How to Make a Poor Man's Spokeshave | Paul Sellers

I just want to introduce you to something that I use periodically sometimes you may be in a bind and you need a poor-man's spokeshave I've got lots of spokeshave to show you here they all work they all work well and you shouldn't dismiss wooden spokeshaves even if they go back three centuries because they work just as well today if not better then most modern-day spokeshaves but wooden ones work great on the wood wood on wood is always best and I'm going to show you how to make a poor man's version of it now first thing I've got to do is I've got to make the blade I'm going to shape and make the blade show you how to do that then we can start working on the main body of the spokeshave we have to before we start the main body of the spokeshave we've got to have the blade made and shaped and we've got to put a bevel on the blade we've got to shape the ends do some cutting some metalworking if you're not used to metalworking don't be intimidated by this it's basically a hacksaw a file a drill a center punch and a hammer and before we get very far you need to have the size I'm going with a piece of steel that's 1/8 of an inch thick 3/4 wide and four inches overall length if you want a smaller spokeshave you can reduce those sizes slightly or bigger you can increase them whichever you want to so we're first of all we want to do a little bit of layout to do that on the end of your combination square should be a scribe like this it's a hard point if you don't have that you can use a hard point screw or nail for this and I'm going to set this to 3/8 of an inch from the end of my square from the start this goes on here we put this on to here so you can see this comes down here so I'm going to make a line down here 3/8 of an inch can't see it I know but that's what it is and the same here so make sure it's up tight 3/8 of an inch and then in from the end we're going to come 5/8 of an inch like this same from the other end and that is my cut one is here let me see if I can put that pencil line in for me maybe for you too so there is my cut line I can see it fairly well we're going to get the hacksaw haven't got a metal vise you can just use your woodworking vise it works fine remember that will be very hot so don't burn yourself keep the steel you can make a cutter from it okay file the saw cut marks off like that oops wrong one can you see I'm slightly out of parallel so I'm going to keep working on that to get it parallel that is so bad that is sorry guys, maybe try a little bit lower. hopefully that will help We're going to put radius at the end of here. Again is not very pleasant but we're going to have a radius that we can drill for so we're going to use a 3/8 bit into the wood so this needs to come out at that same radius when we're finished so depending on how good your eyeballing is that's what we're aiming for anyway we got quarter of a radius there so I've got that one done that's the radius nice quadrant now I've got to do the same onto this other corner put this in the vise too so if you've got 45 degrees first like this just estimate it like this what we'll do what we're going to do is fill a hole into a piece of wood here like this just near the end any piece of wood will work not too deep we're going to take off that's just giving me the radius that that needs to be married to when it's finished so this needs to be conforming to that so there i'm fairly close to getting that married to that shape a little bit more shaping make sure you're filing this square across not beveled ideally I think that will that's got me where I need to be so you can see it's nice and tight it's got a little bit of a gap but I don't think that would bother me do the same on the other end and then we come to this next point which is to drill a hole I need that little quite here so we're going to come in from the end this is 3/8 of an inch wide so we're going to go 3/16 across here that gives me the center of that 3/8 piece and then we're going to come in 3/16 from the very end here now you may not be able to see that but that gives me two crosshairs this is a center punch it goes to a conical point this goes right on the crosshairs here sometimes I think you better just eyeballing it the center but once you're on the crosshairs just pop it and that gives us the center point there can you see we have a place to put the drill bit now we put this into the vise here and then we take the drill right on to the point and we start drilling and we're going to countersink that so it takes the screw head that and here's the screw that's going to go in there there it is and that's what's going to secure this blade to the main body of the spokeshave afterwards we'll file this flush it will still be able to receive a screw driver be able to withdraw it we're going to do the same to the other end now and then we're going to file the bevel same 10-inch flat file this one will do the work you need to I'm going to file this you may have a grinding wheel you can use a grinding wheel I'm not saying don't use one maybe I would use it I would have different reasons to use it not to use it it's faster but you can file if you don't have a grinding wheel don't worry about it just put a little sweat equity into this and start filing make sure you have this nice and secure and just file like this take the bevel down 30 degrees 25 degrees probably would work by 25 to 30 and take it down take it down it'll take you about 15 minutes to get the down to the other side so we're just going to go on this angle now until we hit the other side and that's it that's all we do that's the bevel ground after that we have to harden the steel and then we sharpen it so I've got my bevel on here now we'll just refine it a little bit more the outer edges I couldn't quite get to because of the vise jaw so bring this up here take a couple of strokes with the file here ah sounds so bad there so it's going all the way to the edge on that side that side I'm going just sharpen this because I want this to be just to show you can sharpen the steel even though it's not been hardened and you may want to do that just to check it's working but it won't last as long as it could do if you harden it if you harden it then it will last long and that's what will ultimately be doing but just for now sharpening should be quick and easy because it's fairly soft at the moment usual patterns not much different than any plain iron it is a plain technically a spokeshave so just refine that bevel of course fine and superfine just the whole bevel so I can see I've got the bevel just that last little corner I'm not going to worry about this is fairly smooth I'm going to go straight onto the plate here look on the back metal flat in this case this is actually the sole of the plane now this is very different than the angled spokeshaves I go to my strop just strop it you don't have to spend a lot of time spokeshaves are very forgiving thirty times I'm going to stop now because I have to hardening it will damage the edge so there's no point sharpening it beforehand really no birth that's it ready to go so I can install that once I've made my spokeshave body that's what I'm going to do now so we'll make the spoke shape body using this to guide us when we make the recesses to sit the blade into the body the main stick that I'm using for my body of my spokeshave is 11 inches long it's one and a half inches wide and it's three quarters of an inch thick it could be slightly bigger if you were making a bigger spoke shape it's entirely up to you but this is the size for this spokeshave what I've done what I'm going to do is I want to Center this on the main stem either side here so that's positioned for the blade and then I'm going to look on here and I want to Center this this way as well I want three eighths on the back three eighths on the front I think that's three eighths there take a look look at that dead-on so we take this now run our finger as a gauge line like this just to give us a ballpark of where this needs to be positioned this is my front edge here so what I want to do first of all is i'm going to take this line all the way down here like this and I'm going to take this is a 1/16 Cline here I'm going to put it in the vise and I'm going to bevel this back this is going to give us a relief for the start of the spokeshave when it starts to cut if it's dead level with the blade it usually will not cut it so now my blade goes in here what I've got to do next is I have to put a chamfer that goes from this relief edge to the back edge so I've marked the position of my blade this is here so knife wall on this side and the knife wall on this one up onto this edge here to the back edge now you can stop just shy or you can go past that corner it's and it's just up to you I think I'm going to stop just shy of it for now I can always make an alteration later pop this in the vise at an angle a little awkward it's more awkward because I'm trying to do this so you can see we bring this up here run the saw along the knife wall or catty-corner like that right up to that line if you can you see that there I think you can wide chisel take this down and split it out of the way you'll adjust it so that you can work it best I'm working this to the camera and it works fine so yeah I said that and then that's what happened try it this way we're nearly there read your grain and see which way it runs mine is slightly upwards this is the part where the blade connects at the front so let me show you what I mean this is going to go here so the blade is going to meet this leading edge here and I don't really have to do much more than this just clean up this surface and you can put as much or little effort into this because this now works it will work for me put this on to your bench top I'm lining up the cutting edge with the line on the bevel here and this none of this is an exact science so what we're going to do is take the all right in the very center of the hole we're making a small prick into the surface there's another one and I'm going to bore a hole with my bracing bit like this hopefully this will correspond to the radius of this this is a 3/8 bit this is 3/8 here so as soon as this hits the surface there the blood the Spurs are just hitting the surface now I'm going to count because each revolution is one sixteenth of an inch deep on my bit one two no more one two straight edge under knife from one side to the other aline these up just on the side of that hole make a knife hole you can go quite deeply same on this one small chisel I'm going down to the surface of the wood now this is about the depth of the thickness of my piece of wood my blade my piece of steel so used to wood when I start talking about steel okay I call it wood that theoretically should give me should bring me close to the position I want it to be this case I'm I'm a little bit off here right on the very end so what I'm going to do is put my brace back in hopefully this'll work I'm going to go further up towards the end of the if not you can use a gouge just use the spur as best you can can I do this if not you can plug the existing hole just rotate that blade on a backward cut and that will move your wall take the blade think we're in so my blade is protruding through the front and I need to go a little bit deeper so another couple of turns in this just take it down until the blade is flush with the surface then you are almost ready to put this blade to the test we're going to check and make sure that the leading edge where it meets here and here I'm not going to do any more to this I'm going to put the screws in and see how it feels because I may not have to do much more than this but usually what we do is we set one side deep on one side not so deep and then we can use the spokeshave okay so we have a curt we don't because it is too tight on the on the bevel yet back this out and actually the cut is quite deep but these little micro adjustments now will make all the difference to your now you are dealing with a blade you got to be careful yeah I can see where the blade where the shaving was bruising the wood a little micro adjusting here for micro adjusting feel it might be the only spot much easier to take the wood off than the steel more yet what you can also do I may show you that in a minute you can also take a little bit off the fore edge as well you'll be amazed how well this spokeshave works once you've made it and I'm just using soft wood just really to prove that you can make a spokeshave from just about any wood so it wouldn't be any more complicated or any harder to use a a hardwood so I look through here to see if I can see daylight all I threw which I could we'll try again after we've done this set the screws I can see all the way through this time and I've set this one a little bit higher on this side than this side so I should get a thick shaving to one side and a thin one to the other let's see what we got so it's working fine plugging a little bit but that's just a question of micro adjustment now and remember you can either put shims in if you want to or you can use washes inside see this this will hug off the wood now so I've got too deep of a setting so it's just really a question of tweaking this now you have a spokeshave that works go ahead and take this gauge shavings out and remember that it could be the it may not be that there's anything wrong with your spokeshave it can be the wood itself that you are spokeshaving I'm making excuses not really it's just a reality of wood so it's working all I need to do now is really sharpen it harden the steel and I have a spokeshave that will work shaping it taking that step further just takes a little bit more effort I'm going to probably do that with this one but if you want to know more about how to make a refined one with adjusters as well we're working on that too we are entering realms you may never have ventured in before we're going to have to harden the blade that we've filed and shaped and got ready and to do that all we need is a barbecue pit you could use a propane torch something like that if you have one but I want to make it as simple as possible what we've got to do is put the steel into the barbecue pit get the heat up till this turns red and then we're going to plunge it into the peanut oil because peanut oil or any oil actually I shouldn't say any oil and motor oil things like that tend to flash when you drop the steel in when it's red-hot like that so we're using peanut oil because the flash is less than we can expect with other oils so it really works well but you still have to be very careful because there will be some flash from it I've got a hairdryer to stir up my heat a little bit I've got my drill driver what's this for well this has a magnetic tip on it like this and so when I attach this to here that means the steel isn't hot enough as I heat it in there and it gets to cherry red when I hit it against the tip it won't grab to the tip like this because when it gets to the right color the right temperature it will not be magnetic so we're using the drill driver for that pair of pliers just to lift in put out whatever and I've got my file which will help me test after I've plunged it I'll be able to test the hardness of the steel to make sure it's hard so that's where we're going in all of this so we're first of all I've got my leather gloves on long sleeves on and I'm going to put this down into the coals in here bring some of the coals up and then I'm going to stir this fire up a little bit more with a little extra air here so I'm just using a hairdryer and we get this going it won't take very long for this field to get red hot and we're looking for a color we would call cherry red I don't know if I know what color a cherry is but I have a pretty good idea if you can see this when we go to black blue going beyond the blue we're moving towards the red that we want orange probably quite heartless so do be careful and we just keep going until that heat is what throughout the whole piece of steel and then of course you got to have a barbecue after this keep going keep going once this is done the steel will be very hot it'll be as hot as the fire or something like that it's very hot i think we're actually there little nudge over to the edge so I can get a hold of it I'm going to offer this to my tip and it's not magnetic so I dropped it into the oil I believe that's going to be hard so be careful even the oil will be hot a little bit hot it won't be super hot but just be careful you lift that out what I usually do is take the file straight to the edge to see if it's now it's glancing off the surface it's just taking the black off but it's glancing off the surface so it's good and hard I feel like it's ready for me to anneal if I want to anneal it I would just put this straight into the oven 350 to 375 degrees leave it in for 45 minutes to an hour take it out and it will be exactly the right hardness you need for sharpening now I'm going to leave this as it is I'm going to go and sharpen it up and you'll see how this works we need to go through sharpening this blade we've just made and the simplest method that I've come across is this I put it on a block because you can't hold these with your fingertips they're too hard to hold with your fingertips I think I have difficulty my fingers are very strong so what I did I came up with this system a block of wood in the vise this is cut at 30 degrees here put this on the bench and I'm using puddles that are six inches long which means the when the puddle is on here about five and a half inches along here is the right angle to get somewhere around thirty five degrees down to twenty-five degrees so you can move it all the way to the tip here or further up the puddling you got a different bevel what that does on the back of the bevel it gives you a camber and it's perfect for a spokeshave so drop this on here first of all you have to get the angle so just eyeball the puddle with the piece of wood that will get you in the zone I've got also sun paper glued to a block of wood the same size of these purpose-made puddles I'm going with the coarse one first so this one goes here this goes on here and we are ready to go so I place the front leading edge of the cutting edge right onto the block of wood level with the front edge and I just work this into a circular motion like this and that naturally gives me a perfect camber so now I'm getting down into the hard steel and I just keep working that going around in this circular motion usually you don't need any water but you can add water if you want to just to clear the dross from inside the diamond particles saying as I was saying you can still use just coarse sandpaper on here it works just as well so you don't have to have any fancy equipment this is really part of the pro Poorman process and that works well too so we worked through one grit then we go to a finer grit and we polish it out and then we'll get back after I've got the bevel down to the cutting edge a little way to go yet actually I'm nearly there then we'll get back together and I'll show you what we do next this lust polishing out I'm just using the define of this level is really very minimal you don't need to go very much on it the main shaping is done with the coarser paddle we've got to do a couple of things on this now I've got a burr on this underside here that's come from the abrasion and my steel is fairly well polished out spokeshaves are a little bit different than plane irons in that they are much more forgiving and need a lot less they don't need to be dead flat on this underside but you want it so that you can polish it out so that's what I'm doing the burr was on the other side so you can see the heat from heating it in the in the barbecue pit it's it or even if you do it with a blowtorch it would be the same it's high high and high so I'm going to go to the coarse stone to try and take that down it wouldn't have to technically be dead flat but because it's easier to sharpen when it is dead flat this is what we do take another look so they're almost on this side now I'm going to press harder on that four part like I said I don't mind even if it was curved a little bit push away from the cutting edge strong thing is yeah definitely you do get strong fingers after 53 years so don't give up all right so we're nearly there I'm going straight to my super fine here watch your fingers don't slip this is great and that's it you don't need to go like you would with say a plane iron generally you don't have to go with this super fine abrasive polish on this face unless you are looking for that super superb christine edge that like you might for a plane for some reason spoke shaves really are forgiving supposed to take a little bit of getting down you see i still have a little black line right behind the cutting edge here so I'm going to I want to get rid of that and I did it now what that usually does is it pushes the burr on to the top edge so we go to the strop next to polish out the full bevel I'm going to go on to this wooden side here just I'm going to polish it up on this back face from the flat face here this just with the chromium oxide whatever it is aluminum oxide just a buffing compound good firm grip don't let it slip and over on to the leather side this is where it gets a little bit hard on your fingers I can't get a lot of pressure on here so if that is the case maybe you can get some lock pliers like this that will help you pull that just to polish out get rid of the burr and I think we're probably good enough you clean this off just so you can see it lifts out so there's my cutting edge I'm happy that that's going to cut favorably for me I think feel scary sharp that is. See what we got so let's install this into the spokeshave there's one thing I did notice before and that was that when I took a shaving before I actually did this I was getting shavings with jamming right in there and I think it was because I'll like it was because this wasn't quite steep enough right behind the cutting edge so what I'm going to do is just take a chisel and just pare down here not in front of the cutting edge but right behind it here just take out couple millimeters maybe a millimeter off that that is the closest to the blade here and then this way too it's very simple this is you just have to work it out when you get to yours this will help you to determine what it is it could be causing some problems or a problem hopefully only one so sink this down into there now these are still protruding just a little bit pass the surface of the blade so you can take a file this will be soft steel just take that file till you flush that is some very hard steel I think we're good to go let's give this a whirl see what we got so here we go that's a deep cut there so we've got to do a little micro adjusting that feels so bad so there like there so we've got to do a little micro adjusting on the depth of the iron so I'm going to take this out because I've got too deep of a cut and I'm going to deepen the recesses by a mil half a mil whatever that looks like it I need to go down a mil at this stage but we want this to work this is probably good this is one of the nice things about making tools though you get to know the intricacies of how to operate the tool in so many different ways and I don't see how you could get the better way of understanding the tools you're working with first of all by making one and then secondly by fettling it making it work to its optimum performance by just doing things like this great so now we've got much less oak than we got on this one see what we got oh look at that it's a little bit of now something happened there ah I not it is I think it's this one screw on this side this one doesn't have this one was slightly shorter than the other one so let me put this one in I got mixed up with two screw sizes and I put a short one in there you go small things make a big difference there you are Fibonacci sequence we are on our way so we've got this now we can shapes bevels on here we can shape round overs on here that is so wonderful it feels really nice it's very nice this is great so I've got one side course this side is my coarse side so I set this one a little bit deeper and then this side is the finer side fine that's it it's a wonderful tool simple very easy to make I think it should take you ten minutes plus hardening of Steel bit longer barbeque enjoy

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 360,264

Rating: 4.9148521 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, hand tools, paul sellers, Spokeshave, handmade, wood

Id: jZwzBbcwbgU

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017