Miscellaneous Item's
Updated Friday 26/2/10
A full size Boxwood mitre plane, this one is coloured and has a Ebony mouth closer.
A copy of a Mathieson thumb plane, there are only about 3 known examples, all Steel, dovetailed, Bronze lever cap and screw, Ebony infill, snecked Sheffield iron. 4 3/4" long x 1 3/8" wide. Very fine mouth, gorgous shape.
A Mathieson type thumb plane steel, dovetailed, Rosewood infill, 5" long x 1 7/8" wide, Ward snecked iron. The hardest of Rosewoods, the finest of mouths.
A handed pair, skew mouthed, Bronze and steel dovetailed mitre planes, Boxwood infill, Mathieson irons, made for exhibition. A pair of exceptional planes for the connoisseur.
A Mathieson type thumb plane, Bronze and Steel, cupid bow dovetails, Boxwood infill. 5" long x 1 7/8" wide, made for exhibition. Very fine mouth, a collectors plane.
A Bronze mitre plane dovetailed, with Boxwood infill, 6" long x 1 3/4" wide. A very heavy plane fit for purpose, very fine mouth, 24 degree bed, Sheffield made iron by Marples.
A tiny brass and steel dovetailed mitre plane, with cupid bow side decoration, Rosewood infill, made out of a tenon saw by John Buxton. 3 3/8" long x 7/8" wide. A very early made plane. A complete one off.
Friday 22/5/09.
A dear friend of mine Peter Bishop emailed me these pictures, offering me the chance to buy the plane. I couldn't get my cheque book out quick enough.
It has a very unusual style, Ebony front infill and the pattern on the front infill is repeated on the bridge, this gives it a striking appearance and I love it.
It is a very old plane and has been well used as the button at the back has been hit so many times, the head has fallen off. Also the rear of the plane has numerous hammer marks and is slightly concave and the very thin steel sole has slightly started to part from the Bronze, again through the numerous hammering.
Note the area where the hand of the user has polished the Bronze and at the same time the swarf and sweat has darkened other areas. On the other side of the plane there was an area of dried up blood, I thought it better to remove it, but you can still see where it had been. (Center of picture below)
The iron and wedge have been lost and I am in the process of replacing them.
The wedge is going to be a bit of a challange.
Using a bit of Ebony given to me by Mark Bennett.
Here I am cutting a piece out for the wedge.
I have cut the wedge roughly to shape, tried it in the plane to see if it fits.
I do not want the front of the scroll wedge to go past the dip in the plane.
I have marked the bottom of the wedge to match the bottom of the wedge.
This shows me practicing on an old Boxwood wedge.
I drew lines across the wedge, then sawn down the lines to1/8" depth. I then got a three cornered file and opened the sawn cuts to a V. Then with my blunt ground chisel rounded the flutes. This piece of Boxwood took about 5 minutes to complete.
I now did the same proceedure on the Ebony wedge, but this time the saw cuts were a little wider, 3/8" in fact, not 5/16" as on the Boxwood.
The wedge fits exactly where I wanted it too.
The plane is now finished except for the little imperfection on the front infill which I filled in later. I have aged the wedge to try and match the age of the plane.
I wasn't happy with the wedge so I reshaped the bottom.
I hope Peter approves of the wedge shape.
Sunday 3/8/08
I have borrowed back the most ornate jointer that I have ever made, for the show at Westonbirt. It has 8 cupid bows scattered about, some of the best Rosewood I ever found and I made it in 1991.
A picture of my 2 mallet's, on the left the ash one I made 51 yrs ago, having found a felled log in the bottom of the hedgerow. Fortunately the log was well seasoned. After I made my mallet everyone in the shop wanted one out of the same log. The one on the right is Lignum Vitae, a friend bought me this from a David Stanley sale.
These are my peening hammers and my punch. I love the big old one on the left. Karl Holtey made me the punch. Thank you Karl.
Wednesday 4/6/08
Jointers
Our thanks to John at David Stanley Auctions for sending these pictures of 3 of my 36" jointers. The one in the middle had cupid bow dovetails, which nearly killed me to make, I made 6 in total. At a later date I cut 2 down to 28 1/2" as Norris made. Karl Holtey made the leaver caps, the irons and the adjusters. Ian Houghton did the engraving by hand on the lever caps and the adjusters. Both Carl and Ian's work was perfection.
This is a piece I cut off at a later date. People have said you must have hesitated when you offered up the hacksaw to both the front and back of the plane. I do set myself some tasks, because when I had sawn the front and back off, I then had to shape both ends in place, which involved reshaping the Rosewood, the Bronze sides and the steel base whilst in place. As you can imagine this was far more difficult to do than to shape the separate pieces before assembly. One of the sawn off rear ends went to the USA, with the plane to be used as a sandpaper block. This must have been the most expensive sandpaper block, labour wise.
If you were wondering why I reduced them in size, one of the reasons was, when people lifted them out of my car boot at a sale, they would very often knock my car in so doing, I put this down to the weight which they were not used to lifting in a restricted space. This didn't do the plane or the car any good. I hope you get a smile out of this.
Oil Stones
This is a massive Charnly Forest oilstone in a Maple and Mahogany box. These stones have been quarried for a known period of 400 years and probably a lot longer. They were highly prized in English cabinet makers work shops, until in the 1890's when the first Washtita's came over to England , they proved to be far superior and from then on interest in the Charnly stone's dwindled.
This shows an Elm box with a 2" thick stone, the true colour of this stone is karki, I have no idea where this stone came from, but I do know it is the most wonderful finishing stone, equal to a Arkansas and it's origolan box when found, appeared to be easily over 200 years old, and yet the stone was perfectly flat. This stone appears to be indistructable, I have only ever found one other like it. I used to collect stones.
In this oak box is a 3" wide black Arkansas modern stone, everyone knows about these.
This shows the Oak lid of the previous stone upside down with some of my Sheffield made marks I use on my planes.
This is a scanned picture of a Burr Elm oilstone box, such a simple thing I made, but it turned out to be one of my very best items.
