Friday, February 26, 2010

Wooden Coffin Smoother

So how many projects can I have going at the same time? Ummm...

Taking a break from the small smoother because I lost a drill bit that I need, and I won't be able to replace it for a couple days, I started a new project: a coffin smoother. It's inspired by the Philly Planes Classic Smoother, and by Bill Carter's Wooden Planes. I am using the rest of the plane blade from my infill plane. The construction will be exactly like Derek Cohen's Jack Plane tutorial. Be sure to check out his writeup because it's much more comprehensive than mine. I'm using walnut with a rosewood sole. To begin, I cut out the pieces for the center of the plane. Since I don't have thick enough wood, I'm laminating two flatsawn pieces to make a quartersawn piece. This center piece must be slightly wider than the width of the blade you're using. For the side pieces I resawed a quartersawn piece so both boards were 1/4" thick.Using a marking gauge strike a mark 1/4" from your reference face (the side that is flat) and plane until you hit the mark.

Then I cut the bed angle (50 degrees), and the wedge angle (60 degrees). (Whoa cool shoes!) The bed must be dead flat and square. I used a block plane and finished up by lapping it on sand paper. The front piece is then excavated to provide space for the shavings to escape. I made some saw kerfs, did some chopping and cleaned up with my new Iwasaki float. The wedge-holding-thingys are then undercut with a flush cut saw and waste is pared/filed out. Then I glued it up, and left alone. Stay tuned for part 2, where I will probably do some more stuff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice job old man. One of these days I will get off my lower anatomy and get something going.

Keep up the good work!