Nothing Happens At Ten

This weekend’s basement project was to make some shelves to go on top of the planting table. I made these out of 3/4″ plywood using hand tools. It takes a bit longer using hand tools than it wood (pun) using power tools, but:

• I don’t own many power tools.
• I enjoy learning how to use the hand tools.
• I do not enjoy using roaring, screaming, finger-crunching power tools.

So, I used my hand tools to make the shelves. I had to cut two rabbets and two dadoes in the sides to hold the shelves. Here is the plane that I used to cut the rabbets.

It is an old, wooden rabbet plane with the iron held in by a simple wedge… adjusted using the little yellow hammer. Here is another photo of it:

I would love to tell you that Allen was my old, beloved Great Grandfather who used that plane to create marvelous furniture in the Pre-Revolution Colonies…… but the truth is that I have no idea who Allen was. I picked up the plane at a rummage sale for five bucks. Apparently he did not want to lose this tool.

The plane iron is held in with that wedge, and it is adjusted by tapping with the hammer on the back of the iron, the back of the plane, and the wedge. It is a tricky bit of technology to master, but once the technique sets in, it is kind of fun to do. It really is possible to move the iron in and out by thousandths of an inch to set the depth of the cut.

This is actually the same plane that I found in a drawer the hard way back in 2009. You can see that blog entry at the link below.

Kiss The Devil

I think I am doing a bit better with it now that I have a real shop so that I can store it on a shelf.

I have been trying to use this tool for many years, and only slowly has the skill come to me. For example, I just figured out yesterday that the idea of making the tool cut by pushing down on it harder is incorrect. The blade cuts better if I lift up on the plane. It cuts better if the downward pressure is just slightly less than the weight of the plane… which means lifting up on it very slightly so that it just barely floats over the wood. Whoda guessed that?

For the dadoes I used my Record 405 Multi Plane. What a marvelous beast that one is.

Wow! Look at all those adjustments! Arrr arrrr.! Hey! It’s a guy thing.

The mulitplane ( also called a combination plane) was designed in the 19th century to replace dozens of the old wooden planes, each one designed to do one job. It accepts many different types of irons to do different kinds of cuts. I could have done the rabbets with the Multi Plane, but what fun would that be?

The Record 405 is a British product that is a copy of the old Stanley #45 Combination Plane. Neither plane is in production anymore. Here are all the parts that came with the plane.

Ya gotta love all those pieces and parts. Rosewood handle. Rosewood fence. Nice.

This plane is not an antique. I bought it new about 30 years ago, paying way too much for it, but what the heck, I like it.

So, I spent a few pleasant (quiet) hours in the basement cutting plywood with my hand tools and ended up with some shelves.

We will put these on the plant bench to hold the plant tools and some trays of seedlings under the lights.

I would love to wax poetic about my hand tools some more, but I have already violated my own 15 second rule several times over ( “If it takes longer than 15 seconds to read a blog entry, it is too long”). Perhaps some time later I can blog how to adjust and use the old tools. We shall see.