Hand Tool Journey #2: My first Krenov Style Plane

I made my first plane!

I used the blade from one of those old wooden planes I had. As you can see I had a variety of these old planes with different style blades. Straight, concave, and a couple different radii of convex blades:

Here are some progress photos…

Making the Body:

I started out with a block of Koa that I got on our honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii.

Look, two plane bodies!

I used the width of the blade as a guide to cut my block into slabs.

I am basing my design from instructions in various books from James Krenov. Here I am checking and drawing the angles for the mouth:

And cut them on the bandsaw:

I had to run one of the triangle pieces on my router table to create the space for the screw that holds chip breaker on to the iron.

Making the Pin:

Now, I don’t have a lathe. So I had to get creative to make the round ends of the pin. I used a plug cutting bit on my drill press. I think this would be faster and easier than a lathe anyway. This ensures that both ends are the same and I know that they are exactly 1/2” so I can use a 1/2” drill bit to drill the holes.

I finished shaping the pin (rounding over the top) with a chisel.

Finally I glued it up:

Here is the glued up body:

I ran the plane upside-down through my thickness sander to carefully flatten the sole and open the throat until it was just right:

Shaping the body:

I first rough cut the basic shape on the bandsaw:

And after a lot of hand shaping I ended up with this:

The blade:

Sorry, I didn’t take photos of the blade shaping process. but I cut the blade and chip breaker shorter, shaped it on the disk sander, and sharpened it on my WorkSharp.

And HERE is the finished project:

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