Block Plane for Travel Tool Chest Build Process

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To make a lever cap, I started with a bit of 5 mm × 30 mm brass flat bar. I drilled two holes, tapped one of them and then used a corner-rounding end mill to round off one end:

I used a couple of washers to mark out the shape of the cap (the bigger washer provided an edge against which to push a ruler for marking a line tangent to the two diameters):

It got roughed out to shape on the bandsaw, using my home-made vertical saw table:

I then used a little Axminster mini belt sander to sand it to shape:

The screw for the lever cap is a bit unusual. I wanted a relatively fine thread (as the brass bar is quite thin) so went with M6. However, the slot in the blade is quite long and quite wide (8 mm) and I didn't want the lever cap screw to drop into the slot. To work around that, I made the screw in two parts. The first part looks much like a normal "cheese head" screw, except that there's no slot in the screw head. The second part is a knurled "nut" but with a blind hole. The two parts screw together around the lever cap (they'll probably get glued together in due course), and the "cheese head" provides a bigger contact area on the end of the screw.

The screw components can be seen in the next photo, along with the lever cap which has now had a bit of attention with an angle grinder to make it a bit more shiny:

The next photo shows how the screw goes into the lever cap, hopefully making it clear how it all fits together:

To hold the lever cap in place, a nut was needed as I'm going to fix a bit of threaded rod into the body (rather than having a screw like you'd find on a Bailey pattern plane). Making the nut was just a case of taking a piece of 303 stainless steel, knurling it, drilling and tapping an M8 through-hole and then chamfering and parting off:

This photo shows all the adjuster and clamp components together:

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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