Last Smoothing Plane for Now

[Dennis Mills]

Hi Folks,

Yep, I made yet another smoothing plane, this time a western style plane in sapele with a jatoba shoe. Bedded at 50 degrees (known as a York pitch) with a 1 1/2" wide, 3/16" thick 1095 self made iron, this time with a hardness of around 62 HRc.

A couple of comments about the construction. I found the sapele easier to work with than the beech I used on one of the earlier planes, but at the same time it was easier to get tearout when chopping across end grain. I found this odd because the sapele should be harder to work with, looking at data from The Wood Database.

                                       sapele                   beech

Janka hardness               1360                      1300

Specific gravity                 0.56, 0.67              0.54, 0.72

   specific gravity specified as basic and at 12% MC

Crushing strength             8540                      7410

So I ended up with some epoxy patches on this plane.

My next plane will be a molding plane,although I have not yet determined the profile.

Dennis

PS: I should add that it works very well, and I'll make few cosmetic changes.