Rehabbing a Small Incannel Gouge

Back in February I got this small incannel gouge at a tool show.  I cleaned it up and sharpened it at the time, but I didn't really put it through its paces until recently.  When I  sharpened it, I knew something wasn't right.  I just couldn't seem to get a good consistent edge.  It sat on a shelf until this week waiting for me to look more deeply into it.

New Haven Edge Tool Co.

The curve of the gouge is part of a 9/16" diameter circle (9/32" radius).  The cutting edge measures 7/16" corner to corner.  The handle is clearly a user-made job, and it had come loose while I was working on it, so I made a new one.

When I tried sharpening the gouge, something wasn't right.  The wire edge that forms would get too large and end up flaking off more metal than it should have.  One time, when I finally got a good edge, I tried to cut some wood and the edge just crumbled.

Result of using the gouge lightly.  Can you see the chip in the edge?

I figured the tool had lost its temper somewhere along the line.  So I annealed it by heating to cherry red and plunging into a bag of vermiculite to allow the heat to dissipate slowly.

My heat-treating set-up: two torches pointing at a steel can.
The gouge is stuck in the vermiculite at left.

After it had cooled, I hardened and tempered the gouge.  This was the first time I tried to temper a tool by watching the color advance towards the cutting edge.  When the edge got to a straw color, I plunged it into oil to stop the tempering.

You can see the colors here on the convex side of the gouge

After cleaning up the blackened and discolored steel, I gave it a good sharpening.  But I got an equally crumbly edge!  I'm aware that when heat-treating an edge tool that has a sharp edge, the thin cutting edge can get overly brittle.  So I ground back a couple of millimeters and re-sharpened it.  This time I finally got a good cutting edge without crumbling.  I tested it on some end grain walnut and finally didn't ruin the edge after just a single or even multiple cuts.

Testing on end grain walnut

When I was satisfied that the steel was in good enough condition to warrant a new handle, I got a chunk of cherry, sketched a pattern on some cardboard and got out the bungee lathe.  The shape didn't come out exactly how I had planned, but it'll be fine.

Showing the new handle and the lathe set-up

This was my first time re-handling a tanged tool.  To fit the tang into the cherry handle, I drilled successively bigger holes at successively shallower depths.  I had to adjust the hole a bit to get the gouge to align better with the handle.  I used the brass ferrule from the original handle, which had a 5/8" outer diameter and just shy of 9/16" inner diameter.  It was very satisfying when I tapped the handle home up to the bolster.

New handle next to the original

I gave the handle a single coat of BLO, which really brought out the color of the cherry.  Another tool in the arsenal.

Completed

Box for Plow Plane Irons

Until now, I've stored the irons for my wooden plow plane in a roll that gets put in a drawer.  The roll wasn't some multiple-compartment, fancy leather gizmo; it was nothing more than an old kitchen towel.  The irons deserved better, so I made a box for them.

For whatever reason, I often get stuck on design.  I looked online and found a few images of plow plane iron boxes.  They typically were vertical boxes with a lid that hinged to the side and each iron stands on end in its own slot.  While I liked that, I was having a tough time in my head with grain direction of the parts as well as methods of construction.  In the end I decided on a flat-ish box with a horizontal compartment for each iron.  The box has a sliding lid.  It's got 9 compartments; 8 for the set of irons I bought for the plane and an extra for the iron that came with the plane.

Two 10" long sides and a 6" long front and back

Dovetailed and dry fit

1/8" grooves were made top and bottom, starting 1/8" from the edges

Then (8) 1/8" dadoes were cut into the front and back

Cutting dadoes this small can be a real challenge, but it went much quicker after gaining some experience.  I used my homemade mini router plane to get the bottoms to depth.

The bottom of the box fits into the grooves in the sides, front and back.  It's just shy of 1/4" thick, so I rabbeted the edges to fit the grooves.

Getting ready to rabbet using the moving fillister

Here's the box's bottom rabbeted

Here's dry-fitting the bottom

1/8" hardboard dividers in the dry-fitted box

In this picture, you can see that I've cut down the box's front piece to allow the sliding lid to get in its grooves.  It started out the same width as the back for easier marking and cutting during the dovetailing and grooving stages.

Sliding lid

Two more details: the dividers were shaped to allow easier grabbing of the irons, and a thumb catch was carved into the lid to make the box easier to open.

The shaped dividers, with irons in place

Thumb catch on the lid

The glue-up was OK, though I initially messed up - even after a few dry-fits.  The order of putting the components together was key to get it glued up properly.  I gave the box a few coats of shellac on all outside surfaces, with none on the inside.

Here's one last detail.  The front edge of the box's top has a piece of wood glued to its end grain.  This hides the entry grooves and makes the front of the box look nicer.  I realize it a cross grained glue-up, but I've done this before on a similar box which has held up for about five years now.

Glamour shot

And with the lid partially open

Good little project.  The plow plane irons deserved a home of their own.  Now I just have to figure out where the box will live in my cramped shop.

New Iron for the Veritas Plow Plane

I've recently been working on my old woodie plow plane and it got me thinking about the Veritas plow.  When I bought it, I got a 1/4" and a 3/8" iron with it.  But it seems most of the grooves I make these days are small.  I absolutely love using the wooden plow, but the irons are a little funky.  None of them are the nominal size - they're typically off by a bit (some more than others).  For example, the 1/8" iron (0.125") measures 0.157".  That's almost 22% over nominal.  But the 1/4" iron for the Veritas is spot on.

Here's the Veritas plow plane

And here's its 1/4" iron

Anyway, I thought I'd make a new 3/16" iron for the Veritas, and maybe later I'll make a 1/8" iron.  Their irons are 1/8" thick and, as luck would have it, I have some 1/8" O-1 tool steel.  So I got out the old hack saw and cut a blank to just over 1/4" wide and just over 3" long.

Sawed it out to just over 1/4" wide

The blank filed to 1/4" wide next to the factory 1/4" iron

Next was to file away 1/16" of metal in the lower 3/4" to 1" of the iron.  I probably should have hacksawn this because filing it took a while.  But I got a fairly precise 3/16" wide iron.

Iron clamped sideways in a vise

Filed the width, and also sawed and filed the notch for iron depth adjustment

I also filed the sidewalls so that the bevel side of the iron is a little thinner than the flat side, giving clearance for the iron in a cut.  The next pic shows the iron test fit into the plane.  I made the body of the iron 1/4" wide so that the iron clamping screw would act similarly to the way it does for the stock 1/4" iron.  You can also see where the lever cap meets the iron - that's why I didn't go higher on the iron with the 3/16" width.

First test fit into the plane

The notch fit nicely with the depth adjusting nut

Just a note here.  The metal that was filed away to make the business end 3/16" wide, was filed on the outer side of the iron.  You can't tell in these photos, but the plane's skate sits below the inner side of the iron.  So for the skate to properly support the iron, the metal had to be removed from the outer side.

I heat-treated the iron with a torch until cherry red and nonmagnetic, then plunged into oil.  Then because I didn't want to use our kitchen oven to temper the iron (it was 96° that day and we have no A/C), I tried for the first time to temper it using the colors that advance to the cutting edge as I heated the iron about midway along its length.  When the golden straw color reached the bevel, I plunged in oil.

I didn't get any pictures of that, but it seems to have worked well.  When I sharpened the iron, I thought I might have done the tempering wrong because it seemed I couldn't get a good cutting edge.  But after I removed a bit of material, I sharpened again and got a great cutting edge.  I'm guessing that the initial hardening treatment left the thin cutting edge area a bit brittle and it just needed to be ground back a bit.

Here's the iron sharp and ready to go

First 3/16" groove cut in some soft wood

And a 3/16" groove cut in some fairly hard oak

I'm happy to report that the new iron performed very well.  It locks into the plane nicely, is easy to adjust and cuts a relatively precise 3/16" groove.  Now I've just got to decide whether or not to make a 1/8" iron.

UPDATE: I ended up making a 1/8" iron and it also works very well.  There's something very satisfying about making your own tools.

Resolution to Plow Plane Issue

A couple weeks ago I presented a problem I was having with my wooden plow plane, especially when trying to plow a groove in end grain.

Right side of the plow, showing skates and iron

A closer pic of the skates and iron

After a bit or playing around and then noodling about it for a while, I realized that the underlying problem was that the iron(s) were not well supported by the skate.

On this 3/16" iron, I was able to slip a couple thicknesses
 of paper between iron and skate

Let's step back a moment.  The lower portion of the front edge of the rear skate has a 90° V-shape that is supposed to fit into the V-shaped groove on the underside of the iron.  But I had gaps there with some of my irons.

The front edge of the rear skate, between the green arrows, protrudes
a little further than the upper edge and has a V-shaped edge.
The yellow arrow points to where the heel of the iron's bevel rests.

Here's a typical iron's groove.  The pencil points to the spot that mates
with the uppermost part of the V-shaped protrusion on the skate.

Based on some comments I got on a Facebook post, I first tried to file the groove to allow the skate to support the groove better at the heel of the bevel (where I think it would do the most good).  But this got nowhere and I was really afraid of causing irreparable damage.

Trying some judicious filing

Another comment was about trying to bend the iron by peening the flat side.  This would theoretically make the flat side slightly convex and force the heel of the bevel to make better contact with the skate.  I did some work on one of the irons, but either I didn't peen enough or I was afraid of peening too much.  All peening was behind the location where the harder steel of the laminated irons ended and went to the location where the iron exits the plane's iron/wedge mortise.

You can see the peening marks

In the end, I just added some 0.005" brass shim material in the irons' grooves.  In some cases I needed more thickness than the 0.005" shim, so doubled it up.  It's held in place with superglue, so time will tell how that holds up.

Seeing how it fits

Glued in and excess glue scraped away, brass filed close to flush

Here's a test groove in end grain pine - much cleaner!

This was certainly not an optimal fix.  I wonder how someone might have handled this 150 years ago.  If anyone has further ideas about how best to deal with this, please let me know.

At least this ordeal did teach me one thing that I really ought to have known by now: check your specialty tools on scrap before committing them to the project wood.  If you start on a project and then find that the tool needs to be adjusted or modified, it could be very tough to get it back to the exact settings that you started with and so some parts may not align properly - in this case, grooves.

Repairing a J. B. Van Sciver Chair

I volunteer for an organization called the "Repair Cafe", whose purpose is to rebuff our throw-away culture by fixing things for people (for free) and thereby keeping stuff out of landfills.  A client brought in an incredibly rickety chair that belonged to his mother.  It wobbled excessively front to back and only a little less side to side.  Usually we fix things right there at the repair event, but this one was going to need a workshop and some tools that I didn't have at the event, so I brought it home.

The Van Sciver chair

This chair had an emblem on the underside of one rail indicating the J. B. Van Sciver Co., of Camden, NJ.  A quick internet search found this company was in business from the late 1800s to about 1980.  I'm not good at dating furniture, but it was all mortise and tenon construction and it used hide glue, so maybe it was made more than 50 or 70 years ago.  The screws that held the seat to the rails were slot head screws, but they were clearly manufactured screws (not blacksmith-made).

J. B. Van Sciver

I've seen several videos of furniture repair, but have only ever worked on a couple old pieces that needed some help.  The first thing I did was to label all the parts so I could get them back in the right position during reassembly.

Parts labelled

Almost all the joints in the chair were very loose, so it didn't take much to get the chair apart.  Two "spreader" clamps helped with that.  One complication was that the upper backrest rail was screwed to the legs (and probably glued), with plugs in the countersunk holes.  Those joints were solid and I didn't want to take them apart, which meant I had to disassemble the chair in a certain order so as not to stress those joints.

Before I could do this, though, there were corner blocks under the seat that needed to be removed.  And each had 5 or 6 small nails in addition to the glue holding them in place.

Arrrgh!  Nails!!

Some of the nails were proud and easy to remove, but others were tough.  I bought a tool called a "cat's paw" that helped to remove the nails.  What a bummer, though - I had to chisel out some wood around the more stubborn nails and thought I might have to replace the corner blocks, but in the end they were still good enough to use.

Almost fully disassembled

The builders used hide glue in the joints, but it was mostly gone and what was still there was extremely brittle.  I tested it to make sure it was hide glue.

The water test to see if it was hide glue

The weird thing about this chair was that the mortises were WAY longer than they needed to be for the size of the tenons.  It's no wonder that the chair was racking so badly!  So I added some wood to the sides of the tenons to get a better fit.

A poorly fitting mortise and tenon

Gluing some wood onto the tenon with PVA glue

All the seat rail mortises were way oversized and inconsistent - some were about 1 1/2" long, some 1 1/4".  But the tenons were about 1" wide.  The wood I added allowed me to get a far better fit to the mortises and this should help keep the chair from racking over time.  The stretcher mortises fit much better, but I had to thicken the tenons by gluing on some shavings.  Some of the seat rail tenons needed this, too.

Here's a dry-fit before glue-up

Since my hide glue is about 5 years old, I did some testing before using it.  It has been in the fridge all that time, and it performed perfectly.

Testing the hide glue on scrap with and edge joint and a face joint

I glued up the chair with the hide glue and left it to cure overnight.  Later, I glued and screwed the corner blocks back in place.  I managed to find some slotted-head screws in my stash that matched very well the screws used to hold the seat to the seat rails.

Two new screws holding the block in place

And that was it.  The chair is now solid as a rock and should be good for another couple of generations of users.

The repaired chair

I did not try to fix any dents, scrapes or finish problems.  But I did scrape away some tiny paint droplets from the seat.  This was a very interesting chair and the owners are thrilled to have it in good condition again.