Bevel Up or Down Smoothing Plane Build Process

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This afternoon I've made the rest of the metal hardware. I started with an extremely simple bit of brass turning, to make this little cylinder:

That goes in this hole and gives a smooth rotating surface for part of the adjuster mechanism to spin in:

Next up were three steel pieces. I didn't take any photos of the process, but you can imagine it if you read some earlier posts and look at the photos of stuff being turned in the metal lathe!

The bottom two are 20 mm diameter 303 stainless steel, the top one is 24 mm diameter (at its widest point) mild steel (EN1A). I would have made the screw out of stainless steel as well but I didn't have any big enough and I wasn't confident I'd got the lengths right anyway. I might make a new one out of stainless at some point if I can be bothered (or if that one rusts!).

This is how they fit together and in the plane:

The upper thread is M8 × 1.25 mm. The lower thread is M6 × 1 mm left-hand. The two together work as a differential thread: when you rotate the screw through 360°, the screw moves down through the upper fixed part by 1.25 mm. At the same time, the lower moving part moves up along the screw by 1 mm. The net result is that one turn of the screw moves the lower piece by 0.25 mm. The head of the screw that holds the blade to the cap iron sits in the pocket in the lower moving part and hence gets moved with the movement of the lower piece.

Shoving the knob side-to-side rotates it around the upper fixed part and hence causes the lower moving part to shove the blade side-to-side.

The last job for today was to fit everything and see how it looks:

The adjuster seems to work well (better than I expected if I'm honest). I found it quite straightforward to adjust the angle of the blade to get an even protrusion and it could be moved smoothly back and forth by turning the knob, before tightening the lever cap to hold everything firmly in place.

The next big job is to make a rear handle and a front knob for it, but that'll have to wait until next weekend now.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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