last week I put up a short-form video on how I made the smoothing planes and I've got this one all ready to go out Lee I hope he really likes it but I really wanted to do a longer format video for going into a little bit more detail into how I made these I've had a lot of people asking about them and wanting to know if I can make them for them but to be honest I spent about 60 hours between these two planes and be my first time that's normal I think I could get it down to around 40 hours maybe between the two so it really isn't a viable thing for me to make and sell but there are a lot of fun and really something I want to encourage other people to make so I want to put this video together to show you it is a little longer than most so if you're not into that I'm sorry there is a short form video and I'll leave a link to that over here but come along and I'll show you exactly what I did to make these so first off let's go through building the iron I started with quarter-inch oh 1 steel by 1/2 inch and cut it down to about 6 inches in order to make the tip on the iron I used a red sharpie to mark out what I needed to remove and that way I could get back to it this is a piece of sandpaper 2 foot wide by 20 foot and I got at a resale shop for a buck amazing fine uh-huh but for this it actually makes really quick workers one about 20 minutes of this in order to get the angle down to what I wanted constantly checking it to make sure it's about 30 degrees now I can file off the back I created this shape I wanted to just like before and then took it over to the sheet and ground off more second verse same as the first this side is a lot easier to only took them about five minutes to grind it off by hand now hardening is the step that I know probably the least about and oh one two tool steel is oil hardened and you have to bring it up to a cherry red but lit rooms that is often difficult to actually assess so I like to use a magnet to actually see where it's at and I keep going until the magnet is no longer attracting the steel and once that is done its reached that temperature then I know I can go ahead and quench it in the oil and then of course you get to play with the dust next up I need to temper it I put it in this loveand at 420 degrees I have a specific thermometer to to check that and I put it there for about two hours and then slowly back it down to over the course of an hour two hours I'll bring it back down to room temperature then sharpening is just like anything else go from your smaller grits to your higher grits and then finish it off on the strop very important step just to make sure that everything is perfectly smooth and sharp so let's get onto the plane body this is made of Purple Heart and ash they're about 7 inches long and I'm just laying everything out I'll cut them to length and then cut them to shape total thickness is about two inches and about three inches tall keep in mind that the ash and Purple Heart will overlap by about a quarter inch in the tongue-and-groove section I love using my bow saws they have a 2 TPI so they make quick work of chewing through large items once cut the length then I can cut the ash to the appropriate thickness I don't know why but I kind of enjoyed this part it's kind of meditative I guess the Purple Heart is then matched up to the blanks of Ash and cut to width and length very similar to the ash just more cutting I like to smooth out the two sides that will meet the Ash and Purple Heart to make sure that they are perfectly smooth and perfectly flat that will give me a good reference to Gotham now we're going to start with the long grooves in the Purple Heart and I make one groove a quarter inch wide a quarter inch deep right down the middle of the flank the depth stop is set on this 45 very very hard because every cut I need to make has to be to the exact same depth and so as long as I use one depth stop for every cut they should all match up after the first groove I'll then cut a second groove I'm a quarter inch away from the first one and then a third groove a quarter inch on the other side so I end up with three grooves that are a quarter inch deep a quarter inch wide and each of them a quarter inch apart and I'm being very very careful to be exactly precise and making sure that all of these are precisely parallel to each other as well once I have all three of those grooves cut then I can move on to the ash and make the matching grooves these actually line up the Purple Heart to know exactly where they are on the ash and then make my grooves the depth stop is still set at the exact same point so that I know that these grooves are precisely the same depth as the ones in the Purple Heart this one only gets two grooves down the middle as it only has to fit into the two humps created on the Purple Heart now I get to lay out all of the tongue and groove on the sides of the plane these are a half inch thick but they also need to go down to the exact same depth as the grooves so that everything will fit together perfectly now here you're going to hear me say this a lot through this project I start by making a stop cut it's not deep it's not hard it's not heavy it's just a couple light taps and once I've made the stop cuts all the way around then I can come back through and remove the waste all of the chisel work is just removing the waste and you can't do that until you make the stop cuts each pass is only taking it down 1/16 of an inch or so slow and steady wins the race it is very very important to be extremely precise everything needs to be exactly named degrees everything needs to go down to the exact same depth all the way around each one of these took me about two hours and since there's four sides for the two planes I spent about eight hours on this process so this is probably the most time consuming step of the entire thing was shaping all of these groups which is more of the same make your stop cut and then remove the waste always making sure you're making a precise 90-degree cut down now once I made the grooves on the ash I clamped them together so that I can make all the marks and transfer all the measurements over to the Purple Heart trying to undercut just a little bit to try and make them a little bit tight you can always remove more wood but you can't always add it and then the same as the ash make your stop cuts and then remove the waste we'd love to get a good Chisholm out probably make one of those someday but for now I'll just use the kids nails making sure everything goes down to the exact same depth as the grooves stop cut stop cut remove the way this is actually really enjoyable now the glue fill it into all the nooks and crannies and then match them up now I made these really stinkin tight and because of that I really couldn't just push them together all the way so what I ended up doing is putting them in the clamp and squeezing them with the clamp and then I just left them in overnight it makes a good a good finish I was able to get them completely tight and really nice seal all the way around a clamp just take it slow and make sure everything fits now I have two plain bodies and we need to cut out the space for the iron to go in the iron is bedded at 45 degrees and so I make them mark where the back of it is and then I'll make a mark on the other side of the iron so that I know how big the mouse and the opening needs to be and then make all the rest of the marks it's a three dimensional marking system on all four sides so that I have an idea of where the inside marks inside cuts need to be take your time make them right and now for the boring part yeah it's a lot of this I drill out all the holes just to make it a little easier for removing the waste with the chisel I put about a dozen or so holes in the top notice the blue tape on there it gives me a depth stop so I know if I go straight down to that point I'm not going to run into anything I need it's very careful to make sure that you only only bore in as far as you absolutely need to once all the holes have been drilled and most of the waste is removed you can go in with a chisel and start to remove things this is probably the second longest process of the whole job is making sure everything was exact and you just end up having to take small small chunks with every move and make sure you're not taking off too much constantly checking your angles making sure everything's smooth flattening things out and moving stutter lines once I got down to the purple heart on the grooves then I flipped the plane over and came at it from the mouth side trying to remove the waste from that and again it should slow slow bits just take off a little bit at a time don't be in a hurry and you'll end up with a clean process rushing work is often the worst keeping the chisel flat to the bed I can make sure I have the exact same angle going all the way down we want to make sure the bed for the iron is nice and smooth and flat so there's the comparison of the steps then once pretty close to where I want it I take the file and smooth everything out this will give you a nice flat surface and a good reference edge for everything else the future now let's work on the wedges I used a piece of ash that I had a half an inch and a half wide and then cut the angle in it the actual angle I'm using here is one inch to four inches and I found that to be a really nice a nice angle for these once I cut them down I'll plane off both sides number one that gets rid of the saw marks but number two that also gives you a really sharp edge on the wedge now let's work in the body you're going to hear this as well a lot it's step by step to shape things take the chisels and make your large shapes then bringing your rasp and get your general shape in place they file a fairly rough file to bring things down get rid of rasp marks and then you're going to grab a finer file to get rid of those marks and I'll usually end up with an extremely fine file that I have that I can pretty much get rid of any mark with so just slowly making the shape from one to the next it's actually a really enjoyable step and you start to see things come to life like that then the top surface I'll just do the exact same thing chisel rasp file fine file and I'm constantly checking it to make sure it feels good on this point on I'm I'm putting it in the clamp I'm working on it we'll take it out of the plane gonna feel it and that will tell me where I need to take off more where nitu adjusting I'm not going to any particular pattern I'm just going to okay what actually feels good in my hand this is a little trick I learned a while ago I use some olive oil on the surface not as a finish but it allows me to see what the finish might look like it'll also raise the grain a little bit and I can see if there's any Nick's or scratches that need to be filed out the pin is made from 3/8 brass and I just cut it to length and made it a quarter inch longer than the plane is wide so that it buttons out a little bit on either side then just smooth out either end with a file and give it a nice shiny finish I really do like the brass now back to the wedges same as the body just shape them with a chisel rent go to a rasp and then end up with a file on a smoother file rounding the end cutting the mouth is the same thing with a chisel make a stop cut remove the waist make a stop cut remove the kind of sounds boring but it's a very simple process you just have to learn how to apply it to different scenarios now a lot of people think that carving is something that is Wow and crazy and really cool but it's actually a simple process you just draw it out with a pencil you make your stop cuts and you remove the waste that sound familiar yeah it's the exact same thing chisel knife I have a carving knife that I use sometimes I really like using an exacto knife but just make your stop cuts and remove the waste same thing on the plane body this image I actually just used a pencil and free-handed it and used a round piece just to get the general shape that's why there's a lot of marks that I'm trying to follow but I know which ones I want to follow making stop cuts with a knife and then removing the waste as you get closer to the end you just make smaller and smaller cuts and remove things less and less and then here's the part I like the very last step putting my maker's mark on it made this brand in air and a while ago and I love it to finish it I just use boiled linseed oil three or four coats of that and then a paste wax finish give it a nice shine feels great in the hand not too slippery has a good grip I just really like that on tools and the test cuts like buttah this is why I do handsy this is fun it's not about the end goal it's not about the project about the steps involved and the enjoyment you can have a long way yes we can step back and look at the project and say wow that's cool that's a good thing but when you can look at a project and have the memories of making it and the enjoyment that you had along the way that that's the reason I do hand tool work you I have to say this is probably my favorite project that I've ever completed they are just a joy to work with and absolute blast to make I learned so much on them and it was really kind of fun just seeing how so many different techniques of the carving the shaping of the body the cutting out of the tongue-and-groove so many different things were the exact same process just used a little differently you know putting in your grout putting in your stop cuts and then removing the waste and putting in your stop cuts and removing the waste and if you can learn some of those basic skills things like this are fairly simple it's just learning to apply them in a slightly different way it is my goal that you can learn to do something like this it really isn't as hard as it looks it is just a simple list of steps that you have to go through and once you learn one step you can go on to the next and you can start to learn how these all come together it is my goal to show people that things that we think are a little out of your reach really aren't this is something that just about any woodworker can do and so I kind of want to leave it at that I hope you liked this video this is a little longer than I normally make my computer can just barely render this I'd like to be able to do longer formats in the future I have about 13 hours worth of footage on building these I could really go a lot more into depth in some of the details and things like that but for now that 15 to 20 minute mark is about all I can put out so I hope you like this please let me know in the comments below if there's something else you'd like to see or something I left a question about if you liked the video please hit the like button or feel free to subscribe and feel free to check out one of my other videos you might find something you like and until next time have a wonderful day