Travis Johnson
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In another thread I brought up this shoulder plane to show what can be done with a TIG machine, some stainless steel and some wood. For the last year this plane's progress has kind of stalled. I got some inherent problems with it, but after a year of thinking I think I figured some of them out.
You can see in the picture two problems. The first is the mile wide gap between the blade and the body of the plane. At Lie Nielsen I think the dimension was something like .015...obviously .150 is NOT going to work well. I can't weld much on this guy any more because its riveted with wood and the wood will burn. But I was thinking maybe if I machine out ¼ inch of the front sole I could machine a piece that would slide in the slot...an adjustable mouth like what is used on Lie Nielsen's 9½ block plane. The sole of this thing is 3/4 inch stainless square stock so I have plenty of solid metal to mill into.
Now on LN's 9½ they use the top knob to hold and tighten the mouth but that would be problematic here. I was thinking if I simply used four set screws the mouth could be adjusted to the blade with a feeler gauge. A set it, and forget it kind of thing. I am not keen on having four set screw holes on the side of this thing really, but function is more important then looks at this point.
My question is, do you think this idea has merit? If you don't can you think of another way to tighten the gap between the blade and the mouth of the sole?
The second problem is more cosmetic. You can see in the picture one of the rivets has a pin hole in it. I'd like to dab in a drop of brass, but brass takes in incredible amount of heat and it will burn and char the rood its riveted too. Any ideas on how I can fix that rivet so that it looks a bit better?
You can see in the picture two problems. The first is the mile wide gap between the blade and the body of the plane. At Lie Nielsen I think the dimension was something like .015...obviously .150 is NOT going to work well. I can't weld much on this guy any more because its riveted with wood and the wood will burn. But I was thinking maybe if I machine out ¼ inch of the front sole I could machine a piece that would slide in the slot...an adjustable mouth like what is used on Lie Nielsen's 9½ block plane. The sole of this thing is 3/4 inch stainless square stock so I have plenty of solid metal to mill into.
Now on LN's 9½ they use the top knob to hold and tighten the mouth but that would be problematic here. I was thinking if I simply used four set screws the mouth could be adjusted to the blade with a feeler gauge. A set it, and forget it kind of thing. I am not keen on having four set screw holes on the side of this thing really, but function is more important then looks at this point.
My question is, do you think this idea has merit? If you don't can you think of another way to tighten the gap between the blade and the mouth of the sole?
The second problem is more cosmetic. You can see in the picture one of the rivets has a pin hole in it. I'd like to dab in a drop of brass, but brass takes in incredible amount of heat and it will burn and char the rood its riveted too. Any ideas on how I can fix that rivet so that it looks a bit better?
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