The scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with more or less marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand.
Im not very good at this job, so I searched for sharpening guides available that could serve the purpose. The Record 161 is a guide which is easy to find on ebayUK for few pounds. It has only one central contact point (a rolling ball in the middle) and this permits to incline to the right and left allowing to follow the cutting edge profile easily.
The blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.
For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same angle Ill use a simple self made jig.
I was going to document the full build of this little project but my camera battery died after just a few beginning shots and by the time it had charged up I had completed most of the build. Needless to say its very similar in concept to my Traditional Saw Bench if you are interested.
The spare off-cut from my large Coffee Table top and the last remaining budget 2"x2" from my Saw Bench were dying to be introduced and the simple lap jointed Stool you see below is a result of their union.
I am calling it rustic as the Pine that forms the simple lap jointed frame is so knotted and wild its almost unworkable. There is sap wood, reversing grain and knots but I couldnt bring myself to waste the wood. I was going to attempt lap jointed dovetails but I figured that would probably end in disaster at my skill level with this wood.
To be honest, this project almost didnt make it to completion as I nearly threw the whole lot out of the window in a temper several times. I had the whole thing completed bar the glue up. I did my final planning of the joints to get everything nice and flush and tight and did several dry fits with clamps to check everything was perfect before gluing it up. I was actually quite proud of my accuracy and the tightness of the joinery.
I aborted the first glue up as the top would not fit into the frame once glue was included and I frantically tried to get things apart from their half assembled state before the glue dried. This resulted in my pieces all getting mixed up - yes once again I didnt mark each component and its position - Doh!!!
After cleaning up the glue and waiting for it to dry, I re-sanded the joint faces making them a little looser and clean. However, I couldnt seem to get the pieces in the same order as originally intended and the joinery wasnt as tight. Attempt number two failed and resulted in glue over everything - Aaarrggh!!!!
Luckily my sanity allowed attempt number three - a charm! However, despite wiping all the glue up with a wet cloth and re-sanding everything again, the liquid Bees wax finish shows several glue stains. They could be sanded out with wax reapplied but Im going to leave them and wait for everything to just age.
This stool is going to be used to stand on for easy access to kitchen cupboards and as a general useful item around the house so its going to get marked regardless... and I simply cant be bothered!
I may not be able to build fine furniture yet, but its useful furniture none the less! ...
When you have to work small in section pieces with molding, plow and rebate planes, may be convenient to use a proper board which helps to keep them steady during planing. It simply consists of a leveled board , at least 150 cm long and with section of about 10 x2, 5 cm. On its surface can be glued a stright rail (section 4x2, 5 cm).
It is important that the side of the rail is square with the backing surface of the piece. I used some screws inserted at the end of the board; they have the task of stopping the piece during processing. They can be tightened and loosened to allow to avoid the piece escapes from board. If the piece is square it will be sufficient. However, it is convenient to work pieces longer than the final measure to use the edges or parts that will be discarded (cheek of a tenon in the pic), to ensure all through thin nails. The table is stopped by dogs and lateral vice.
The shooting board task is to allow planing a piece square to the surface that rests on the table. There are various models, with different building solutions. The board I am proposing is useful for planing and square end grain sides or to finish a 45° angle, such as is necessary for frame assembling. As the shooting board fundamental characteristic is plan and angle accuracy, using pre-worked material can be convenient.
I used lamellar beech, but plywood is a good alternative. For the base I used a 3 cm thick board, while the plan upon which the
workpiece is held is 2 cm thick. The length is about 60 cm, width about 25 cm. The support board is narrower to make room for the plane side.
After screwing the upper board to the base, I installed two holders (3 x 4 cm section) that will serve for workpiece supporting. Their precise positioning is critical for proper shooting board working. The pieces are screwed flush with the upper board edges and have an elongated hole at the rear to allow a fine angle adjustment. Place the two holders to exactly 90 and 45 degrees respect to the sliding edge. Chamfer the holder rear edges (not that one where the piece rests) in order to prevent their damage when the plane will produce the first shots.
Another holder is placed under the board so that it can be hooked to the workbench and/or locked in the vice. In my case I have used two holders, so I can firmly held the board between the vice and the bench well. A useful operation will be to cut a groove at the plan intersection in order to collect chips and dust and avoiding problems with plane sliding.
The first shots will remove some shavings from the sliding side, but only until the lateral sole portion under the blade will not come in contact with the edge.
In the sliding dovetail joint the two elements, male and female slide one into another. The resulting joint is very strong and it is most used when vertical and horizontal parts have to offer more resistance to the traction (the shelves in a bookcase, for example).
The traditional choice for this joint needs three tools: saw, chisel and router plane.
Another option is to use dedicate planes, but while for the male element the choice is wide, for the female part of the joint the specialized planes are rare. Japanese tools, instead, have a Ari-Kake-Shakuri-Kanna for this purpose, a grooving plane needing a separate angled fence for its job.
As this joint is mostly cut across the grain, it is necessary scoring the wooden fibers before.
The plane for cutting the female element is a sort of dado plane, indeed, only with angled sole and skewed blade.
Finally I decided to make a self made one and here is the result:
FDT means "Female Dovetail" and 6 is the blade width (6 mm)
The blade is skewed at 20° and the sole is inclined at 78°, the same of male cutting plane. The blade is bedded at 50°.
It has an adjustable depth stop and a double spur for cross grain cuts.
The woods are beech for the body, mahogany for sole and wedges.
The body building is quite simple. I cut a rabbet for the 6 mm bottom part.
I cut rooms for blades and wedges and glued a piece of mahogany to the bottom.
I planed the sole at 78°, controlling the correspondence with the male element.
The critical part of the job is to find the exact correspondences between angled sole and skewed blade and wedge.
For the blade I used an old plane iron, for the nickers a 10 mm spade bit, grinded ad hoc.
Then the side is closed by a piece of beech; it creates the slots for blades and wedges.
The finish is shellac and wax.
The plane is able to cut grooves of which minimal width must be inferior to blade width; in practice is better that such measure was at least 3-4 mm more.
The cut is carried out in two parts (or more, if the dovetail is larger), the last one in opposite direction.
Here is the on the road test:
Cut the male and trace two parallel lines at a distance corresponding to minor width dovetail point. This is the only tracing requested:
The angled fence keeps the plane in the correct position:
The cut begins:
A couple of minutes for the first groove:
The second cut in the opposite direction.The depth stop arrests the plane at wished point:
The router plane has really a poor job to do:
Here is the groove completed....
....and the joint!
In this case I cut beech wood; it will be interesting to observe the plane working on harder woods. Surely, the tool can be improved by a better quality blade. I did only few cuts but I learned that is convenient to keep the groove closer (- 1mm) and finally adjust the male by few other shots.....plane shots of course!
Another super quick & dirty project... A fast approaching birthday and the question of where to hang dog leads and keys in the pantry. Both problems solved ...
A scrap of Pine, some dowel and some spare brass hooks I had kicking around.... I squared, chamfered edges and smoothed with my No#4 Plane.Used a bradawl for the threaded brass hooks. Drilled the holes and glued in the dowel. A lick of boiled Linseed oil. Done! Its Rustic....
The scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with more or less marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand. 
The blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.
For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same angle Ill use a simple self made jig.
I am calling it rustic as the Pine that forms the simple lap jointed frame is so knotted and wild its almost unworkable. There is sap wood, reversing grain and knots but I couldnt bring myself to waste the wood. I was going to attempt lap jointed dovetails but I figured that would probably end in disaster at my skill level with this wood.
