Red Gum Slab Table Build Part 2

Here is a beautiful Red Gum slab that I purchased last year. (Click on any photo to enlarge)

It’s a monster! 2.4 meters long by 1.2 meters wide and 50 mm thick. It weighs approximately 150 kgs. First order of business was to fill all of the pitch pockets and checks with clear epoxy.

The more meticulous you are with the filling process, the better the finish you will get. Here is the top after a good polish and eight coats of Danish Oil.

The lower frame was a good challenge and pretty labour intensive. It involved cutting some big, half blind dovetails. Even though this joint will be hidden, perfect accuracy was important because of the massive weight of the top. Sloppy joinery would not hold up. The added challenge was that the frame was angled at 5 ½ degrees. I have cut many dovetails but it was surprising how this angle made it tricky to sight my lines when cutting. Also the Victorian Ash is 44 mm thick. After cutting all of the tails with my dovetail saw, I carefully lay out the pins.

You can see from the photo how I used an off-cut to register the 5 ½ degree angle to lay out the pins. Then I used my Lie Neilson dovetail saw to cut the pins.

A series of relief cuts are made and then the first section of waste can be removed with a Jeweller’s saw.

Then I switched to a more aggressive Coping saw to remove the remaining waste.

Removing the rest of the waste involves many hours of chiselling. You know the quote “To understand you must do”.
A glue up of this scale is always stressful but, my careful layout and accurate sawing and chiselling paid off.

In my next blog, I will finish up with the build of the base by showing the dovetailing of the the upper and lower stretchers. Then I will show ebonising and applying the Danish Oil finish.

Red Gum Slab Table

Sorry it’s been a while! Got the kitchen and laundry finished. (Click on any photo to enlarge).

We also have had our en-suite bathroom renovated over the last few months and I decided to make the vanity. The drawers are made from Birch ply and the solid wood is Victorian Ash.

The drawers are finished with my own homemade beeswax finish, which smells beautiful. The Vic Ash is finished with Danish oil. Re-sawing the Vic Ash was a good effort for my 14” bandsaw.

I only have a small thicknesser, so once the panels were jointed and glued I worked them to finished dimension with handplanes. It is always nice to find a reason to use my beautiful, Lie-Nielson #8.

I was just about to get back into some plane making, when this Red Gum slab caught my eye.

Here is a sneak peak photo of the progress. I will go through the building process in detail in my next blog.

Stanley #51 & 52 plane and shoot board

Wow! This year is flying by. As I said in my last blog post, my wife and I are doing some house renovations and we are neck deep in tearing out the kitchen. (Click on any photo to enlarge).

The reno is not allowing me time to make any planes but I am however, still taking a little time here and there to refurb some old tools. My latest is this old Stanley #51 & 52 plane and shoot board.

I was given an opportunity to purchase this from a friend, who is selling off his collection. I did not want to purchase this plane just because it was a cool object. I wanted to see how well this old plane and shoot board performed. My friend was happy for me to take it and if I could get it working, then money would exchange hands. The whole thing was covered in a thick layer of dust, so I gave it a good wipe down, covered it in Camellia oil and it sat for several weeks before I could get back to it. I then wiped all the oily residue off with a rag and some methylated spirits. When the plane body was clean, I could then get a good look at the plane’s condition and how well it was machined. The plane body was square and looked good. The next order of business was to sharpen the blade and tune the chip breaker. The back of the blade flattened up quickly, however you can see that there is a considerable amount of pitting in the blade.

I knew that it would work but, I need to get a replacement blade. I will probably try a Lee Valley replacement in that fancy “PMV-11” steel.

Then I needed to tune up the frog. I apologise that I didn’t get any photos of this process, but at the time I was more worried about getting it done than grabbing the camera. The frog did need a serious tuning. It was not meeting to the plane body very well, so I unscrewed it and filed the mating surfaces until everything was true. I screwed the frog back to the body and then trued up the entire bed angle. Next I turned my attention to the #52 shoot board.

The track that the plane runs in will wear over time so it can be adjusted to allow for this.

The adjustment screws and bolts were seized solid, so I soaked them in a pool of WD-40 for a few days. The next photo shows the shoot board, flipped over and one of the four bolts in it’s WD-40 bath.

By the next weekend the bolts were free and the fence was again adjustable. It was now time for the long awaited test drive. My engineer square was telling me that the plane body was nice and square but I was curious to see how flat the sole was. A quality straight edge is fine, but I like to test flatness by using another plane. If you have a plane made by Lie Nielson or Veritas, then it should be well machined and pretty damn flat. I jointed a piece of wood with my Lie Nielson 5½ Jack Plane and took a few light shavings. The old Stanley followed up the 5½ with equally thin shavings, no problem. So I knew that the sole was good and true.

Now it was time to see how it felt while shooting using the #52. Up until now my shooting set up has been the Veritas low angle jack and it has done a great job.

Here is a short video of the old Stanley in action. I am really happy with it and am confident that it will perform even better when I get the new thicker replacement blade.

Damascus Steel Infill Plane

My latest plane is all about the challenge of trying out a new material, and I thought that Damascus steel would work nicely with my low-slung smoother design. As soon as you lap Damascus steel the pattern disappears, so you have to etch it with ferric acid to bring out the pattern again. I knew this job was going to be better handled by my wife, the “mad scientist”. We did a bit of internet research regarding the etching process and a little experimenting on a few off-cuts. I always lap the insides of my planes before assembly, so acid etching the inside was a good warm up.

Here is a couple of photos of me doing the final fit of the ebony infills. I used two of my low-slung smoothers from my original set.

After the infills are in and all the cross pins are drilled and peened, it is time to lap the outside up to 600 grit.

Now it’s time for the final acid etching to the outside of the plane. I was definitely less nervous about how the etching was going to turn out because my wife had perfected her process and did a great job on the inside. Here is a photo of the pattern reappearing under the ferric acid.

Under the acid you can see the dovetails and cross pins clearly. When the acid is removed however the cross pins and dovetails turn a dull grey. I wanted the dovetails to be more visible, even from a distance, so I decided to make a quick sanding tool out of some scrap aluminium (or aluminum) and meticulously sanded each dovetail.

The finished plane turned out better than I imagined. I picked Damascus steel with a pattern that was leaning forward to give the feeling of forward momentum.

1¼” Low-slung smoother – 6⅛” long, 1¼” wide blade, 50° pitch

If you would like a more detailed description of acid etching an infill plane, check out Konrad Sauer’s blog – Etching pattern welded steel - Damascus. I would also like to mention Brian Buckner. I am pretty sure that he was the first plane maker to use Damascus steel. Both Brian and Konrad’s Damascus steel planes were a huge source of inspiration. Also, feel free to contact me if anyone has any questions regarding plane making using Damascus steel. Here are a few more photos.

1 ¼” Low-slung smoother

I just finished this commission. Here is a picture with its first coat of finish.

1¼” Low-slung smoother – 6⅛” long, 1¼” wide blade, 01 Tool steel, Naval brass, Kingwood infill

I was contacted a couple of months ago by a local woodworker and hand tool enthusiast, who was interested in potentially commissioning one of my planes. The next step was simple, invite him over for a Saturday afternoon and take some shavings. It was a great day, low key and lots of fun. He was able to try all of my planes, old and new, and was happy to pick them up and put them to work. Like myself, he enjoys doing smaller woodworking projects and he was attracted to the feel and versatility of the 1¼” low-slung smoother. If you do fine woodworking, chances are you do smallish projects such as box making or small drawers, or your larger projects include small details such as inlays. This small smoother is great for all sorts of smallish jobs and can be used comfortably with two hands or one. Why use a sanding block to remove machining marks from the edges of a small drawer side? One or two passes with this plane and the edge is smooth and ready for finishing.

Or use it with one hand to gently round an edge or clean up a chamfer.

With the blade cambered, I can level up a delicate joint or smooth any small surface.

Of course every woodworker has a favourite plane to perform these tasks. You certainly do not need this plane or an infill plane - whatever works for you. I would just like to encourage more woodworkers to trust in their fine planes on projects. I’d rather sweep up shavings than sanding dust. I actually use this size plane to fit my parallel sided infills and the first time I tried it I was surprised at how accurate this method is.

I was finally able to get my hands on Naval brass for this plane thanks to a good Samaritan in America. It was a great brass to work with and it will be what I use for now on for my low-slung smoothers. Here are some more pictures of the finished plane.

While taking the photos for this most recent blog, my wife and I had a play with the video feature of her camera. It was a bit of fun – you can check it out on the new Video page on my website - BJS Planes and Working - Video page.