Handplane Lunch

[rhull]

My compay's main office is in Boston. I work in a smallish satellite office with about a dozen other people. A few of the folks in the office are kind of handy in the woodshop, and one of them mentioned at our Christmas party this week that he had some old handplanes that he couldn't get to work.

I JUMPED right in and suggested he bring 'em in, and I'd bring in my tuning/sharpening supplies, and we'd have a "Handplane Lunch" in one of the meeting rooms. He thought that'd be fun.

Subsequently, I sent out an invite to the whole (small) office inviting anybody else to come, and bring any handplanes they had. I did take a litle ribbing:

"WTF is a handplane? "

"Gee, I'm not sure the meeting room is going to be able to handle the capacity of that crowd! "

But, a couple people seemed genuinely interested... We'll see how things go on Monday.

Now I need to get all my stuff together, and come up with a jig to do some handplaning in the meeting room without scratching the tabletop. I'm thinking a small jig with a stop, some of my good clamps, and some cardboard between the table and the jig to prevent scratching..

[sachbvn]

That's pretty cool - I like the comments you got back! Sounds like a funny bunch to work with.


Zac

[sawduster]

Heck, just use a couple 10d nails to tack a piece of scrap to the end of the table as a stop and make that table into a useful workbench. ;D

Great idea, Rob.

[Beamer]

How bout a long bench hook with a couple quick grips strategically placed?

I think you should spend the weekend building a portable work bench, i does. That way I can steal your design for myself

[admin]

Nah, just plane on the table top. Then have a mini-course on table refinish.


And on 'finding a job after abrupt dismissal'. ;D

[rhull]

Delayed until next week due to..well...actually having to do work, at work.

[sawduster]

Dec 23, 2009 8:28:13 GMT -6 rhull said:

Delayed until next week due to..well...actually having to do work, at work.

Don't you just hate it when that happens? ;D

[rhull]

Dec 23, 2009 8:29:51 GMT -6 sawduster said:

Don't you just hate it when that happens? ;D

It wouldn't bother me so much, if it didn't happen so darn often. Heheh.

[rhull]

Well, there's no weather event, and I remembered my box o' stuff, so we'll see if anybody shows up today.

[rhull]

We did our little handtool thing yesterday for about 75 minutes. There were only 7 people in the office (small satellite office), but 3 people were there for the whole thing, and another person was there for about half of it.

I brought my LV BUS and a Stanley SW #4, talked about the differences between bevel-up and bevel-down planes, some physics of cutting wood (angles versus grain, hardwoods versus softwoods, etc). We talked about how planes can be used for facing and joining both small pieces of wood and large things like tabletops. Then we went to work trying to get one of my coworker's planes tuned to some degree.

He had two planes, a Buck Bros smoother with a Hock aftermarket blade, and a 1960's era Stanley smoother. We worked on the Buck Bros., since that was what needed the most help. We did a little sanding to see that the bottom wasn't really flat (task to him to finish that up). We talked about placement of the frog and how the width of the mouth affects results. We got it more-or-less adjusted to the right place. We worked some on the chipbreaker, which needed the tip sanded down significantly to stop clogging (task to him to finish that up). We also flattened the back of the blade and sharpened it to 2000 grit automotive sandpaper. Because of the problem with the chipbreaker, which we didn't have sufficient time and I didn't bring course enough grit sandpaper to address, we really couldn't get it to satisfactorily cut the curly maple that I brought with me. Also, my clamping jig that I rigged up didn't work quite as well as I had hoped it would, which didn't help. However, I did avoid damaging the table in the meeting room, so that was good, at least.

Everybody said they thought it was really interesting, and didn't know there was so much to know about handplanes. I warned them that I'm really just an amateur, and to take everything I said with a grain of salt. They responded, "amateur compared to what???" I just smiled, thinking "they clearly don't know sawduster, tw, tdhofstetter, dcarter, lwilliams, etc, etc, etc........"

I jokingly suggested that next week would be "handcut dovetails", and got serious responses that they'd like to see that. Hrm... What have I gotten myself into.


Edit: I brought a camera and meant to take pictures, but was so engaged in show and tell that I totally forgot. DOH! So I guess this never happened.

[sawduster]

I jokingly suggested that next week would be "handcut dovetails", and got serious responses that they'd like to see that. Hrm... What have I gotten myself into.

That's a good thing!!

Hopefully, you were able to show them what they should be able to expect in performance of a hand plane with your planes. I think that is important for folks who have never used a well tuned plane.

[sdb777]

Wish I could have been in attendence!!




Scott (got to much to learn and no time to do it) B

[rhull]

Jan 9, 2010 12:11:53 GMT -6 sawduster said:

Hopefully, you were able to show them what they should be able to expect in performance of a hand plane with your planes. I think that is important for folks who have never used a well tuned plane.

That would have been nice, but without a decent way to keep the piece of wood in place, it was pretty difficult to get a good swipe in. Ah well.