Some comments on two aspects of toolmaking – of a general nature – that might interest woodworkers thinking about taking on a metalworking project:
Peining/peening is not the heavy-duty metal-bashing you might think. My anticipation was that I’d be whacking into the steel with a blacksmith’s enthusiasm. That way lies disaster. It’s actually quite a gentle and enjoyable process. Tap, tap, tap, not whack whack!
The hard work is in getting your metal surfaces smooth. Achieving a shiny surface is relatively easy, once the surfaces are smooth. I bought a roll of 150 grit paper, stapled the ends of a long strip under a metre-long piece of MDF, and use that with great sucess.
Malcolm
Replies
This is an interesting coincidence. In my metals shop we are making a "Scrub plane". It is cast aluminum with a brass rod that holds the levercap. The ends of the brass are "peened". I tell students almost the same thing that you said - it takes hundreds of taps, not a few whacks. Two this week hit it so hard they broke the casting. The lesson - know when to quit.
Is the aluminum going to leave dark smudges on the wood?
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I used to have that problem. The last few years I've been using recycled pistons (local NAPA saves them for me). This is a pretty hard alloy and the streaks are minimal.
Do you have a photo of a finished plane using a piston?
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Tommorrow at school I'll take a couple and post them when I get home.
Here's the finished plane. This is a long term project started in the fall. Most students finish one, some look like this, some are better and some don't look as good but all work.
NICE!So how does this become a plane after being a piston? Do you melt it down and recast it or machine the top flat, cut the skirt off as needed, fill in where the wrist pin goes and drive the bronze(brass) pin in? Do you use billet Al for the rest of it? Any thoughts of making something along the lines of the Sheperd planes with brass sides, dovetailed into a steel sole and milling the frog from something suitable? Definitely looks like it would require quite a few of the machine shop skills you would be teaching.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
We make sand molds and pour aluminum in the traditional way. I melt the pistons (this plane takes about 2 average car pistons) into 1 pound ingots to clean the metal and then remelt for molds. The machining operations start with these rough castings. For the brass rod, we drill the parts and use a tapered reamer to widen the outside of the holes. This is where the "light taps" start - upsetting the brass and hammering it into the tapered hole.
Very cool. Are you at a large school? My graduating class had about 775 in it and I don't remember the metal shop doing much, if any, casting. I'm absolutely sure the teacher would have been able to do a great job of teaching it and doing it, I just don't remember if they had the equipment. What city?"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Edited 1/9/2006 7:14 pm by highfigh
I'm in a small school (we graduate about 60 per year). The class making this plane has 17 students (high school). I make different planes with other classes (along with a variety of projects in other areas of metalworking). "Metal is Marvelous". The website below is the "virtual tour of my shop".
http://bmcsd.org/vtour/metalshop.mov
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled