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Tag Archives: plane

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

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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.

Koa Smoother: Update

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, guitar, lutherie, plane, woodworking

So the Koa smoother has been completed…..she’s a thing of beauty. It will be a really nice plane for general use; soon to be shipped off to its new home in the US.

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Why use a Handplane?

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

art, curly, figured, fix, guitar making, hand, how, maple, plane, planing, quilted, reduce, tearout, woodworking

It dawned on me today that there is something I had not discussed here. For anybody who is new to building guitars (as I was two years ago), there is something important to note – the benefits of using handplanes over sanding.

When I started this blog, I intended it to be a one-stop resource for those new to woodworking and/or lutherie. So it’s important then for me to note for the beginner why handplanes are important.

Handplanes are enjoyable to use – but aside from making nice thin curly shavings, the real reason for handplaning is this: the finish that you can achieve with a handplane is much better than what you can achieve by sanding. This is something that is talked about a lot – however, there are not a lot of images online when you research hand planing that demonstrates what the actual difference is in the wood’s appearance.

I was testing out a smooth plane today (the African Blackwood smoother from the handplane making tutorial actually) and I snapped a photo of the piece I was working on – which happened to be piece of highly figured curly maple. The right side of this piece of wood has been planed with the smooth plane – the left side has been sanded to a reasonably high grit.

Look at how much more prominent the figure is on the side that was planed! This will be reflected in the wood under a finish as well (in fact the difference will probably be multiplied), and using a handplane will make your figured wood considerably more attractive.

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.

How to Make a Wooden Handplane: Part I

12 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in Tool Making

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

art, crafts, guitar building, how-to, krenov, lesson, lutherie, luthier, making, plane, tutorial, wood working, wooden, woodworking

As promised, here is the wooden handplane tutorial!

For anyone who missed the other post…this is a tutorial on how to build wooden handplanes – I said a Krenov plane, but my method deviates a wee bit from a true Krenov plane. The plane above is what this tutorial will teach you how to make.

The first thing I want to say is – I am not an expert at making handplanes! I have made several handplanes, but this is homegrown lutherie, so I’m just a hack. If you want to see perfection in handplane making, check out Konrad Sauer’s blog (or Holtey). However – I have found that most of the tutorials that you can find online don’t really have enough information for the beginner to understand what really makes a handplane good. So I want to make this very detailed, so that anyone can follow it and end up with a really nice (and more importantly, well functioning) handplane.

This technique can be used for any wooden handplane really. The one I’m working on is a High Angle Smoother (a smaller one, with 1.5″ iron). Hopefully by the end of this tutorial anyone who has read it will be able to go forth and make a wooden handplane.

This is not the blade for this plane, but this iron is the same width so I’m using it to guide the build.

This plane will be made out of this nice big piece of ebony that has been on my workbench for a couple weeks now. The wood itself doesn’t matter so much, but it should not be a softwood (use Cherry, Maple, etc.). Harder woods are better than softer woods.

First step is to joint two sides perpendicular to one another.

Plane the other four sides.

Checking for squareness – the four sides have to be perfectly square, pay careful attention to this. Keeping everything square at this stage makes life a lot easier down the road.

Plane the thickness of the board to the same as your iron width (in this case 35 mm).

This piece of ebony will actually yield four planes for me (one Krenov smoother and three 22-25 mm Miniature infill planes), so I marked off how this will be cut.

For the smoother, I marked out a 55 degree bed angle.

Next up was to cut the pieces out on the bandsaw. The skinny piece will make the sides of the Krenov; the fat one is the body. The rest is for small metal planes.

Cut out along the lines marked for the bed angle. The other angle roughly matches the bed angle, but 45 degrees or somewhere around there is usually good.

After cutting, the bed angle will not be square to the sides. It was hard to capture in a photo but what I am checking for squareness of here is the bed angle against both the left and right sides of the plane.

Very carefully (making sure not to remove too much material), the angle is squared up on a belt sander.

With the disc sander, I also square up the nose of each of the two body pieces. Check that the nose is square to the sides as well. The reason for this is that the plane bottom will have to be re-flattened from time to time, each time making the plane a little thinner by removing material from the mouth. If you don’t square up the noses on each piece, the mouth of the plane will get a little wider each time the bottom is lapped.

For smaller planes etc. this isn’t really important, but the smooth plane requires a tight mouth so it is important here. Also, I took this picture but I made the noses a little more flat than this, maybe 2 mm or so.

Double check the blade angle. Sometimes it’s helpful if you happen to have three arms for this, the blade likes to slide if you are using a good heavy one. Especially trying to take a picture at the same time. This blade did come out around 55 degrees though – doesn’t need to be exact, within 1-2 degrees is alright, maybe more depending on your preference. This one was right on the money though pretty well (it actually came out at 55.5 or so). Usually I would rather go with 1-2 degrees off rather than taking off more material, unless it has made the bed angle more than 60 degrees (which I consider a bit too much).

Next up, just the faces of the blade bed and the other block are buffed to a high gloss. This plane will not be getting a finish, except maybe a rub with some oil if I’m concerned about cracking over time.

The faces are buffed now because they cannot be once the plane is assembled.

Next up – the sides. Plane the other side flat so that is is flat on both sides and nice and square.

Cut the piece in half to make two sides.

Starting to look a bit like a plane now!

Another operation that requires three arms (when trying to photograph, anyways). With one side in place and lined up with the rear of the plane as it will be glued, the blade thickness is marked.

The thickness of the wedge is added, which is the second line drawn here. In this case, this plane will ultimately be receiving a lever cap rather than a wedge.

The cross pin position is traced so that it will be placed at the edge of the lever cap or wedge. This is then drilled to the same size as the pin that will be used. In this case, my pin is 3/16″ brass.

The two sides are clamped together while drilling the hole, ensuring that the hole is drill in exactly the same place on both sides.

Check everything for squareness one more time. Key areas are the sides, the bed angle of both the blade and the opposite piece (the other angled cut), and the flat noses of each piece. Check the bottom. The only areas that are not critical at this point are the back and front ends, plus the top.

The inside of each side is buffed only where it will be visible (since, like with the bed angle, this cannot be accessed to polish/finish once the plane has been glued up).

Now the sides are glued on. Two things are important here – 1) try to keep everything lined up flat on the bottom of the plane, and 2) make absolutely sure that your cross pin is lined up square with the bed angle. You can either do this by making a wedge to insert which you’ve squared up in advance, or by sighting down the bed to see how if the pin lines up straight with the mouth (this is the way I do it). Both of these methods require that you glue the cross pin in at the same time as the sides. The cross pin being straight is more critical than the bottom being dead flat at this point.

Another thing to note is that I use epoxy rather than wood glue – as a result, I do only one side at a time (since the open time is only 5 minutes).

Here it is after both sides have been glued.

Use the square to mark lines for cutting the ends off so everything is flush.

After it has been cut on the bandsaw, I sand both ends flat and square to the rest of the body.

This plane will be getting a lever cap, but I made up a quick wedge just to test this out. I ran the bottom of the plane across the jointer (being careful to only take off a small amount of material) to true up the sole so it is dead flat.

This plane will be getting a Hock 1.5″ iron – so these cuts are with a mouth which is a bit too wide (more than 1mm), since this iron is only 3 mm thick (compared with the 4.8 mm hock irons).

However, even with the wide mouth, the initial test cuts were very good :thumb:

That’s all for today. Tomorrow I will do some chamfers on the sides etc. and give the plane a bit more shape, then buff it to a high gloss on the buffing wheel. After that it will be time to start thinking about the Lever Cap.

Cheers!

Image Gallery Update

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by anthonymurkar in General Information, Tool Making

≈ Leave a comment

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

≈ Leave a comment

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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Tags

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).

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