Homemade Transitional Plane

A while back in WOOD magazine, issue #236, November 2015, there was an article on pages 68-71 on "Make Your Own Transitional Plane." the basis for making this plane was to take an old broken/junk Transitional plane and make a new usable plane.

Fortunately, a friend recently gave me an old transitional plane, with the iron part of the body broken. 

The perfect donor.

Using the paterns in the magazine I made the pattern for the sides....

And the tote.

The sole was cut from hard maple and the mouth was made by drilling out the waste and cleaning up the sides of the opening with a chisel and a final fit after glued up.

I quickly progressed to the glue up as per the instruction in the Magazine.

And soon had a glued up body, with a block of wood in the slot for the tote, this was to keep the slot open to the right size during glue-up. For the front infill I had a piece of highly figured Walnut which was not nearly large enough for the rough size, so I glued up scrap pieces that would be cut away after glue-up.

The sides are made out of Birds Eye Maple.

Here is a look at the tote slot after cutting the body to final size.

And the notch for the Frog to fit into.

Here is the body cut to final size. Shaping the ends to come.

And then gluing the tote into the body.

Here is the finished plane, I gave the wood 4 coats of Danish Oil and 2 coats of Polyurethane.

View from the back.

And it does cut nice and makes nice shavings.

The iron is a NOS VINTAGE WARRANTED SHEFFIELD 2 1/8" PLANE BLADE W MARPLES SHEFFIELD STEEL. I bought this off of eBay from a gentleman at KIBWORTH DIY in England, he had a stock of these irons in the original waxed wrapper.

All in all very  happy with the results.

Home made Chisel Plane

I have no idea where this plane came from, I found it sitting on a shelf in my shop, the only marking on the iron  in a circle says "Damon Raikes & Co. Gernany with DARAIKE in the middle. The iron itself is 1 9/16" wide X  4 9/16" long.

Here is a little History: Damon Raike Co. DARAIKE Germany - was actually a business started by Damon Raike SR. in the early 1920's in Chicago, IL, but the tools were manufactured and imported from Germany (location unknown) Damon, a Mechanical Engineer, went to Germany on business a few times according to his son Damon Raikes Jr. 

Damon's father Louis Raike was born in Russia and was a Milliner himself back in 1900 along with his brother Isidore and cousin John Wineberg. Damon Sr was born in Michigan, served a few months as a Private during WWI and then started the Damon Raike Co and hardware business, shortly after starting the tool line he had to give it up because of the cost associated with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 as it went into effect, which raised American Tariffs on many imported goods. 
By 1930 Damon Raike started a printing business, Schenker Co.

Damon Raike died in June of 1945 in Chicago Illinois.

Thanks to Geoff Raike for this information.

So this little plane came to me through a very narrow window, between the time Raike started importing tools in the early1920's and the time he shut down in 1922.

 This poor little block plane has had a neglected life as you can tell by looking at it.Out of no where came the idea to turn it into a Chisel Plane rather than just throw it away, above the red line shows the crack in the body and the proposed cut line.

So I plunged ahead and made the cut, then some grinding, filing and sanding.

After some cleaning of parts painting and sharpening of the iron. Here is the final results, a cute little useful plane,

This type of plane is good for flush cutting plugs, as shown above (see the plug in front of the plane)and cleaning up glue squeeze out in corners.

Front View

Side view. This was fun, I took this little broken plane and turned it into something useful. 

Now I believe I need to find a better Iron as the metal in this original iron is of pretty poor quality.