Looking forward to this Plane reunion

[C. in Indy]

I'm feeling a tailwind of good luck today


I like German horn planes; I have some, have sold some.   If they're hammer-adjust, they never sell for much money for me.  So I keep the hammer-adjust ones myself.

Seldom seen here in the U.S., the ECE Primus planes had an East German 'clone' series by Howal.   I just ordered this abandoned Howal from the auction site, and I should have either the right horn for it, or one that I can re-shape.   Then I'll have the super-duper anti-backlash adjuster, plus a pretty rare "red" HSS blade


Chris

   

   

[Arlin Eastman]

Looks nice Chris.  I am looking forward to seeing some shavings when you are done! 



O and it looks O so nice and easy to use and adjust too.

[C. in Indy]

First Steps;  the postman has come this week!

A bit of disassembly and inspection is shown here; you might find these interesting.

The HOWAL adjuster pieces, aside from plastic knob pieces, are just like the PRIMUS type adjuster pieces:

   


This plane had a partially delaminated finger-jointed base, so I went ahead and knocked it apart to get it cleaned and re-glued.  Fine joinery at an angle which presents interesting profiles on all 4 sides of the plane!   Also here's a view of the red-painted blade, which I believe for the German planes means it's a super-durable HSS alloy:

   


Salvage has been a big theme this week.  I went down the street and picked up a number of armfuls of oak flooring being thrown out from a house there.  It took a bit of practice before I got a way to cleanly knock out the multiple cut nails.  All this stack is now nail-free!  Probably 100 nails knocked out, most of them at a toed angle.  I will like having a goodly stock of red oak narrow planks

   

[museumguy]

Very nice. I'm looking forward to seeing this through. Good score on the flooring.

[C. in Indy]

Inching along here...

The lower rear knob, upon looking closer, had a lot of flaked-out plastic and cracks around the captured nut.  While I might consider turning a custom knob one day, right now the approach is to stabilize with epoxy:

   


For the Horn replacement, I did a lot of rummaging in my 'shop'.  The one spare horn I came up with was too small in diameter.   But now I'm eyeballing the stump end of a hickory axe-handle that I had cut up in order to make a hammer-handle a while back.  There could be a decent diameter fit here, and enough clubby mass to form into a curvy horn:

   


Thanks for watching,
Chris

[C. in Indy]

I'm full in for the hickory horn now.   That ax-handle will have turned into 2 hammers and a horn-plane before it's exhausted


This rasping work has been pretty enjoyable:

   


Chris

[C. in Indy]

As I write this, there is a funny irony:   The "auction site" has a superb ECE plane that is missing the very metal pieces that I have in this wanna-be Hobel.   But I'm continuing with what I have.

The upper adjuster rod was fairly bent, and I had to straighten it.  I'll bet it was bent by the operator's hand slipping at the rear of the plane and hitting the adjuster rod.  So, I am adding a bit of a wood cushion to prevent that problem in the future.  Some old rolling-pin stock which I had 'funneled' for a particular special purpose wooden lathe chuck, long ago, is now coming in handy:

   


Thanks for watching

Chris

[C. in Indy]

We're getting closer!    The plane body is pretty well trued-up and done.   I'll get on that blade and its pitting soon.

   


- Chris

[C. in Indy]

Late in the evening I finally got it working!

I will say, the chipbreaker had unusual challenges for me on this one.   First I thought all my troubles (chipbreaker capturing / jamming with shavings) were due to a bit of twist in the breaker's metal length.   By torque "tweaking" the breaker alone I never got it to mate satisfactorily.   I finally decided to put a slight hollow-ground laterally in the chipbreaker's edge.   This finally let it work and eject shavings nicely.   I believe the design of the "Primus" adjuster pull-rod on the breaker will cause any hump (or maybe even flatness) in the breaker to bring up gaps on the extreme left and right edges where it mates with the cutting blade.  By doing the bit of lateral hollowing, it finally sealed down under tension very well.

In the process I got a lot of practice on setting the cut-depth as well as the mounting tension.  In practice the two knobs are iterative paired adjustments and there isn't much to be accomplished just using the upper knob alone.   It's possible to get one depth-of-cut with more than one setting of clamping tension, and being the anti-chatter idealist I am, I went for a goodly amount of tension.

At the end of all this, it works really nice.  Definitely a fun project!

Chris

   

   

[cputnam]

Very well done sir!