Fantasy Tool Box - Tuning the Record #043

[derekcohen]

One of the tools for the Tool Box is the Record #043 plough plane. This is a gem of a plane - small enough not to take up too much space, and it fights above its weight. I have the Veritas Small Plow and Combination planes, but they are too large and heavy to include in this tool box. Veritas has also brought out their version of the #043. I've only seen it in photos, and it looks really excellent. It did give me one idea for tuning up the Record.



One of the vulnerabilities of this plane is the loose blade clamp. They fall off and get lost. I have done what Veritas has done and screwed the blade clamp to the body.



This requires drilling the clamp and then tapping the body for a bolt. Note that the bolt must not be tightened up against the body. Leave the clamp slightly loose. If tight against the body, the clamp screw will likely end up off centre, and this will cant the blade. Leaving it loose allows it to rotate into square.

Add a sub-fence. Make this longer, but not too deep. A longer fence aids in registration as the blade enters and comes off the work piece. The depth of the fence is kept shallow as this is a small plough plane intended for small boards, such as boxes and small drawer sides.



There is nothing worse when a plough plane looses its setting, either the depth of cut or the fence setting. The knobs are finger tightened, and generally this is not enough as metal-on-metal ends up slipping. The knobs need to be cranked down. This is made easier if the knobs receive a slot for a screwdriver.

I've never liked the Record blades, and so decided to make new ones. In any event, I wanted metric versions: 3mm and 6mm for drawer grooves, plus a 10mm for rebates. The 3mm needed to be shaped wider at the rear to have enough clamping area. Note that the Veritas blades fit and work very well in this plane, but I planned to make my own, and for pennies.

Making the blades was quite simple - I used HSS (M2) purchased via eBay. All blades are 3mm thick and come in 8"/200mm lengths. One 6mm length creates both the 3mm and 6mm blades. 30 degree bevels ...



All blades require a relief angle, which is a slight taper away from the cutting edge. The purpose of this is to avoid the blade binding in the groove. The relief angle was made using the fixture for grinding the sides of dovetail chisels.



Here is the 3mm blade installed ...



Why a 3mm blade? Well, this is the side used for small boxes, where the box- or drawer bottom has a 3mm tongue.

I also wanted to try out an idea I had for positioning the groove, as well as when ploughing into the grain (which would typically cause tearout and a nasty looking groove). The mortise gauge I made (with the fixed blades in a cassette) has a 3mm blade ...



Here is the board scored ...



... and ploughed ...



All the blades worked well. Grooving (with the grain) is straight forward. Rebating across the grain is more of a challenge. This is facilitated by first scoring the surface with a cutting gauge.



Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Dr.Al]

Lovely work as always Derek. I like that modification (the screw) to the #43. I might well do something similar with mine.

 

[Cabinetman]

Scoring before grooving, yes I can see that would be good on some grains, now if you want to get really clever Derek you could mount the scorer in front of the blade! Very nice work as always.

 

[Lons]

Thanks Derek. An interesting modification which I'll pinch and add to mine I think.

The only comment I'd make is that it looks to be a cross head bolt, (unless the photo isn't clear) which looks a out of place IMO. Maybe nicer to use a standard bolt head or slotted head instead?

 

[Dr.Al]

Thanks Derek. An interesting modification which I'll pinch and add to mine I think.

The only comment I'd make is that it looks to be a cross head bolt, (unless the photo isn't clear) which looks a out of place IMO. Maybe nicer to use a standard bolt head or slotted head instead?

I'd use a (metric) cap screw (Allen key type), but then I don't care whether it looks out of place and I detest slotted heads, phillips heads and pozidrives

 

[Lons]

Probably better Al,
I said slotted as it would match the originals on the plane. Wouldn't you just make your own though, because you can.

 

[Lons]

Derek
I didn't know about the relief angle on the blades, it makes sence. Did you heat treat the whole blades or just the lower section? I have suitable tool steel but only a map torch for hardening/tempering.

 

[Pete Maddex]

A Mapp torch will be fine for small blades, I have done 043 blades with mine.

Pete

 

[Dr.Al]

Probably better Al,
I said slotted as it would match the originals on the plane. Wouldn't you just make your own though, because you can.

Yes, maybe... I've got a few ideas of how I'd do it, but you'll have to wait and see

I didn't know about the relief angle on the blades, it makes sense.

I learnt that one the hard way: when I made my first plough plane blades I didn't grind the relief angle and they were really disappointing. When I ground the relief (only on the bottom bit in my case as there's only so deep a blade will ever go) they worked much better.

Did you heat treat the whole blades or just the lower section?

I think Derek said he used HSS. That's supplied pre-hardened and you just grind it to shape.

I have suitable tool steel but only a map torch for hardening/tempering.

MAPP would be fine. For blades of that size, even a propane torch would be fine.

 

[Lons]

Thanks for the advice Al, I missed the HSS part. It's reminded me I have some old HSS planer blades which From memory are around 3mm thick. I have a few metres of tool steel I aquired some time ago. I've forgotten what grade it is but it's 25mm x 3mm and I've used it a few times. Got a great finish and razor sharp edge on a knife out of it. I treated that on the barbeque though not the MAPP torch.

You're a right tease. I'll have to wait to see what you do now before modifying mine. My money would be on you replacing all the slotted screws with thumbscrews.

 

[Lons]

Thanks Pete.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The 3mm / 1/8 cutter with stepped width looks a good idea. The most annoying feature of the 043 IME is that the clamp does not retain a narrow cutter well - the screw tends to push it sideways when tightening. Or perhaps it is just my particular example.

I could not bring myself to drill holes in it though. The other approach is just to remember to be careful not to drop the clamp. Keep it over the bench in case you do. We manage it with the cutters.

 

[Dr.Al]

The 3mm / 1/8 cutter with stepped width looks a good idea.

The #45 has that for its 1/8" cutter and I mimicked it for my 3 mm one. The #45 copes down to about 4 mm width but narrower than that needs a step. In that case it's because of the notch for adjusting depth of cut.



(photo taken before grinding the relief)

 

[Dr.Al]

You're a right tease. I'll have to wait to see what you do now before modifying mine. My money would be on you replacing all the slotted screws with thumbscrews.

You didn't have to wait long...

I haven't replaced any of the screws, although I considered it. The ones that hold the rails into the main body never get undone (apart from when modifying the plane as I've just done, so I can live with them being slotted). The one for clamping the blade in place has a big mechanical advantage, so the existing thumbscrew is fine. I could imagine the thumbscrews for holding the fence to the rail slipping, but I've never experienced it actually happening so for now I'm happy to live with them.

Anyway, this is my Rapier #43:



The clamping piece is quite shabby. I suspect the original was lost at some point and a replacement was made with judicious use of files. The blade that's in there at the moment is from the #45 and is a bit too long really, but it works fine. At some point I'll make some shorter ones for this plane.

Another look at the plane body:



You can see the two nasty slotted screws that hold the rail in place but, as I said, they never get undone (apart from today) and they're probably some daft imperial thread so remaking them is more hassle than I can be bothered with.

This is what it looks like if you remove the blade and try to tighten the screw to stop the clamp falling out:



It might not be obvious, but the clamp is still loose in that position. I did consider (a while ago) just making a longer thumbscrew. At least with that, I'd have been able to store the clamp with the tool while no blade was fitted. That's really what I see as the main goal: holding the clamp in place while you fit the blade isn't really an issue. The main reason I haven't done it is that I'd (probably) either have to re-tap the hole metric or make the screw with an imperial thread and that felt like more hassle than the job was worth. It's a sign of how little this has bothered me that I haven't even checked to confirm that the thread is imperial!

Anyway, @derekcohen's solution looked like a great idea and I didn't think it would take long (half an hour as it turned out). My approach was this...

I clamped the body of the plane in the mill vice, with the bottom bit on a parallel and a 20-40-80 block pushing on the only bit of the plane that's parallel with the bottom:



The blade's in place and the clamp screw is tightened very tightly (I gave it a bit of a twist with a pair of pliers to be sure).

I then picked what looked like a promising spot and made a counterbored hole. The counterbore is 7 mm and the hole is 4.6 mm:



That hole was deep enough to just touch the body; I then removed the clamp and finished drilling through 4.6 mm on the pillar drill.

The reason for those slightly odd hole sizes is that an M3 cap screw has a nominal 5.5 mm head. The one I got out of a drawer had a 5.4 mm head. I wanted a bit of clearance around head and screw so that the clamp could move around freely and pivot around the pivot point rather than around the screw. 8 mm felt a bit big for the counterbore so I went with 7 mm (which was the next end mill size down from my collection). That's 1.6 mm over the size of the head, so I drilled through 1.6 mm over the size of the screw. All of that should allow the clamp to move 0.8 mm in any direction. All my plough plane blades are (home-) made from 3 mm gauge plate, so the thickness of them should be very close to identical so 0.8 mm movement should be plenty.

With the clamp removed, I drilled a 2.5 mm hole in the same place in the body and then started tapping M3 (by hand but with the tap in the chuck):



The tap I chose was a taper one. I had expected that, even with a shallow hole, I'd probably pop out the other side of the plane (although I happened to hit a thicker webbed bit so the hole ended up blind).

Either way, the taper tap is beneficial as I could (with the plane removed from the mill vice and the tap in a small tap wrench) tap it a little bit, then insert the clamp and cap screw and tighten the cap screw. If there was still a lot of clearance under the screw head, I could insert the taper tap and go a little deeper and then try the fit again.

After a few goes, I have an M3 cap screw that's tightened firmly into the body but the clamp still moves freely while being unable to fall off:

 

[derekcohen]

Derek
I didn't know about the relief angle on the blades, it makes sence. Did you heat treat the whole blades or just the lower section? I have suitable tool steel but only a map torch for hardening/tempering.

It is not necessary to heat treat HSS (M2) blade steel. It comes treated/hard, and is impervious to being cut with an angle grinder. One of the reasons I used it.

For the clamp screw:

Drill the clamp first. Start with a drill size as a pilot hole.

Insert a blade, add a double layer of blue tape under the blade (this will leave clearance), and clamp the blade down (as intended when setting it up).

Now drill through the pilot hole into the body of the plane.

Drill and tap the hole in the body. Drill out the clamp hole just a smidgeon wider than the bolt thread (enough that the clamp moves smoothly).

Bolt together, but leave the clamp free enough for a little sideways wiggle. This is to enable it to clamp square and not be forced to take the angle of the body (DAMHIK)

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Lons]

That's very neat Al.

 

[Lons]

Thanks Derek, advice much appreciated.
I'd missed the bit where you stated HSS which of course I know doesn't require treatment. Al put me right on that one.

 

[derekcohen]

The #043 can also plane sliding dovetails. This is 1:6 ratio ...



The fence is angled at 9.5 degrees (= 1:6) and the blade skewed at 20 degrees ...





The blade cuts from the inside outwards. Set the depth angle, but for sharp edges run a pencil along the edge to see where you are cutting where you are not ...





Stop when clear ..



Regards from Perth

Derek