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Tag Archives: handplane

A new Handplane: General Purpose Ebony Plane

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

art, building, guitar, guitar making, handplane, handplanes, lutherie, luthier, plane, wood working, woodworking

DSC_1136

Hi All ~

I just wanted to share a handplane that I finished working on today. I find I’m making more handplanes than instruments these days (although admittedly I’m not making much of anything for a few more weeks until I have my new shop set up). This one is a general purpose ebony plane. I would say it’s a smoother since it’s intended take fairly fine cuts but it’s pretty good all around as a nice little plane to have in the shop. I will probably end up selling this one after I finish running it through the paces to make sure it’s up to snuff.

It has a very heavy O1 steel iron from Ron Hock – so far I’ve had no issues planing curly maple with it, which is usually my benchmark for the usability of a plane. Tomorrow I’ll test it on a piece of quilted/curly maple consider almost un-plane-able (which I keep as my final benchmark test) to see how it performs…

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Since I had some scraps, I also made this lovely little thing to go with it – another drill bit Awl, in striped ebony. I’ve also started stamping my tools with the emblem of an anchor…I think it’s a nice touch.

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Making a Little Wooden Mitre Plane

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

guitar building, guitar making, handplane, infill plane, lutherie, luthier, plane, wood working, woodworking

So I made a new plane today….actually, 5 of them, but this is the only one that’s nearly finished. It’s australian blackwood with an african blackwood wedge.

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The mouth on the plane is minute – right now it has a mock iron, soon it will have a hock iron.

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The screw isn’t necessary for tightening down the wedge – it’s really meant for look and also for use in cases where one is planing extremely hard woods that might cause the wedge to loosen. The angle is bedded at 25 degrees; with a 25 degree bevel on the iron this will make for an effective cutting angle of 50 degrees.

That’s it for the moment.

Making an Infill Plane: Part I

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

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art, guitar building, guitar making, handplane, infill plane, lutherie, luthier, woodworking

Well…..I’ve wanted an infill plane for a long time. I’ve been making a lot of planes recently, so I decided that it was time to make one for myself. Oddly enough I don’t own any planes – because every time I make one, it gets sold.

I have one on the go (a Koa smoother) but it’s already got an owner (which is not me). Soooo…..here we go!

I started with the steel. This is cold rolled steel. If I had access to a milling machine and/or surface grinder, I would have gone with stainless (but sadly I do not). The little square and the brass rod to the right are for the Koa smoother.

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Lots of time was spent getting the sole made up; everything has to fit together perfectly. There is no room for error.

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It’s very satisfying to use tools you made to make other tools! Here laying out the positions for the side pins.

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I selected a nice piece of Bocote for the infill. Beautiful grain!

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Last but not least…..the Koa smoother, nearing completion. The side pins are now in; I have some final shaping to do (the top right corner is a bit high as you can see here; I wanted to make sure it cut perfectly before taking the time to work on the final shape).

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The infill is actually already cut and fitted to the sole. I don’t have pictures of that, will post some tomorrow probably when I get the chance. That’s all for now…..

Striped Ebony Smooth Plane

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

guitar, handplane, infill, lutherie, luthier, music, woodworking

Been a while! Unfortunately life has kept me from keeping up to date with this blog. However I will try to do so more after things here slow down a bit (likely around October I will have more time for guitar building).

Just wanted to provide an update on the Smooth Plane I was working on before for the plane-making tutorial…the striped ebony plane has been finished. The plane iron arrived a couple of days ago from Ron Hock – beautiful blade! Super thick, and it cuts great.

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This turned out to be a very elegant little handplane. Tomorrow it will get packed in a box to get shipped to it’s new owner in California.

How to Make a Wooden Handplane: Part II

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

art, crafts, guitar building, guitar making, hand, handplane, lesson, lutherie, luthier, plane, tools, tutorial, woodworking

Continuing on with the handplane build! Here is the finished product:

Now, unfortunately, I didn’t take a lot of photos for this part – however I will describe what I’ve done with the few photos I do have.

First off – this is not the same plane as before. This is another plane that I’m working on. I haven’t had a chance to finish up the ebony plane yet, but I did finish this one today – so I took photos of this one instead. The process is the same either way.

When we left off last time, the plane was just assembled and buffed. The mouth of the plane should be too tight for your plane iron at this stage (i.e. the blade should not fit through the mouth yet).

Next up is to profile the plane into the shape you want. You can figure out your own design, but this is how I profile my wooden hand planes.

To start off, the back edge of the plane is rounded over.

Next up, I mark off lines around the edges at all four corners. This is about the height of a pencil off the bottom edge. I use a silver pilot pen because it shows up well on dark woods like Ebony (or in this case, African Blackwood).

This is the part I didn’t take any photos of – the chamfers. I just do these on the router table using a 45 degree chamfer bit. You can also do this by hand with a file however. Actually, what works even better than a file (way better!) is a micro-plane zester – just don’t let the wife see you sneaking it out of the kitchen. I use it to carve guitar necks when nobody is looking. Notice below – the chamfers are cut only up to the lines drawn on the corners before.

Another thing to note is that you need to be careful when chamfering the top edges. There is nothing for the bearing to ride on when you chamfer around the mouth – so you need to leave that part, and clean it up with a file, zester, or belt sander (careful if you use the belt sander, it’s easy to take off too much material in a hurry).

On this particular plane, I then polished it up by sanding to 220 grit and throwing it on the buffing wheel.

The last step is to make a wedge or lever cap – this plane will ultimately get a lever cap, but I made up a quick wedge just for doing the test cuts. To make the wedge you just need a piece of wood the same width as the iron, which is flat on the back. The top can be profiled as you wish – there are lots of examples of wedges to be found online.

The final step is to open the mouth of your plane so that it will accept the blade. The width of the mouth depends what you are using the plane for. The distance between the edge of the mouth and the cutting edge should be 0.5 mm for a general plane. If you want to make a smooth plane like this one, 0.2-0.3 mm is better. 0.8-1.0 mm is fine for smaller planes such as curved or flat bottomed luthier’s planes.

To open the mouth, very careful use a chisel or a small file. Make sure to keep the edge straight, and check the mouth size often as you work. I usually use a chisel. This is the one I used to fit the mouth on this blackwood plane (an EA Berg 1/2″ Eskilstuna that I very recently discovered). If you use a chisel, be sure that it is shaving sharp – sharp tools make the job much easier and make your work more careful and accurate.

Test cuts – this plane will cut better once it has a lever cap, but the quick wedge worked alright. This is how your plane should cut – thin shavings on very hard woods (the ebony here is very hard, and dense enough that it does not float in water). The second test cut was on Oak.

Having a very tight mouth on the smooth plane will help to reduce tearout – if the mouth is too wide, it will be difficult to plane woods with alternating or unpredictable grain (like Curly Maple). When I have the lever cap for this plane, I will post some test cuts on some highly figured maple.

And that is the end of the Krenov tutorial! If there’s anything that I have not been clear on, feel free to leave a comment and I’d be more than happy to give more detail on anything.

Image Gallery Update

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in General Information, Tool Making

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Tags

anthony, building, guitar, handplane, krenov, lesson, lutherie, luthier, making, murkar, music, plane, wood working, woodworking

The image gallery has been updated again! I’ve also finished another handplane – well, it is not quite there yet, but will be done tomorrow. It does not have an iron yet but I should be receiving it tomorrow. When the sun rises I will get the sides to a satin finish and polish the chamfers on the edges to a mirror finish. I was very generously given some Ziricote recently, so that is what this plane is made of.

The pictures of this plane are all in the image gallery now, I figured there have been enough handplane updates for now until I get the Krenov tutorial going.

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All for now!
~Anthony Murkar

Upcoming Tutorial: Making a Krenov Smooth Plane

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in General Information

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

hand, handplane, krenov, lesson, making, plane, smooth, tutorial, wood, wooden, woodworking, working

Somebody commented asking about making planes…so I thought it would be a decent idea to show how to go about making a Krenov smoother fo anybody who is interested in making a wooden handplane.

There are some OK tutorials online, but most of them don’t really talk about what makes a plane good. If you want your plane to cut well there are a few things that are important to know when making your Krenov. In addition, I’m making a plane for a friend (probably from Ebony) – so I will be recording the whole process of making a smooth plane from start to finish. That way anyone who reads the tutorial should hopefully have the knowledge necessary to make a smooth plane completely (from start to finish) by the end of the tutorial.

This will be a small smoother, with a 36 mm blade. I am hoping that the iron arrives later today so that I can get started this evening. I will begin posting the lesson as soon as I receive the iron.

From Wedges to Lever Caps

31 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

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Tags

art, building, crafts, guitar, handplane, infill, lutherie, luthier, making, metalworking, plane, wood working, woodworking

It was time to make the transition from wedges to lever caps. Lever caps are harder to make, and they make for more work. However I was not satisfied with the results I was getting from these planes – the wedges work fine for softer woods, but when planing Ebony, the wedges come out.

As a result I decided to make lever caps for these miniature planes – all of the planes I make from now on will have lever caps instead of wedges.

Also made another handplane today. This one is also Cocobolo.

Test cuts on some very hard woods (Ebony and Cocobolo).

I received a pile of wood for making handplanes from somebody recently. I am going to be making some planes for him – time for a new plane design? This is the only hint as to what I’m making:

Plane Updates & A New Header

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in General Information

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article, blade, blog, book, brass, brazillian, cello, ebony, guitar, guitar building, guitar making, hand, handplane, handtool, handtools, header, how, indian, iron, lutherie, luthier, madagascar, make, maker, making, new, news, O1, online, peen, pein, pien, pins, plane, play, playing, rosewood, steel, to, tool, tools, up, update, violin, write, ziricote

New header! I figured it was time – and since it’s spring now, it might as well have some color (rather than the usual black and white). I’ll switch back to monochromatic when winter comes round again.

Also, another plane is almost complete. This one is also Cocobolo – however the wedge is Madagascar Rosewood, which is much harder than the Cocobolo. My hope is that it will wear better, I was concerned about how the Cocobolo would hold up over time.

In the future however I’m hoping that these planes will be entirely made from a harder wood – in particular I’m hoping I can make them with Ebony or Ziricote, but I’ll have to see what’s available to me (and what’s affordable).

Identifying Quartersawn Wood (or, Medullary Ray Explained)

02 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

≈ 3 Comments

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There was an interesting thread on MyLesPaul today about quartersawn wood…

There are a number of views on how much it matters that guitar necks be quartersawn. Personally I would use quartered or flatsawn only, nothing with distinctly angled grain. However some say it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s stable.

It came up in conversation, however, that often saw marks or end grain sealer at the lumber yard covers up the end grain of the wood, making it difficult to identify the grain direction while you are there. So I thought I would share this.

This is widely known by acoustic builders, but I think electric guitar builders tend to pay less attention to the structure of wood to some degree. I wanted this to be posted here so that it gets archived along with the other tips and techniques…that way it’s here for anyone just getting started in guitar building to learn about.

So here it is, a piece of basic lutherie knowledge that everyone should be aware of: How to identify quartersawn wood, without looking at the endgrain (or, a brief lesson in the anatomy of wood).

It’s actually very simple. I must note that you’ll rarely come across wood that is perfectly quartered so as to display this in a regular lumber yard (unless they have wood marked as quartered, or a section for instrument woods), but if you bring a finger plane with you, you can find out the grain direction of rough sawn lumber quickly and easily by looking for this characteristic. In addition, in the opinion of many, this should be the standard by which you assess whether wood is considered quartersawn for the purposes of lutherie.

In many woods, medullary ray is visible in perfectly quartered blocks. It is visible on the face of the wood that is perpendicular to the vertical grain. However, when the wood is off quarter by more than about 10 degrees, the ray disappears. So it is only visible in perfectly quartered wood. The ray is visible running sideways across the grain (at a 90 degree angle to the normal grain direction). Below is an example of medullary ray, here seen in a piece of African Mahogany:

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However, here is a piece from the same block of mahogany, but this piece is slightly off quarter. Notice that the medullary ray is not visible in this piece. This means it is not perfectly quartersawn.

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So, there you have it – the easy way to tell exactly which way the grain is running, without looking at the end grain. If you plane on the edge of a square block and the ray becomes visible, it’s rift sawn at about 45 degrees. If the ray is visible on the wide face, it’s quartersawn. If it’s visible on the narrow face, it’s flat sawn.

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