Plane Repairs

I have several wooden planes that I've been wanted to close the mouths up a bit on, so with sore ribs preventing me from doing anything very physical, it seemed like a good time to get to work on a couple of these.

(The ribs were initially diagnosed as bruised, but that was upgraded to 'cracked' after my second visit to the doctor. I lost an edge playing hockey and slid into the boards hard.)

Anyways, first up was a cocobolo Krenov style plane with a 1 1/4" blade that I wanted to put a cocobolo insert in, which I did by routing out the bottom in front of the mouth.

When it came to flatten the bottom, I decided to try something a bit different. I had taken a course on metal scraping in Seattle a couple of years ago from  a guy named Forrest Addy. Hand scraping a metal surface will yield a surface flatter than can be achieved by machining or by abrasion/sanding. I had had great success in scraping an old Stanley plane at that time, and thought I would see how the process would work on a wood plane.

 Scraping pattern on bottom of Stanley plane

I modified the procedure only slightly for wood, by using my very thin hand scraper (from Lee Valley I believe). With a granite reference surface, a tube of Prussian Blue oil paint, and a Brayer roller, I was off to the races.

I started scraping immediately after I had passed the bottom of the plane over the jointer, and as a result half the work was to get past the jointer ripples. Note to self: Next time sand off the ripples after jointing!

The process was to roll the dye out on the granite, put the plane down on top of the granite surface (which will mark the high spots with the dye), and then scrape, using the smallest strokes possible ( 1/16"?), all the dye spots off the bottom. Then repeat, until you get a consistent pattern of dye marks across the entire bottom. It took me about ten passes to get to where I wanted it to be.

After a couple scrapings

Getting near the end, fairly even pattern just not dense enough yet.

After the bottom was flat, I very carefully worked the mouth with small files until I achieved a tiny opening. This was rather tedious, but the plane yields full length full width shavings consistently now. I'd judge the procedure a success!

Next was an old beech coffin smoothing plane that I picked up a few years ago. It has good 'bones' and a great heavy old laminated 2" blade on it. I had glued a new sole of quartersawn locust to it some time ago, now was the time to finish the job.

I chose locust for the sole since it is the hardest wood available locally. In retrospect it was not the best choice as it is quite brittle and filing the mouth was too delicate as a result.

This one really taxed my plane tuning skills. The blade angle had become far too steep over the years, so I had to regrind and resharpen. The laminated steel was extremely tough going. The chipbreaker was warped and not closing tightly. The wedge was not holding the blade in evenly. And the new sole was not flat so I tried to flatten it with the same scraping procedure, but unfortunately the blue dye got into the pores of the locust and made lit hard to figure out where to scrape. After an awful lot more fooling around than I had wanted/hoped/expected, I started getting full length full width shavings .0005" thick.

 Time to put these bad boys to work!

More More Milling

It seems like what little time I have had recently for "woodworking stuff" has been dedicated to milling. Unfortunately my pile is now completely full, I have wood leaning against the garage and no place to stack it, and now I have injured myself playing hockey!

After picking up the yellow cedar a couple weeks ago, I went back to get some more of it, only to discover that a bunch of deodar logs had arrived. So I spent a morning milling up deodar. I have milled up deodar before, I love the smell.

Unfortunately, this log had a lot of knots in it, not nearly as much clear wood as I had hoped for, although still enough to make it worthwhile. I wound up with 9 slabs, and even left a couple of the worst ones on the beach, first time I had ever done that!

Started to have some mill problems as well, the mill seemed to be diving into the log at the start of the cut, making it super hard to push for the first six inches or so. Diagnosed some lose nuts on the mill, hopefully that will take care of it!

The week after that I went back to get some more of the yellow cedar. Unfortunately it started to rain pretty hard so I decided to save it for another day. Not before I noticed a couple more promising pieces of deodar though.

Then I planned to go back and get the deodar and the yellow cedar, except I hurt myself playing hockey and it looks like the milling is done for a while now. That's what happens when 50 year old guys play hockey I guess. At least as soon as I can plane without pain I can get back to the shop!

More Milling

Had a couple more milling sessions recently.

Some friends joined me one brisk morning for a maple crotch, an enormous and ancient red cedar stump/burl, and a short piece of maple with quilting in it. Unfortunately this day went badly and ended early, as both maples were punky/rotten/blue stained, and the cedar was too deeply fissured to yield anything decent.

Subsequently I went back and took a look at a large piece of yellow cedar that had obviously been cut down ages ago, eventually drifted ashore locally, and had lain on the beach for several months.  After a minor string of bad luck with rotten logs recently, I was a bit reluctant to go at it since it struck me as being kind of marginal. Twisted, cracked, weathered, full of sand, etc. Despite this, it contained some very promising looking sections.

While the log was indeed full of sand and incredibly tough on my chain, I wound up getting five nice slabs from it, all quarter sawn or rift sawn. While there are some cracks, I have no doubt that I will still have a lot of very fine material once it all dries.

Sometimes it does pay to take a chance!

Some BIG Milling

Scored this big maple log last week. 9' long, 3 1/2' wide at the narrow end. Probably the widest log I have ever attempted.

Unfortunately it was totally punky, my friend and I did not get anything from it. Which was a shame as there was some beautiful quilting in some areas.

But it was a darn fun day!

We did pick up a few pieces of cherry though. 3' across, but only about 2' long, with the graft union in them, it was a flowering cherry.

The new saw was cutting well, we used the 5' bar.

Back in the Milling Saddle!

It has been an eventful couple of week since the loss of the 2100s. As mentioned, I picked up a pair of 3120s and a pair of 390s in Victoria, along with a trove of spare parts.

I am on the trail of some new cylinders and pistons for the 2100, if I can get them repaired, I will wind up with seven big chainsaws. 

I took the 3120s into the shop on Monday for tune ups as they had not been run in 2+ years. I was in kind of a rush as I had a long standing plan with my friend Pete who lives in the Okanagan to do some milling on Thur/Fri at the beach.

I picked one of them up on Wed afternoon, the other needed some oiler parts. At the same time I dropped off the 390s for their going-over. 

The bad luck started immediately thereafter when I tried to mount the 3120 to my homebrew mill which had previous been driven by the 2100. Turns out the 3120 is bigger than the 2100, and interfered with one of the threaded rods which was threaded into a hole in the bar. So a long story, and a long cold dark evening, but I had to redrill and rethread a new hole in the bar, I lost about 1 1/2" of cut width, and then I had to change the mill itself since the threaded rods it mounts on were now closer together.

So on the chilly Thursday morning we selected a couple short pieces of horse chestnut and an elm crotch to work on. The chainsaw gods were continuing to conspire against me though. The saw  troubles started immediately and I did not put saw to wood until about 1 o’clock.  This included a 3120 problem, problems with my last functioning 2100, and eventually a desperate run to the shop to fix the 3120. Luckily it was an easy fix and I was also able to pick up one of the 390s which was now ready. I eventually got the 390 into action and started milling up the horse chestnut, wound up taking ten slabs 2 ½” thick off the two logs. My buddy was working away on the elm.

Two small horse chestnut logs

Elm crotch

Friday morning we started in on a log that was covered in burls. It might be maple, but we are not sure. Again, a lot of planning and set up required to get the best cuts, but I eventually started taking off slabs. Soon the oiler adjustment screw fell out of the 390 and it wouldn’t oil any more. So I switched back to the 3120. That was the end of my saw troubles, but now it was time for my mill to act up. Turns out the last minute mods I made to accommodate the threaded rods being moved closer together were a bit weak and allowed the mill to flex, causing it to dive and jam in the wood. My buddy's saw refused to start for most of the day on Friday as well. Finally by Friday afternoon we had two saws in action, all the log set up and trimming was done, and we were able to make some good progress.

 Burly Mystery log

At the end of the day on Friday, in addition to the ten shortish horse chestnut slabs, we drove away with ten 10’ elm slabs at about 1 ¼” thick, and eight 10’ maple? burl slabs, plus a bunch of burls and shorter pieces of the elm.

My share of the loot

I went home, showered, had dinner, then slept for 11 hours! Can’t wait till next time!

 End of the day, beach in the shade, the 'banks' of Spanish Banks visible. 

Tough place to work!

Husky 2100 - RIP

It seems that my recent milling marathon in New Westminster described in my last post was tough on more than just my lower back. Both of my Husky 2100 saws that I used on that adventure have been pronounced DOA at the mechanic's shop.

They told me that the saws were starved for oil in the mix, and that I have damaged the pistons and the cylinders by running too lean. New pistons can be purchased for these old-timers, but new cylinder heads cannot. So I am done.

I checked the 2 stroke oil the shop had recommended I use. It came with a convenient measure for 1 US gallon / 4.5 litres. Unfortunately the measure was 100:1!!  So no wonder. I can't understand why the manufacturer would recommend 100:1, and why the chainsaw shop would suggest that brand to me. I also can't understand why I didn't read the fine print on the oil containers more carefully!

Luckily, I hit the jackpot. A guy I know from a chainsaw milling forum that I participate in turned me on to a fellow in Victoria who was selling four older (not as old as mine though) Husky saws, two 3120's that are larger than the 2100, and two 390's that are slightly smaller. Plus he had a couple 'parts saws', and a ton of accessories, including bars, chain, mufflers, air filters, etc. In fact he was a very nice retired logger who had done a lot of milling at the end of his logging career. They have seen some use, but looked to be in good shape, better than my old saws were. A quick day trip to sunny Victoria via ferry and I came home with my car loaded with the loot.I'll go through it over the next week.

 Coming Out of Active Pass, Vancouver in Distance

In other news, I pulled a load of wood out of my kiln this week. Pictured is a piece of 'fiddleback catalpa' that was in there. Who knew that catalpa had fiddleback? Who even knew there was catalpa?! This chainsaw milling gig sure turns up some quirky stuff!

In the bad news department, my neighbour whose garage I use for woody activities has listed his house for sale. It appears the luxury of a second shop is nearly done, and I will shortly have to make some tough decisions on what to keep and what to move along.

A week of Milling

I spent three straight days this week at a wood chipping yard in New Westminster, milling up three western red cedar logs and one spalted maple log. I know I am not the speediest guy at the best of times (just ask the guys on my hockey team), and I guess the same applies to my milling!

I went out the week before and sussed it out, as mentioned in my last post. So I showed up 7 AM on Monday all ready to go, but apparently my contact had fallen off a chipping machine on Friday, and was still in the hospital. In fact he remained in the hospital the entire week with a fractured skull and bleeding in his brain. It was really an awful thing. Fortunately he will recover, he had not fallen into the chipper, but onto the ground beside it, probably a good 8 or 10 feet.

The Chipping Machine

So the mood at the site was somber. Pretty rough guys, colleagues of his, were nearly in tears talking about what had happened. Not to mention the place was swarming with WorkSafe folks. Since the machine he fell off was immediately beside where I was working, I couldn't run the mill while they were there. That really hit my productivity for the first couple days.

Meanwhile, a constant array of trucks were arriving and dumping various wood waste. This was my favourite below, a steaming pile of ground up Christmas trees that smelled great! My least favourite was a huge truck full of sawdust which the wind blew right towards me. I had to run like mad to get out out of the dust cloud when he dumped it.

Despite my first impressions of how horrid and industrial this place was, it actually kind of grew on me. Tugboats were going up and down the Fraser river, the local rapid transit trains would shoot by silently through the trees, and the occasional float plane would buzz overhead. The guys who worked there were very helpful and interested in what I was doing. And the weather was decent. For February. The world kind of slowed down for a few days.

So, on to the wood. WRC is of about zero interest to cabinetmakers. But in this case I was milling it up for a company who sells the slabs on line.

Second WRC Log

Nice colours showing on the end of the maple log!

Note the nasty split in it. I subsequently rotated the log 90 degrees (by hand) so that the split would be captured in a single slab, rather than affecting most of the slabs.

By the end of the third day I had 13 WRC slabs and six maple slabs. I milled them all to 3 1/4" thick, and most were 12' long.

At that point I had had enough and I called it done! I had touched up the chain several times, enough so that the rakers needed filing again. Also two of my saws need to go to the shop for tune ups, they kept stalling on me.