22 August 2008

Buns in the 'shop...

I got a email from SWIMBO yesterday at work (she was poorly at home) saying that I had a parcel for me when I got in. No guesses as to what it contained...the LN No 9 Iron Mitre plane. I've never actually examined one close up or taken one apart, but having done so yesterday... it's an absolute beauty! After tea I took it out to the workshop and sorted out the blade honing angles. The bed is at 20 deg and the blade is ground at 25 deg giving an effective pitch of 45 deg so I've increased this slightly by honing a bit more of a micro-bevel on the 10000g Spyderco ceramic stone so that the final finished bevel gives an effective pitch of 48 deg or thereabouts. I found the plate on the back a little awkward to set up as well...LN recommend setting it about 92mm but in practice it seems to be a little more than that to get the correct adjustment, however after a bit of fiddling about I got it to work quite well. The 'hot dog' handle is also great, it's fitted by just using an Allen key...in use my hand falls exactly in the right place to apply pressure squarely onto the bearing surface of the tool, the result of which is that there's no way in which the dreaded shooting board 'tip' will happen. In use on the 'shoot it's fantastic, absolutely the right tool for the job.
I also ordered some Mirka sanding sheets, 180, 240 and 320g...10 of each. I'm going to use these from now on for sanding flat surfaces as the really good thing with them is that any dust created is sucked up by the 'shop vac through the perforations in the surface of the sheet. The only downside as far as I can make out is the extra racket generated by the vac...isn't there a well known saying about having 'cake and eating it'?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rob,

Glad your new toy, sorry tool (!), arrived.

Great aren't they, I spent ages looking for bits of timber and just playing with it, adjusting the shooting board etc when I got mine, but perhaps that's just me !

The hot dog handle does make a diffference, I made one up from cherry and it's a good tight friction fit and bears on the front surface also so no need for a grub screw so far.

Have fun !

Cheers, Paul (aka chisel)