Shop made Spokeshave

[Herb Stoops]

Several years ago I read how to make shop made spokeshave from used planer blades,so I made one.Here is a similar link.
https://brfinewoodworking.com/plans-for ... pokeshave/
http://www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=125
http://www.veritastools.com/Content/Ass ... 3.30EN.pdf

The hard part was drilling the blade to tap in the threaded bolts, a regular drill will not touch the blade. So I had to anneal both ends ,drill and tap the holes and retemper the blade. You need a good Map torch, or similar to heat the blade cherry red,put it in sand to cool,do it a couple of times to anneal it. Then to harden heat again to cherry red and quench it in oil to cool it. The blade can be cut and ground to shape before it is annealed with a cutoff wheel and bench grinder.
Or you can buy the kit from several sources already made up and make the handle yourself.

[Nickp]

Very nice, Herb...as usual, beautiful work...

[Cherryville Chuck]

I have some planer blades that were used in a large sawmill in MacKenzie,BC when my brother in law worked there. They had been sharpened as many times as they could be and then tossed. Still razor sharp and very high quality high carbon steel. A hacksaw blade barely leaves a mark. I was wondering about drilling the holes. I read on a knife and gun forum while researching how to drill them that someone else tried and even carbide tipped drills wouldn't drill them. Someone there suggested just slotting the ends which is doable with an angle grinder and cut off disc. So I'm in the process of trying that (sandwiched in among other jobs) and will see if that is a viable option. I'm hoping that if I carefully inset the blade into the body that it will be tight enough to avoid chatter. I haven't decided if I'm going to try and chamfer the edges for a flat topped screw or not worry about it and just use a round top instead. I'm cutting 13" planer blades in half so they're long enough that the heads sticking out shouldn't be an issue. As usual Herb yours is beautiful.

[Herb Stoops]

How thick is the blade, Chuck? I imagine a lot thicker than the DeWalt blade I used, probably 3/16"-1/4"? I think mine were under 1/8". If they are wide enough a slot might work where the screw/bolt head will not rub. Or use a brass bolt and pein it over.
Or use a Dremel and a small grinding wheel to taper the slot for a FH screw.

If all else fails go to a different type of spoke shave, like one of these:

[Cherryville Chuck]

It's about 5/32" thick (4mm) by a little over 13/16" wide. It probably started out as 1" but then got sharpened a few times. If I can make it work then my plan is to make a curved sole shave with bevel up blade. I have a Stanley 151 and one with no name that has a concave radius blade beside a straight blade shave, a two in one type. I have a 2" by 1/8" by roughly foot and a half blank of O2 that I might make another radius type with a larger curve than the one I already have. I find that radiused one quite handy at times.

[Cherryville Chuck]

I decided to try something tonight that one of the wife's cousins told me about years ago. He said that when he was in machinist class they used to take masonry bits and grind the carbide to a sharper edge to drill hard metals. So I took one of mine and honed it with my of my diamond hones some until it had a little bit of an edge and put it in the DP at the slowest speed it will turn which is 250 rpm. I tightened it good and tight and put some tapping compound that looks like grease and put lots of down pressure on the bit. About 1/2 way through I stopped and honed a little more and then drilled the rest of the way. I should get at least one more hole out of the bit and maybe more. It made a pretty clean hole though not exactly the right diameter. A larger bit should give the countersink for it. Sorry for the poor quality picture. The light is behind me.

[Herb Stoops]

That is good to know, Chuck, was that a .125 bit? or .187" Bit?
HErb

[Cherryville Chuck]

It's close to 5/16 but not quite. I'll either file it with a dremel with stone or a diamond rat tail file I have out to 5/16" or just chamfer it and see if a 1/4" flat head machine will keep it from chattering. I could maybe try putting a couple of wraps of that metal foil duct tape around the screw too.

[Herb Stoops]

Another way would be to grind or file the head of the FH machine screw to be flush.
On mine I had 2 set screws to set the depth, one on each side of the blade, and the thumb nuts on top side would tighten the blade against the setscrews the setscrews were just tapped into the wood, they seem to hold OK, once they are set.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

My plan with the first one is to make a curved bottom shave since it's the one I don't currently have a version of so depth isn't as much a factor on this shave since you rotate it to the proper exposure for the curve that you are working on so I want to inset the blade carefully into the body so I get a good tight fit and countersinking should help with that too. The masonry bit worked well enough that I'm confident a larger size will do the job and the angle on the tips of masonry bits looks like it should be close to the right angle for the under side of the screw heads.

When I started drilling last night I saw a slurry of very fine metal particles mixing in the tapping paste and my first thought was that it was the carbide being ground up. When I lifted the bit up to see what was happening I was pleasantly surprised to see the start of the cone. It seemed to drill better when I put really good down pressure on the bit. Between the drilling and stopping to resharpen it took about 20 minutes to get the hole drilled. There was at least 5 minutes of actual drilling time I would say. That's still faster than other other method I could come up with.

[Herb Stoops]

Yes, it sounds like a winner. I have some of the blades I took off the delta bench top planer, I might try that on they are high speed and trying to drill them is fruitless.
Were those masonry drill bits or rotohammer bits, I have both.
HErb

[Cherryville Chuck]

Just standard masonry bits like for a hand drill. You can't get anything but flat on the face (they don't angle with the flutes) but maybe that's why this one worked when someone else I read about said they tried carbide and it didn't work. A carbide tipped drill sharpened like a standard twist drill may have too fragile an edge. The best you can do with a masonry bit is get a scraping angled edge. I just honed the tops of the carbide to get a relief angle and try to get as sharp an edge as possible where that meets the face. On the second sharpening I thought to make sure the sides had some relief angle too. One good thing about this is that those bits tend to be as cheap or cheaper than twist drills.

[Cherryville Chuck]

I finished drilling and chamfering the holes in the two pieces I made from one 12" blade. The through hole was made with a 1/4" masonry bit which made a hole just slightly larger than .25. I drilled all 4 holes with the one bit and if it hadn't grabbed as it broke through on the 4th hole it would still be going but that chipped one side of the carbide off. I'm not sure what size the larger bit I used for chamfering is, never bothered to look. Probably 1/2". The chamfers were harder to cut than the through holes were plus the angle was a bit off and I wound up using a dremel with a diamond bit and with a cone shaped grinding point to true the shape of the shoulders up a bit. The masonry bit did make a nice smooth cone with no chatter marks.

In the end it all worked well enough and didn't take overly long to do. I'd probably go with a smaller size through hole next time. I don't think they needed to be that big.

[Herb Stoops]

Fantastic,Chuck. You have given me inspiration. And you put the chamfer on the correct side too.
Now to do the slope for bedding the blade. I used a dado and made a simple jig to lay the rough handle block in and did them on the table saw ,if I remember right.

[Nickp]

Very educational...I've not tried masonry bits on metal...thanks

[Cherryville Chuck]

The last thing I did last night was try to carve out the ware for the shavings to escape through. I'm using a piece of Siberian elm from a tree we had to cut down last year. SPOILER ALERT: that elm doesn't carve. The grain is stringy. It was like trying to push a wet noodle uphill. Despite saw kerfs every 1/4" I couldn't get the individual pieces to snap loose and trying to chisel out the inset for the blade didn't go any better. The wood is beautiful so hopefully the finished product will make me forget what a PITA this wood has been to work with.

[Herb Stoops]

The last thing I did last night was try to carve out the ware for the shavings to escape through. I'm using a piece of Siberian elm from a tree we had to cut down last year. SPOILER ALERT: that elm doesn't carve. The grain is stringy. It was like trying to push a wet noodle uphill. Despite saw kerfs every 1/4" I couldn't get the individual pieces to snap loose and trying to chisel out the inset for the blade didn't go any better. The wood is beautiful so hopefully the finished product will make me forget what a PITA this wood has been to work with.

How is the spoke shave coming,Chuck, I am excited to see the final product?
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

I need a few final touches like rounding the throat. Wifey has me making something for her right now but maybe I can slip a little time into working on the shave tomorrow. The elm I used looks nice but it is tough to work with. I should have inset the blade with a router and cut the ware on the TS but I thought that since it is a one off for now that I'd do it the old fashioned way.

[Cherryville Chuck]

Okay Herb, I got the mouth rounded and put a couple of coats of teak oil on it to help keep my grubby hands from staining the wood. I gave it a try last night before the oiling and it takes pretty heavy cuts on something straight and it will follow a curve although as I've read there is a learning curve to figure out how much tilt to put on it. It works better with a shear cut and because the blade is so much longer than normal I can use it that way.I was able to plane the inside curve of the piece shown but I'm still working on getting a smooth cut. I'm getting better at it already.

I rounded the throat with a 3/8"r roundover on the router table. On the RT I could start and stop the cut without going all the way through. I installed inserts for the machine screws to screw in to. I have wing nuts as lock nuts but I'm not sure if they are really needed. With the curved sole you don't have any depth adjustment, you just alter the angle on the throat to achieve that. I'm probably going to have to get some brass strip and inset it later. I don't think the elm is tough enough to last all that long, not that this curved sole shave will see as much use as my others. The closest place to get any is 1.5 hrs away so it will have to wait until I need other stuff to make that trip.

For a first try and on a curved sole shave I'm happy with the results. It is a usable tool that can do jobs my others won't. When I get a chance I'll start on a flat bottomed shave with adjustable throat with the other half of the planer blade and then I'll have a bevel up shave to add to the arsenal.

[Cherryville Chuck]

Oh yeah, the gash in the table is from me not checking to see how much circ saw blade was extended. Sooner or later someone was going to ask. The word assume starts with an ass for a reason.

[Herb Stoops]

everything looks good, Chuck, except you don't have any depth adjustment for the blade, when you tighten up the blade against the body it has a fixed opening. The plan I had, had a small brass angle for the shoe and along side the long screws that hold the blade in are 2 set screws. They are tapped threaded into the wood and are set from the top with an allen wrench. The set screws are screwed against the blade to give it an adjustable stop to tighten the wingnut screws against to fine adjust the depth of cut. SO the blade can be adjusted from zero cut to any fine cut, kind of like a plane blade.
If you look at the diagrams I posted above the LV one does it in a different way. They have a hollow tube that the end has a cone shaped bearing and it has a knurled head. They turn the tube to set the depth, then lock it in with the thumb nuts.
On mine in the pictures if you enlarge them you can see the holes for the set screws in the top of the spokeshave right next to the thumb nuts.
Herb

[Nickp]

Oh yeah, the gash in the table is from me not checking to see how much circ saw blade was extended. Sooner or later someone was going to ask. The word assume starts with an ass for a reason.

...sign and date it...call it "Workbench Character"...

[Herb Stoops]

I have some of those too, and the saw horses have a lot of them, in fact I think the corner of the workbench is gone from a miscalculation.
Maybe if Chuck drew an arrow and put a degree number on it, it might look intentional.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

everything looks good, Chuck, except you don't have any depth adjustment for the blade, when you tighten up the blade against the body it has a fixed opening. The plan I had, had a small brass angle for the shoe and along side the long screws that hold the blade in are 2 set screws. They are tapped threaded into the wood and are set from the top with an allen wrench. The set screws are screwed against the blade to give it an adjustable stop to tighten the wingnut screws against to fine adjust the depth of cut. SO the blade can be adjusted from zero cut to any fine cut, kind of like a plane blade.
If you look at the diagrams I posted above the LV one does it in a different way. They have a hollow tube that the end has a cone shaped bearing and it has a knurled head. They turn the tube to set the depth, then lock it in with the thumb nuts.
On mine in the pictures if you enlarge them you can see the holes for the set screws in the top of the spokeshave right next to the thumb nuts.
Herb

I've never had a chance to see any of the old ones in person but luckily a month or so ago Fine Woodworking had an article about them that renowned chair maker Brian Boggs wrote. He showed a few of his in his article and he said the older curved ones didn't have blade adjustment. You rotated the shave on the curved part of the throat to control depth. That requires some practice but I'm okay with that as it makes the construction simple and it allows for a rock solid connection between the blade and body to help eliminate chatter.

On the next shave I'll make with the other half of the planer blade it will be a flat soled shave but I'll still attach it in the same way for the same reasons. To control the throat opening my plan is to take a piece of brass and put slots in it and install on the face of the shave. That way I can control the depth of cut by moving the brass up or down which will be simpler than moving the blade. I think it should work the same.

[Herb Stoops]

Yeah, thats a good idea,similar to the block planes that have the sliding sole piece on the front.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

I finally got some brass so I could finish #2. I installed 8-32 inserts behind the brass plate and slotted the plate enough to get about 1/8" of adjustment height. It doesn't need much. A couple of thousandths of an inch makes a big difference. I tried it out as soon as I was finished on some fir and birch and the shavings are in the photo.

So fixing the blade on a bevel up blade spoke shave and adjusting the throat works just as well and maybe better than having a fixed throat and adjustable blade. The fixed blade is very solid and resists chatter really well and adjusting the throat is easy enough it just takes a try or two to find the right setting. Now that it's set I don't expect to need to change it anytime soon. The brass I got is fairly hard.