Bevel Up or Down Smoothing Plane Build Process
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Posted 6th April 2026
This morning was a bit dull if I'm honest. I started by hacksawing off the excess on the home-made screw:
The body then went in the jaws of my portable workbench (to raise it up a bit and save my back) for the heads of the screws to be filed down:
I used a couple of punches (one with a flat end and one with a domed end) along with a hammer to mash the heads up in order to try to merge the screw material with the base material:
It then went back in the portable workbench vice for more filing (with some finer files):
The biggest flat surface I have is the bandsaw table, so I clamped some 80 grit sandpaper to that and started rubbing the base on it, regularly cleaning off the dust with a brass brush. It was immediately obvious that the low points were where the screws were so I guess the screws had ever-so-slightly deformed the brass when they were tightened.
After doing that for a while, I remembered that I had a roll of 60 grit sandpaper so I switched to that:
After quite a lot of back and forth on the sandpaper I eventually decided I'd had enough and stopped when it looked like this:
I didn't want to go too far given that the lever cap might distort the shape a little so ideally it'll be flattened with the lever cap fitted. Also, I was fed up of sanding brass.
The brass screws hadn't disappeared as much as I'd hoped. Here are the two at the front:
The two in the middle are better:
The two at the back aren't bad:
I haven't decided how much to do about those yet. They won't affect the operation of the plane so I could decide just not to worry about them. I could also just see what they look like when I've sanded them a whole lot more. Another option is to drill and taper-ream some little holes for tapered pins, fit the pins and then mash the pins to fill in some of the gaps. That's something I'll ponder on over the next week or two.
In the meantime, the plane went back into the portable workbench vice for more filing (which actually felt quite enjoyable after the sanding!)
The ends got filed too:
It was then time to do some more filing, this time for the mouth opening:
That's quite a smooth file (probably 2nd cut at a guess), but it was the coarsest 4 mm thick one I could find: all my coarser ones are 5 mm or more and that would open up the gap too much.
I worked at the bottom surface (which isn't that critical as it's just the opening behind the blade) and kept going until it was parallel with the bed. I then rounded over the very tip as I didn't want a sharp brass point behind the blade.
At that point it was time for lunch. We spent the afternoon out so I haven't done any more today.
I think the next job probably needs to be making the lever cap, which I haven't figured out yet. Ideally, I'd make it out of something like 10 × 50 mm brass flat bar, but I haven't got any and it seems to be rather expensive stuff to buy.
One day I'd like to get set up for brass casting. I've got loads of scrap brass stored away for when I eventually do and if I was equipped for that I could have a go at casting myself some thick flat bar. That's not an option at the moment sadly.
Another option is to make it out of stainless steel. That would have the advantage I could buy some thinner material and build up the thickness where required by welding pieces together.
There are probably plenty of other options too, but I haven't thought of them yet!
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