I recently had the opportunity to take a class that my friend Jeremy Grubb was teach in Houston at his shop. It was $200 plus wood and blades, but you came out with two awesome wooden hand planes.
One of the hardest parts for this class was finding the wood. It is very difficult to find an exotic hardwood that is 2 1/2" X 2 1/2". Why exotic hardwoods, they look cooler and are a lot denser that your standard maple, walnut, etc. I found out that cool woods to use are cocobola, which I used for both, bebinga, purple heart, grenadila, lignum vitae, and a few other. My cocobola was expensive at $170 for a board that was 10" wide X 2 1/2" thick X 4' long. At least, I can make many more hand planes with the remaining wood that I have.
The next step was the jointing, resawing, trimming on the table saw, and them planing. Quite a lot there, but it is very important, especially for the sole to be dead ass flat.
Then we cut our different angles. We were making two, one was a 63 degree high angle that was 13" long and the other was a 55 degree stardard angle with a Krenov style metal chip breaker which was 9" long. You had to cut all of your angle for the blade to sit in and the curve for the front where the shaving fly out of, hopefully.
Next, we the assembly and after that the flattening. You need a lot of clamps for this part. We used a few pin nails for aligment, helped out a lot. Once it was all dry, we then had to true up the sole. Soemtimes this was pretty simply, but in my case, it took a hand plane to flatten a hand plane. We finally got it all done.
Next part was cutting the wooden wedge and shaping your hand plane to look like a hotrod namely a rodster. Off to the bandsaw to make your rough cuts, and then to the spindle sander, the belt sander, and the disk sander. Then once all of that is done, you have an ugly hand plane.
Now it is time to make it look pretty. For this, we used a hand plane makers float, some files and rasps, a little spokeshave, a card scraper, and some 220 grit sand paper. So we rounded here and took off from there. Shaped and sculpted here there. And last, we had to put the finger places that were set just for yourself. What you did was grab your hand plane and mark some circles on the side where your back hand was. Then you let got and repeat. All the while, you want to run a test pass on a piece of wood to make sure that your hand is grabbing the same place.
Once you have this done, you take a scoop hand chisel and a v-groove hand chisel and scoop it out, then you use a goose neck scraper and hollow it out a little. Then you take the v-groove chisel and make a grid, much nicer for holding onto your hand plane.
When this is all said and done, you have a beautifully sculpted wooden hand plane form the Grubb's Bad Ass School of Woodworking. I hope that you enjoy the pictures, and let me know if you have any questions.
Matt
One of the hardest parts for this class was finding the wood. It is very difficult to find an exotic hardwood that is 2 1/2" X 2 1/2". Why exotic hardwoods, they look cooler and are a lot denser that your standard maple, walnut, etc. I found out that cool woods to use are cocobola, which I used for both, bebinga, purple heart, grenadila, lignum vitae, and a few other. My cocobola was expensive at $170 for a board that was 10" wide X 2 1/2" thick X 4' long. At least, I can make many more hand planes with the remaining wood that I have.
The next step was the jointing, resawing, trimming on the table saw, and them planing. Quite a lot there, but it is very important, especially for the sole to be dead ass flat.
Then we cut our different angles. We were making two, one was a 63 degree high angle that was 13" long and the other was a 55 degree stardard angle with a Krenov style metal chip breaker which was 9" long. You had to cut all of your angle for the blade to sit in and the curve for the front where the shaving fly out of, hopefully.
Next, we the assembly and after that the flattening. You need a lot of clamps for this part. We used a few pin nails for aligment, helped out a lot. Once it was all dry, we then had to true up the sole. Soemtimes this was pretty simply, but in my case, it took a hand plane to flatten a hand plane. We finally got it all done.
Next part was cutting the wooden wedge and shaping your hand plane to look like a hotrod namely a rodster. Off to the bandsaw to make your rough cuts, and then to the spindle sander, the belt sander, and the disk sander. Then once all of that is done, you have an ugly hand plane.
Now it is time to make it look pretty. For this, we used a hand plane makers float, some files and rasps, a little spokeshave, a card scraper, and some 220 grit sand paper. So we rounded here and took off from there. Shaped and sculpted here there. And last, we had to put the finger places that were set just for yourself. What you did was grab your hand plane and mark some circles on the side where your back hand was. Then you let got and repeat. All the while, you want to run a test pass on a piece of wood to make sure that your hand is grabbing the same place.
Once you have this done, you take a scoop hand chisel and a v-groove hand chisel and scoop it out, then you use a goose neck scraper and hollow it out a little. Then you take the v-groove chisel and make a grid, much nicer for holding onto your hand plane.
When this is all said and done, you have a beautifully sculpted wooden hand plane form the Grubb's Bad Ass School of Woodworking. I hope that you enjoy the pictures, and let me know if you have any questions.
Matt
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