Making Wooden Planes

I'm in Asheville, North Carolina, this week, learning to make wooden planes from Scott Meek.  Yesterday was our first day, and it was a busy one,

Our first job was to choose the woods we wanted and to assemble the blanks. I'll be making three planes, a smoother from Osage orange with an applied sole of Ipe and a wedge and retaining rod of the same wood; a 12 inch jack plane from a nice block of teak and a 22 inch jointer of quartersawn white oak that will have an insert just in front of the blade to help with wear at this critical spot.  The jack and jointer will have wedges and retaining rods from bubinga.

Assembling the wood blanks

 One thing I learned is you don't have to have a 4X4 inch blank to make a plane body.  You can glue up two 2X4 inch boards to get the size needed for a jack or jointer.  Here is my jointer in clamps.  We used Titebond 3 glue for the oak, but an epoxy glue for the woods like teak, bubinga and Osage orange that have more natural oils and would resist normal glue.

Gluing up two white oak boards; squeeze-out is good!

The white oak boards clamped up

Teak blank for jack plane

After selecting our wood, we jointed a smooth edge for the bottom and also one side.  When glue-ups were called for we did those, rough cut our wedges to shape (we'll rasp and sand them later) and cut off the cheese so we can get to the interior.

More to come!

Norm