Making a Rabbet Plane

I have a wooden 1 1/4" skew rabbet plane, and it is great for continuing cross-grain rabbets that have been started by some other method.  But I wanted to have a rabbet plane with a straight iron that could help me start rabbets with the grain.  Finally I got around to making one, using a lamination technique.

Started with three 1/4" thick pieces.  Outside two are red alder and inside is cherry.

On the cherry piece, laid out the bed angle

Then used the thickness of the iron to determine the mouth size

Then laid out the "breast" angle that would accommodate a 10° wedge

After cutting out the triangular section that will become the mortise, I glued the stack together.  In retrospect, however, it might have been better to cut the bed and breast lines on the lower portion of the outside pieces before gluing up the plane.  But trying to glue the lamination together with perfectly aligned bed lines on all three pieces can be tricky.

The stack clamped under cauls to the bench top

After the glue had dried, I used the mortise formed by the center cherry piece to lay out lines on the outside pieces.

Using the mortise extents to lay out the bed on the sides

Used both top and bottom mortise extents

Lower bed laid out and hole drilled for the escapement

I further defined the lines with a knife, then sawed the bed line and breast line close to the knife marks, following up with a chisel to square the cuts off up to the knife lines.  After that was some shaping of the escapement and fitting the wedge.

Escapement shaped and a future wedge fitted

I left the plane body at that point and worked on the iron, which I salvaged from a Stanley 4 1/2 iron that I broke a few years ago.

Laid out the shape of the rabbet plane iron on the 4 1/2 iron.
See the huge crack?  It made me sick when I broke it!

Hacksawed out the shape, then filed to 3/4" wide at the large end, 1/4 wide tang

I had to anneal the iron (first time ever!) to be able to cut it.  The hard steel ruined a couple of hacksaw blades before I did the anneal.  Then it cut like butter.  After re-heat treating and tempering the iron, I sharpened it.

The iron warped a bit during heat treatment, so I had to re-flatten, here shown part-way done with a hollow area

  All that was left was some shaping on the plane body and wedge.

Laid out some lines to guide shaping
(I don't like how the small side of the escapement turned out - next time will be different)

After the shaping, a test drive

Finished with a couple of coats of BLO thinned a little with mineral spirits

When I tried it out, the cut was rough.  It was clear there were chatter marks on the planed surface.

Can you see the marks on the bottom of this rabbet?

Here's the reason: when held up to the light, you can see light between wedge and iron
and there was also a little light between iron and bed (not seen here)

So I did a little work on the edge of the wedge that contacts the iron, hollowing it a little.  After a few iterations, the light was almost completely gone and now the plane cuts much better.

Planing rabbets with this is challenging and takes practice and patience.  I'll keep at it, though.