Some photos of the No 984 panel plane
No 984 panel plane sides being routed on milling machine – no water jet or laser here. All work in house.
No 984 panel plane milling of blade bed and adjuster recess.
No 984 panel plane. Lever cap, adjuster and bun are easily removed without any tools
No 984 panel plane with acrylic and rosewood ( honduran rosewood) handles
With the sides prepared I can now make a commitment to the sole of the plane. i.e. mouth position and adjuster recess. This is a critical time which I would prefer not to get wrong, in fact it can get scary. The excitement level gets stronger as things progress.
This is the start of a new version of the No 984 panel plane. It will be 12 ½” long with a 2″ blade. There will be a slight variation in styling.
Now that the No 982 lever caps are 99% complete I shall move on.
The beginning. Cutting up bottoms and sides from hot rolled black mild steel. This is a very malleable material with no stresses.
(more…)
After the completion of the No 982 smoothing planes it was not long before I was pressed into making a larger version in the form of a panel plane. Because of the enormity of work on this plane I have decided to make only 8 for this batch.
For the benefit of those who have bought this plane I would like to blog the making. Hopefully it will show up some areas I did not cover on the smoothing plane blog.
You will notice that I do change my techniques from time to time.
I will start this blog by documenting the work on the lever cap. I would like to emphasise the work that goes into this one component. Though I have used castings in the past for my lever caps I feel more in control by making them from a solid bar and I produce a far better product. I now understand why some of the Rolls Royce cameras bodies are made from solid billets.
Starting with a bar of naval brass I go round and machine all the sides true, just like you would with a piece of wood.
If this was a piece of wood the next stage would be to machine a form i.e. either with a spindle or a router. In the case of metals I have to concentrate more on work holding so this picture shows me setting up three vices in a line. The bars I am working are 18 inches long and cut 8 lever caps each.
(more…)
As I am currently working on a small batch of No 982 14 1/2″ panel planes I thought I would show this picture of all the component parts of the smoother. Most of the parts are going to be the same.
This picture excludes taper pins, handle, lever cap, screw and adjuster.
There will be more pictures as I work through the project.
I have just found this blog entry for No 982 smoother that I forgot to finish. As it is very similar to the blog entry for the No 982 panel plane 14 1/2″ I have already done this week I thought I would just publish the pictures with no comments.
Powered by WordPress