Small mitre plane

So, this little mitre plane is underway.

It's a Bill Carter type mitre plane, which is where Bill uses the brass back from an old tenon saw as the body of the plane. I have wanted to make one of these for ages. To build a plane by hand is not an easy task, when you are making one from new parts, but when you are trying to make one from old tools and get everything right from marking up the dovetails, to bending the body of the plane to get it all to line up is going to be some kind of fun.

I thought that I would start with a mock up, this way I can keep a track of the setting out, with the positions of the dovetails, the mouth position and the bridge position. All of these are most important. I will add the picture of the finished mock up tomorrow.

With the length of the tenon saw governing how long the plane would be. I would like the logo that is stamped into the brass, to sit in the centre of the back of the plane. The drawing above shows all of the setting out needed to be done.

Here is the cutting of the dovetails, the base is marked, so is the bed angle for the blade. The base thickness is 2.76mm Gauge plate, a gift from an local engineer, who is going to sort out machining the blade for this plane, it was taken from an old smoothing plane. Robert's going to machine it down to 3mm, with only a slight taper on it.

I'm staying faithful to Bills methods of construction of the plane, so here I have cut into the waste, and used an old Stanley Black chisel to knock over the waste 'pins'.

The waste removed from some of the body, the Vallorbe files are brilliant, the half round has a great flat surface, then for the roots of the dovetails I used the three square, followed by a needle file to ensure to root is clear.

I will add more tomorrow

All the best

Jamie