Building a Woodsmith Chisel Plane
I spent some time on Saturday putting together a couple of hand plane kits from the Woodsmith Store. The first one was the chisel plane. 
The other was the small hand plane (more on that in another post). I love making my own tools and restoring old ones, so I was excited to get these home and get to work.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the plane iron. Both planes use a 3/16″-thick x 1-1/2″-wide plane iron from Hock Tools. They’re branded “Woodsmith by Hock Tools.” These are quality irons that are almost worth the price of the kit. The hand plane kit also includes a nice cap iron.
The chisel plane was pretty simple to put together and finish. The wood sole and “cap” are pre-cut and pre-drilled. There’s a brass threaded insert that you need to press into the sole piece. Then all you need to do is form the radius on the back end to make the plane more comfortable to use. I put the two pieces together with the iron and clamped the assembly in my tail vise on my workbench. Then I used a rasp and sandpaper to form the radius. It went fairly quickly. The instructions also suggest making a “finger notch” in the cap to make the plane more comfortable to use. I used a round rasp to start this notch then finished up with a half-round rasp. I also took the time to lightly round over any sharp edges where my hands might come in contact with the body of the plane. I finished up the wood pieces with a coat of boiled linseed oil and a couple coats of Briwax clear paste wax.
Then I turned my attention to the iron. A light honing and a couple of swipes to flatten the back on 400-grit wet/dry sandpaper were all it took to get a sharp edge. I assembled the iron into the plane (bevel down) using the included cap screw and washer. I then tried to adjust the depth of cut and realized there was a problem. The bevel of the blade matches the bed angle of the sole, meaning that the flat of the bevel was parallel to the sole of the plane! So the flat of the bevel just slid across the workpiece. I tried to shim the under the upper end of the iron with an old business card, but it didn’t seem to help angle the iron so its cutting edge would contact the workpiece. The only other solution I could think of was to slightly change the angle of the bed. I used 150-grit sandpaper face-up on my table saw for a flat surface. Then I went to work sanding the bed, concentrating the pressure on the “mouth” end of the bed. After quite a bit of sanding, I tried fitting the iron. It was a little better, but I ended up shimming the upper end anyway to get the plane to cut. Once everything was assembled, I gave it a try on some scrap lumber. It was a little tricky to get the exact depth of cut, but once that was done, it worked great. It’s good enough that I’ll keep it on my shelf of “users” for future projects. It’ll be great for getting into those corners to remove glue squeeze-out and general cleanup of a joint.
Patrick Mills said,
I just purchased this same plane a couple of days before finding your article on building it. I was also impressed with the Hock blade, especially since I paid less than $20 for the kit (purchased on ebay).
On question: Is there any reason not to change the angle on the blade? I have not measured the angle of the plane bed or the angle on the blade, and am not sure that I would even know the correct culmative angle for this type of plane.
(posted on October 26th, 2006 at 9:31 am)