Plane Blade Setting Mallet(s).

Boys and Girls,

This saga started by an idiot indulging in some left over, 1970 mind altering samples and getting mesmerised by wooden hand planes,

In the beginning, this was purchased from the HNT Gordon stand at our local wood show,

followed by this Krenov Style plane kit with a Hock blade,

and getting sucked into these HNT Gordon kits,

Why?... musta been that mixture of ‘shrooms and wacky-tobacky. 

 

Not finding a blade adjustment lever/knob on any of them, I heard (never read) that I needed a tapping hammer to drive those wooden contraptions.   

Ever willing to try, surfed the net and blundered across some designs using plumbing gear and eventually fabricated this hammer 

 

 

from the rejects of my toilet… before you yuck… it was surplus plumbing equipment.  

Problem with it was its weight… a small tap on the front of a plane turned the blade into heat seeking missiles soaring for the light bulbs, while a similar gentle tap on the back just about sent the blade through the concrete floor… lucky I didn’t hold the plane in my palm.

 

On my next visit to the wood show, I bought this tapping hammer 

off that cursed HNT Gordon stand where I bought some of my hand planes… it was touching the mallet that sealed the purchase and not the cosmetic look.

Got home, used the hammer and was gruntled.

 

Then I thought, why the hell did I spend $70 on the hammer when I could have made one. So I took up the challenge, not thinking why the (other) hell should I make one when I already bought one and my second hand was needed to hold the plane and not the 2nd hammer.

 

Nevertheless, I went to town (that’s Churchill speak of to the workshop), and decided to make 2.

 

Not being a gardener, I have no idea what king of vegetables the mother tree would have fruited… so I called what I found in my wood piles, appropriate looking timber…  dressed to approximate size of the purchased,

Took to the handle(s) on my lathe and used the bought one as a hand model (pun intended)… the head didn’t need much translation.

 

Having just bought my Beall wood threading kit at the time 

I decided to thread the parts… nothing like the treads on my previous shop made mallet,

but the handle (the non holding end) and to the hammer head (not the striking faces)

 

and oiled them before assembly,

 

Can’t remember whether I applied glue to the threads and wasn’t prepared to test as I do remember using brute force tightenning the threads. Deliberately left some thread poking out as a reminder,

… twas not a measurement error… that’s my story and I’m blue-tacking it.

Unfortunately, the original is hanging idle on the box housing all my planes,

one of my shop made ones is hanging on the lathe room wall 

as I don’t know any wooden hand plane owners I could bequeath it to…

but fortunately the other shop made one is continually being used when making my puzzles,

and seating my laser cut inlays

  

 

 

 

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