Veritas Block Plane

I got a new toy last week, paid for with my lawn-mowing money. The Veritas Standard Block Plane, sold exclusively from Lee Valley. This thing is a Cadillac compared to my Stanley Low Angle Block Plane. It is considerably wider, the sole measuring 2" wide... compared to 1-3/8" wide for the Stanley and Lie Nielsen. When I first got my Stanley it took me hours to get the sole flat... of course I didn't know what I was doing, but it had to have been out of flat by about 5 mils. The Veritas was very close to dead flat right out of the box. I marked up the sole with a magic marker and then took a few strokes on a granite table with sand paper... 99% of the marker was gone. If I got it in just the right light I could barely see a slight hollowing out in the middle, about 2" diameter. So about 5 minutes on 220 grit and it was gone... finished it off with 400 grit and called it good. Point being it had to have been within a few tenths of a mil of dead flat to begin with.

But beyond the sole, this thing is truely a wonderful design. The blade adjustment mechanism is so fine. It even has a set screw on each side of the blade at the mouth for fine lateral adjustment. I decided to go look at the Lie Nielsen just for kicks to compare. They are very similar, but the Veritas does seem to be a higher quality case/machining job. The blade mechanism is similar, but it doesn't have the set screws at the mouth. I haven't used the Lie so it may work just as well, but my impression is the the Veritas will be better.

Scraping the bindings

Scraping is a new skill for me. I had some scrapers made for me by a friend of different thickness SS. The trick is that I really don't know how to sharpen them very well. Some of them were sharp just from the shearing process... some weren't. Eventually I'll need to figure out how to sharpen them.
For now, I managed to figure out how to use them to scrape the bindings. It took me a while... and had to put a lot of elbow grease in on it. But it turned out well.




The box is built. Now I can begin the tedious process of sanding, pore filling, sanding, and finishing, sanding, finishing... and lots of other steps in between.

Top binding

This weekend, I glued on the front binding. It went pretty well.

Back binding

Yes it's been a while, been very busy. But Sunday I found some time to glue on the back binding.

Those bicycle tubes worked great once the tape was on.

There are a few small gaps, but I should be able to cover them up when I do the pore filling.

At some point, I'll use a scraper or plane to trim off the excess. Although the binding channels were sized pretty close so it won't take much.

Sharpening... and a second job!

I haven't got much done on the guitar lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working. About a month ago I bought Brian Burns book on Double Bevel Sharpening from LMI for $11, it's a great book for sharpening chisels, planes, planers, joiners, etc. Within the book are plans to make a sharpening jig out of wood and miscellaneous parts from the hardware store (or you can buy the jig/box/book/etc. from Japanese Woodworker for about $175). So over the past few weeks, I built it and began to use it on a few different chisels and plane irons. It takes a little time to get it setup and leveled... but it works great.

You can see the magnetic dial gauge angle finder is the exact same one Brian shows in his book... got it at Harbor Freight for $3. I am using Diamond Honing plates from HF ($10) for the course work (180/260/360), they are seen on the left next to the box in a stack; each one on a 1/4" piece of aluminum. Then I switch to a DMT DuoSharp Plus 600/1200 for fine sharpening (my wife got it for me for my birthday). I finish off with Pinnacle Honing Film on 3/8" sheet glass. Woodcraft sells 3 packs for $5 - they come in packs of 15, 5, and 0.3 micron equivalent to 1200, 4500, 90000 grit. The HF 180 isn't really course enough to start a new bevel, I'll have to look for something better (or I could use wet/dry sandpaper on sheet glass). But everything else works great.
Now for a neat story: Brian highly recommends the Veritas Standard Block plan (not the low angle one). He says the standard angle plane can be sharpened to get the same cutting angle as the low angle plane using the double bevel system, but the low angle one isn't as versatile with hardwoods. He says you only need 1 plane for lutherie, and no other plane will do. That Veritas plane is $130. I e-mailed him, asked if there was any other plane that is reasonable since I can't afford it. He replied that the Veritas is so good... and everything else is so bad... that he'd "deliver pizzas" to pay for it.
The exact same day I got his response, my wife was out talking to our neighbor. He is a retired Marine, bad knee. He said jokingly that he would pay her $25 to mow his yard. It takes him a long time because he can only mow for 10-15 minutes at a time due to his knee. I go over and tell him I'll mow it for $25. He agrees. Mowed it three times now, takes me 60-70 minutes. I should be able to make roughly $200 total from him over the rest of the year. That's enough to buy that plane, an extra blade and 2 more Hirsh chisels from Lee Valley!

Back purfling...

I'm using black fiber purfling to trim between the bindings and the lower binding channel on the sides, as well as the end wedge. Because this purfling has to be mitered in around the end wedge, I thought it was best to install it as a separate step. While the purfling is fairly flexible, I still had to pre-form it with a little water and a heat gun at the waist. I used plastic binding stock to glue it down with... the wood glue will glue the purfling, but not stick to the plastic binding.

Now that this is done, I can go back and miter in the purfling and prepare for the back bindings.

Herringbone Perfling done

This weekend I glued in the herringbone perfling on the top. It was somewhat stressful, I have to admit. Felt like I was racing the clock to get it all taped and bound before the glue setup. But in the end, it turned out a little better than I hoped.

You can see the bicycle tire tubes I used to bind it after the taping. Most of them are CA glued together... but the piece I had prepared wasn't long enough so I quickly cut another tube and tied it on at the end. Before I do the bindings I'll fix this and make it even longer. I trash picked about a dozen tubes, more than I will ever need.

There are a couple spots that aren't perfect, but probably aren't noticeable to anyone but myself. I may be able to fix this during the finish process.
As for the bindings, there are a few locations where the purfling sticks out over the binding ledge... this is ok since there won't be a gap when I put the binding on. But the opposite is a problem, and there is 2-3 of those locations. On is under the fretboard which won't be seen. But one is at the waist, so I have to shave down that ledge before I glue on the binding. This will be tough since it's an inside curve.
This week I'm rather busy, probably won't get back to it until next weekend. But it's good to get this step done, starting to look cool.