However, I wanted to be able to make beads anywhere and decided to make a "Center Bead Moulding Plane".
To use it, you scribe a line or pair of lines where on the wood you want the bead with a knife or marking gauge cutter that matches on center across the opening on the Moulding plane's blade.
If you want, you can go over these lines with some Snipe Bill Moulding planes being careful not to go too deep.
You can also clamp a scrap piece of wood as a fence where you want to place the bead and run the moulding plane this way. I use this method.
It produces a nice bead in 3 passes.
I made this plane with side escapement.
Here's what the underside looks like for the bead profile.
On top, in front of the wedge, It has a strike button inlaid for blade removal. It's made out of Dogwood. The upper body is Pine and lower is Spalted Maple. It's assembled by a sliding hand cut dovetail like I've done with some of my other moulding planes. I've done scratchstock beading to hide parting line between the upper and lower halves. The Spalted Maple was fairly gnarly and yielded some tearout here and there but it's livable.
Makes for a nice detail along the inside of an edge, cool!
How carefully do you need to read the grain to minimize tear-out? Seems cutting the wrong direction could quickly tell you, but I don't know if your cutter angle is such that that is a non-issue.
SplinterGroup... with all Moulding planes reading grain direction is very important. Always with the grain is a pretty much a requirement. However a very sharp honed blade will work well in those situations where you can't help going against the grain. Another requirement especially with any curved profile is to have the blade cut on a "spring line". This way the profile curve or shape is cut little at a time with each pass until you reach completed profile. Having a "stop" IMO is mandatory so over cutting doesn't happen and you know when you're done. The plane tells you. Hope I explained okay.
Amazing work Rick, this is one sweet beading plane. Very nice, very nice indeed. I think Lazyman was questioning the boxing on this plane with his fragile comment. What wood did you use for the boxing? PS: I like the look of the sliding dovetail joint, nice and tight. Great work.
Lazyman I am seeing it right? The sides on the beaded groove you show of the underside look like would be pretty fragile.
Lazyman... it is very important to choose the right wood for the boxing. This is what that piece is made of for strength. Also notice the points have a small flat which negates breakage. So far so good!
