Infill Plane Blade

I got the blade and cut it out, using a carbide-grit hacksaw blade, and refining the shape with my diamond stone. It took a long time. The blade has a 25 degree bevel, with a 30 degree micro bevel. It was slightly wider than 1.25", so I sanded the sides down to be slightly less, in order to allow for lateral adjustment.

Plane Drilling Jig

I made this jig to accurately hold the plane parts together as I drill into the sides for the screws that hold everything together. The sole goes on the top, the sides are clamped to the sides. The middle piece is exactly the same size as the interior if the plane.


The base piece gets clamped into the drill press vise like so:

Making a Lever Cap

I roughed out the lever cap, first cutting out the bottom of it, at an angle, to reduce work later. I cut from both ends because I'm not very good at hacksawing to a line. Then I used coarse, and fine files to shape the round-over, then sanding through the grits to 600. Then I feather cut perpendicularly to the curved shape of the top half of the lever cap, and sawed out the waste with a fret saw. Then I used a round file to smooth the concave curves, and a flat file to smooth the convex curve (at the top). I used the edge of a triangle file to cut the step by the cap screw, this is a purely aesthetic choice, since in my opinion, if everything had been co-planar, it would have looked boring. To be able to sand into the tight corners, wrap a piece of sandpaper around a file. This is a trick I picked up from reading Karl Holtey's blog.

After the cap has been uniformly sanded to 600 grit, I start the polishing. I took a 1/2 diameter piece of oak dowel, and made a split in one end, about 1" deep. The I took a thin strip of paper, and folded it over onto itself. This I applied veritas honing compound to, since I don't have a nice real wheel yet. It worked fine. The hole for the cap screw is drilled for a 10-24 thread.
Derek Cohen's write-up about lever cap making.

Some posts of Karl Holtey's Blog:
Window to my Workshop #7
Window to my Workshop #8
Window to my Workshop #21

Small Infill Plane

I decided to finally build a infill plane. First I made a mock-up, to see if it will be usable. Here's the first version.



Reading Derek Cohen's writeup about building the Brese Small Smoother kit got me wondering about shavings clogging in the throat. So for the second version, I moved the back infill backwards, and put a radius on the back of the front infill. This increases throat size.




Right now this is probably what I'm gonna make. To follow the entire thread, go here.