Self-Made Shoulder Plane

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Well I did it..I started it at least...after a long time of putting it off and doing other things, I finally spent some time in front of the Milling Machine and began fabricating my first self-made hand plane.

I have had a few plane ideas floating around in my head for quite some time. I am an accomplished Machinist and did a stint at Lie Nielsen as well, so I am well versed in hand plane machining, but I decided to start out with a relatively safe design first. I saw a Shoulder Plane design I liked in a Shop Notes magaizine a few months back and decided to base my new plane off that. I did decide to change a few things however.

They made their plane out of carbon-steel and brass, while mine will be made entirely of stainless. There are two reasons for that. At work we have a ton of 316L stainless steel billets, flat bar and sheet goods, and because I love how shiny polished stainless steel can get. About the only other change was the sole. They dovetailed brass plate onto a mild-steel sole, while mine sole is machined from a solid stainless steel billet. This will add a little more heft to the smallish plane and be down low so the balance should be better.

Other than that I left my plane to be pretty much like it is in the magazine article. I figure machining a low angle plane can be tricky enough without adding a design of mine from start to finish. I figure my first try should at least have some semblance of hope to it.!!
 
We'll be looking forward to pictures of the finished plane, Travis. ;) I've always thought a stainless steel plane would look great.
 
I wanna see pics, and not just pics of this nice plane sitting on a bench with a few waffer thin curls of wood on it, I wanna see the milling machine at work too!

Man, I'd love to have a milling machine!! :rolleyes: :D

Cheers!
 
I did manage to get one decent photo today. The picture does not show much because I am still in the very early stages of building this hand plane. It's still very rough around the edges, but as I put more and more time into this plane, those rough edges will be more defined. In the end I am sure it will look good.


Hand_Plane-Small.jpg
 
Wow Travis, your off to great start. From the picture it looks like 4 pieces of steel (two plates plus toe and heal stuffing(?)). It also looks like the holes and pins are for holding the wood infill in place. How do you bind the metal pieces together?

Looking forward to progress pics. Thanks for sharing.
 
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