Hollows and Rounds Class @ Port Townsend

We then went to the plane body and worked to complete the plane details such as chamfers and carving the ramp details. We then gave it a light sanding and applied some oil finish. We did this so that in the last step when we started to sharpen the blades we didn't get the body dirty.
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Part of the sharpening process is back forth fitting of the blade into the plane body to ensure we exactly match the plane bottom. I mean exactly. I was surprised at the accuracy that Matt insisted on. Anyone that buys a plane from him is guaranteed a precision product. Even before we started sharpening, we again placed the blade into the plane with the blade just barely raised and with the opposing plane body (the hollow) fitted with sandpaper we matted the two surfaces (plane bottoms) and rubbed against each other. First concentrating in the center of "the round" to create a slight concavity along the length and then along the entire length to truly flatten the plane bottom and again register the blade against the plane body, creating another small land on the blade. Then we sharpened with med India stones then honed with Arkansas stones and stropping with green compound on leather, constantly placing the blades back and forth into the plane body to check that it matches the profile.
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Here are my two completed planes. The wedges are not complete in their final shape as I am going to wait until I am home to finish. I want to use some tools that I have at home to complete the process.

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Very cool, they sure came out looking nice anyway! Thanks for taking us along the way with you.

Did you have to cut back much of the blade to get past the decarburized section on the edge?

A real forge would be a smidge easier to get the temperature without if being quite as exciting :D I miss having a forge.. :(
 
It is a lot of work, I can now understand why the new ones cost so much. They cut wonderfully. My only other experience was trying to get some vintage rounds and hollows to work, but I really did not know what I was doing. But Jim Tolpin during our visit said that Matt's planes cut way better than any vintage he has.

Tomorrow starts the other class where we actually make molding shapes. There only two of us from this class staying over for this next one. So tomorrow we will be getting some new classmates. I can't wait as we saw all the prepared wood for the class. Should be really fun. After all the hard work, it will be nice to use our own planes even though Matt brought a ton of his planes for the class to use.

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Very cool, they sure came out looking nice anyway! Thanks for taking us along the way with you.

Did you have to cut back much of the blade to get past the decarburized section on the edge?

A real forge would be a smidge easier to get the temperature without if being quite as exciting :D I miss having a forge.. :(

No not really. As for the forge, Matt use to have one, and he indicated it retained too much heat and that is when he developed his "open" "Rube Goldberg" designed torch based on a weed burner tip.
 
No not really. As for the forge, Matt use to have one, and he indicated it retained too much heat and that is when he developed his "open" "Rube Goldberg" designed torch based on a weed burner tip.

Depends on the setup with the forge - some of them allow you to adjust the heat down a bit so the temperature doesn't move quite as fast (granted that also means you have more time spent in the hot zone which changes the iron in different ways so its a tradeoff). Mostly my experience was with coal forges (and mostly using douglas fir bark in them because coal cost to much) which are a bit of a different animal as well.

The setup here is certainly easier to reproduce at home anyway :D :thumb:
 
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