Shoulder Plane

After much ado here is my Boxwood,Blackwood,Mopane & Lignum Vitae shoulder plane.

I intended to make this plane 15mm wide but a moments distraction on the sander resulted in a width of 14.6mm,not a huge deal but enough to unleash some spectacularly colourful language & a small but steady stream of self flagellation.

She is constructed with slabs of Boxwood over a Mopane core with the Lignum Vitae sole rebated down the center to accept the Mopane & the Blackwood border is dovetailed into the ends.The blade is 3mm 0-1 tool steel honed to a single bevel of 25 degrees & the bed is angled at 28 degrees.

Like many of my projects she was started over a year ago,possibly close to 2,but I was put off completing her by how flexible she was once I had opened her mouth up.

However,I saw her sitting on the shelf this morning & thought,

"Hey,let's see if I can get her to make shavings..."

A couple of hours later,a new blade,cut,ground & heat treated,a wedge out of Lignum,cut & fitted & lo & behold the Mahogany shavings surrounding her are evidence of her worthiness.

Her blade is ground a whisper wider than her body,about 1/5th of a millimeter & she is 61mm high & 107.5mm long.

Although I'm satisfied with her performance I will be making subsequent planes with slightly smaller cut outs in their bodies to reduce some of that flexibility.

I've called her Bethsheby after one of Karens ancestors & one of the kittens we had to return because of my accursed alergies.

Carving Tools

Been meaning to make some carving tools for a while so here we are....Made using a O-1 tool steel,brass tubing ferrules & various woods.Top row,Maple,Mahogany,Beech & Yew.Bottom row,Sapele,African Blackwood,Boxwood,Walnut & Piquia Amarello.The gouges were made on the lathe by drilling a hole the appropriate width for the chosen sweep down the center then half the material was ground away to leave a U shaped cross section that is easilly sharpened into a gouge.The largest gouge is also forged a little to open the sweep so that an 8mm diameter drill rod yeilds a gouge with a 9mm sweep(I'm not that enamoured with this tool,I'll be making another 9mm sweep gouge when the 13mm drill rod arrives.)The straight chisels were 5mm drill rod that I heated in a propane/butane torch until red hot then hammer forged to rough shape then ground to final dimension on the lap grinder.The skew & fingernail chisels were simply ground.All have been successfully heat treated & take & hold an edge that is "shaving sharp".I thoroughly enjoy making these wee tools & imagine I'll have a lot more before very long!

I'm rubbish

Yet again it's been 3 months since my last post,I really do suck at keeping a journal!

It's been a busy 3 months,along with the usual earrings,cufflinks & pendants I've made a replacement electrical component for my father in laws old Rolls Royce using a piece of copper tubing (free),a sandwich board (all materials scavenged from skips & the roadside,well,apart from the glue & panel pins)for my artist friend Deborah Cameron,she paints the most amazing seascapes,http://deborahcameron.com/,started work on a pair of Viking shoes & made a few more custom tools.

This little smoothing plane has to be my favourite tool so far.She's 130mm longs by 51mm wide with a blade width of 34mm.She is constructed primarily from African Blackwood,a stable timber as hard as bone that glues to itself with little or no seam & is capable of taking a mirror finish,my favourite wood by some margin.The wedge is curly Sycamore with a ring of Blackwood,Sycamore,Black Walnut,Turquoise resin & finally beef bone holding in a 13mm Lapis Lazuli cabochon.

Her mouth is quite wide at the moment,1.5mm with the bevel down,4mm with the bevel up (I modeled her on Karl Holteys 11-SA & although she is a little shorter the blade & bed geometry are the same).This will close up once I get round to replacing the 2mm thick stanley block plane blade with a 3.5-4mm 0-1 carbon steel blade of my own creation.I'm not too bothered at the minute as I've only had to plane some very sedate Oak & Mahogany & these particular timbers seem to cooperate without a fuss producing some very woolly shavings.I'm sure once I have to plane some African Padauk or pippy Yew I'll be looking for that smaller mouth.

I've made a couple of planes before but none of them turned out as well as this one,it seems to me that Blackwood is the wood of choice when planemaking.

You may have noticed I am refering to this plane as she?I tend to name my favourite tools/machines & I've named this little beauty Charlize...

mokume gane & blackwood cufflinks

Here is a pair of Mokume Gane & African Blackwood cufflinks.
Mokume Gane is a Japanese technique involving the lamination of 2 or more contrasting metals,in this case 8 layers of copper & sterling silver,then cutting into those layers to reveal a pattern then flattening into a sheet to create a smooth,uniform material.
As far as I'm aware Mokume was first used to decorate the hilt & scabbard of Samurai swords but now is mainly used in the manufacture of jewellery,most notably by James Binnion & Steve Midgett.If you Google either of them you will be amazed by the work of 2 modern masters of an ancient craft.

First Image

I had a funny feeling my blog entries would be few & far between but I didn't think the first image I uploaded would be 3 months after my first entry!

Anyhoo,here's a wee pendant I made for a long lost friend who I have tracked down on facebook.

The main bulk of the piece is African Blackwood,the blue is turquoise resin which is marketed toward pen makers,then we have Mother of Pearl,difficult to see from this photo but it has some lovely flashes of pink & green.The brown you see is American Black walnut & then there's the tiniest hint of bone just around the silver tubing which holds a 5mm Tigers Eye cabochon.The whole thing is finished to 400 grit then given a light buff with a fibral mop(more on fibral in a later post.)before being wiped with vaseline then buffed to a soft sheen.

More much sooner,promise...