Shop Made Chisel Shoulder Plane

I’ve recently fallen in love with very thin shavings of wood on my bench and shop floor. Hand planes totally ROCK!!!

I’ve got a couple of block planes, and a very nicely tuned Anant No. 4 smoothing plane I currently use. I’ve also got a Stanley No. 4, Stanley No. 5, Stanley No. 80 cab scraper, and a Dunlap spokeshave that all require a little TLC to turn them into working tools (another project post soon… I’m planning to document the process)

I found the idea for a “chisel-based “shoulder plane on garagewoodworks.com, and thought it would be a nice little project. And it was!

I made my plane from cherry and walnut from the cutoff bin, and the wedge is made from walnut. In the pictures, you can see actual shavings from this plane from the piece of lyptus you can also see. It’s been finished with danish oil and paste wax. The angle between the two faces for the chisel is 10 degrees, and the back face is at 45 to the sole of the plane. The wedge is 8 to accommodate the taper of the chisel. This plane is for a 3/4” chisel, but I plan to make a 1” and a 1/2” for kicks.

It was a lot of fun, and it’s always nice to be able to use a tool you’ve made yourself. I’m also a Ham Radio operator, and in that hobby, this would be called “homebrewed”, but of course, that also refers to a completely different hobby as well. I guess this is more appropriately “shop made”

If you’re getting started with hand planes, this is a really nice project to work on…

Mark

-- -- "there are many good reasons to use old hand tools, but moral superiority is NOT one of them..."