all in a days work with Hand Planes

[Tom King]

I have 16 operating shutters to build for a mid 19th Century house.  Each shutter is 20-1/2 x 92 inches.  Originals were two raised panels that match other doors on the house.  The originals have nothing worth saving, except the dimensions.  We had a good supply of Cypress 1/8s left from making shingles for the house, so we picked through the remaining boards to get good prospects out of.

Thursday, we glued up the boards for the panels.  The 16 shutters need 32 panels.  I rough cut the pieces to 40 inches long.  They will finish at 13-1/2 inches wide, but I glued up the whole boards to see how they plane before running them down to final width.

Yesterday, I started hand planning the boards to flatten the panels, and they need hand plane texture anyway, not to mention that I don't have a 16" wide jointer. 

 

 

The house has a good air conditioning system, and with it being mid 90s with maximum humidity, it was the right time to do some inside work.  I turned the AC down to 68, because I knew I would be burning some calories.

I clamped the little 5' Lervad bench to the table saw.  There is no room on this job site for a large bench, and I've done this many times before.  The 40" panels left plenty of room in between the end of the bench and the table saw, and stayed plenty sturdy enough.

 

The boards were flat enough not to require anything as aggressive as a no.5, but I have two no. 6's that work just fine for this.  I don't know the camber on the blades, but one takes shavings maybe 15 thousandths thick, and the second maybe half or a little less than that.

Smoothing planes finish.  In this picture I have a 4-1/2, a 4, and a 3 laid out.  The 4-1/2 takes a thousandth or less, so it wasn't much use for this job that didn't have to be furniture quality, so I put it back up.  The 4 got used some, but the 3 was best for getting any low spots that the 6's would quite get down into, but weren't taking the whole board down for.

 

I started at an angle that I could reach all the way across the 16" width, and took the hump out of the middle with the first, coarsest set no.6.

Ano.6 is a good enough length to be able to feel when these panels are flat enough.  I use winding sticks to judge how to take any twist out.  I don't have any fancy winding sticks, but just find something close at hand.  These are a couple of scraps of decking boards we ripped down to make new purlins out of for one of the work building roofs.  They were plenty straight enough, and already a good enough length for this job.

I sight over the nearest one to the bottom of the far one, like in the picture.

[Tom King]

I started planning at 9:30 in the morning, had to stop to give a tour, we took about a half hour for lunch, and the guys wanted to quit at 2, so I have maybe three hours work in the 17 that I finished.  The only problem I had was a little irritation on the outside of the knuckle on my right little finger outer joint.  Next time, I'll add a band aid there to start with.

The stiles and rails will be a little thicker than the wood I have, and I haven't even picked it up yet.  As long as I'm doing "something that needs to be done", I'm good with calling it all in a days work.  I have a lot of work in progress.

Obligatory picture of shavings pile

[Tom King]

When I first noticed the irritation on my little finger starting, the line in the DIre Straights song Money for Nothing kept going through my head.  "Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger..........."

[Immortan D]

Great job so far Tom.

 

Is the #6 a lot better than a 5 1/2 as a coarse plane? It's not clear to me the reason why the latter even exists.

 

[Tom King]

Sorry, I don't know what a 5-1/2 is specifically for.  I don't have one.  I didn't intend originally to have two no. 6's, but just the way it worked out, and it's been a real asset having both set up with different cambers.  I don't bother to keep up with plane history.  I don't even know what types all my planes are.  I'm just thinking about getting the work done.

If these pieces were going in furniture, the 6's would get followed by a no. 7, which I have set for final flattening taking only about a thou and a half over the width of the iron.

I like full width cambers, and see no real purpose for only rounding off the corners. 

I'll try to get some video the next day I work on these.  I have an HD camera, and have gotten used to using it, but there is not enough light in that room.  I have some photography lights on stands ordered, so hopefully they'll get here pretty soon.

[Tom King]

Today, I just flattened a few when I had a little time in between periods of overcast working on a white standing seam roof. No trouble with the little finger. Only ten left to flatten after today. I'll run them down to a common thickness on the big bandsaw/resaw, and hit the backs with a smoothing plane. It works really good, without building up a sweat doing a few at a time, so that's the plan to finish the rest of them when.

I get asked all the time by someone who doesn't understand working on old houses, "When are you going to be finished?"  My most common answer is, "When there's nothing left to do." 

[Tom King]

I thought to buy a battery for the micrometer today. The thicker cutting no.6 shaving was a bit thinner than my estimate, and the thinner cutting one was a little thicker.

On a full width shaving the coarse cutting no. 6 takes a shaving .014350 at the thickest part in the middle of the shaving. The second cut no.6 takes .00880 in the middle of a full width shaving. I had estimated the first one at 15 thou, and the second one at a little less than half that. It definitely takes way less than half the effort using the second one.

I just stumbled into this setup, but really like it. I bought the first no. 6 because it was in good shape and cheap, but needed a few parts. Sometime later I bid on a couple of other no. 6s on ebay, and ended up winning both of them. It's been long enough ago that I don't remember what I paid for them, but since I bought them, it couldn't have been very much. I did no rust removal on any of the parts, since they were in pretty decent shape. Out of the three planes, I ended up with two complete users. I have no idea, and don't care what the type numbers are, or when they were made. It really does work out to be a good combination for rough flattening though.

Only six left after today.