It's a bird! It's a plane! No, really, it's a plane!

[Roger Tulk]

It needs a little finishing and sanding, and the blade needs to be honed a mite, and really I should probably get a new block of wood and start over, but I built this useful little tool today.



It's a chisel plane, and is useful for getting into tight inside corners, and cleaning up glue lines, flush cutting and other things a chisel can do, but with more control. I don't know if I will ever use it, but I made it for the very best reason - it looked like a neat sort of project. My reward will come in a few years when someone looks at it and says "Wow, how old is this relic?" and I can reply, "Well, we've been married 35 year...Oh! You mean the plane. I made that myself."

While I was doing this today, my son was spreading 1½ cubic yards of dirt around the lawn, and started cracking wise about the number of planes I have, why didn't I just buy one It'd probably be cheaper, etc, etc. He finally asked me if my plane could fly. I told him it would if he kept that up.

[Jim DeLaney]

Nice concept. I'd maybe round over a few edges on the body, and perhaps rout/carve some finger/thumb indentations in the sides. Oh yeah, and maybe streamline that blade cap a bit, too!

Basically, you've 'invented' a 'poor man's Stanley 97' there - a pretty useful plane for the purposes you've already mentioned.

BTW, send the kid down my way. I've got twelve yards of mulch that needs spread around.

[Tom Becnel]

Nice project there. What type of iron did you use on it?

[Roger Tulk]

It's a Stanley block plane blade, $7.50 at Lee Valley.

I am going to round the corners a little, and decided not to do the finger grooves, maybe. I know I will have difficulty getting them the same on either side. This project is found in "Working with Handplanes" from Taunton Press. It is an anthology of Fine Woodworking articles. I am also building a wooden bench plane from an article in the book.

[Bob Gibson]

That's pretty neat Roger Looks like it would be pretty useful.

[Roger Tulk]

I have used it to bacck up my rabbet plane, which didn't work well for me the first time I tried it, but the chisel plane smoothed out the damage nicely, even though I haven't honed the blade. Nice tool.

[Jim C Bradley]

It just plane ole looks like fun.

Enjoy,

JimB

[Roger Tulk]

This is the finished product, for now. I rounded it, streamlined it, and stained it dark cherry, then applied a coat of mineral oil. Have already used it a bit, but now I've honed the edge and it's ready to play!