Small Project - rehabilitate a plane?

 I just finished a larger project. (is a surprise so I am not talking about it here) It was one that was totally new to me and one for which I had to do some design and experimentation. So now I am looking for a couple of small things before I drive into another large project.  I will probably do some more wood turning as a distraction too. 

 In a back cupboard I have a few things that have been the in back of my mind. I have knife blades that needs handles and two plane bodies that need blades.  5 or 6 of the knife blades are Swedish Mora blades of various styles, one of my plans is to make my own Morakniv  Eldris. I think an Eldris will be a great pencil sharpening knife and will fit well into a tool belt for use as a marking knife. 

  For this plane body I had a blade in my collected parts and pieces  that was slightly too wide.  The other body is for a 5/8 rabbet plane, I have no idea where to get a blade for it.  I may have to cut a chisel apart, or....?

  I  clamped the blade in my work station and carefully filed the sides down until it fit into the plane body.

  Most of the files that I have in my shop are either from my Grandfather/father's shops or something that I bought cheap at a garage sale once upon a time. Between these three I filed the plane blade so that it fits snugly in the body.  I may have to track down a chip breaker for this blade and make a hard wood wedge as well.  I am going to fiddle with the wedge before I go looking for parts, unless I can get a chip breaker cheap this may end up as the body of a large sanding block.  I don't remember where the plane body came from and suspect it cost $0.00.

 

  Currently the weather is unseasonable and so full on shop attendance has been somewhat delayed, but it is coming soon.

cheers ianw  

   

Plane Door Handle

screen shot

  The last day of the holiday, tomorrow, trains and planes and cars.  We travel by train to Frankfurt and then have a stop over in Paris and then home to Person International.  It will be a long time in a small chair.

   Getting home  will mean less wine, less beer, fewer wonderful pastries and....getting back to a real computer.  My suggestion to folks that are looking at netbooks, is to be very aware of their limitations.  The wee computer has kept me us up to  date on email and given good weather reports as well as helped us plan our days here. It has made me very crazy trying to write the blog and load photos.

   The photo above was taken in Winningen, a picture perfect wine village on the Mosel River.  We were riding our bikes through town when I saw this door handle on a garage.  I thought it was clever until I looked closely and saw that it was a complete plane, with blade, that someone had screwed to the door as a handle.  I  suspect that the blade was pretty whipped but the plane looked to be in good shape.

  Over the course of the 10 days here I have looked at a couple of hardware stores but nothing here competes with what we have in Canada and the United States.  I really don't know where one would go to get a good selection of tools, even Bauhaus left me pretty unimpressed in terms of tools.   The is a good German internet company whose store front I visited two years ago in Berlin, maybe that is it for German wood working?

    Remember to look in on my sponsor thetoolstore.ca and the places I visit at the bottom of the blog.

   Friday, back to the real world, and maybe some better photos.