Friday, September 29, 2017

Making an infill plane from scratch 8, front knob and wands

There's not much to be said about the continuation of the build today except that it involved a little bit of filing, and a lot of sanding.
The sanding was done with grit 60 emery cloth, so the surface is not perfect yet, but like the base of the plane, there is no need to make a show surface and risk destroying it while riveting the plane together.
The front knob looks a bit big, but I think it is because the rest of the plane is not yet filled. I made it a bit longer than the base of the plane, so I'll have to trim that when it is riveted in place.

Now that I have gained a bit of experience with the Bubinga, I am going to try to make the aft infill and later the rear tote.

There was a discussion going on in the comment section of one of the earlier posts in this series regarding which type of wand that is best for a woodworker.

I am not saying that the wands from Olivanders' made out of ebony or holly with Phoenix feathers or griffins teeth etc. aren't good, but for woodworking my old time favourite is without any doubt pallet wood with a bit of hair from a Newfoundland dog.

If there should be any sorcerers amongst the readers of this blog, please feel free to comment on your personal favourite wand composition.

Front knob in place.

View from the other side.

Dipped in water to give a bit of shine.

11 comments:

  1. The pallet wood, of course, should be from a discarded shipping container of a magical shipment of dragon eggs.

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    1. Now that would be cool to be transporting dragon eggs. I wonder if those could be shipped legally? There might be a grey market for stuff like that :-)

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  2. Jonas,

    I'm still along for the ride, not that I would think of doing the same. Flatting the backs of some wonky chisels is more metal working than I can handle most times :-).

    Your build is looking very nice, throw in what I perceive as your limited tool set ship board it crosses to amazing.

    Thanks for posting,

    ken

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    1. Hi Ken

      Thanks.
      Are those the English chisels that you wrote about the other day, where the seller had been a bit too eager on his belt sander?

      There is a bit more metal working involved to my taste as well, but now it is just exiting since I have moved to the wood part.
      I just hope that it will end up being worth the trouble, but I guess that no matter what I will have learned something.

      Best regards
      Jonas

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  3. Jonas,

    Yep those are the ones. I've learned that English sellers tend to over use belt sanders to make the chisels "look pretty" for selling. Bottom line if you buy from UK eBay if the tools look too good to be true, they are. If the tools are "pretty" I plan on spending at least twice the time to get 'em in working order as I would one that didn't look as good.

    Bottom line you will end up with a infill plane even if all it does is set on the shelf...That should be worth it in itself.

    ken

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    1. Thanks for the warning. Not that I plan on buying chisels from the UK at the moment, but you never know what might happen one day in the future.

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  4. Wait did I miss something? You're on a ship transporting dragon eggs on pallets made of bubinga? I guess it makes sense, I mean you can't ship dragon eggs on a pine pallet that may have been used last year to ship toilet paper. Great build. Thanks for sharing. Take care chris.

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  5. Hi Chris
    Yes, it is one of the few perks of being a seaman. Dragons eggs are transported on Bubinga pallets, Griffins eggs are transported on ebony pallets. All those pallets are single use in order to avoid contamination of the next shipment of eggs :-)

    Well, not quite. actually the supply of exotic wood from singel use pallets have been really disappointing compared to when I was in Nigeria a couple of years ago. On that vessel all the spare parts and stores that we received were delivered on singel use pallets made out of exotic wood. Bubinga and Idigbo were the only species I was able to recognize. But there were plenty of other types of wood too.
    In the link you can see a couple of pallets that I received on that ship.
    https://mulesaw.blogspot.no/2013/03/sea-chest-build-part-9.html

    I had hoped for something similar on this ship, but for some reason we have only received stores on regular euro pallets. But I was glad that I managed to buy a couple of pieces of Bubinga with the help from the stevedore foreman.

    Thanks.

    Brgds
    Jonas

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  6. Wow, I was just kidding. That was awesome. I won't complain anymore about having to drive 180 miles to get African wood now that I know a guy who will go half way around the world to get it. That makes your plane even more awesome. I'll tell you what, if all my pallets looked like the one you disassembled, I'd be doing more of it. A year or so ago I built some chairs out of pallets to see if I could do it. After that I said never again. What a pain. My mom likes here chair tough. https://senrabc.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/use-a-string-along-the-centerline-to-draw-an-arc/

    Stay safe,

    Chris

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    1. Hi Chris.
      Driving 180 miles to get wood is also a long haul if you ask me.
      I guess the difference is that I don't go here "voluntarily", but because it is my job :-)
      Euro pallets have some really nice sides that I make most of my ship based projects of, and also the pallets themselves normally yield some OK wood. Not furniture grade, but definitely usable. And being a cheapskate, I like using free wood.

      I purchased a really nice board of Idigbo in Nigeria. As far as I remember, it was 12' x 11,5" x 1". Straight and freshly sawn.
      I never got around to build anything out of that or my stash of exotic pallet wood, because I got laid off when I came home after that trip. Buthopefully someone else has found good use of the wood.
      http://mulesaw.blogspot.no/2013/03/when-you-had-hoped-for-steam-engine-and.html

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  7. Hey Jonas,

    Great story in the 'oak like wood'. I too am a frugal guy, my wife calls me a cheap skate. I make most of my projects out of construction lumber. I go every few weeks to the big box store and sift through the Southern Yellow Pine 2x12s and the white pine I get are the reject 1x12 they artfully call utility shelving. It's 13 dollars for an 8 foot board vs the 24 dollars for the normal 1x12. I often get lucky and find ones with ok knots. My laundry cabinet is all from utility shelving and I've done a fair jobviously cutting around the knots. Any knots I can't cut around I fill with super glue, another Paul Sellers trick. I make the long drive to get exotic wood to make tools or recently I bought some African black wood pen bkanks to try and make Royal Game of UR dice ala Brian.

    Take Care,
    Chris

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