Fitted wedges and irons

 

It does not show up well in this photo, but one of these wedge mortises is slightly wider than it's nieghbor. This is the result of problems with consistantly cleaning out and paring the mortises to size. To improve the consistancy of wedge mortises in a batch of planes, I ordered extra-long brad point bits in fractional sizes less than the tang widths offered on LN plane irons. The next time I work up a batch of planes I intend to use these new bits to drill out the waste in the wedge mortises. I hope that this will reduce the chances of inadvertantly opening up the mortise width in relation to the tang being fitted. We will see if this solves the problem.