Shopsmith Forums

Has anyone made a metal bodied wood plane? I believe there were plans in either Wood magazine or Woodsmith on a metal bodied plane. I think the base was steel and the sides were brass or vice versa.

I'm getting the urge to make a plane. Something free hand but with a needed qualifications to be a useful plane. I'm thinking wood but I keep coming back to the metal plane idea.

I'm looking for feedback from plane builders. Any advice will be much welcomed.

I have... in a fashion; link below. I used a piece of steel square-pipe to make an "Infill" plane. It was sort of fun, but I'd go a more conventional way (or buy a kit) if I ever had to do a metal plane again. To be honest, this one doesn't perform much better than my other planes. Occasionally I want to flatten a really hard blank of rosewood, and this plane will exceed my others mostly because it's so heavy (my other planes tend to skate over the ridges):

https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=5799

Verry nice...lots of careful work there

Tons of resources and how to info on the web
Just Google "make an infill plane"

This is a bucket list item for me, but I have a lot of other stuff to to do first. Hope your comfortable working with metal.

http://www.petermcbride.com/metal_plane_making/
http://user.xmission.com/~jry/ww/tools/a13/a13.html
http://woodworkingbyhand2.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-infill-smoother.html