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Im an idiot.

Just remembered your blogging. Checked your blogged and what do you know, it answers all my questions..

Cheers
Anthony

I had essentially no woodworking experience. On my first guitar, I made mistakes every day. Luckily I was in a class and the next time I saw Robbie, he'd show me how to fix it. Yes, I learned to make a guitar, but I also learned you can fix pretty much anything. On my second, I made far fewer mistakes. Hopefully it will be a trend.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

I would recommend making yourself up a toothing iron.

You can get a #4/#5 size replacement iron at Home Depot for $2.97 -- Grind some shallow notches in it with your dremel (1/16" apart)... Resharpen to razor sharp... and off you go! You will wonder where this wonderful iron was all your life.

So.. 1st you tooth, then you take a plane with a medium/fine set and clean off the grooves... then tooth over it again... Makes it very easy to thin down a plate by hand. (Well, as easy as it gets with a Plane.. It takes me ~3 hrs to do a back by hand)

Here's a pic of my home made toother in my #5.


Keep on going!

Thanks

John

I've been thinking about doing this but didnt know if those blades at home depot would fit. Do you see less chip/tear out?

Luke,

Far less tearout. I basically can't thin down hardwoods without the toother.... especially when the plates start getting thin and flexible. One thing, though... If you are still having trouble with too much chatter... you may need to replace those old Chip Breakers with thick Hock units. I have had to do this on most of my old planes now, and it makes a world of difference (Though I still run the original irons.)

For $2.97... What do you have to loose? Those cheap irons will fit most any "Standard" Stanley pattern #4 or #5 plane. They may be too thin to run in a Clifton, LN, Veritas, etc... but work great in your run of the mill Stanley, Millers Falls, Sargeant, Footprint, Groz, Anant, and myriad other vanilla Stanley knockoffs.

I run a couple planes for plate thinning duty...
#5 -- gets the Toother
#4 -- set for transparent, thin shavings for smoothing duty
#7 (Really a Millers Falls #22) -- Set for taking shavings a little thicker than the #4 for thinning after the toother.

In normal thinning, I will alternate between the #5 toother and the #22 for stock removal, then finish up with the #4 (To smooth down any remaining tool marks) before measuring all over the plate, knocking down high spots, and flipping it over.

Keeping the irons sharp is also extremely important. I made up a strop out of a scrap of shoe leather -- and I strop regularly to retain the sharp edge between honings (Especially on Spruce and Cedar.) I found that without stropping, I would wait too long between sharpenings... and only end up sharpening when it was quite dull and wouldn't cut right anymore.... and then I would spend an entire night sharpening... Now, I strop and am back to work in a couple minutes.

Thanks

John

Lee Valley sell toothing irons for their planes. Don't know if they have replacement toothed blades for other planes or not. Worth a check.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Home-made toothing blades do work.
When you use the Dremel (cutoff wheel) to put the 'groove' in the back of the blade, be sure to avoid overheating the blade. A spray with water from time to time will help- and you don't need to go much deeper than your shaving thickness.
AND- eye protection is a must any time you are using those cutoff wheels- the least bit of side pressure will snap them.
Cheers
John

Good for you, Luke!! Great attitiude. I couldn't agree more - I felt the same way about my first guitar. I could have started with a kit, but didn't. I could have started with prebent sides and binding, but ultimately that was far less interesting than the charge I got out of doing it from scratch. The finished product was anthing but perfect. But getting it done felt like nothing I've ever felt before.

And guitar #2 was 100% better, with only 25 mistakes

When has anything worth doing been easy?