Cool blind nailing plane

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
MJD posted this one on facebook this morning.. A plane for lifting slivers of wood to allow putting in nails "blind" by gluing the sliver back down over the nail head.

https://www.mjdtools.com/WebCD/CDBrowse.php?Page=view&setAuction=FC16&item=310478

Patent: http://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?id=8913

A somewhat more contemporary approach (no longer for sale...) that it looks like you could pretty easily re-create in your shop:
http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.aspx?cat=1,41182&p=32683

I've done basically the same idea as the LV tool with just a chisel which practically speaking works quite well most of the time if you pay attention to the grain (and the grain isn't to squirrelly). I'm not really convinced of the utility of a specialized plane for this, but thought it was a pretty cool device nevertheless.

Picture preserved locally for posterity.
310478_lg.jpg
 
Price of the old one could pay for a lot of chisels. The one from Lee Valley shows great promise. Don't think I'll make the investmentbhowever. Fancy above my pay grade.
David
 
I had the one from Lee Valley some many years ago. It worked quite well in soft woods, but not great in harder woods. Grain direction was very important for it to work well. Pine and poplar were about the only woods that I had any reasonable success with. Mahogany was about a 50/50 gamble.

I have no idea where it is now. I lost some hand tools in a move and it may have been in that box. Still, it might be somewhere in my shop. I do very little cabinet work in soft woods now, so I haven't needed or wanted to use it an a very looong time.

Charley
 
I always wondered about that tool from LV. Not suprising to me that its no longer available.
Ryan the price these old tools go for amazes me. Thats a lot of moola for a tool with such a specialised purpose.
 
Its for collectors not users certainly at that price. The sheer rareness (likely due mostly to the lack of utility) drives the price up. So we're in a weird space here were the less useful things were they more they tend to be worth :rolleyes:

I was mostly fascinated that someone had done so much engineering and made such a complex piece of work for what it does.
 
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