right?

The plane worked pretty good on thin stuff but on thicker stuff (3/4+), there was a LOT of chatter (if you look at the shavings in the previous post, the short & narrow ones are where the blade dug in and popped back out generating the narrow shaving and a divot). This was caused by two things: The Sargent blade(s) I was attempting to use did not have a uniform thickness and the bed was not flat. The blades were a bit cupped and I don’t think the wedge was able to force them flat so the middle had room to dive before it hit the bed. A Lee Valley blade took care of that. The bed had a cup of about two thousandths (of an inch, half a sheet of paper, I used a feeler gauge to determine this) in the middle, again allowing the middle of the blade to dive. I used 220 grit paper to remove that, being very careful not to change the bed angle (which would adversely the wedge). I used the [entire] blade to press the paper against the bed and then withdrew them both. The thicker blade caused the mouth to close to about eight thousandths. That was good enough to get rid of the chatter on a 1 1/8” thick piece of walnut.

These shavings are about 0.002” – 0.004”, which is way too thick for human power on a board this thick. I had to use both hands to muscle these cuts. Looks like some more fine tuning is in order. Or maybe a new plane with a skewed blade.

OK, glued the cheek on with a bazillion clamps, cleaned things up and did some test runs. It works. Here, you can see it it in its native habitat (a shooting board) surrounded by lots of end grain shavings (mostly from that red oak board in the background).
Boy, those ramps seem like an eyesore.

 
Here are some close ups. The end grain shavings, the clean cut on the red oak board and the plane mouth (the cutting edge is to the right). The mouth isn’t nearly as tight as it might look as I used a Japanese style opening, where the top of the mouth is parallel to the top of the iron for the last little bit (one benefit is the sole can be trued a few times before the mouth starts to open. A drawback is it effectively makes the mouth larger than the actual opening). The opening is about 15 thousands of an inch. An interesting side note is that many Japanese planes are bedded around 38º, bevel down, so the cutting action is similar to this plane.
On an another note, the ergonomics of using this plane like a bench plane really suck but it does work good when planeing with the grain. Also, a knob that fits between the thumb/first finger web would probably be a nice addition.

Presto chango, part II. Pretending to use the plane, I noticed that there wasn’t much room for my fingers and a pin in the throat, especially the big wooden pin I was thinking I wanted to use. So I decided to use ramps instead, to hold the wedge. Not a particularly good idea in retrospect, they were a real pain in the butt to install and I wouldn’t be surprised if they fail. They do work really well however, the wedge doesn’t need to be much more than hand tight.

In the photo, you can see the pins I used for alignment. These are just brads I hammered in and clipped the heads off of. The cheek is bigger in all dimensions and will be trimmed to size after glue up (to make the glue up a little less stressful if I have to move things around in the heat of the moment).
The ramp screws are there for basic alignment and to act as pins, glue does the real work. To attach the ramps, glue was applied, screws loosely tightened, wedge and iron inserted and a feeler gauge was used to make sure the ramp was in full contact over it’s entire length, then screws tightened and a clamp applied. Sounds simple but once the glue is squeezed out (I used PVA (yellow) glue), the ramps don’t move, you only get a few attempts to get things aligned before you have to remove the ramp and start over. Took me like four tries on one ramp. My tolerance was around one thousandth of an inch over the length of the ramp.

Oh boy, did I jinx myself when I said I didn’t like glue lines. I want to use this particular piece of purple heart for the wedge, the color is wonderful (same piece of wood as the wedge in the previous posting) but I only have a single length of it. I cut enough for the wedge and as I was drawing on the shape, I kept wanting more on the top. Which meant glue because I don’t have a thicker piece. Being a tight wad (and not thinking ahead), I sliced off the ramp and glued it where I needed the extra for the hump. I should have built up the bottom but noooooooo. In my defense, I did do a three piece test glue up and the glue lines are completely invisible. But not here. You can’t see it in the photos but you sure can “in the flesh”. Arghhhh. The other jinx was I didn’t plan out where I was going to get the other cheek from and, as it turns out, the piece I needed had a crack in it from one end to the other (gapping to thin). At least that glue joint is invisible (so far). Using a shop vac to suck glue through a thin crack really works. Other than those little annoyances, the wedge is done (maybe).

I’ve made a minor change in plans, except I don’t have a plan, in that I’m going to use a #3 (1 3/4”) iron instead of making one. Quite a bit thinner than the 1/8” I was thinking but I have three of these in the bone yard, might as well get some use out them.

I decided to put some cupid bow like features on the end of the wedge. Not so sure about these but it’s not like you’ll be able to see them.

Reading this, you might get the impression that I’m completely winging this. You would be right.

I want a big honken miter plane to use on my shooting board. I dearly love Bill Carter’s metal mitres but I find metal planes really uncomfortable to use for shooting. My wood Gordon’s are comfortable but I think the 60º angle leaves end grain a bit ragged (and you have to really ram them into the wood). Bill Carter (scroll down a ways) and Phil Edwards both make beautiful wooden miter planes so I’m going to try and copy one of them. Bill wins the beauty contest but I like Phil’s bevel down design. Sooooo

A wooden miter plane made from purple heart. This will be low angle plane intended for a use on a shooting board. It will have really wide cheeks for good registration on the board and I’ll try and make it comfy to use with my fingers in its mouth. I’ll use a pin and wedge like on my other miter planes. I think I’ll use a 1 1/2” wide, 1/8” thick blade, which will be bevel down and bedded at 35º (which means the cutting angle is also 35º, which is about as low as it gets). The blade will have a 30º bevel, which will give a 5º clearance angle, which should be fine for end grain (Phil and Ron Brese use 38º for the bed angle). Somewhere around 10” long.

Here is the start of the plane. I’ve decided on a half laminated (1/2 Krenov style) construction. I’d really, really like to do a one piece construction (I hate glue lines) but I also really, really didn’t want to hand cut the bed and I also wanted a curve at the front. So I machined things from the side and I’ll glue on one cheek. I’ve swiped a wedge and blade from other planes to get an idea of what it will look like. It took me a half a day to get this far, which is by far the fastest I’ve ever gotten to this stage (the other two planes in the photo took weeks).

Finish filing shapes (such as the curves on the sole), lapping the all surfaces (I use 180 grit sticky backed sandpaper stuck on my bandsaw table), squaring the blade to the sole (I didn’t leave any room to insert the blade at an angle), apply finish (I used Tung oil and varnish), etc.

The iron was made from O-1 (oil hardening, Starret brand in this case) steel. I milled some detents at the back so it is easy to hold. An initial 20 degree bevel was milled. This angle is very low (I normally use 30) but this iron is for light cuts on end grain. Heat treatment was by the book: Heat to phase change temp (steel is no longer magnetic, around 1,500F). I use a oxy-acetylene rose bud. Hold at that temp for a bit and quench in oil (I use a gallon can full of motor oil. And yes, it stinks). Bake in the oven to temper the blade (I use 325-350 degrees to get a Rockwell hardness in the low 60s). Then flatten the back and grind the bevel.