Making the spokeshave body is not that tough. The woodworking is straightforward, but fettling the shave after all the woodworking is complete can be tedious. I started with a maple blank, 1 1/4" x 7/8" x 12" (the second shave blank was 1 1/4" x 13/16" x 12"). Laying the iron on the bottom (the sole) of the blank with the iron's front edge 3/8" from the front of the blank and back edge 3/16" from the back, draw the shape.
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| Iron shape drawn on the sole, kerfs cut for waste removal |
The business part of the blade is 2 1/2" wide. These extents were marked with a knife and the lines extended to the rear edge, to about 3/16" from the top.
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| Remove the waste that becomes the escapement |
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| Then chop the mortises that house the iron's tabs. I used a router plane with 1/4" iron to flatten the bottoms. |
Install the blade and mark for the holes for the iron fixing screws. Here's where I changed something for the second shave. Notice in the picture below how close the smaller hole is to the escapement. It leaves only about 1/8" of wood and I was concerned it would blow out when drilling or tapping the hole, when or installing the set screw. On the second shave, I moved the two holes over 1/16" to give me more meat to hold the set screw.
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| Large hole is for the iron fixing screw. Smaller hole gets threaded and a set screw is installed. |
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| The set screws adjust blade height (cutting depth) and are adjusted using a 3/32" Allen wrench |
Next was to plane a 5° chamfer on the front 3/8" of the sole. Rozaieski uses 8° and a couple other sources used from 1° to 3°, so 5° was a compromise. In retrospect, it seems about right.
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| Planed the 5° chamfer on the front of the sole |
In the area directly in front of the iron, I inlaid a 3/32" piece of brass for wear resistance. I'm sure it could have been thinner, but that's what I had. The bottom of the mortise was leveled by hand with a wide chisel.
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| Test fitting the brass strip |
After roughing up the underside of the strip, it was glued into the recess with CA glue. It later fell out and was re-glued using two-part 5-minute epoxy.
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| After gluing in the brass strip, filing the rear edge flush with the escapement |
I used the template provided by Bob Rozaieski (see part 1 for the link) to lay out and cut the shape of the handles. Five points go to the first person who catches the mistake I made.
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| Handles shaped. Also carved indents for thumb placement. |
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| First shavings on edge grain pine |
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| Shavings on end grain cherry |
So far so good. I found when shaving the cherry that the leading edge of the brass strip was digging in. So I eased that edge with a file and it worked much more smoothly.
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| Add a round-over to the front edge of the brass strip |
I made a second shave from some dense mystery wood that looks akin to mahogany. It came out better than the first.
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| The second shave. See the mistake with the first one yet? |
And here are the two shaves after a couple coats of BLO. BTW, the iron fixing screws were made from 12-20 threaded rod and brass thumb nuts. At first I didn't use thread-locker and they worked fine, but later I locked them together.
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| The two completed shaves |
The iron in both these shaves (above picture) is pointing away from us. I had shaped the handles of the maple shave backwards! Little mistake in layout, but c'est la vie. It works anyway. I had actually seen shaves with handles in both orientations on the 'net. And the Boggs shave sold by Lie-Nielsen and metal-body shaves have handles straight out to the sides. But I do think the darker shave is a little more comfortable in use.
Fettling the shaves has been challenging. At times I've gotten nice clean shavings. Other times I've gotten bad chatter, leaving a rough surface. I'll have to continue messing around with the shaves to get them dialed in for consistently smooth cuts. This had a lot to do with mouth size.
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| Chatter marks (3/32" Allen wrench for scale) |
Lastly, I made a sharpening jig to help with grinding and honing.
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| Sharpening jig ... |
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| ... uses the shave's screws with spacers to affix the blade |
I can't believe this was on the to-do list so long. It's a fairly quick project, but it would have been really fast if I had bought a blade from Hock Tools.
