Make a rabbet plane for NO MONEY.

this is woodwork for humans the series where we make great things out of wood and sometimes we even make our own tools recently we've been doing a lot of joinery like the dovetails on the simple wooden gift box but there are a lot of other great joints out there besides the dovetail for instance consider the humble rabbit or rebate for our friends across the pond this is just a little chef's cut into the edge or end of a piece of wood and then that shelf allows us to accept another piece of wood just like that and then the two pieces are typically reinforced without a fasteners glue or both the rabbit is a simple and effective joint and you find it on things like drawers boxes and cabinetry all stuff that we might want to build but no matter how you're gonna make a rabbit you probably need a rabbit plane you can grab one of these vintage or new metallic ones and these are great they have all sorts of fences and depth stops and all sorts of stuff but they're a little bit pricey and they can be difficult to find so instead of going that route how about we do this how about we make our own for zero dollars seriously this plane has two huge advantages the first thing is that it's made out of a laminated construction it's glued together from several different pieces of wood this means we can make it in several pieces and if any of those individual parts go wrong we could just throw it away and remake it instead of ruining the whole thing the second big advantage of this plane is that all you need to build it is a common bench chisel and a couple of scraps of solid wood and let's be honest if you don't have a chisel and a couple of scraps of wood then you have wasted your life I'm gonna start this plane by cross-cutting my stock I'm gonna use a vintage rabbet plane and base all of my measurements off of that but all the measurements you need are in the plans and on the tip sheet so you're not gonna need your own plane to work from the main body of my plane is gonna be made out of cherry and whatever piece you use just needs to be a little bit thicker than whatever chisel you're going to use you're also gonna need a backer I'm using a piece of soft maple here and it's on the thin ish side this piece is a little over half an inch you can kind of use whatever is sitting around once I've got my boards crosscut I'm also gonna have to rip my cherry board to the correct width I'm just standing on it and ripping it with my real basalt that's a really fast way of getting the cut done I'm also going to dress the wood flat and square using the palm in my vise and a standard bench plane precision matters a lot in tool making so I'm going to shoot the ends of all of my stock on a shooting board and make both of my pieces as perfect as I can be I want the main body to eventually end up the exact width of my chisel so I'm gonna set marking gauge to my chisel scribe all the way around my cherry board and then plane it down to that line so I have the finished thickness you can see how the two pieces will fit together and while I've got them together I'm going to mark the outside and the front of each piece that's gonna allow me to keep them straight during assembly I'm gonna get the bed angle off my vintage plane and it's 47 degrees now the other angles are gonna be different for you depending on your chisel and how thick it is but for me my wedge is 12 degrees my escapement 63 degrees and the chisel width makes up the difference now I've got to cut out all of these angles and for this project I need to saw very very accurately so I'm gonna use the knife wall technique I'll cut lines with my marking knife using my protractor as the straightedge I'm gonna make several strokes on each line for a deep and crisp cut then I'll take my widest chisel and push in towards that line bevel up and flick out the chips this is gonna give me a shallow trench that's gonna guide my saw really precisely through all the cuts I have to make with my Japanese pull saw I always do careful cuts as a series of triangles first I cut across the top and down one face then I flip the board and cut down the other face then I flip the board over and make the same cuts across the bottom now all I have is the waist in the middle of the board and the cuts at the top and the bottom edges will guide my saw you can see that it from my bed I have a nice clean cut and I'm gonna repeat that process to cut my escapement course even good saw cuts requires some cleanup so I'm gonna plane these edges flat and square in the vise one of my pieces comes out a little bit belied so I'm gonna shoot that straight just by holding it steady on the shooting board this freehand technique doesn't always work but it works this time I also want to clean in a little bit of angle in my statement I want this angle here not to be a straight 90 degrees but to angle up and into the plane a little bit that way when I add the wedge and tap it in that angle is gonna pull the wedge not just down but also into the plane it's gonna make it hold the chisel really securely to get this angle on my escapement face I'm just gonna shim the board up a tiny bit with cardboard and then shoot that's gonna give me a degree or two of incline it's all I need to make this work perfectly now my bed and escapement are done and I need to finish my backer board and my wedge I'll lay my bed pieces on my escapement and trace the angles I can then copy these angles onto my wedge stock which is just the cherry piece left over from ripping the main body I'll rip down this angled cut and then glue up the body and let those pieces cure while I eat lunch then I'll pull off the clamps and test the wedge fit man I got super lucky it is a great fit right off the saw now I'm going to add the chisel and the handle of the chisel interferes with the wedge so I'll cut out some material and then chisel and sand the curves nice and smooth now the chisel fits in here nicely now at this point in the video you might have noticed I started out using this chisel and ended up using this one here's what happened this chisel which is a nice vintage one is a socket chisel and the blade of a socket chisel actually slopes up on the top to where it starts to form the socket now usually this is good it makes the chisel really sturdy and I knew this feature was there but I wasn't really thinking about it and having a curved face like this is gonna make it very very difficult for this chisel to seat in the plane body it's gonna want to pop out all the time because it's just the wrong shape on the other hand this urban marbles chisel here it has a flat straight blade it's flat on both edges so I can use this surface against the bed of my plane and it's not gonna want to move on me at all these blue tip chisels are also totally decent bench chisels I will link to a set of them down in the description now that I've switched chisels my wedge unfortunately no longer fits and it's gonna take me a lot of time fiddling with it very carefully to get the perfect fit that I need on the face of the wedge and that internal angle on the escapement I do several test fits while getting it slowly closer but still not close enough so I finally hold the plane and pull the wedge down the sole of the plane for added control this gets me very close and then just a little bit of sanding on the flat of my bench helps me dial in that wedge all the way now I've got a perfect fit all the way along the side of the wedge and in that angle I've cut in the escapement I don't need to do anything else to it finally I need a little cut away in the wedge that's gonna allow chips to escape and I want to put a nice little finial on the top this is mostly for looks I'll cut these details with a chisel and a bench hook and then I'll install the chisel and the wedge and I'm ready to test even before it's done this plane produces a lovely little shaving I can already tell that it's gonna work great so this plane functions but it's very uncomfortable mostly because of all the sharp corners and ninety degree angles on it so I'm gonna trace a radius onto the corners using this big fender washer and then chisel off the waist with bevel up cuts then I can sand it smooth now on this vintage plane you can see that the chamfers not only go across the top like this but they also carry around the front and back of the chisel and they end in these lovely little stopped chamfer details these are not necessary but they're super cool and I've got to have them on my plane to make the stop chamfers I'll make a little saw cuts in the edges of the plane chisel down to them from the top and then scoop up with small bevel up cuts to form the stops on the front and back of the plane when all this stuff is done the body and wedge of the plane are pretty much done what I need now is a fence that's gonna let me control the width of my rabbits so I'll cut a piece of thin hardwood stock and drill and chisel slots in both ends when I go to install this into the bottom of my plane I'm gonna use several small washers as spacers between the fence and the plane this is gonna keep the fence from interfering with the chisel it's gonna let the edge of the chisel come down below the sole of the plane a little bit so it can cut effectively once I've got the fence screwed into the body of the plane with the spacers we're ready to test it now that our rabbet plane is complete we need to learn how to set it up and use it first thing you want to do is grab it over the top with your thumb across the iron and the wedge just like this that's gonna keep them from falling out when you strike the backer plan just like that one sharp tap and everything should come out really easily set the plane aside for a second and check out your chisel first thing you need to do is make sure that it's absolutely square across the top wooden square is perfect for this because it won't blunt the edge and then if you've been using the chisel a little bit recently go ahead and hone it up right now a razor sharp chisel is totally helpful for this tool now we're ready to reassemble the tool so grab the plane insert the iron in put it so it's just above the fence add the wedge on top I'm keeping my thumb across the wedge and the iron and I'm gonna give the wedge one good sharp whack now everything's nice and set up and it's not going anywhere next thing I want to do is set up my fence so that I'm getting the correct width rabbet when I cut with the plane now you can measure this or use a square for it those work great but what I really like to do is just set up my fence from a piece of stock that I'm gonna be using so let's just say for instance that I was making a cabinet and I was gonna use a piece of material this thickness for the back of the cabinet and I want to rabbet this into the sides well instead of measuring I'm just gonna use a scrap of that stock to set up my fence it's really easy just take a screwdriver and I'll gently loosen both of the screws that hold my fence in place then I'll set my piece of scrap stock flat on the table and put my plane down on top of it so that just the fence resting on the scrap then I'll push down on the plane to make sure it's flush with the table and retighten those screws now my plane is set up so that it's the exact width of the stock that I'm gonna be wrapping in for there's no room for error here now I need to check the projection of the blade I've already got a piece of stock setup in my vise so I'm going to take my rabbet plane set it with the fence flush against the side of the stock and give it a gentle programming and in this case the iron is already engaging and I got a nice little shaving but it's a pretty light shaving and it's gonna be slow going I'd like the blade to be a little bit deeper that's no problem I'm just gonna give the chisel a light tap on the back and that's enough to advance it a little bit anytime I mess with the iron I also want to tap the wedge real quick just to make sure that stays nice and tight last thing I want to check is I need the iron to stick out of the side of the plane out of the mouth here just a tiny bit that's gonna give me a square inside corner to my rabbit and I can tell right here I don't have that stick out that I need that's easy to fix I'm just gonna tap the side of the chisel just like that and you can just feel with your finger until you get the adjustment that you want that's perfect now it's sticking out just a little bit now I can see from testing this out that this plane body is a tiny bit thick for this chisel I might take it apart and take just a couple light shavings off of it with a regular bench plane for right now it works fine so I'm not gonna worry about it now I'll go back to my stock and take another shaving good I'm taking nice shavings I can see that I've got a good straight line and a nice clean bottom to my rabbit let me do several more of these is a short piece of stock I'm just starting at one end and going all the way across the rabbit planes aren't typically used that way usually you start back a few inches from the far end push forward back up a little bit take a stroke back up and take a stroke back up and take a stroke this technique lets you progress much more quickly through your rabbit now I've got a nice clean rabbit and I've just watched the depth as I've worked I could also put a depth stop on the side of this plane really easily there are lots of examples of those online I don't really feel like I need a depth stop so for right now I'm just gonna keep things simple the rabbit that I've created is the exact same thickness as this piece and as I set it in here I can tell it it's a perfect flush fit if I were gonna lap these two boards together this would already be perfect if it's gonna be the back of a cabinet my piece of stock still sticks up a little bit and that just tells me my rabbit needs to be a little deeper a few more passes with the plane and this will sit in perfectly flush with the side stock and I'll be totally done I think this project is a great example of how you can take stuff that you already have sitting around your shop and make a really useful functional tool I own a bunch of different rabbit plants and honestly none of them work much better than this one some of them have some convenient gadgets but the rabbits they make are exactly the same and they take about the same amount of time to use so there's really no reason not to make one of these if you've got a couple of afternoons and some spare stock now with this part of the video I usually talk about the plans for the project have plans for this rabbit plane they're great and they're inexpensive but let's make it a little bit more interesting I've taken five of my most popular woodshop plans and put them together into my two makers bundle that's available right now for only eight dollars that's like buying three sets of my plans and having me throw in the bench hook the shooting board and the rabbit plane for free so go over to rex krueger comm slash store and pick up the five plan two makers bundle for only eight bucks this is a limited time deal I'm only doing it for the month of September so grab it before it's gone and when people look at my plans they often say wow it's really inexpensive most of your plans are only two and people want to know why that is well it's because of patreon the support that I get from patreon not only allows me to spend days building and shooting and editing these projects it also allows me to keep prices really low I sell a few plans but not nearly enough to support these videos it's my patrons that make this stuff possible and their support allows me to keep prices low even for non patrons if you're interested in being a part of that community go on over to patreon comm slash Rex Krueger and check out the early access rewards an exclusive content that I have just for my patrons and of course for everybody who's watching this video thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 100,098

Rating: 4.9376912 out of 5

Keywords: plane, joinery plane, rabbet plane, hand plane, rabbet, block plane, shoulder plane, rabbet planes, rabbit plane, hand planes, make a block plane, how to make a wooden plane, stanley no. 78 rabbet plane, rebate plane, rabbet block plane, low angle rabbet block plane, rabbet joint, rabbit block plane, make, diy shoulder plane, block planes, woodworking, flattening a plane, how to use a shoulder plane, rabbit, what does a shoulder plane do

Id: L1MFASOkJnY

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019