This plane is the same size as a Stanley #4 at nine inches long and weighs a bit over 1/2 pound more (1,838g vs 1,571g).

Here is the infill in action on walnut, purpleheart and oak. Click for slide show.

It is always a head scratcher to figure out how to hold a small part when applying finish. I’m wiping varnish on all surfaces so I need to rotate, twist, turn, flip, etc the infill for access. So I bolted a pipe to the mouth block. The #7 keeps the infill off the floor while it is drying.

Here is a photo of all the parts to my infill smoother. All the parts on the bottom bolt into the shell (at top). The metals are titanium (the cap screw), 6061 aluminum (the mouth block), O-1 steel (iron) and stainless steel (shell (304), screws, pins, cap (304)). The wood is jatoba. From the left, the bun floats on two through pins, secured with screws (8-32). The heads of the screws (10-32) in the lever cap slip fit in the shell and provide the pivot points (the screws are not secured to the shell). The 1/4” O-1 iron is bedded at 55 degrees. The frog/tote is secured to the shell with three 1/4”-20 screws, which provide for a variable mouth opening (I think I have enough movement for a 3/16” iron).

Time to make the tote fit my hand. The process goes something like this: Plane for a while. Where does my hand hurt? Why? Remove a little bit of wood with a file (because I’m not going to be able to add wood so screwing up would be unpleasant). Repeat. Lots of times. I did this over a couple of days to give my hand a rest and ensure residual soreness wasn’t slewing the results. There was a lot of use the plane, “OK, that is uncomfortable” and peeling up one finger at a time (with my other hand) to see what was offending that finger. This is quite a bit more complex than it might seem at first glance.
I’m using two metal files; one fine and one coarse. The pad is too keep the sides from getting more scratched up as there seems to be some grit like stuff on the bench (not surprising).
This is a four finger tote. Or three, works both ways.
You can see the finished bun, pretty amazing what BLO will do to the color (varnish adds the shine). The bun and tote are from the same piece of wood.

Here is the finished frog (well, almost, still need to finish shaping the grip and apply finish). The 3/4” (thick) aluminum mouth block has been screwed and glued (epoxy) to the infill. The frog is held to the sole with three 1/4” x 20tpi stainless screws (pan head because they are low profile (the tops are below the wood) and have a wide bearing surface). 1/2” (diameter) access holes have been drilled in the infill to allow for adjusting the frog.

Looking down on the frog

Looking up at the frog

The frog mounting studs

Flattening the sole was very difficult. Stainless steel hates heat and moves as it heats up. If you are using power to sand/grind it, it gets really hot and I have nasty burn to prove it (stainless is a poor conductor of heat, compared to “regular” steel, thus the heat isn’t dissipated throughout the steel and remains localized). So, if you use power without coolant, you are chasing a moving target. Took me a while to figure this out as I used glued sand paper, files, and a 12” disk sander and didn’t seem to be making any progress. Eventually, I got to the point where hand sanding on glued paper got me close. But not very flat as the paper left hills and valleys. From there, I used a large diamond hone to get to the point where I didn’t care anymore. You’ll notice the “wave” behind the mouth, like that on a Japanese plane. I’d like to say that was intentional, but no, that was caused by the sole being banana shaped after brazing. But it doesn’t hurt and may even help.
This is idle speculation on my part, but I think having the sole be very flat at the front (at the mouth) is important when planing against the grain as the chip is held down and has to break before it gets a chance to lift and tear. Planing with the grain, who cares? it isn’t going to lift.

Measuring sole flatness with a 12” Starrett rule

One fun thing to do is attempt to pick up a piece of wood with the sole, this gives you an idea of how flat the sole is. Take a small, very smooth piece of wood (I use 1/4” hard board, which has a “polished” surface), press the sole down on it, “wring” (twist) it and lift the plane. The wood should lift off an inch or two before it drops away.

It is pretty rate to see a infill plane with an adjustable mouth. But I wanted one for several reasons: I don’t know what the “optimum” mouth width is, or if there is one (I suspect it differs for different woods), I think it would be pretty cool to be able to take a thick shaving with infill, this plane is big enough to be a small jack plane, I figured I would probably screw up if I tried to make a fixed mouth. Plus, I’m not convinced about the utility/advantages of a super thin mouth and now I can experiment.
Here are two mouth settings (I can go under zero but that is the max for a 1/4” iron).
If you look at the big pictures, you’ll notice that the iron needs some serious attention (nicks) and has a [unintentional] slight camber.

Adjusting the mouth is easy, something I didn’t realize when I designed it and can be done with the iron installed:
1) Remove iron, loosen the frog screws and close the mouth.
2) Barely snug the screws.
3) Insert iron (it won’t go all the way though) and start to tighten the lever cap screw.
4) As you tighten the cap, the frog will slide back, stop when the mouth is the right width.
5) Remove the iron and tighten the frog screws.
6) Install iron, set depth and remove wood.

Sub 0.001” shaving and 0.020” shaving

I did a [very] light pein of the bottom tails just to force the sole up against the sides (you can kinda see the punch divots in the second photo). Then pre-heated to 500F (oven), applied clamps (see previous post) and flux, and silver brazed (using a #000 tip, barely hot enough) (photo left). Then a hot water soak and some wire busing to remove the flux (below).
 

Over to the mill to remove the majority of the waste, which uncovered bubbles in the silver so reheat and get rid of those (gotta improve my technique). The sides drooped in, straightened those up. Then lap, lap, lap on sand paper on my band saw table. Started out on adhesive backed  180 but that was taking forever so I switch to a 80 grit sander belt clamped to the table. Much better. Then switched to 120 by hand with a block, then 180. Stopped there for now (I’m pooped, that took a looooog time), probably won’t go past 220. The photo on the right shows the “glue line”, which I like, as it says “this is not a casting and took a lot of effort to make”. Plus, I just think it looks cool.

I could have done things faster by milling closer (I left everything 0.004” proud by using a piece of paper and lowering the [turning] endmill until it caught the paper) and filing but I really didn’t want to make any deep scratches. As it is, the tail dropped quite a bit, which is going to take some effort to remove and flatten the sole. I don’t have a belt sander but as I can’t keep things flat and square with one, I wouldn’t use one (plus the heat if glue is involved). I’ve used a fly cutter before but it takes a long time to get the plan jigged square, mine leaves a rough surface finish and I blew up all the cutters the last time I used it (making chisels or on stainless or something silly).

To be brazed. The four cross “pins” will hold the sides parallel each other and square to the sole (they have been machined to the same width as the sole). The two front cross pins will also be used to hold the bun in place as well as support the sides. Since the rear infill “floats” on the frog and isn’t attached to the sides, I filled in those pin holes (check previous entries to see if you can see where they aren’t anymore). In a “oh, what the hell” design decision, the screw cap and front pins will have visible screws. And since the plane won’t be used on its side (on a shooting board), the screws are not flush with the sides.

This project is taking a while to get done and I wanted to see something happen so I bolted down the frog, pushed the sides on, used a quick grip to clamp the infill to the frog and stuck in the iron. And pushed it over some [super easy to plane] wood. And got some thou and half shavings. I think I see potential.

Here is what the mostly finished frog looks like. It will be screwed to a mortise in the infill, which will be drilled so a screw driver can reach the screws. Believe it or not, the screws are accessible (with the blade removed but with the cap in place). Real close on the center screw.

If you have looked at the mouth block on traditional infills, it is fitted as an extension of the sole, as in this example (image from Peter McBride’s excellent article "making a dovetailed bench rebate infill plane"). Using a movable frog negates the possibility of the iron seating on the sole, but this is not an issue in my case. The back of the 1/4” iron, sharpened at 30 degrees, is above the 3/16” sole so it would never touch. You can see this in the photo above (a bit exaggerated).

Here is what the sole looks like after the studs have been silver brazed to it. The green goo is flux, the silver looking stuff is 56% silver (which melts at 1200F) and the black crap is burnt flux & oxidized stainless steel. The flux will dissolve in hot water. You’ll notice, on the left, the filled holes have been brazed. On the right, the other side of the pins have been peined (which closed the hole enough that the silver could not flow through). An experiment. The sole was preheated to 500F in the [kitchen] oven, which is quite helpful (apply the flux AFTER you preheat, you don’t want to contaminate the oven).

After a hot water soak, some work with wire brush, the bottom looks like –>

You can see how much material needs to be removed. Most, I’ll take off on the mill, using special tooling* to deal with the stainless steel, which can be very difficult to machine. The fill pins have been further peined (with a punch) just to be sure, for sure. (I didn’t taper the pin holes, just drilled them to clean up the rough water jet hole)
*I used a 3/8” 4 flute Cobalt M-42 fine tooth roughing end mill.

After milling, filing and sanding, things look pretty good. Below left, you can see where I got careless machining the pins and cut a tiny bit too deep (and then back filled with silver). The tops of the pins are visible because there was a big chamfer to fill. On the right, the pins have completely disappeared. There was a bit of a chamfer (from deburring) on the stud holes, which is why the silver circles are so big.

  So many options, so few decisions. I need to figure out what I’m going to do for a frog. Here are the options I’ve prototyped:

Two Bedrock style frogs:
- I have a steel frog that is attached by screws up though the sole (three holes came predrilled). Solid but ugly and hard to embed in the infill.
- Aluminum mouth block. No matter what, the sole holes have to be moved. Uggh. Screws up though the sole or screwed to the sole? Slots in the sole or in the block? Screw size?

Mired in indecision, I needed to do something so I forced my hand by drilling a hole in the aluminum. And milling a slot. Then another. Which meant screwed to the sole. Even though a 1/4” x 20 tpi would have over three threads in the 3/16” sole, which is plenty, I just didn’t like it. So that meant threaded studs attached to the sole. Space is pretty limited so the threaded hole in the studs has to extend into the sole. I left ~1/16” solid so I could flatten the sole without worrying about opening up the stud. Of the three holes in the sole, two have to be filled, one drilled out and two new ones drilled.

Here you can see the milled moth block; the bottom is milled for 3/8” studs and the top is milled for 1/2” screw heads, with a 1/4” slot in the middle for the screw heads to tighten against. The studs have been drilled and threaded but need to be shortened and have a step cut in the bottom. The small stud in one of the holes will be used to fill the hole. The two new hole positions are marked.

I read that jatoba is one of the hardest woods in the world, 62% harder than hard maple. Sharp tools really make a difference and metal working files work great. I suppose it is kinda like working brass.

Back to the boo-boo of cutting the infill too low; decided to make that a feature and cut down the metal sides to fit. The photo shows an “after” (with chamfer) next to a “before”. I’m thinking I’ll tweak the nose slope to match the tail although I’m a bit constrained by the cross pin hole. I’m likely to fill in the last tail cross pin holes as they are basically vestigial. I flattened out the tail so the movement of the infill will be less obvious. The small chamfer on the very end will also help disguise this.

After looking at the tote some more, I think the upper “hole” is too square and too big. The “squareness” (at the very top of the finger hole) spoils the “flow”. Oh well, next time … or maybe I’ll open it up just a smidge and see if that helps.

If the wheel on your grinder is too big, just grind down some stainless steel – after shaping these two plates, mine is quite a bit smaller.

I just hate it when I do this. I didn’t trace the side plates onto the infill before I started removing wood and what do you know, I cut too low (you can see the shims under the infill to raise it up). Now I have a problem to patch. I could start over (I hate doing that because I usually screw up again), glue a shim to the bottom of the infill and get yet another glue line or lower the side plates. I noticed that my Stanley’s have much lower side plates so I’m going to stare at that option for a bit.
Another question is: is the infill shape any good? It feels good but it sure looks different and has this weird skinny vs bulky & rounded vs square vibe.  On the other hand, the handle seems, to me, to have a rather pleasing humanoid form (now, if I could carve some arms holding the iron …).

Now that I know what the frog will look like, but haven’t finalized the hole placements, I switched back to the infills. I really like the feel of the no-handle smother, so I’m pitching the traditional “ornate/formal” (for the lack of more appropriate terms) look, which I’m no good at anyway, for a more “organic” (code for “round” or silly putty) look.

I grip the bun (front) at about a 45 degree angle so square buns just don’t cut it (that square edge tries to drill a hole though my hand). The back of the bun is scalloped so there is lots of room to get your fingers in there and clean out stuck shavings. [I’ll let you add all the bun puns]

The tote is basically a less ornate version of my backsaw handle. The handle is quite a bit more laid down than usual (for handled planes) to give me more of that no-handle feel. I don’t know how to describe the difference in feel between, say, a Stanley and a “flat” plane but here is an attempt: With the Stanley, your forearm is parallel with the wood and you push with your [fore] arm. Without a handle, it seems like I’m pushing down and using more of my upper body to move the plane. Personal preference, my wrist is [a bit] more comfortable with the no handle plane.

The wood is glued up jatoba; I have lots, I’m cheap and the grain lines blend the glue lines pretty well. Three pieces in the bun, four in the tote (two “wings” will be added to the shown center section). This stuff is hard, it feels like I’m carving rock.

The tote grip is 1 1/4” wide.

I don’t see the need for a lateral or height adjuster; compared to a wedge, a screw cap doesn’t grip all that tight. And, once you read the spell book, adjusting the iron is pretty easy. I can move the iron laterally by hand (you can on Stanley's also).

Here is the progress so far: the bun is shaped, the tote is shaped enough to test the ergonomics, I’ll finish when the wings are glued on and trimmed to size.

Lots of times, I just have to see, in context, what I’m trying to visualize, which seems strange to me since this is not a problem when I program. So, for the frog, I’m scribbling on the side of the plane to see how big it needs to be, how it attaches to the infill and sole, etc. (The plane has some quick, dirty and ugly prototype infills so I could get some context on how it felt. It actually cuts wood, even though nothing is pinned together).
Here’s the plan:
- That big block of aluminum will be screwed to a cut out in the bottom of the infill.
- The blade will rest on both the block and infill.
- The block will have two or three slots along its centerline.
- Bolts, though the sole, will hold the block/infill to the sole. The nuts will be captive in the block slots. Access to the bolts will be from the bottom of the sole.
- The infill slides back and forth to adjust the mouth opening. Experience suggests the bolts will work fine. This idea is similar to Stanley Bedrocks and Sargent Shaw’s patent planes. And probably Veritas.
- This has implications on the shape of the infill “wings”.
- The block and plane need to be machined such that they remain square as the block moves.

To fine tune the mouth opening, the rear most hole in the side plates have a rod between them with a bolt in the middle of it. The bolt presses on a plate glued to the infill. Tighten the bolt. the infill moves forward and the mouth gets smaller. Access is via a hole in the back of the infill. The infill has to have a slot so it will clear the rod, which is a potential weak point. This feature is strictly to avoid frustration when trying to adjust the mouth opening by a few thousandths of an inch.

Prototyping totes and buns for the smoother and not doing so well. They feel really good but look like crap. Having even more trouble picking out wood for the infills. Cut open the apple log that has been sitting in the shop for many years; the heart wood is very pretty, the sap wood is very boring and the checks immense. Got some nice mahogany but don’t have enough of the dark, dense (Cuban?) stuff, got enough of the light orange fluffy stuff. Or, really beautiful walnut (the wood in the photo (under the plane, apple in the background) but you can’t see the colors or figure). Decisions,  decisions. I also want a movable frog, as I’m not a believer in the super tight mouth but want that option. After lots of drawings, one welded and machined chunk of steel and getting nowhere, I pulled out the first infill smoother I ever made to see if I could reuse any ideas (the infill moves to adjust the mouth). I never liked it all that much (aesthetics aside), it was a total pain to set the blade depth (the wedge works very very well), you can’t remove the wedge without backing off the infill and it clogged. So it was stuffed into a dark hole and I tried to forget about it. Two of the problems were easily fixed – the wedge was too long and seems to have been causing the clogging and tapping the bun backs out the iron. The wedge still stays wedged but if I don’t hit it with a sledge hammer, it is merely annoying vs impossible. Anyway, short story long, it works wonderfully. As in “Wow, this is really sweet”. So I had a lot of fun making boards thinner very slowly. And I think I know how the new frog will work.

The caliper is a bit pessimistic, the shaving are actually closer to 1 thou than half a thou (I checked with another caliper and micrometer).