Final Steps

The final steps for the plane are cutting the throat, fine tuning the iron, and making the wedge.

In this photo you can see the float in use to finalize the throat. The throat was carefully cut with a chisel. 

Shown here are the template plane wedge (top) and the wedge blank for the new plane. 

This is the wedge's finial. 

Here you see the finished plane. 

The finished new plane next to the sample plane. 

Side-view of the finished plane.

Cutting the Sole

In keeping with the hand-built nature of this project I decided to cut the majority of the sole waste with my rip back saw.

The photo above shows the first two cuts I made along the profile (shown in pencil). 

In this shot you can see that half of the waste has been removed and the cut has been made to allow the removal of the second half. 

This photo shows the majority of the waste removed. At this point I used the scraper to finalize the shape of the profile. 

Making the Plane, part 2

The block for the body was cut out of 2" thick beech.  When looking for material I was seduced by some lovely grain and forgot that the grain should be parallel to the sole of the plane.  It is the most important factor when looking at material for your planes.  When the grain is parallel to the sole there is less likelihood of any movement in the wood which might affect the operation of the plane.
Before I cut the sole of the plane I made a scraper that matched exactly the profile I wanted. According to a chapter in this Garrett Hack book, the final shaping of the sole could be made with a scraper blade.  I wanted to use a nice clean new scraper blade but I found that it was too hard to shape.  Instead, I used an old plane blade donated by my friend Justin.