Prototype medium chair-maker plane with tote

 

Recent visitors will know that I have been working on another batch of my small chair-maker's planes. These started to sell on ebay, and now all of the first batch have sold. At the same time, I have been pondering making a new variant of the large chair-maker plane I made two years ago. That design came about because I wanted to incorporate both a wider plane iron, two inches, and a handle or tote to the body. The stock ended up being nine inches in length. It's larger body successfully fit the curves of my chair seats. But it was still a little clunky, and not quite right. So it has been sitting on the shelf for a while. My interest in antique hand-saws got me hooked on the shape and feel of the early handle profiles. The good news is that there are several websites on hand-saws which provide templates of both English and American saw handle profiles. This led me down the rabbit hole. For two weeks I tried a variety of handle shapes, seven to be exact, on a new plane body. Looking for an ideal blend of form, balance, and arc of cut. I narrowed things down to two possible handle designs. But I was concerned about the overall weight of the design. The plane which was sized to take a two-inch wide blade was about the length of a #3 Stanley bench plane. I made another prototype whose length was based on the Stanley #2, as seen the the photo posted above. This plane's stock was sized to fit a 1-1/2 inch wide blade. Balancing the two new planes in my hands, I pretty much knew that the smaller of the two had the better feel to it. When I drew my plans for the plane, I was considering using a plane iron whose length was, like most Stanleys, at least as high as the height of the tote. To keep the blade from interferring with the tote, or perhaps it's clearer to say, to keep the tote from interferring with the removal of the plane blade, the body had to be lengthened a half inch so the tote could be set back more to the rear. After playing with the prototype, I have gone back to the idea of using a shorter iron on this design. This will let me shorten the body by that half inch. The tote is mounted to the stock using a sliding dove-tail joint. Shortening the plane brings it back to the length of the #2 Stanley, which I like. You can see in the photo above that the foot of the tote can be moved forward easily so that it is in line with the bed of the plane iron. It doesn't show up clearly in this photo, but the heel of the stock is cut at a 20 degree angle, and with the sweep of the bottom curve bares a strong resemblance to a classic clipper transom. A nice detail. The tote is modeled on the tote of the Stanley #2. On the tote stock shown in the back ground of the photo, I have increased the height of the foot of the tote, returning to the original pattern of the Stanley tote. I am still playing with the idea of either rounding the end of the tote's foot, as on the original, or cutting the end of the foot to an angle matching the plane iron bed, and having the foot butt up against the rear of the iron.

Thanks for stopping by. STB