Small plane, big ticket

Ah, planes, tickets. You going on a long journey, Alf? I hear you wonder. Don't be daft. No, I mean planes. Proper planes. With soles and blades and handles I can complain about.

Belatedly I've remembered that this year's miniature tool from the Lee Valley elves should be about the place, so I went to have a look.

Ooo, it's an ickle spokeshave. Schweet. Darn it, and here's me with a fountain pen-sized hole in my finances where a miniature spokeshave should be. Oh well, my own fault for failing to plan ahead; will have to start saving.

And, you know, I can't help wondering if those handles are customisable...

Financially speaking, it could be a lot worse. I could want one of these:

8mm high (that's, what, 5/16"?) and 14k gold. Well, gold is expensive at the moment, but still - £190.06 (plus delivery!) One hundred and ninety Earth pounds?! (And sixpence). I goggled a bit, I must admit. It's not even than attractive really, is it? I mean it doesn't even appear to have that rounded bit behind the blade to make for a more comfortable pushing experience. Tsk. And the edge holding properties of 14k gold are, I suspect, poor.

Still, if you've just got to have a continental-style hand plane rendered minutely in gold hanging round your (or your best-beloved's) neck, then there you go. Your needs are met. No, don't thank me...

Planes by the pint

Well I can tell you were all agog wondering about this one.

Anyway...

Occasionally, or maybe more often than that, my dad tells of an old dear in the village he grew up in who used to sell potatoes by the pint. Seems to me a cunning scheme to sell folks a lot of air to me. Anyway, I reckon you can probably fit more planes to the pint than you can potatoes. If you nest them.

I know, I know. It looks like a crush at the bottom. But they're all fine, honest. If my apron plane had been a low angle instead of standard, I'd definitely got that in there, I'm sure of it.

See? Look at all that space at the top! Alas, nothing quite small enough to fit in it. I suppose I could have stopped off to make one or two. Didn't think of that. Anyway they had to be functioning... Wanted to put the Stanley #271 in there too - or try to - but inexplicably can't find it. Okay, perhaps not so inexplicably. My top tip: make every effort to avoid long absences from the w'shop directly after you've tidied it; you can't find a thing.

Unfortunately the detail rebate's effusive tail meant I could only get one in. Too bad, because they look good in a jar, turns out. Likewise, the cherry knob on the side rebate ruled out more than one, and I couldn't find the Stanley #79 either to try that. It must be somewhere.

 Yes, it's a woodie! I was especially pleased to get that one in, for variety.

And the final total. Ten. Yes, TEN (count 'em) planes to the litre chez Alf. And by no means all "miniatures" either, but proper grown-up planes. If I'd ever succumbed to the siren song of violin maker's thumb planes, it'd easily be a round dozen.

So my wondering mind can rest easy again. Until the next time.

When is a plane till not a plane till

You know those fair and fête things where you guess the weight of the fruit cake or how many sweets are in the jar? This is like that, except you don't get to win the cake. Or in this case, the jar of planes.

"The jar of... What?" Do I hear you splutter?

Well it's like this... A few weeks ago I looked at this unexceptional Kilner jar knock-off, and thought "Self, I wonder how many planes you could fit in this jar?"

Well you know me and wondering - it's fatal. Instead of having the thought, discarding the thought, and then going and doing something useful, the thought stuck. The thought persisted. Dammit, the thought positively nagged. So you can guess what happened next.

Well I say "Next", but I mean a coupla weeks later, obviously. Doesn't do to rush.

I gave myself some parameters to avoid the temptation of asking El Presidente if I could borrow a gross (or two) of key rings and totally skew the results. Viz: The planes have to be of a functioning variety; they must be in one piece and not broken down into component parts; and they must come out of the experience unscathed. (The last one was particularly important.) I also wanted to avoid an exclusively Canadian jar, if at all possible. Just because.

So a single one litre glass preserving/food storage jar, approximately 6in tall. How many whole and functioning hand planes can I fit in it and still seal the lid?

And just to get you started, yes, I did use the Veritas miniatures, but as you can see, they didn't get me very far...

Answer next week. I know you'll be on tenterhooks.

Well-polished Chipboard

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned how I've always struggled to get a grip on mouldings; what's called what, what's appropriate where, etc etc. Well, unhappily, I have similar difficulties with furniture styles. I'm better than I was - walnut came before mahogany, and so forth - but the detail eludes me, and I certainly fail mightily at placing the furniture style in the context of history. It's always been like that; I was useless at music theory too, but I could hold a tune just about okay.

So at the moment I am applying myself to reading Edward Lucie-Smith's Furniture: A Concise History in yet another bid to remedy that. I'm pretty sure I ought to have a copy of Charles Hayward's English Period Furniture and be reading that, but somehow or other I don't have it and I do have this one. Because my mother, bless her, saw it in a charity shop and bought it for me. So naturally I'm reading it; you should always exhibit suitable enthusiasm to encourage family and friends to be inclined to buy any and all s/h woodworking books they might see. You never know what they might find.

Anyway, he's a pretty good read (should be; he's written enough), and does put the furniture into a nice social history context, which works for my poor brain cell. He seems to be a bit of a Makepeace fan, but I'll try not to hold that against him; it was written in the 70s, after all. Alas, I'm getting a bit bogged down in the 17thC at the moment (as is so often the case) - can't see the furniture for the ornamentation, which I loathe - but there is more than enough to keep one interested en route.

For instance, I'd never before heard of a doll's house in Nuremberg, Germany, dating to 1639, but there's a rather dark black and white plate of same, and my interest was piqued. Luckily Google supplies, and it seems it's better known as the Stromer House, and it's absolutely fab. I love it. All it needs is a workshop attached, and I'd live in it. Here are some photos of it halfway down the page - and further miniature marvels as a bonus.

But I must return to my education; a marquetry table from 1690 is now demanding my attention. Too bad the picture is such that it looks less like delicate marquetry, and more an illusion of, um, well chipboard. Well-polished chipboard, mind you...

Oh look, a post title :^)

So you've heard of palm routers...

The Parcel Farce man cometh - eventually. Much loveliness, most of which will be put away for more careful study around Christmas (except the tool-covered shopping bag, which will lighten my mood during the weekly shop tomorrow), but if you're curious, I did seem to get fairly carried away in the measuring section of the LV website. Hey there's no point accurately cutting to a line unless the line's in the correct place, right?

However, couldn't resist having a teeny look at a teeny plane, as has become tradition in recent years.

You'd think by now I'd have got over the "Oh my word, it is small, isn't it?!" reaction to these, but nope, apparently not. I am once more utterly taken by its cuteness and therefore have become its slave forever. Arguably this slavery happens pretty much with every plane, regardless of size, but the cuteness is completely irresistible.

Oh, El Presidente? Could we have a miniature felling axe next year, so I may cut down a small fir tree to be decorated with these as the ornaments? Pretty please? Or a miniature spokeshave might be fun. Or, ooo, maybe a tiny chisel... Oh, who am I kidding? Look, let's just cut to the chase and go straight for a miniature toolkit in a miniature tool cabinet. Or miniature tool chest, for those so inclined. Brilliant, right? Fire up the R&D elves and I'll start saving now...

Miniature redux

Been a bit busy during the last week. So busy, in fact, that step-by-step pics have fallen by the wayside. I know, the horror. The idea was if I didn't do them it'd speed things up and I'd be able to focus more. Yeah, well, all I can say is I've never made this many mistakes in so little cubic inches of timber, so maybe stopping to take photographs is a better idea. On the other hand, the main focus of my hopelessness may never be fit for public viewing and thus no public record may be a blessing... I've been doing a few other odds and ends as well, so some of them may yet venture into the spotlight.

Meanwhile, I fell over a plane that should have featured in the earlier round of Miniature Madness that engulfed this blog not long since. Except I couldn't find it. Although when I say fell over it, a leprechaun would be hard-pressed to stub his toe on this one.

It's a small round plane with top escapement, made by the patternmaker who was the source of my Mother Lode of tools some years ago. The one with the artistic tool handles. Due in no small part, I believe, to the fact that my eye lit on this little gem and exclaimed over it, he ended up depositing about half his entire hand tool kit into my care.

Constructed in two halves, basic wedge and an iron made from goodness knows what scrap of blade or whathaveyou. Simples. Works a treat too.

Profile appendix

I can give this up any time I want. Yup. But I had to try the edge trimming plane idea, didn't I? Of course I did. Don't you roll your eyes at me...

So I raided the exotics scraps box. Bearing in mind what I keep in the regular scraps box, you may imagine I hang onto the minutest fragments of such things as Rosewood, Box, Purpleheart, Nutmeg (Yes, Nutmeg) and Ebony, and you'd be right. I used to wonder about the sanity of this - although why this and not about everything else is anyone's guess - until I read The Tool Chest Of Benjamin Seaton wherein the inventory of contents includes such things as Ivory (1" x 1/4") and "four fragments of tulipwood cross-banding". The way things are these days, a whole cornucopia of hardwood species are getting to be as valuable as Ivory, so I hang onto them all and feel not a qualm.

Thus it was that I found just the thing lurking between a 1" long (1/4" square) piece of Pink Ivory and a 1/2" square piece off boxwood. Don't laugh; they're just the ticket for Miniature Mallets such as these). Anyway, a piece of Rosewood approximately 2" long, 1 1/4" wide and 1/8" thick - from which to cut a wee fence for the wee plane. A bit of doubled-sided tape, luckily slightly the worse for age so not as terminally adhesive as it can be, was cut to stick it on.

And there we are. Simples. Naturally the thickness of the fence dictates how far in from the edge it'll cut, so you could conceivably have a whole range of fence thicknesses. Don't look at me like that; it ain't happening.

Getting the scored line lined up with where the plane actually cuts is, of course crucial and to be honest, a bit of a fiddle. But a couple of tests to get it right and then I took it for a spin on another piece of wood that died horribly at the hands of the router.

As long as you concentrate on taking a full length shaving every time, the depth takes care of itself, and the result isn't half bad.

So, as expected, it works, but unless you're absolutely lost without a fence - or have the edge trimming plane but not the shoulder plane - I'd still opt for the shoulder plane. It's a lot less fuss.

If you haven't got either, don't tell anyone, but it's a wonder what you can do with the humble file...

Determined Profile

Before we start, a little blog admin (blogmin?). As you may have noticed, I'm now requesting commenters put a name to their comments. This is an attempt to make dealing with the ridiculous number of spam comments slightly less time-consuming. If you don't put a name to your comment, I will treat it as spam. We'll see how it goes, but if this doesn't help I may have to change to only allowing comments by registered users, which I'm obviously reluctant to do. So help me avoid that, and Sign Your Name. Thank'ee.

So where were we? Here. So how does one make a profile in the edges of a very small piece of wood by hand?

Option 1. The moulding plane.

Obviously my first choice, however two good reasons for it to fail in this case. Firstly, I may have a wide range of tools from which to choose, but a moulding plane of a suitable miniature-sized profile? Unlikely. Secondly, how d'you plane something that small? Even holding it to allow the plane access is problematic in this case. I briefly dallied with taking the work to the plane. i.e. Hold the plane in the vice and move the work over the cutter. But at the correct spring angle and without planing your finger tips? Across grain?

Forget that then.

Option 2. Scratch stock (Yeah, most of you were probably way ahead of me here)

I like scratch stocks. A lot. Despite owning two, commercial beaders just don't gel with me the same way as a homemade scratch stock. I find they're often too cumbersome and, in the case of the Stanley #66, the angled nature of the cutter means you can't easily change direction when the wood demands it - one of the real benefits of scratching lost, in my opinion. So I broke out the scratch stock I made for this article in the Lee Valley Newsletter (Vol. 1, Issue 1) and filed a suitable profile in a piece of saw blade (Thanks, BB). I even went to the lengths of honing the edges on a fine Arkansas slip too. Well this thing needed to be really sharp for the task and it wouldn't hurt.

Now I don't recommend scratched profiles across grain as a rest cure. It can work well, but it depends on whether the timber wants to play ball, and that can vary not just from species to species but also piece to piece. Applying a spot of shellac first seems to help, but you might as well resign yourself to a fair amount of work with abrasives from the start and then rejoice if you happen not to need them as much as you feared.

Okay, so I admit that when it comes to comfort the commercial beader wins Scratch stocks tend to ask a lot of the thumbs and I knew all about it when I'd done.

The result won't ever be mistaken for something done by a router, that's for sure, but it was okay. The second one was worse, and I had to do some remodelling with a file. In the end I think that result was probably better anyway. For the third, in beech. I switched to using a single point cutter from Lee Valley and a slight chamfer on the top surface, which sort of looks vaguely cushion-y to me. I quite like it, but whether the little horses will, I dunno. Not to put too fine a point on it, that's all they're getting...

Naturally, it's only after the event - and the cramped fingers and, okay, yes, aching back (I must improve the vice on the bench-on-bench so it's more useful for this sort of thing) - that it occurred to me that I'd missed an opportunity to see whether some of those miniature tools could really come into their own. Naturally, I had to have a try. First I scored deeply for a shoulder/quirk/ whatever it is. Is there a simpleton's guide to mouldings out there somewhere? Surely The Schwarz has found some tome from 1904 that tells you everything you ever need to know by now. But I digress - and ever-so slightly cattily at that. Sorry, Chris. It's teasing with affection, honest. Even if you are busy putting up the price of Woodworker annuals... Anyway, I used the fairly small 3-in-1 brass gauge for that, but could have gone down in size a tad to the Pocket Gauge if I'd had one.

Then guide the Miniature Shoulder Plane against the scored line. First the back side to prevent the back edge breaking off.

And finish off the rest of the cut the usual way.

At this point I can hear some readers having kittens at the idea of trying to hit the line accurately. You don't. If you're slightly shy, the chips will tend to break away cleanly at the scored line anyway. And once you've managed one or two passes, there's shoulder enough to guide the plane. Use your fingers underneath the plane as a simple fence, take your time, and it's really not as hard as you imagine. I mean, it can't be, can it? I can do it. Although overnight I had a further thought, and wondered if a shim of suitable thickness (or rather, thinness) double-sided taped to the fence of the miniature edge plane could give you the same result, but fenced. And a skew cut for added cross-grain loveliness. Not tried it yet, but don't see why not.

Then to the fairly small, but not actually miniature Little Victor Block to round over the edge.

Alas, it was a piece already chewed by the router encounters so I couldn't complete it to demonstrate a good finished result, but after a little work with some fine-ish abrasive, you can get the gist. Not bad really. In fact I'm not a little annoyed I didn't think of it earlier. Sigh.

Anyway, I have Made An Effort - which I hope will at least be something. It was also a challenge which got the old brain cell working on something wood-related for a change, and that can be nothing but a Good Thing. As a bonus I'm finding the idea of dealing with large lumps of Southern Yellow Pine suddenly rather appealing in comparison. Yes, gentle reader, the workbench thoughts are a'stirrin' again. Take to the hills.

Micro Bevels

Sometimes I'm really, really glad I bit the bullet and learnt to hone freehand. Like, for instance, this time:

Okay, so I didn't actually try it in a honing guide, because... Well, I mean, come on. Although before you come on, do pause to appreciate that fine machining for the blade bed. Okay? Got that? Right.

So faced with this stonking great big hunk of A2 steel, I bethought me to turn to the instructions; bearing in mind those clever Lee Valley elves have provided cunning dodges for holding awkward blades before. And found:

"Blade Sharpening
The 0.060" thick by 1/2" wide A2 tool steel blade has the bevel ground at a 25° angle."

And that's your lot.

Gosh, that's helpful... The Mk1 honing guide it is then. R/H version.

The Schwarz is associated with cut nails - I do bitten ones. Sorry about that. Must try and remember to get some stunt nails for these things. Something with some nice sparkly-pink girlie polish...

And behold, if you look carefully you can see a nice little secondary bevel all honed and ready to go. Although, on reflection, describing anything to do with this plane as "little" is just a tad superfluous.

I was a little concerned as to exactly how tricky it'd be to set the iron. I've read mutterings on the difficulty of getting the edge so the tool actually planes at 90° to its fence with the normal-sized versions, so what would this one be like? No adjuster and very little fiddlin' room. In the end I had a brainwave and adapted a tip out of the wooden plane-setting manual. Viz: One block of hardwood, one face and edge at 90°. Place plane tight against same and push cutter down so the edge just nicks in the surface evenly across. Tighten lever cap.

Then I looked at the blade setting instructions for the normal-sized version - and found not dissimilar advice. Oh well, great minds...

Now for the fun bit; time to hit the scrap box and find something suitably thin. Oak seemed to be flinging itself at me and nothing else, but it's not a bad tester. First, some pretty thin stuff to ease us both in:

Ooo, look at the pretty curlies. More! More! In fact more of a challenge - a piece that's absolutely the upper limit of planeable thickness. Actually I had to take a couple of shavings off it so the blade could span the thickness:

Oooo, different pretty curlies. Me likey.

Okay, I'm sickening you now, aren't I? You're rolling your eyes and muttering about how could anyone mistake me for a serious tool user. Okay, out with the square it is then, you practical types:

Perfecto! Houston, we have a miniature edge that is definitely trimmed. Job done, tool proved, case closed.

And as a result I will absolutely not be tempted by the big one. Nosir. I don't like edge trimming planes. Nope. Silly things. For collect- Er, I mean. No. Um. Er. Well. Look, I can explain...

Twice As Handy

Getting a, um, tiny sense of déjà vu all over again? Yeah, me too ;) About the only way El Presidente was going to get me to voluntarily purchase an Edge Plane was probably like this. What can say? It's small and cute and I couldn't resist.

Fully working, I gather. Haven't tried it yet. I mean, that'd require me to break my duck and use one of these confounded planes. Cripes, what happens if I like it and all my baseless prejudices are blown away?!

So to a rather safer small plane - one that doesn't work. Arguably you could say that for all my planes if you based it on the amount of board footage they've traversed in recent years, but moving on...

Isn't it sweet? El Presidente teased me with a pic of dozens of these lined up during production, and I knew I was doomed to buy one when they came out. I love the detail, although the rear tote is actually even worse than the original.

(What? Yes, okay, so Alf is bitching about the handles again. Hey, you can't say I'm not consistent. And insane. The level of tote comfort on a keyring being a little esoteric even for me.)

Quite by chance the level of detail on this one extends to a mark that looks as like as dammit to the effect you'd blench over if plane sole accidentally met nail. I rather like that. It suggests it's a user. You know, just like I am.

Right, stop that laughing at the back RIGHT NOW. Yes, you. Don't think I can't see you.

Anyway, a lot of needless whittering to say "A LV parcel came and I wasn't stung by customs." Woot!

Handy Tool

Is it me, or are Veritas tools getting smaller and smaller? It's either that or I've eaten the wrong side of the mushroom again...

Yes, it really works, honest. Even the adjuster. Click on the thumbnails for a larger pic.

Tardy

Yes, yes, so it's nearly a fortnight now... The pics are waiting in anticipation on the hard-drive and the spirit is willing. Alas, as is so often the case, the flesh is weak. But a taster of the mini-bashers made for the mini-bash which was easily the highlight of the trip - lots of pics from that to come. Eventually.