Bevel Up or Down Smoothing Plane Build Process
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Posted 29th March 2026
This morning I've been doing a bit more work on the body. I 3D-printed a guide (and later 3D-printed another thinner one) to help me get a consistent angle when tidying up the surface that the blade will sit on. No prizes for guessing what the bed angle of this plane will be:
The finished (for now) surface:
I then did a bit of (unguided) tidy up of bottom half of the front surface (which you can see is a bit shabby in the photo above) but I was being quite cautious not to open it up too much. The top half will get cut off later so I didn't bother to tidy that up. The bottom bit will probably get a bit more attention when the base is on and I've test-fitted a blade but I'll leave it for now. I didn't take any photos of that stage but you'll see it in some of the later ones.
The next thing to do was to make the pocket for the adjuster mechanism. To start the pocket off I angled the table on my pillar drill and used a 30 mm Forstner bit. I used a digital angle gauge to get the bed surface level and drilled down until the tip was a shade under 18 mm down:
I also drilled a second hole with a 28 mm Forstner bit to clear out some of the waste:
It was then time for some more chiselling, using these three chisels:
The 18 mm one did most of the work. The 8 mm one was used to get into the bottom of the curve and the carving gouge was used to extend the curve deeper into the wood (so I could get rid of the mark from the tip of the Forstner bit and bring the hole to depth).
That pocket is finished for now; the next job is to drill a couple of holes, one for the adjuster and one for the threaded rod that the lever cap will tighten against.
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