Building the miter plane

Here we go! I'm getting into the process of building the miter plane kit from St James Bay Tool Co. I'll let the pictures do the talking here...

The main parts. Some of the machine work is already done on the body and lever cap. The screws are tapped into the steel sole, and do not go through it. The cap screw, iron, cap pin, and sole screws are all included with the kit.

The bed is machined, both in the bronze and steel portions. Some fitting and clean up is still required.

That's oil, not rust or corrosion.

The sole mounted to the body. You can see that the heel of the plane is still rough cast. That will be a job for the belt sander.

The lever cap came with its bottom already machined. The leading edge has some flash that will go away when I clean up the back side. I have already started cleaning up some of the sand cast texture and shaping. The top side will have a visit with the belt sander.

The top of the body is as-cast. Here I am milling it to be parallel with the sole. I removed about .020" of material.

Using a surface plate and height gauge to lay out the remainder of the work on the mouth.

Layout lines are established for the mouth. I referenced the thickness of the sides in order to place those lines. I'll mill up close to the lines will finish with a file.

Much of the clean up on the inside of the casting is done. The curve at the heel presents an issue to me, but that will just involve some clean up by hand.

The machining of the mouth is done, I only need to file the corners square. Let's not forget that there's a pair of steel plates going on there, so it's going to look a little off until they get put on.

Nice long iron.

Cap screw.

All the additional pieces. Iron, sole plates, pins, and screws.

Working the mouth of the bronze casting. This is when specialized files come in handy. I have one just for this job with one of its faces ground smooth. That allows the file to ride on the ramp while the side of the file cuts the side of the mouth.

In order to get the iron set properly, I need to machine away some material from the back of the casting.

I machined away part of the rear of the casting to fit the iron. I think I went too far, but that will be fixed easy enough. When I fit the infill, I'll cut it to fill the extra cut out in the heel.

Another shot of the heel.

The stock for the infill. A Hormigo Negro turning blank.

The infill after being squared on all four sides. It was hard to get the lines to show up in the picture. I have the bed line laid out. It will be cut at 17 degrees to match the angle of the sole. It is long on the back side to allow for fitting.

I've been working on getting the rear infill shaped. I hope I can get a good match...otherwise I'll figure out a way to cheat a little.

The infill out of the plane.

I cheated. A LOT! Getting the infill to match the curve just right was a little frustrating. Soooo...I just milled out the back of the body. I'm sure the plane maker gods will hold this against me.

Preparing a new blank for the rear infill.

Ready to trim to final size.

The lever cap is installed.

The new infill is fit. Now it just needs to be trimmed on the back end.