Erik's Hjørne: PREPARING THE SIDES

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

PREPARING THE SIDES

After recovering from the aches and pains in my body caused by the back planing, I decided to try another way to plane the sides.

When I initially got my 50º blade for the Lee Valley Jack/Smoother combo, I also ordered a toothed blade which I have never used, mostly because it was honed to a 40º angle rather than the 38º angled specified on their web site. I did start to hone it to the lower angle when I first got it, but it took me forever on my water stones and I kept having to flatten them and it was all a pain in the butt. Now that I had acquired an extra coarse diamond stone, I thought I would give a go once again.

It still took me some time and effort to get the new bevel on as well as lapping the face but I eventually got there. I slid it into my jack plane while the smoother got outfitted with the regular but steeper 50º blade.

First I set out to plane all the saw marks off with the smoother. I put one of the sides on the bench unclamped, just using a bench dog as a stop and started to plane away, but I soon realized the potential danger of this as the side suddenly bent violently up in the air and slapped down on to the bench with a loud 'smack' as the blade bit into the surface. Luckily no harm was done but I'm not so sure the outcome wouldn't have been different, had I been planing some curly something. I'll try to remember not to do that again in the future. I proceeded with one end clamped to the bench with a caul and planed away from that. Though this was a bit of a pain as I had to unclamp and rotate the side all the time, in order to thin the full length of the side, it was definitely safer way to do it and I eventually got it all smooth and free from saw marks.

Once the saw marks were gone I decided on which face would go on the outside and marked these with the position of the neck joint, waist and end as well as arrows for which edge would be joint to the top. Each side was also got marked 'A' and 'B' accordingly and so was each corresponding heel slot on the neck block. The sides were now ready for further thicknessing on the inside face.

Finally I got to try out the toothed blade and what a difference it made. It was so much easier to drive through the work and it left a wonderful bundle of frizzy curls. The clean up of all the tooth marks with the regular blade in the smoother was equally effortless. Every time I had completed a full circle of planing; toothed planing, regular planing at both ends, I measured the thickness of the side and marked the shallow spots with a white pencil and planed the next circle accordingly.

Eventually I got down to a thickness off 2.1-2.2mm (~0.082-0.086") with the heel slot ends slightly thicker than that, to accommodate the slightly wider heel slots.

Last, all four edges were jointed true and square on my shooting board

TOOTHED BLADE AND REGULAR 50º BLADE