I made a plane and shooting board

[Eric Knapp]

Hi, everyone.

I've been very quiet since it's the school year. However, I've been busy working on my shop to make it usable for instrument making. My latest build is a handplane and shooting board for tops and backs. I've been wanting to make good planes for a long time. I made a bunch of bad ones and finally one that is pretty good. Here it is:

My Latest Handplane

I made the plane hammer too. I left the plane very square since it's going to be used on its side a lot.

Here's the shooting board I made to go with it:

My Shooting Board

It's based on Todd Stock's videos on YouTube. Yes, it's left-handed.

I wanted to try it out so I took an old 1" x 4" board and resawed it into three pieces. Each slice was about 3/16" thick. I jointed them with my plane and shooting board and glued them with the stretchy tape method. I surfaced the resulting panel by hand with my new plane and my ECE Smoother. I don't have any other way to thickness at this point. I'll never have a thickness sander, I don't have enough room. The only power solution that would fit would be those drill press Safe-T-Planers from StewMac. So I'm practicing doing it with planes and scrapers.

Thicknessing Test

The news is I'm getting better. I was able to take this flat-sawn pine to a pretty consistent 3.5mm/0.14" thickness. Not thin enough but it was a good enough test to make me feel better.

Getting Better

I also made a short video of the plane and shooting board in action.

https://youtu.be/zo23OV5TunU

Any feedback/criticism/encouragement is very welcome.

Thanks,

-Eric

[Jim McConkey]

Nice plane! You will have to make a separate discussion to tell us how you built it.

Not to steal your discussion, but I just had to join a top for a mandolin I am repairing, and the lack of a shooting board reminded me I also needed to build one. I was just about to post mine. This shooting board was too late for the mandolin, but here is what I ended up with. Mine is longer than usual, about 36", because I regularly join dulcimer tops which can easily be 30". But a 36" stop is way too long while joining a16" mandolin top, so I borrowed a feature I also found on YouTube, which is to have an adjustable stop fence. I decided against the incline, mostly because I rarely shoot more than one top a year and blade wear is of minimal concern.

You will notice I have a stop on the bottom where it hooks over the workbench, to keep it from sliding. My base is about 11" wide and the riser about 8" wide, to accommodate virtually any top. I found a roll of 3" UMHW tape at Woodcraft, and the entire sliding area has one long strip, which you can see the light glancing off of. This makes pushing the plane far easier and smoother. It looks like you have some sort of strips on yours, too. The board in place is about 28" long.

Here you can see my movable fence. The holes are 3/8" and the fence itself has 3/8" walnut dowels glued in. The fence fits in very snug and does not move.

I first drilled two holes in the fence with a Forstner bit, then accurately aligned it square to the riser and continued the holes into the riser. I repeated for 4 sets of holes at 6" intervals. Then I put short dowels into the first set of hole and glued them into the fence itself.

Overall, a great improvement over the stack of boards I have made due with in the past! The plane pictured is not quite ready for prime time. I discovered the sole is nowhere close to flat, and that will be the subject of a forthcoming discussion.

[Bryan Bear]

Nice plane, what did you make the blade from?

Good on ya, for building your skills for thicknessing by hand. Early on, I took the time to build a thickness sander but I often wish I had spent that time developing my hand skills.

[Eric Knapp]

Nice plane, what did you make the blade from?

It's a Hock iron and cap. It's his Krenov-style, the 1.5" x 3.5" one from this page. I don't think I'll ever be interested in making my own irons when I can get such nice ones from Ron Hock.

http://www.hocktools.com/products/pi.html

Good on ya, for building your skills for thicknessing by hand. Early on, I took the time to build a thickness sander but I often wish I had spent that time developing my hand skills.

Thanks, I'm forcing myself to learn handtool thicknessing even if I eventually have a powered solution. I also made this small walnut panel.

Thin Walnut Panel

It is about 10"x9" and is very thin. I was able to thickness it with scrapers to 1/16".

Pretty Thin

I used my plane and shooting board to joint it and it worked well. Wood that thin can be hard to deal with.

-Eric

[Eric Knapp]

Nice plane! You will have to make a separate discussion to tell us how you built it.

Thanks for the nice comment. I think I will post about making the plane. I took a lot of photos along the way and could share at any detail level people wanted.

Not to steal your discussion,

Extending the discussion is not stealing, it's a great part of forums. Your shooting board looks great. I may be making one like that too. I like the idea of an adjustable fence. I am also using that Slick tape from Woodcraft. It works well. I had some of the 3/4" size and used two strips. I will be using that tape a lot I think.

Overall, a great improvement over the stack of boards I have made due with in the past! The plane pictured is not quite ready for prime time. I discovered the sole is nowhere close to flat, and that will be the subject of a forthcoming discussion.

Fixing planes is an interest of mine. Keep us posted on that effort and I'd be happy to share the small amount of knowledge I've gained on the subject.

-Eric

[Barry Daniels]

Good job, Eric. Now try it in Rosewood!

[Eric Knapp]

Good job, Eric. Now try it in Rosewood!

Thanks! I will! (Someday) I am going to make my initial bad guitars with woods that aren't quite so exotic. I don't want to ruin my good wood immediately.

The next trial is using some old cedar siding to practice making a top. Then maybe some walnut or cherry for backs and sides. I have lots of that. I'm saving my mahogany, rosewood, quilted maple, curly maple, flamed walnut for when I know what I'm doing.

-Eric

[Barry Daniels]

Good plan. I was kidding about the rosewood. My experience on my first guitar (Brazilian Rosewood) with a dull, poorly setup plane and some paint scrapers quickly convinced me to acquire a thickness sander (even though they really hadn't been invented yet).

[Eric Knapp]

Good plan. I was kidding about the rosewood. My experience on my first guitar (Brazilian Rosewood) with a dull, poorly setup plane and some paint scrapers quickly convinced me to acquire a thickness sander.

Ha! That would do it for me too. I'm very fortunate to have had a lot of experience with hand tools before I got the guitar-making bug. Of course, I had to make a lot of my own tools before I was satisfied. I also have accidentally collected a lot of wood that might be instrument quality. If it is that good I will have enough for years of building as a hobbyist.

One step at a time. I hope I have a build going soon.

Thanks for the encouragement, folks. It makes a huge difference.

-Eric